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He couldn’t imagine that.

“What are you doing here?”

“I came to check on you. I didn’t mean to make you that upset.”

Her eyes were round, her cheeks pale. She blinked for a moment, looking at him like he might be an apparition.

“It wasn’t your fault. It was my fault. I was an idiot, Levi. And I’m sorry. I was pushing you and acting like you were dumb. That’s how I was acting. It was. You had reasons, and I refused to see it, and I feel badly about that. And personally responsible for what my father did. I couldn’t handle it.”

“So you ran away?”

“Yes. I did.”

“You only know how to win or retreat?”

“I don’t understand.”

“If you can’t hammer me to death, you don’t know what else to do.”

She lowered her head. “Yeah. Okay. I don’t know what else to do. I don’t know the right thing here. And I don’t actually want to try and talk you into something you really don’t want to do. I just thought you were being stubborn and... Yeah, that I was willing to push up against.”

“It’s a whole thing where I’m a human being that has feelings that baffles you?”

She leaned against the rope. “Yes. Because I didn’t consider them.”

“Am I understanding you right, that actually what makes you mad is that you don’t feel like you have the moral high ground anymore?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Well. That’s part of it.”

“So what really bothers you is that you aren’t right.”

“Don’t make it sound like that. That still makes it sound like I’m not very nice.”

“Are you very nice?”

He shouldn’t badger her. Or maybe he should. He didn’t owe this little creature anything. She was the one who had come into his life and put things in relative turmoil. She was the one who had caused all of this. He had just been ranching and minding his own business. He hadn’t asked.

“I want to be nice,” she said. “But I just...care a lot. About everything. When I get into that space I do things sometimes that don’t seem nice because all I can see is the goal.” She looked up at him with glassy eyes. “I never feel mean because I know how much I care. Well, I didn’t used to feel mean. I have recently.”

She felt bad, and he could see it. And worst of all...he related to her. He wondered if they suffered from the same problem. Her life had been singularly devoted to proving herself. And while his had been more practical—he had to do a good job by his siblings—it had hacked limbs off his personal development.

He wondered if her own narrow focus had done the same to her. She’d gone away to college, yes, and she clung to that now like it validated her. So whatever she said about that, and surfers, he wondered if she’d actually been social there at all. Or if her singular mission statement had taken over all of it.

He was pretty sure he could guess.

“I care about the ranch,” she said softly. “I... It has felt easier than caring about other things for a long time, and I feel like my degree is what makes me...important.”

“I don’t care about your degree, carrot.”

“I know you don’t. It’s why you make me so mad. If my degree doesn’t matter to you, then...”

“Here’s the deal,” he said, wondering why the hell he felt compassion for her. “If a degree is all that mattered to me, I’d have to discount my own experiences, right?”

“I suppose.”

“And I’m not doing that. The degree isn’t what makes me think you’re smart. It’s what I’ve seen you do. It’s the amount of care I’ve seen from you as far as the land goes. That’s what matters to me. Come back to the ranch. Take a look at the paperwork.”

“But you said...”