sat in the hard wooden chair across the desk from her brother. “Something like that. I didn’t want to get roped into whatever confection she was starting to make, anyway.”
“Fish fry on Sunday. She’s probably prepping her apple-caramel pie.” Levi eyed the plate as if trying to convince himself not to eat.
“You on a diet or something?”
“No.” He stuck a couple of bacon slices into the center of a biscuit. He took a bite. “Have fun at the Slope last night?”
Savannah folded her arms across her chest. “What if I did?”
“Just tell me you didn’t go home with Merle, okay?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I didn’t go home with anybody. I came back here.”
“I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Are you my keeper now?”
“No. Dad mentioned—”
“Would you both back off? I’m twenty-seven years old, and I’ve been living on my own in a major metropolitan area for the past couple of years. I think I can handle Slippery Rock without accidentally falling on some guy’s penis and impregnating myself.”
Levi blinked. “It isn’t that we don’t think you can take care of yourself—”
“Sure it is.” Savannah stood and began to pace. “You want me to be helpless, but I’m not. I’m like Mama.” At least I want to be.
Mama Hazel was always calm, always knew what to say and how to fix a hurt. She baked pies and loved her family.
“Mama has a purpose.”
“And I don’t?” She didn’t know why she was picking a fight with her brother. It was stupid and childish, especially when she wasn’t sure she wanted the things she kept telling her family she wanted. She liked singing, and she was good at it, but there was a difference between the fun of karaoke night with a few friends and singing in front of an audience in an arena. In having all those people scrutinize her every move. There were good points, too, like meeting little girls who wanted to be singers. A few of them had looked up to her. At least, it seemed as if they had.
Levi just watched her for a long moment. “Mama worked in the Peace Corps, Van. She didn’t vagabond all over the world with a hobo sack over her shoulder.”
“I’m not a vagabond, and my luggage is Louis Vuitton. I lived in Nashville and I’ve been on tour with the top artist at the label.”
Levi nodded as he finished his biscuit.
“Fine, I have no illusions about world peace and I’m not curing cancer. That doesn’t mean my dreams are inconsequential.”
She just needed to figure out what her dreams were. Did she want to go back to Nashville and face the music? The one part of the city she liked was the weekend music program the label put together for underprivileged kids. Helping those kids find their music had been the highlight of her months there. Now she wasn’t welcome in Nashville and definitely not in the music program.
“They could be so much more, Van. You had a scholarship to the university. You were talking about med school.”
“And then I realized I didn’t want ten more years of school. I wanted...something else.”
Levi waited, watching her expectantly. “What is the something else?”
“I don’t know.” She crossed her arms over her chest.
“Is that why you’re here ‘on a break’ now? Because you don’t know what you want?”
“Is that so wrong?” She didn’t wait for his answer.
Savannah stalked out of the barn and started down one of the trails leading to Slippery Rock Lake, which separated Walters Ranch from the Tyler’s orchard. Through the trees she could see sunlight dancing over it.
What was wrong with her? Getting turned down by a guy was no reason to take her frustrations out on her family. And keeping this lie that things in Nashville were perfect was ridiculous. Things were so not right in Nashville it wasn’t even funny.
She’d gone to Nashville to try to get people to notice her the way that nobody had in Slippery Rock. To validate her in some way. When she was onstage she was more than Levi’s sister. Offstage, though, she was still the kid someone had left on the steps of a police station with her name pinned to her jacket.
The truth was that she didn’t know what she wanted. She liked singing, but had found out that she detested being on a big stage in front of thousands of people. She enjoyed working with the kids in the music program, but she didn’t play an instrument so mostly she’d just encouraged their interest. Now she was back in Slippery Rock, pretending she had her life together, when in truth it was falling apart and she had no idea how to make things right or if she even wanted to.
She’d been wrong to come back here.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Savannah should have kept driving and completely reinvented herself in some town where no one knew who she was.
She could use some distraction.
As she neared the lake, she saw Collin sitting on the hood of his old pickup truck, staring out over the calm water. She hadn’t realized she’d walked so far.
“Hi,” she said as she neared him. Brilliant May sunlight gave his blond hair streaks of white, which was just unfair. Women in Nashville paid hundreds of dollars to beauticians for streaks like that.
“Savannah.”
“You say that like you’re unhappy to see me,” she said, leaning against the fender of his truck and shooting a flirtatious look his way.
Collin glanced at her. “I’m not.”
“Not unhappy to see me? I figured,” she said, pretending she couldn’t read the disdain in his expression. He might have turned her down last night, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself from flirting with him again. “What brings you to my side of the lake?”
“Technically, you’re on my side.”
Savannah grinned wickedly. “Do you want to know what brought me to you, then?”
Collin sat straighter. “No.”
It was the panic in his eyes that did her in. It was fun flirting with a man who was reluctant to flirt back. It wasn’t fun to flirt with a man who was not only not interested but potentially afraid of her. Although why Collin would be fearful of her, Savannah couldn’t quite figure out.
“You don’t have to look at me like that. I’m not going to jump your bones out here.” Savannah stood straight, smoothing her hands over the thin tank top she wore. It was royal blue and she knew it contrasted nicely with her skin.
“I can take care of myself, whether or not you want to jump my bones,” he said,
