Heartland (True North #7) - Sarina Bowen Page 0,16

locked and loaded over here,” he says from the passenger seat. “Let ’er rip, Chass. It’s only four miles.”

“Okay.” I take my foot off the brake and tap the accelerator gently. “For the record, this was all your idea.” I turn out of the gas station and point Dylan’s truck uphill.

This must be how a criminal feels when she’s driving the getaway car. I’ve stolen Dylan away from Kaitlyn, at least for the weekend. For some reason Dylan decided I should practice my driving. I have a license but no car, so I’ve barely driven at all after passing the test. He offered to let me do some highway driving, too. But I refused.

Dylan looks completely relaxed, singing along with the radio as I drive us the last few miles toward home.

In the cupholder, his phone lights up with a text. Again. His phone is full of texts from Kaitlyn. She’s pissed off that Dylan left town a day early. Every time his phone lights up, I feel a shimmy of victory, followed immediately by discomfort.

Because I told a lie. And I got away with it.

Dylan doesn’t even glance at his phone, though. That’s just his way. He’ll get to you when he gets to you. But when you have his attention all to yourself? There’s nothing else like it.

“Are we going to make caramel before dinner or after?” he asks me now. “You said it takes a while.”

“Before,” I say, steering carefully around a curve.

“I hope this isn’t a disaster.” He laughs. “Because when I told Griffin what we were trying to do, he got all excited. He wanted to know the cost of every ingredient by weight.” Dylan shakes his head. “I told him that you were the numbers man in this business venture.”

I still can’t believe we’re doing this. I nearly chickened out yesterday instead of sharing my idea, because I hadn’t wanted to get shot down. But I’d still been hungover and still angry at Kaitlyn.

I hadn’t felt like I had anything to lose. And there had been no mistaking Dylan’s spark of interest. The unsold goat’s milk was a problem.

Still, I didn’t have to tell him that Friday was the only day available to us. I’d surprised myself by lying. Kaitlyn’s awful excuse for a note pushed me over the edge, though. She’d known exactly what she was doing when she’d left me sitting in the library like a loser.

I’m aware that it’s a shallow victory. Dylan is still hers. But this is the only time I’ve ever had something she wanted—a night in Dylan’s company. I don’t really deserve it. Yet here we are.

I make the last turn, and then we’re cruising down the dirt road to our neighboring farms. The Shipley Farms sign comes into view first, its posts decorated with a scarecrow and a collection of pumpkins. By nine o’clock tomorrow morning, tourists’ cars will be parked all over this road. They’ll come in droves to pick apples, ride in the wagon, and buy cider.

Leah and Isaac are almost two miles past the Shipleys’ driveway. “Next-door neighbor” means something different in Vermont than it means elsewhere. We pass a cow pasture and then row after row of the Shipleys’ apple trees. Eventually, these give way to a little bungalow where Griffin Shipley lives with his wife and baby boy.

The Abrahams’ place is just beyond. Leah and Isaac bought their farm five or six years ago now. It was in foreclosure, which is why a couple of runaways from a cult could save up enough money to afford it. They made their escape a few years before that, because they wanted to marry each other, and they weren’t going to be allowed to.

By the time I got here, it was already a small but thriving farm. The Abrahams grow vegetables and raise a few dairy cows. But the big cash crop is Leah’s artisanal cheeses. They retail for twenty-four dollars a pound.

We roll past six greenhouses with solar panels on their roofs. Greenhouses are the only way to get a reliable tomato harvest in Vermont. Every time Isaac can save up enough money, he builds another greenhouse.

Leah and Isaac are amazing people. They ran away with nothing but huge plans. And the farm isn’t even the end of it. Leah is all fired up about starting a nonprofit to help other women and men who leave cults. They’ve helped me and Zach get on our feet, and now they want to help more