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"Really? Why?" Mia asked curiously

"Because"You had a pet pig?"

"Sorta When I was seven, our sow gave birth to a dozen or so piglets, and I fell in love with the runt of the litter But the little guy was damn sick He couldn’t en-deprivation during the birth and that he wasn’t gonna survive, but I was determined to nurse him back to health"

Mia sat up with a smile "So even back then you wanted to save lives"

"Yup But Frankie couldn’t be saved He was gonna die no matter what, but I refused to accept it When I heard uy out of his s in a backpack, snuck into the barn to get Frankie, and ran off"

"Where’d you go?"

He grinned "This little cabin on the edge of our property I was eight--I didn’t know there was a world beyond our ranch Didn’t take long for my dad to find me"

"Did he kill Frankie?" she said softly

"The ot home" Jackson sed a luht, which was that you can’t save everyone Soo"

"I’let, Jackson" Mia leaned down and brushed a kiss over his lips "I bet he was really cute"

"He totally was"

"Are you an only child?" she asked, then answered her own question "No, wait I reer sister What’s she like?"

"Evie? She’s dang precocious And unlike lil’ ol’ e in her teens Luckily I didn’t witness er and I was already outta the house by then, so I was spared her purple hair phase and countless runaway atte in the main house at that point either, so he--"

"Who’s Shane?" Mia cut in

He sed again "My older brother When he turned twenty-one, he told onna keep workin’ on the ranch unless he had some privacy, so my dad fixed up that cabin I was talkin’ about before"

"So your brother and sister still live in Abbott Creek?"

"Yup Shane works with our dad, and Evie lives at hoe in the next town over She’s studying to be a et to see theulp it down, but it stayed ja it difficult to get any words out