Free Texas Redeemed by Isla Bennet Page A

so-called dad to get lost. “Chill.”
    “I can’t chill,” Sarah protested with a headshake that
sent her auburn hair whipping this way and that. “You’re skipping class and
haven’t even asked what went down at the diner.”      
    “So dish.”
Lucy peered around the corner to see a teacher pass a stack of fliers to a
student and then enter a classroom. Maybe this was a crappier hiding spot than
she’d thought. After all, Sarah had been able to find her with no problem.
    “Owen asked me for your cell number. Maybe he wants to
text you.”
    Lucy nearly swallowed her gum. “Are you serious?” It took
less than a second to picture Owen McNamara in all his blue-eyed, tawny-haired
gorgeousness. She’d first really noticed
him last year when he’d accidentally knocked over her lunch tray in the
cafeteria. But this year he was in high school, so outside of tagging along
with her mom to the McNamaras’ feed store, she hardly saw him.
    “Uh …” Sarah shifted her big brown eyes away “… he ended
up going to that New Age place with Minnie Hawthorne.”
    “Oh.” Of course he did. Minnie was in eighth grade, had
six piercings, filled a C-cup bra and did
stuff. “No biggie.”
    “Here’s some good news,” Sarah went on. “My parents
didn’t say no about the llama.”
    The Carews’ farm was more like a petting zoo, but their
menagerie of cool animals was missing a goat. It only made perfect sense for
Lucy to trade her family’s goat, which didn’t get along well with Battle
Creek’s head foreman’s pig, for Sarah’s llama.
    “But did they say yes?”
    “Not yet. Did you ask your mom?”
    “No, but I will.” Once she convinced Peyton Turner to
leave town. Then stuff would be the way it’d been before, and she could focus
on getting that adorable llama on the ranch and getting on with her life.
    The bell rang and Lucy listened closely to the sounds of
footsteps, laughter, books dropping, lockers slamming. When the halls quieted,
she whispered, “Better get to class before you get a late demerit.”
    “Where’re you going?”
    “Can’t say.” She peeked around the lockers, scanning the
emptying hall. If she could get to the ground floor and out the corridor at the
side of the school building before the tardy bell rang, she’d be good. “Gotta
go.”
    Sarah unzipped her backpack and pulled out a Hershey bar.
“Here, in case you get hungry.”
    “No way.” Sarah was diabetic and needed snacks to
regulate her blood sugar, so she couldn’t afford to share her stash. “But
thanks.” Lucy started off toward the stairs, tugging her backpack strap over
her shoulder.
    “Call me later,” her friend said as she sprinted off in
the opposite direction, and Lucy slipped through the doors and out into the
sunshine as the bell rang inside the building.
    Yesterday’s rain had cooled the air, and the autumn breeze
ruffled her hair. She adjusted the hood on her sweatshirt as she moved across
the campus, extra careful to avoid the single-story attached building that
served as the town’s elementary school. At the gas station she skulked around
outside, too worried that Sully Joe, who had an amazing memory for a little old
guy in his nineties, would recognize her and mention her visit to Valerie.
There was stuff she had to tell her dad—if she could even call him that. She’d
heard her great-grandfather call somebody “Johnny-come-lately” once, and that’s
just what Peyton Turner was. Their family had been broken from the start, with
her mom poor and trying to raise twins. Then the ranch was almost taken away
and then Anna was taken away.
    And Gramps had been a fairy godfather, trying to make
everything good. But nobody was the same, especially her mom who worked all the
time and was always telling Lucy to make smart decisions—something Lucy just
couldn’t do, as if she was hardwired to screw up.
    It didn’t take a brainiac to know her mom wouldn’t see
her sneaking out of school to