in time to key in to Ryder giving a toast to the newly engaged couple.
“To West and Pansy,” he said.
“Thank you,” West said, grinning.
“If you hurt my sister, I’ll rearrange that pretty face of yours into something no one would ever recognize as human. Count on it.” He said it with a smile.
“I believe you,” West said.
“Good,” Ryder responded. “You ought to.”
Ryder was teasing. Well, kind of.
Ryder was protective. He always had been.
It was one of the things that had drawn her to him in the first place.
And seeing it now, seeing it play out with Pansy made her feel... He was so sure and solid. Everything here was sure and solid. For the longest time her only goal had been to have a family.
She had made something of a family with the Daniels. More than something. They were better than the one she had been born into, that was for sure. But... Pansy had broken off and now she was making a life for herself, and it reminded Sammy that she was no closer to doing that.
And you want something to change.
She did.
She was doing really well with her handmade jewelry business. Online marketplaces and an interest in craft fairs had done very well for Sammy. She had something of her own.
She wasn’t dependent. Not anymore. But... Well, but.
It was her mother. The sameness of her mother combined with the accusations her mother had spit out.
Sammy’s mother was the same as she always had been. Brittle and angry, her skin pulled too tightly over her bones. Committed to misery and bad decisions, when before the death of her father Sammy had been convinced she’d been committed to him.
But her father had died five years ago. A heart attack. Which felt right. A heart ill-used, turned hard and scarred. A heart that allowed the abuse of a child. That didn’t burn at all when he’d turned his rage and fists on the little girl she’d been.
It seemed right a heart like that would give out early. Poisoned by the spite that surrounded it.
Though she knew death found many good people that same way, so it was probably just a random occurrence.
It comforted her to think otherwise.
When he’d died she’d believed that maybe she and her mom could...that maybe with the enemy gone they could find a way to having a relationship. But no.
Paula Marshall had proven that while she hadn’t made the particular kind of misery she’d found with her husband, she hadn’t wanted to find anything else in life, either.
And she was angry at Sammy for leaving. For walking out on the abuse.
I wouldn’t do that to my child.
She hadn’t said it to her mother earlier, but she thought it now in defiance.
She would be a better mother. She knew she would be.
And she could change at any time. She wasn’t frozen the way her mom was. Her mom was still in that house. Like she was tied to it.
Sammy wasn’t like her. She could...she could do whatever she wanted.
And that feeling in her chest, that insistence, expanded.
Without thinking, she turned to Ryder. “Can I talk to you?”
Ryder looked at her, one brow arched. “Sure.” He stayed rooted to his seat, as if he didn’t understand that she was clearly asking to speak to him alone.
“Outside,” she said.
He was going to tell her she was crazy. She totally knew that. But she really wanted to talk to him about this. About her idea. About what she wanted to do to move her life to where she wanted it to be.
She was thirty-three years old. At some point there had to be more than just sponging off her best friend’s family, using his kitchen and parking on his land. At some point she had to make something for herself. Something of herself.
She didn’t want to be her mother.
Never changing.
Tied to something that had no real power to hold her anywhere anymore.
What if she wasn’t destined to be like her mother at all?
That had been itching at her brain now for a while, a restlessness in her soul she hadn’t been able to define.
Until today.
And even though she knew that Ryder would tell her she was crazy, she wanted him to know what she was thinking.
Because his opinion mattered, even if she didn’t ultimately do what he suggested. It just mattered. He mattered. He always had.
“If you’re asking me my opinion on any of the guys out on the dance floor, it’s grim.”
She laughed, reaching out and placing her hand on