Surprising me, Drew came over to where I was standing in the doorway and placed his hands on my waist like he wasn’t going to let me pass. He captured my gaze with his; then his attention flickered between my eyes and my mouth as he said quietly, “She’s asleep, Sugar. You need a break. Come eat something.”

His closeness, his warm hands on my body, the way he was looking at me with his steely eyes, the softness of his tone when he called me Sugar—it all pushed at some part of me that had been dormant for days. I elbowed the awakening sensations aside, wanting to focus on my mother.

“What if she wakes up?” I challenged. “I don’t want her to be alone.”

“I’ll sit with Momma,” Beau said sheepishly. His expression told me he felt some guilt for forcing pain meds on her. I wanted to tell him I was glad he’d done it. As soon as the thought entered my head, I felt guilty.

“I’ll sit with her too,” Roscoe volunteered.

Jethro stepped forward and tugged on my elbow, pulling me out of Drew’s hold, which tightened before he let me go. “Come on, Ash,” my brother pleaded. “It’s fried chicken and mashed potatoes. Maybe you could call your friend Sandra and have a chat.”

I let Jethro lead me into the kitchen, and the entire Winston brood—plus Drew, minus Beau and Roscoe—followed.

“I can’t, actually. My phone doesn’t get reception out here, there’s no house phone, and there’s no Internet, so I can’t use Skype.” I said this flatly, without recrimination.

“Why don’t you use Momma’s cell?”

“I can’t find it. It wasn’t with her things when she came back from the hospital.” The situation was not easily fixable so I’d decided to do nothing about it. None of the houses in Green Valley had Internet unless they had a satellite dish. There was no point in asking for a satellite hookup since I wasn’t staying very long.

“You can use my phone,” Jethro offered. “Or Billy’s, or any of them.”

I shrugged. “Nah. That’s all right.” I didn’t really have the energy to think about it.

“You haven’t talked to your friends all week?” Duane moved to the cabinet and grabbed a stack of plates. “That don’t seem right. Don’t y’all see each other every week?”

I nodded. “Sometimes I meet them for lunch at the hospital during the week. But, yeah, Tuesday is the day we all get together. We meet up and knit and crochet, and of course we talk.”

“Tomorrow is Tuesday.” Cletus placed a pile of forks and knives on the counter. “You’re going to miss your time if we can’t get you on the Internet.”

“Don’t worry about it.” I glanced around the kitchen, not feeling particularly invested in the conversation. My eyes landed on Drew and found him standing off to one side, removed from everyone else, looking at his cell phone as if he were reading a text. For some random reason, I wondered who his cell phone company was.

“Hey, Ash, Momma’s talking about someone named Jackson.” Roscoe said this from the doorway. “Do you know who she means? She keeps asking if you’re out with Jackson.”

“Is she awake?” I moved toward the doorway, but Roscoe blocked my path.

“No, Ash. You need to eat. She’s not really awake, just talking in her sleep, I think.”

“She’s not talking about Jack Jackson James, is she—that little twerp who followed you around?” Billy asked this as he put napkins at the place settings on the table.

“He wasn’t a twerp. He was my best friend.” I crossed my arms over my chest, but felt only a slight twinge of defensiveness.

Jackson and I had been best friends all through school partly because I’d never been very good at making friends with other girls. He and I just got along so well because we were both oddball social outcasts. In my experience growing up in small Hicksville nowhere Tennessee, little girls were mean, adolescent girls were cruel, and teenage girls were ruthless—but that was probably true everywhere.

Plus, Jackson James was the sweetest, kindest, most amazing boy in the entire world...until the end of our senior year when he dumped me.

I was stunned when that happened. I wasn’t in love with Jackson—not in the passionate or romantic way that books and movies tell you is real—but I had come to rely on him. He’d been my first everything: my first kiss, my first boyfriend, my first first. And when he dumped me just before college, he cut off all communication. I was so devastated over the loss of my best friend that it felt like I’d lost a part of myself.

Over the years, the feeling of loss had dwindled to a slight ache, mostly related to nostalgia. I’d come to view him as another example—in a long line of examples—of why men were as trustworthy and reliable as tampons made of sand.

“Oh, please.” Duane rolled his eyes. “Jackson James is an asshole. I still don’t know why you gave him the time of day. You could have had any guy in a hundred-mile radius, and you didn’t give anyone a second look except that dipshit—and he was a scrawny little bastard. Didn’t he play something stupid like the clarinet or something?”

I gritted my teeth. “It was the obo, and he was really good.” For some bizarre reason my gaze searched out Drew’s and found him watching me. When our eyes met, he didn’t look away. Therefore, I did.

Jethro grumbled as he placed the utensils around the table. “Real men play instruments with strings, like a guitar or a bass.”

“Or the drums. Those got no strings,” added Cletus.

“He just wanted to get in your pants,” Duane said and shook his head, obviously having worked himself into a temper of disgust for my childhood best friend.

“Duane Faulkner Winston.” Jethro’s voice held a hint of warning. “Quit being ugly. That was disrespectful. Apologize to Ash.”

Momma had given each of us her favorite authors’ surnames as our middle names. Mine was fine, Ashley Austen Winston for Jane Austen. But I felt a little sorry for Billy, because his full name was William Shakespeare Winston.

Duane placed his hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Ash. I didn’t say it to be mean. It’s just that everyone in town wanted to get in your pants, and that guy was the worst. It’s rough having a beauty queen as a sister.”

“Lots of guys to beat up,” Billy mumbled under his breath as he finished placing the napkins.

I frowned at Billy and could feel my neck heat with embarrassment, but I addressed Duane’s apology. “It’s okay. I know you weren’t trying to be mean. But Jackson really was my friend. I knew him when we were kids.”

“You mean you felt sorry for him,” Duane insisted. “He was a reject. You were the only one who was nice to him.”

I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead, feeling abruptly tired. “I think I’m going to go lay down.”

“But you haven’t eaten,” Cletus argued from behind me.

“I’m sorry…I’m just not very hungry.” I was already walking toward the hallway that lead back to the den.

When silence followed, I thought I was home free. But then I felt a hand catch my wrist and pull me down the hall in the opposite direction of the den.

“I said….”

“I heard you.” Drew’s voice was like tempered steel, his eyes silver and flashing, and he had rendered me momentarily speechless. His presence was overwhelming. Despite my various states of exhaustion, I couldn’t resist checking out his well-formed backside as he led me through the family room, out the front door, and onto the porch.

Once there, he let me go, but he stood between the door and me, his arms crossed over his chest, his face grim. Then, he stalked toward me.

I blinked at him, at the door, at the brightness of the early evening sunlight. My brain told me it had been more than a week since I’d been outside. When my brain also told me that I needed to pull myself together by voluntarily taking showers, eating three meals a day, and finding a way to keep in regular contact with my friends in Chicago—basically, to rejoin the land of the living—I told my brain to hush.

Drew was glaring at me, each of his steps bringing us closer, and his jaw was set. I mimicked his stance, though I backed up as he advanced. I’m sure the effect was pathetic. I was tired. I lacked the physical and mental energy to argue with anyone.

However, it seemed that my body did not lack the energy required to become hot and flustered at finding myself suddenly alone with Drew.

“You’re sleeping on the cot in the den every night, aren’t you?” His words sounded accusatory, and his jaw ticked.

I scrunched my nose at him, taking another step away. “Yes. I am.”

“I told you that you and your brothers would take shifts. I don’t want you sleeping in there every night. You need to take better care of yourself.” His tone was straddling the line between angry and agitated. He stalked closer.

I shrugged, my back hitting the porch post. I couldn’t retreat further.

“Fine,” I said.

I’d learned, growing up, that if I said fine, people usually left me alone because they thought they’d won. Then, I ignored their wishes and did whatever I wanted to do. This approach also worked well with physicians when they got a bee in their boxers.