Somehow, Austin managed to sleep in his own house without getting up and standing on the back deck, his eyes trained on Shay’s front door like a creeper. He managed to get Christmas presents for the ranch hands, his brothers, Robin and Hazel, his mother and her boyfriend, his father, and everyone at Grape Seed Ranch.
andAnd somehow, miraculously, he also got Shane and Dylan to agree to invite their father for Christmas. Shane’s stipulation was that their dad had to sleep at Austin’s, and Dylan’s condition was that their mother had to give her consent too.
Austin called her on Tuesday evening while he sat in the truck, the Christmas presents he’d spent the afternoon buying filling the cab beside him. “Hey, Ma,” he said when she answered. Her voice made everything in his life softer. “So I
