She glanced into her tin mug before taking a sip of the hot chocolate that had long since gone cold. “Starting small, I see.”
“I didn’t think you wanted to do the long-lost-friends thing,” he said, looking over at her. “But maybe it’d be better if I started with ‘How are you?’？”
Lily kept her attention fixed on the fire, but the press of his gaze was unnerving. She turned and met his eyes. Dark and searching. So familiar it hurt. “Actually, yeah. Maybe that’s easier.”
“Okay, Lily,” he said, and his playful smile tapped against a tiny, vulnerable well of feelings inside her. “How are you?”
“I’ve been better.” Lily laughed thickly, pushing back the heavy swell of anger and sadness that rose in her throat. “I guess I was wrong. ‘How are you’ isn’t an easier place to start.”
His gaze swept over her face, from her hairline down to her mouth, pausing there. That vulnerable well began to upend, spilling dangerously, and Lily turned away.
When he spoke again, Leo’s voice was so strained it came out as a whisper. “Then maybe I’ll just start where I really want to: What happened to the ranch?”
She settled her gaze on his when she answered, wanting to see how it would land. “Duke sold it right after you left.”
Leo went still. “What? Why?”
“About a week after, in fact, he handed over the keys.” Lily turned her attention down to her hands, where her fingers were knotted together. “I’m not sure if you remember, that last morning, Duke was heading out of town.”
“I remember,” Leo said. “For a dig.”
“Turns out he wasn’t going on a dig,” she told him. “I can’t tell you how many times I tried to remember if he told me that, or if I just assumed. He was going to sign papers at a title company. He sold the ranch to a local guy named Jonathan Cross.”
“I don’t—” Leo cut away, understandably confused. “He’d already planned this when he left that morning? It felt like he was leaving everything in your hands.”
“I know,” Lily said, remembering how naive she’d been. How excited she’d been to see him go. “I thought so, too. But do you remember he’d left me a note on the table?”
Leo paused, and then slowly nodded.
“It was one of his stupid riddles. He couldn’t even tell me to my face that he was selling it. It took me an hour to decode when I dug it out of the trash, and the note said he had plans for the money. Probably some big expedition that would get him another National Geographic cover.” She wiped her clammy palms on her thighs. “I was so pissed, I moved out that day.”
Leo bent, putting his head in his hands. “Holy shit. He didn’t mention any of this.”
She was about to continue when his words crashed into her. “What do you mean? When did you talk to Duke?”
“When I called you back.” Leo said this plainly, stating a fact. “The messages I left?”
Lily, mute with shocked confusion, shook her head.
“When you’d called me— I’m sorry,” he said, neck flushing red. “I was arranging my mother’s cremation. I— It wasn’t a good day for me, and I know I was short with you, but—”
“What—your mother’s—”
“—when I called back, I didn’t even get a voicemail recording. I called the lodge, and Duke said you weren’t at the ranch, and to leave a message with him.”
The word cremation was looping over and over in her brain. His mother had died.
“You left a message with my father?”
He nodded. “Yeah, a few, actually.”
Lily’s jaw creaked open, words falling flatly out: “I never got a message. All I knew was what you told me the morning you had to leave: that your mother had been in an accident but was okay.”
Leo frowned. “I told Duke that my mother had unexpectedly passed away from her injuries, and I wouldn’t be able to leave Cora and return to Wyoming.”
The words landed like a meteor falling from the sky; the impact shook her entire foundation. She’d been angry, acted impulsively. But that brief moment of fury meant that not only had she missed Leo’s call, she’d also missed the messages from Duke that Leo’s mother had died.
She’d been so stupid.
“I’m sorry,” she said, voice muffled. “Oh my God. I had no idea, Leo.” Slowly, she straightened and looked over at him. Guilt beat a heavy thunder in her chest as she got the next words out: “I didn’t know you’d called. I didn’t know your mom died.”