Take Me Home

TAKE ME HOME DANI GALLIARO Copyright © 2023 by Wollerin Books LLC All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. To the people of West Virginia, especially my family and those who have loved me as family Sorry for all the ugly stuff Love y’all CONTENTS Playlist Chapter 1 Darcy Chapter 2 Darcy Chapter 3 Darcy Chapter 4 Jake Chapter 5 Jake Chapter 6 Darcy Chapter 7 Jake Chapter 8 Jake Chapter 9 Darcy Chapter 10 Darcy Chapter 11 Jake Chapter 12 Darcy Chapter 13 Jake Chapter 14 Darcy Chapter 15 Jake Chapter 16 Darcy Chapter 17 Jake Chapter 18 Darcy Chapter 19 Jake Chapter 20 Darcy Chapter 21 Jake Chapter 22 Darcy Chapter 23 Jake Chapter 24 Darcy Chapter 25 Jake Chapter 26 Darcy EPILOGUE: JAKE Want more Jake and Darcy? Acknowledgments PLAYLIST This book was born from a song, so music is woven into every part of it. Some artists are featured multiple times (I’m a dedicated Swiftie and Tyler Childers is Appalachian royalty). Some songs are mentioned in the book but weren’t as crucial to the mood and journey of the characters, and thus aren’t mentioned here. There were over 50 songs in my playlist. These are the MVPs. Find the playlist on Spotify by searching Dani Galliaro Take Me Home - Jake and Darcy, or by following this link. That Summer - Garth Brooks Something Like That - Tim McGraw Fearless (Taylor’s Version) - Taylor Swift A Boy Named Sue - Johnny Cash Tennessee Whiskey - Chris Stapleton Today Was a Fairytale (Taylor’s Version) - Taylor Swift She’s In Love With The Boy - Trisha Yearwood Passionate Kisses - Mary Chapin Carpenter Cowboy, Take Me Away - The Chicks Would You Go With Me - Josh Turner Any Man of Mine - Shania Twain Take Me Home, Country Roads - John Denver Feathered Indians - Tyler Childers Begin Again (Taylor’s Version) - Taylor Swift Shameless - Garth Brooks Tattoos - Tyler Childers Starting Over - Chris Stapleton Your Man - Josh Turner Sweet Nothing - Taylor Swift Forever and For Always - Shania Twain All Your’n - Tyler Childers Leather and Lace - Stevie Nicks and Don Henley 1 DARCY I couldn’t believe I was actually back there. Looking out over the pond from the guest bedroom balcony, my mind traveled back to all the summers I’d spent working at my uncle’s farm. That morning, I’d plowed through the day’s chores, working from the list pinned on the kitchen bulletin board in my uncle’s neat-yet-deteriorating scrawl. The dogs seemed confused by me. The mix of ferals-turned-domestic, wandering strays, and irresistible pound rescues were still snoozing on the porch when I headed out to feed them. They’d grown accustomed to Uncle Bill’s slow starts and were thrown off by my up-and-at-‘em attitude. I just hoped the half-feral ones would keep the actual wild dogs and coyotes at bay. Sleeping at the farm always gave me the creeps. I hated being all alone out there. No cops, no neighbors to hear you scream. I’m not a gun girl, but people came up the holler to do all sorts of unsavory things to where it might help to have a gun. Not all the activities people used the property for were terribly unsavory. Some of it was just teenage hellion stuff, like riding four-wheelers up on the ridge or sneaking Bud Lights after a day at the pool or a summer job. Occasionally, I’d found evidence of more sinister doings. A random shoe. A dropped-off deer carcass or ten courtesy of the state highway patrol (why did they drop those there?). Meth-making remnants, or at least that’s what I imagined all those weird jugs and fire pits were for. Shit, maybe it was just people hunting or camping and my imagination was just too active. I’d never really done too much illegal stuff. My idea of trouble growing up was more like kissing boys in cars, trying (and failing) to smoke pot, and underage drinking. I was 29 that summer. After falling victim to the most recent round of layoffs at my job, it didn’t make sense for me to keep paying big city rent when I could go home, lick my wounds, and help Uncle Bill instead. If I was honest with myself, working as a copywriter for an online bedding retailer wasn’t exactly the most fulfilling or challenging work. I’d been phoning it in for a while. I’d gotten comfortable and didn’t push myself to want more. Add that to my recent broken engagement and I really had no business staying in Raleigh. Opportunity knocked and I didn’t have much choice but to go home and make it happen. I took a cooling sip of my lemonade, the little pulpy bits sticking in my teeth. That centuries-old, freezer-burned can of Minute Maid from the back of the freezer came out surprisingly well. The sharp tang of the drink sharpened my mind like a splash of cold water to the face. I needed to focus on what needed to happen in the next week, not figure out my whole life’s journey after this sudden bottoming out of my life. Baby steps, not the big picture. When I was in town, I’d reach out to my cousin Eli to see who he could get to work for me. I hadn’t been around for so long that I didn’t really have contacts of people who wouldn’t be working a regular-ass job over the summer. Uncle Bill had been no help at all. “You’re working with ‘em. You should pick ‘em,” he’d said on the phone earlier that week. It was getting toward the end of May, and there was no way I could manage the whole place by myself. The peaches weren’t due for