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“Good,” she said. “You can tell me, you know,” she continued, “if I need to get my own place.”

“Why would I want you to get your own place?”

She felt something blooming in her chest. Something like hope.

She knew that this wasn’t permanent... Except...

She was starting to want it to be. Something was shifting inside of her. And she had been so certain that this was going to be temporary, and that she was going to be okay with it. And she felt like maybe...

She wasn’t an idiot if she felt something for him. She had told herself that she wasn’t going to be that person, that she wasn’t going to be the idiot virgin, that she wasn’t going to be the sad waif who fell for her rescuer. But it was more than that. And what was really funny was that all the people around her seemed invested in her plumbing the depths of her trauma, and she knew she didn’t want to do that. But she wouldn’t let herself get to the depths of her own happiness. And why was that? People didn’t seem to value happiness, herself included. She framed it as being idiotic. While anger and all kinds of other bad emotions seemed to be treated as valid.

She wasn’t going to go making any declarations to him right now. She needed to sit with all of this for just a little bit longer.

But...

She was starting to think she didn’t want to go. That her happiness wasn’t out there in some vague, isolated future. That these weren’t random bricks. But a foundation. One that she wanted to build off of. Right here. Was that so crazy? Maybe it was. She was starting to care less and less.

She felt incredibly protective of these feelings that were rising up inside of her. Entitled to them. Because yes, all those bad things had happened to her. But so many good things had happened. And she wanted to marinate in those things. To dwell in them and with them. She wanted joy. To claim it. To own it. Identify finding Daughtry and this ranch, this family, as a miracle. It was.

The easy thing would be to walk away. To continue on down the road. To not risk herself. Not invest herself.

But she had been alone for all of her life. For a while it had felt brave. Dreaming about doing school. Dreaming about getting a job at a brewery. Yeah, for a while that had felt really brave.

But it was still walking away. Rather than building on connections. Rather than making more of this, of them. She still wanted to go to school. Maybe she would even get a job away from the ranch. Maybe. She and Daughtry had just talked about how neither of them wanted to get married. Have a family. But shewas starting to think that maybe the real bravery was in taking a chance on something that you couldn’t actually imagine. Following along in your heart, even if it didn’t make any sense. Even if you didn’t know the pattern.

To make a whole new path out of something you had never seen before, that was really something.

And if she was so extraordinary, for coming out of the situation that she’d been put in, then she wanted to be the most extraordinary. The most wildly, blindly happy. Because if she had to acknowledge that her past was a tragedy, then she wanted to claim a victory in her future.

They drove away from the van, with a few of her things in a crate. “I don’t even think I need these things,” she said. “Not really. Some weird kitchen utensils and not much more.”

And what she hoped was that his kitchen would just keep on being hers. That she wouldn’t need to ever start a kitchen of her own. Which was maybe presumptuous. But she was living in a moment of presumptuousness.

“It seems like a big deal,” he said. “Selling the van.”

“Yeah,” she said. “It does. But... it doesn’t feel like it’s my life anymore.”

The most amazing realization was that her new life could be whatever she wanted it to be. Whatever she saw it as. And that the limit on her own happiness didn’t exist.

Now, Daughtry... She didn’t know about him. She was going to have to wait, bide her time. Figure out when the best time was to... to say something. Anything.

“You’re a big-time beer brewer now, Bix Carpenter.”

She frowned. It was funny. That last name. It belonged to her father. Her brother. And consequently, it didn’t feel much like it belonged to her. Or like she would even want it to. But the name also spoke of building. And that was kind of interesting.

So maybe she could make the name take on a meaning that was just something for her. Not tied to them.

She had been a carpenter in her own life. She had gotten a brick, and she had started building.

Where she built from here was up to her. And she could confidently say she really felt that for the first time in her life.

Really felt like the control was hers. The agency.

All of it.

She also realized that hope was an ever-expanding resource. The minute you had a little, it grew and grew.

Now she didn’t just want to survive. Now she didn’t just want to live well and comfortably. She wanted to live surrounded by friends. She wanted to live in this family that she had grown so fond of.