“So, your mom tells me you’ve made your best friend into your girlfriend,” Rex said as he worked alongside Vaughn in the barn one afternoon.

Vaughn felt his face flush. Fuck, his dad was going to give him the damn sex ed speech again like he had when Vaughn was twelve. So goddamn uncomfortable.

“Yeah, T.J. and I are dating.” He scraped a pile of manure into the shovel and tossed it into the cart outside the door.

His dad put down the pitchfork he was using to toss fresh hay into the stalls. “So how’d that come about?”

Vaughn fought the urge to run screaming from the barn and ducked his head so he didn’t have to look his old man in the eye.

“I don’t know, we just sorta realized that we’d rather date each other than anyone else.”

“Uh-huh.” Rex did that thing where he watched Vaughn without saying anything. It was like having lasers tracking your every movement.

Vaughn finally cracked. “Just get it over with, Dad. Tell me about waiting until we’re ready and wrapping it up and all that stuff so we can be done with this.”

Rex chuckled. “Well, now that you mention it, all that’s good advice too.”

Vaughn looked at him, questioning.

“You’re nearly eighteen, son. I think you know how condoms work, and I highly doubt me telling you to wait with the girl you’ve loved all your life is going to make any difference.”

Vaughn tried not to choke as he went back to shoveling shit and praying that a bolt of lightning would just take him out now.

“Vaughn.” His dad called to him, and Vaughn stopped shoveling and paid attention.

Rex walked over and put a heavy hand on Vaughn’s shoulder, squeezing ever so slightly.

“That girl is part of our family whether you date her for a day or a lifetime. You remember that, and you treat her with the respect and the care that you would any member of our family. You understand me, son?”

“Yes, sir,” Vaughn whispered, something making his throat feel full of cotton.

“You may not realize it, but you have the power to break her heart, and she has the power to break yours. She trusts you with everything now. Make sure you’re worthy of it.”

* * *

Janelle shook her head as T.J. walked into the office and set two cups of coffee down.

“That’s bribery in the form of caffeine,” Janelle said with a scowl.

T.J. sighed. “Drew talked to you.”

“Yeah well, when I saw him checking out of the inn this morning and made a joke about you being there with him, I found out. Now I know why you’ve been so absent the last few days.” Janelle paused, sipping the coffee T.J. had brought for her. “How is Mr. I Can’t Make Up My Mind, anyway?”

“Apparently, he’s made up his mind,” T.J. offered.

Janelle raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

T.J. flopped down in her desk chair. “He seems serious about it. He keeps hanging around, bringing me flowers, feeding me dinner.”

Janelle snorted. “He’s always done that stuff. He just did it, then slept with other women instead of you.”

T.J.’s face grew hot.

“Oh. My. God. You didn’t!”

“I might have?”

“Spill. This instant! Was it good? How did it happen? Were you sober? Was he?”

“It was…um, it happened the night of Boots and Brews—”

“So that’s why you left so early. I knew I didn’t believe that story about you not feeling well.”

T.J. narrowed her eyes at her friend. “You were so busy spying on Vaughn’s brother, you didn’t even notice I’d gone for nearly an hour.”

Janelle shrugged. “If you’d seen the way Ty looked at that woman when she walked up to him, you’d have spied too. I’ve never known a Jenkins man to look so damn scared. It was like she was a ghost or a wicked witch or something.”

“I’ll have to ask Vaughn if he knows anything about it.”

Janelle pried the lid off her coffee and dumped in a packet of sweetener she found in the top drawer of her desk.

“You’re doing great at avoiding my question, by the way.”

“What question?” T.J. muttered into her coffee cup.

“The one about the sex you had with Vaughn.”

“It’s complicated.”

“It is. And I know how hard this is for you. I want it to work out, I really do. I just don’t trust him.”

T.J. nodded. “I don’t either. And I’m not sure if I ever can.”

* * *

Two hours later, T.J. arrived at the Big Sur Ranch to have the first session with Vaughn’s running blade. She went straight to the gym to put her things down, even though they’d be doing most of their session outside. As she reached for the door, she met up with Cade coming out.

“She’s back,” he said, a big smile on his face.

“She is. For now,” she added, not wanting to get anyone’s hopes up, least of all her own.

He winked at her. “Oh, I’m expecting her to be around for a very long time now.”

“Makes one of us,” she muttered to herself as Cade held the door open for her.

Once inside, he stayed with her. “How are you?” he asked as she went to the desk and put her bag down and stripped off her zip-up hoodie.

“I’m okay, thanks.”

“You know I mean more than in the generic sense,” he added, watching her carefully.

She leaned back against the desk, sitting her butt on the edge and thought about that for a moment. Was she okay? If being in a constant state of waiting for the other shoe to drop counted as okay, then she supposed she was.

“I’m okay, but I’m…cautious, I guess you could say.” Pessimistic. Discouraged even.

“And no one could blame you for that,” Cade said. “I have something to show you,” he added. “Come with me for a minute?”

She nodded and followed him out of the gym and next door to the barn complex where the Jenkinses had their office as well as the horses they personally used, and a sick animal quarantine area.

Cade led her to the section of the building that housed the office, but opened a door on the left-hand side of the hallway instead of the right.

It was a room T.J. had seen only once before, when she and Vaughn had been dating in high school. The twelve-by-twelve space had a window that covered one whole wall, looking toward the road that led to the house. The view was all Jenkins land and the big sky that hung over the ocean beyond.

Inside the room were canvases—dozens of them. Some blank, some filled or in progress, all of them Vaughn’s.

“You remember when Dad had this room set up for him?” Cade asked.

T.J. nodded. “He was really excited. Your dad was a good guy. I know he didn’t really understand the art, but if his kid loved it, then he was going to facilitate it.”

Cade’s smile was bittersweet. “Yeah, he was that guy all right. And the day they died, Vaughn quit using this room. He came and sat around in here once in a while, but I don’t think he ever painted. When they were alive, he’d spend a few hours every weekend in here, and if we were lucky, he’d end up with something he liked and the rest of us would get to see it.”

Cade walked over to a covered canvas on an easel. “Since he came home from college, he’s been all about the photography, and since it’s digital, we never got to see what he was doing. But I figured maybe he wasn’t going to paint anymore. Maybe that was just something that he associated with Mom and Dad so much, he’d never do it again. But yesterday, he showed me this.”

Cade removed the cover from the canvas, and there in living color was a big, bold painting of a woman on a surfboard, gliding over the water, long dark hair flying out behind her. It was impressionist in style, not too detailed, the colors of the ocean and the sky bleeding into oranges and yellows where a sun set in the background. Only a slight profile of the woman’s face was visible, but the hair alone was enough for T.J. to realize that it was her.

She walked silently closer, holding out a hand as if she was going to touch the brilliant, complex piece.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Cade asked, brotherly pride spilling out of him.

T.J. fought the tears that threatened, and nodded, caught speechless for a moment.

“It’s—” She cleared her throat before she continued. “It’s amazing. Different from the stuff he used to do.”

“He’s never done the art for show,” Cade said quietly. “It was always just something that he loved and did for himself. That’s why when he decided to major in it in college, I was really pleased. I know it’s important to him, and I hoped it would help him after Mom and Dad died.”

T.J. huffed out a breath. “Didn’t seem to.”

Cade turned and faced her, his brow furrowed. “That’s my fault. I want you to know that. I was so caught up in running the business and feeling sorry for myself, regretting all the things I did wrong with my parents—it didn’t leave me room to take care of Vaughn the way I should have. He was a kid, T.J. He needed a parent, and I wasn’t there for him.”

T.J.’s eyes filled again. So much regret and pain in these Jenkins men, sometimes she wondered if it was really in her own best interests to hang around with them.

Then Cade smiled. “But when he had the accident, it was my wake-up call. I won’t let him fail this time. And I can feel it in my bones—he’s getting there, and this painting? It’s one really big sign I’m right.”

She nodded, looking at the bright splashes of color and the way the brushstrokes so perfectly shaped and molded the forms in the scene. The way one thing flowed into another, curves, slopes, crests. It was a voluptuous composition, lush and full.

“I wanted you to see it,” Cade said, pulling the cover back over it, shutting it away in the dark again. “I asked him if I could, and he said yes. You know he doesn’t really show his stuff to people himself.”

She did know. But once upon a time, he had shown her his work. Little sketches on school notebooks, a painting of flowers for his mom on her birthday, and one very special portrait of T.J.’s dog that he gave to her after they had to put Candy down. But she couldn’t help but wonder if he would have shown her this one, this picture of her, if Cade hadn’t done it for him?

As they left the little art studio, she wondered if they’d ever rebuild the trust that had been missing between them for so long.

“He’s never going to be the same again, you know,” she told Cade.

He glanced at her as they walked through the hallway and back outside. They both stopped, and he faced her.

“None of us are. Life changes people. It’s just a fact. I’m not looking to get back seventeen-year-old Vaughn. I’m looking to have a brother who’s confident and happy. I’m looking to get the man Vaughn was becoming. I don’t expect him to be the same, just to be his best self. That’s something I think even he’d agree he hasn’t been for a very long time.”

T.J. smiled at him. “Thank you for showing me the painting.”

“Anytime.”

She turned to go back to the gym, Cade’s words ringing in her ears. Life changes people. I’m not looking to get back seventeen-year-old Vaughn. But was she? Was she waiting for that sweet, innocent, romantic boy to come back? Had she been for all these years? Well, of course she had. He’d disappeared overnight and taken her heart with him.

But a piece of her had disappeared that night too. She’d loved his parents almost like they were her own. And their deaths had frightened her. A seventeen-year-old suddenly slapped in the face with the realities of human mortality can’t be the same as she was the day before. Since then, she’d grown up, lived away from home, dated other men, gone to college. She wasn’t the same person she had been. She couldn’t expect him to be either.

And it would be the height of stupidity to expect them to love each other in the same way. In fact, she had to wonder if the new Vaughn and T.J. needed to figure out if they actually did love each other, or if they only loved the bygone versions?

By the time she walked into the gym, she was thoroughly convinced that they’d missed something important in all this, and if they didn’t figure that out, they’d never end up together.

Vaughn was already there going through his warm-ups. His face broke into a smile when he saw her, and he stopped what he was doing.

“Hey there,” he said, moving toward her.

“Stop!” She held out a hand in front of her like a school-crossing guard.

He froze, confusion all over his face.

“T.? What’s going on?”

She crossed her arms and pursed her lips. “We have to talk.”

“Okaaay. Am I allowed to move, or are we going to do this from across the room?”

She huffed out a breath and glared at him. That only made him grin. Heat washed over her. He’d worn gym shorts and no shirt. His skin had the faintest sheen of sweat on it and his hair was sticking out from under a backward baseball cap. She was a professional, she wasn’t supposed to be perving on her clients’ bodies, but Vaughn’s abs should be illegal. And those biceps. Did they get bigger every time she saw him? The tattoo he had of his parents’ names over his left pec was looking especially sublime today as well.

Focus, Theodora, focus.

“Yes, you can move. Let’s go for a walk.”

He nodded and followed her out of the gym.

They took the small trail that led toward the creek. The copse of trees that sat alongside the creek had always been a favorite place for them to play in the summers, and T.J. wondered if they could ever escape the ghosts of those two children they’d once been.

She took them to the fallen log that they’d used for a bench when they’d fished in the adjacent stream.

Vaughn stayed quiet, waiting for her to take the lead just as he’d been saying he would.

“I saw the painting you did,” she began.

“And?” he asked softly.

“It’s beautiful. Absolutely stunning.”

“I had great inspiration,” he answered.

Why did he have to be so damn charming?

“I’ve realized something that I think is important if we’re going to try this—” She gestured between them. “I’m ashamed to say I’ve spent the last six years waiting for my seventeen-year-old boyfriend to come back.”

He looked at her, his head tipped to one side as he tried to process what she meant.

“And see, you’re never going to be that guy again, and I shouldn’t even want you to be. You’ve had six years of life, your parents died, you went to college, there’ve been friends, and…women…and experiences. You can’t be my old boyfriend.”

He looked at her, and she saw flashes of so many things—panic, confusion, determination.

“I’m not explaining this the best, but you’re not the only one who’s made mistakes. When I lost you, I never once considered the new you wasn’t damaged, just different. I kept grieving over having lost the old Vaughn, and I never bothered to look at the new Vaughn.”

He nodded, and she could see him beginning to puzzle it out.

“We’re not the same people we were at seventeen.”

He gave her a sad smile then. “No, we’re not.”

“But I think we keep trying to go back to them.”

He took his cap off and ran a hand through his hair, leaning his elbows on his thighs as he looked at her.

“This is a lot of deep for a guy, you know,” he joked.

“Is it? See I don’t really know you at this point, so I have no idea what’s too deep and what isn’t.”

“Come on, T. That’s not true, of course you know me. I know the last few years haven’t been what we would have liked, but we spent a ton of time together. Going out, working on your dad’s place, hanging around watching movies.”

“Right. All those things that we did when we were teenagers, but without the sex.”

He scratched his head again. “What do you want me to say here? You know me better than anyone else on this planet. But if there’s something you think you don’t know, just ask, baby. I’m an open book to you.”

She growled in frustration. “I know about you. I don’t know you. You at twenty-four. You who’s been to college and lived away from home. You who paints pictures like that.” She looked at him with an ache in her heart. “I didn’t know you painted pictures like that, and I think there are a lot of other things I don’t know.”

He watched her and finally nodded. When he spoke again, his voice was hoarse with emotion. “I’m not sure how to introduce you to that guy.”

She moved closer, reaching out to wrap her fingers around his where they lay on his leg. She watched the shock of hair that fell over his eye and curbed the desire to brush it back. That was what the old T.J. did. New T.J. needed to figure out what she did for Vaughn. And what he did for her.

“I think we need to get the hell out of here,” she told him. “We need to get away from where old T.J. and Vaughn have so much history we can’t see past it. We need a fresh start.”

“You want to move?” He looked skeptical.

“No. I want to go on a damn vacation.”

The smile that spread across his face was slow and warm like syrup. And when it finally broke all the way, it was as though the sun had come out from behind the clouds—brilliant, sparkling, and hot.

“A vacation? Just the two of us? That’s not slow.” He raised an eyebrow.

“Agreed. I don’t think it was slow we need so much as fresh—different—new. We don’t need to find the old us. We need to create a new us.”

Without warning, he reached over and lifted her by the waist, depositing her on his lap, her knees on either side of his thighs.

His bare chest radiated heat, and she couldn’t help but run her fingertips down his pecs and onto his abs, her gaze following her touch.

“Have I told you that I love the way you think?” he asked as he nuzzled her neck.

“I think you love anything that might result in you getting laid,” she chided.

“Theodora Jayne.” He kissed her on the nose. “You have so little faith in me.”

“But I want to get more,” she answered. “I want to have faith in you—in us. I want to learn everything about the new you and grow to have faith in him. I have a feeling he might be a really great guy if I just give him a chance.”

He ran his hands up and down her hips, and kissed her on the lips, firm, decisive, but gentle and forgiving too. “Thank you,” he whispered.

“For?”

“For giving me this chance. For believing in us enough to look for ways to make it work. For being you.”

“Where should we go on our trip?”

“How about wherever the wind takes us?”

“I’ll get the time off arranged this afternoon.”

“I’ll pack the truck. Can you leave in the morning?”

She nodded, and they sealed it with a kiss.