I press my cheek against his chest.

His arms tighten around me.

I peek up at him. “Are you really asking me to run away with you, Bobby?”

He flushes at my wording, but his smile grows larger. “I guess I am. Will you run away with me, Kaley Stanton?”

Shaking my head, I sink back against his chest.

This is crazy.

But it makes sense.

Definitely better sense than how I resolved my issues with my father.

“This is nuts. Do you know that? And I shouldn’t even consider it—I’m enrolled in USC film school for this fall and I’ve worked damn hard to get there—but I’m seriously thinking about it. Do you want to know why? It’s not just because I love you. It’s exactly something my Grandpa Jack would say or do or encourage. He always says the best thing a person can do is get lost for a while. Let it all go. That sometimes it’s the only way you can find yourself.”

When Bobby pulls back there’s a sheepish grin on his face. “Who do you think I’ve been hanging out with and talking to the last four months while you were away? Working through things with? Getting advice from?”

Oh no.

It can’t be.

“Grandpa Jack?”

“I spent a lot of time surfing in Santa Barbara while you were away, Kaley. Had a lot of long chats sitting on a board out in the ocean with Jack.”

My eyes grow large. “You have?”

With his thumbs he brushes the corners of my lips. “I missed you so much, baby. Spending time with your grandfather was the closest thing I could get to spending time with you. You may look like your dad, but in here”—he taps the spot above my heart—“you are your grandfather.”

That was kind of sweet.

Still—

He did dump me four months ago.

Shit, am I really considering taking off with him on our first day back together?

I need to slow this down.

Think.

I crinkle my nose. “Grandpa Jack is the closest you could find to me?”

Bobby’s eyes shimmer. “You’re pretty much all we talked about. I needed to talk to someone. So much had happened. I love you so much. It was my mom’s idea. Jack is a good listener.”

My brow crinkles. “You know, you could have just choked down your pride, hopped a plane, and joined the tour if you missed me.”

“No. I couldn’t.”

My temper flares. “Why not? Was being right more important than being with me?”

He rolls his eyes, exasperated.

“You could have come to me, Bobby,” I repeat stubbornly.

He leans in until his forehead is resting against mine. “No. I couldn’t. And it didn’t have a thing to do with pride or being right. Your dad threatened to kick the shit out of me if I didn’t stay away for the entire four months. I’m almost positive I can take him, but to be honest I didn’t want to because I knew he was right when he asked me to do that.”

What the fuck?

I pull back from him, staring in disbelief. “What are you talking about? You stayed behind because my dad asked you to?”

He nods. “Yep. He showed up at my house the night before he left California with you. He asked that I stay behind, not go on tour with my family, and I respected him for it and so should you. He wanted some time alone with his girl without interference to work on his relationship with you. I had to respect that. Give it to him. Even if you were pissed, didn’t understand, and mistakenly thought I’d broken up with you.”

What?

My emotions explode in a leveling array.

“Mistakenly?” I counter heatedly. “You did break up with me. I remember every word you said the night before I left. You broke my heart. Do you think a girl gets something like that wrong?”

He gives me a contrite expression. “I pretended to break up with you. I didn’t want you skipping out on your dad and coming home to be with me—”

My cheeks burn red. Jeez, why are all guys, even the good ones, totally conceited jerks at times? “As if,” I taunt, grimacing.

“You needed to work through things with your dad. And you have. Now it’s time to work on us.”

“I should be pissed at you. That was a mean thing to do, Bobby. Not to explain. To let me think we’d broken up four months ago.”

His lips make a slight curl downward. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. Letting go, not telling you why so you wouldn’t get more pissed at your dad, and letting you be where you needed to be without me. I love you, Kaley. If that doesn’t prove it, nothing ever will.”

We stare into each other’s eyes.

“This is crazy, Bobby. One minute you’re dumping me; the next asking me to run away from home with you.”

“Not crazy at all. And I’m not asking you to run away with me. I’m asking you to get lost with me.” His hands close on my cheeks, holding my face with his palms as his intense green eyes claim me lovingly. “Get lost with me, Kaley Stanton. I want to spend the rest of my life lost with you.”

CHAPTER 33

Two years later

I drive down the bumpy gravel road in the center of a dust cloud that moves with Bobby’s Aston Martin and makes it damn near impossible to see through the windshield.

After wandering from state to state by car, stopping where we want, doing what we want—Bobby usually just getting to know people and locales, and me filming whatever catches my eye—we’re finally back in California.

Three months ago we started working our way down the coast from Seattle back to Pacific Palisades and our families. Our home state has changed a lot in the two years we’ve been gone. There’s been a lot to film and experience.

I crank up the air conditioner in the car. Fuck, it’s dry in the Central Valley of California. Hot. Dusty. No rain. Maybe people would start taking the drought seriously if more people could see this or at least watch my vlog and films.

I roll to a stop in front of a small adobe ranch-style house in the middle of a clump of barren earth in the middle of nowhere.

That’s what the center of the Golden State feels like. The middle of nowhere. The land before time. Or maybe I should say the land before urbanization. A strange, brown, uninhabited piece of earth completely unlike the trendy, elite coastal towns I was raised in.

I grab my notepad from the passenger seat beside me and jot that down. I might need it for the next installment of ‘Forgotten California’, my hard-hitting documentary series I upload each week on my rehabilitated serious-news-only Kaley’s World website.

Yep, that’s what I do now. I make serious films with serious subject matter, but I post them on Kaley’s World because, what the heck, after I destroyed my dad’s house in a streaming live video it still gets a shitload of traffic. I cringe, even more embarrassed today about that stunt than I was immediately after I did it, trapped in the shitstorm of being an Internet sensation. Why shouldn’t I put the continued traffic on the site to good use? And raising people’s awareness of the tragedy happening in my state because there is no water is good use.

I lean over the steering wheel, looking up through the windshield. Bobby is sitting on the roof of the house, shirtless, drinking a beer with the old man we met in town last night.

My features soften from my fast-rising emotions. I never know what Bobby is going to do on this strange journey we’ve been on.

Last week, we made an impromptu stop at a water distribution station in a tiny town thirty miles out from Fresno and Bobby spent the day working at a relief center, handing out water. I got some great footage there, but it blows my mind that there are people in California without running water now who have to go to relief centers to fill buckets and get bottled water.

In the richest country in the world there are people—usually the poor. The poor are always first to be hit—without water.