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I agreed with hi else

After a solid hour of sulking I finally got up and took Dolly out for her nightly ritual I dug up some sheets and blankets to make a temporary bed for Wheeler on the couch, a te to be as uncos, and eventually found my way to my own bed

I wanted to cry for all of it For Wheeler’s broken heart, for my sister’s stupidity and blindness to what she had throay, for Poppy’s obvious e and her fear of other people, for Joseph and his creepy relationship with his insane mother, and for me Unrequited love sucked I hated it

No tears fell as I climbed under the covers Like I always did, I told ht at the end of the tunnel … there had to be because I refused to live my life in the dark

Keep your face always toward the sunshine and shadoill fall behind you

--Walt Whitht"

The southern draas lighter than mine, more lyrical and smooth The Blue Hills of Kentucky rolled thick and un as he looked at me steadily from behind thedown

"I talk when I have so the chatty type When I did choose to speak the Mississippi Delta was deep and locked thickly around all my words My draas much slower than the blond bartender’s and far less practiced Asa used his inflection and his southern char on the other side of the bar like they were one of hiscon He turned up the south in his voice tohe was far less sharp than he was His Kentucky-flavored tone was nothing e whenever he needed it, while my unhurried inflection re That was one of the reasons I never had much to say Every time I opened ravel and deep as the Mississippi River, tookfor over a decade

I’d spent a little over ten years serving my country in various capacities while enlisted in the army I’d been around different types of men from a million different walks of life In all that ti across froed whiskey on the shelf behind hi me apart with a perceptiveness thatso transparent Whatever shield I had up, whatever ironclad curtains I had pulled around h thele word You look like you have so on your mind" His eyebrows lifted and that srin that I wanted to put my fist in He wouldn’t be half as pretty as he ith ht I figure you orried about her since she’s been spending tiuys over the last few hts off"

My back teeth clicked together in aggravation and a lol escaped my throat My hands curled into fists atit and I could feel a furious heat climb up the back of my neck

The idea of Dixie, sweet, sunny Dixie, out there with God only knehat kind of troll she was going to find on the internetI wanted to break the bar top in half I wanted to throw chairs through s I wanted to smash all the meticulously placed bottles displayed behind Asa into slers nursing their last-call drinks out the door and I wanted to get ht and throttle hiically, I knew there were decent, nor the internet to find love and sex … the sex beingand while I thought that was okay for them I refused to think it was an option Dixie should be utilizing I hated the idea of her dating at all, but there was so men that hadn’t had the opportunity to see her in person before taking her out, that really rubbed irl I had ever met She didn’t have a mean bone in her perfectly curvy and petite body She was always s, and there wasn’t a moment spent in her co directly on you She embodied warmth and care Someone behind a computer monitor would never understand that They would never feel the way her innate ability toseem like it would be okayThere was a lot of bad shoved at us all on a day-to-day basis but somehow Dixie was a filter for it, and when you were around her it seeood she let through

She needed someone that could appreciate that She needed a ht as she did and that would hold her above the shit that was always trying to drag everyone else down I doubted that guy was on Tinder or Buuy existed at all

"I don’t keep track of her cos" I rubbed a hand over my mouth and watched as Asa’s eyebrows shot up and his lips twitched I was a daood liar I lied to myself for years and years about the kind of man I was in order to convince ht ones But I was currently trying to lie to a man that was a professional liar, so it was no surprise that he saw right through the bullshit I was laying down