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eased when Rina didn’t push her. She shoved her straw deep into the curvy glass and sucked hard. The sharp, creamy cold hit her tongue and eased down her throat. “He deserves more than to be second best. He deserves someone to love him like I lo—” She stopped, infuriated by her inability to choose a verb tense.
    “Like you love Kale,” Rina said easily. “Or are you starting to question that?”
    “Absolutely not.”
    “Okay then.” Rina shrugged. “But somehow I don’t think that’s why we’re at Murphy’s tonight.”
    Amber looked miserably around the bar. Murphy’s was more than a place to drink and hook up. It had the best comfort food in Hempfield, and everyone came here. “I can see at least four people who told me this week that I should give up on Kale and move on with my life.”
    Rina shrugged again and ate the rest of her cheese stick. “Moving on doesn’t have to mean with Danny.” She chewed slowly, savoring, and swallowed. “It could just mean to stop waiting.” Her casually bored air disappeared and she studied Amber. “You’ve been in a holding pattern for a long time, now that I think about it.”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Amber drank until her glass was exactly half-empty. Her head had gone swimmy, a nice change from the hard, intense circle of thoughts she couldn’t escape. If I can finish it before anyone else gives me advice…
    “Of course you do.”
    A tall, lanky guy in a trucker cap and red-and-green flannel button-down took a few steps in their direction.
    Rina turned her back. His shoulders drooped. He sighed , shoved his hands in his pockets, and continued on to the bar. Amber hid her smirk in her melty brandy cream.
    “What were you going to do with your degree when you graduated from college?” Rina asked her.
    Amber frowned. Her degree was in merchandising with a minor in business. She’d interviewed at a couple of small chains and one major independent store in various cities, but had no job offers before her parents were killed and she had to come home. “I hadn’t decided. But what does that have to do with Kale? We weren’t together then.”
    “I know. But that’s actually when you went into the holding pattern, wasn’t it?”
    “No. I just changed my goals, that’s all.”
    Rina straightened, her eyes glinting. “Yeah. Changed from long-term, big-world goals to small-town, get-what-I-can-get goals. Right?”
    Amber wanted to deny it, but Rina had her. “Okay, yeah. But it doesn’t matter. I’m happy here. I have tons of friends, people I care about, who I’ve known all my life. If I can’t have true family, that’s the next best thing.”
    “But what do you also want that you can’t have here? And don’t say Kale.”
    She hadn’t been about to. But she was a little stunned that the answer came so easily. Rina gave her a knowing smile when she didn’t voice it, and she knew she didn’t have to. She just needed to know it.
    This wasn’t the life she’d be living if things were different. Her shop was fine. It made her enough money to live on, since her parents’ house was paid for and the cost of living here was reasonable. But it wasn’t a challenge anymore. Planning, launching, and running a business had been great, but there was nowhere else to take it.
    If she accepted the common belief that Kale was dead, what would she do with her life? Not her romantic life, but her life life?
    She wouldn’t stay in Hempfield.
    It didn’t free her. There was no miraculous lifting of weight or swelling of hope, because she didn’t accept the common belief. Okay, yes, her resolve had been battered by the negative viewpoints of everyone around her. Their certainty that Kale was gone made her question whether she was being stupid, putting so much faith in something so unlikely.
    But this wasn’t their lives. It was hers, and what Rina just made her consider was likely to make life after Kale’s return easier, not harder.