I don’t even try to stop myself from stepping closer, and she grins as she steps back, leading me into the unused stall behind her. She lets me herd her up against the wall, the shadows not dark enough to hide anything, but enough to let us pretend we have a little privacy.
All I want is a kiss. I won’t let myself take more. I swear it to myself even as I wrap my hands around her hips and pin her against the well-worn wood.
“Everett,” she says again.
It may have been the start of a sentence, or she may have just been saying my name, but I slot our mouths together before she has the chance to say anything else.
She tastes like coffee, and her nails claw into the nape of my neck. I drink down the sounds she makes, stepping in closer when she tugs at my hair. Heat blooms between us, a spark that fans to a flame near instantly. I stifle a groan in my chest when her teeth gently tug my bottom lip. There’s this raw, unstoppable magnetism that keeps pulling us together, and I feel like I’ll explode if I don’t keep Mary close. My hands slip beneath the hem of her shirt, desperate to feel her warmth. She arches into the touch, winds her arms around my shoulders and tilting her head so she can kiss me more deeply.
My entire body aches with need, and just as I’m about to force myself to pull away, a gasp breaks the quiet of the air around us.
Mary and I yank back from each other as if on cue, and I spin to face the entrance to the stall, panic coursing through me. My blood runs cold when I see Jenny standing there, her hands clenched into shaking fists, eyes flitting back and forth between us in disbelief. Her eyes are wide and furious, color high in her cheeks as her chest rises and falls in barely controlled breaths.
“What—” she spits out, “—thefuck?”
I step between Mary and Jenny instinctively, wanting to shield her from Jenny’s anger. There’s no reason for her to get caught up in this. I’m more than capable of handling the blowback.
“Jenny,” I start, hoping I sound reasonable and not totally rattled.
She silences me with a glare, and my heart cracks when I see a sheen of angry tears beading at her lashes. Her breath hitches on an outraged laugh before she speaks, her voice raw and vicious.
“Al is working himself so hard to keep your ass in business that he’s in the fuckinghospital,” she spits at me, “and you’rehere fucking some girl half your age in the stables like you don’t have a care in the world!”
I flinch back from the accusation, grief and guilt welling in my chest and making my mouth water with disgust at my own actions. All I know how to do with Jenny is argue, so I lean into the anger that flares in my gut and open my mouth to do exactly that.
“Don’t you take that tone?—”
“Andyou!” she cuts me off, stepping into the stall to fix her piercing glare on Mary. “Don’t you have a fucking job to do? I didn’t realize I was paying you to fuck my dad.”
Mary makes a soft, wounded noise behind me, but Jenny is shouting again before I can get a word in.
“You’re fucking disgusting, both of you!” Her lip curls into a sneer, but I see it wobbling with the angry tears she’s working to hold back. “If it wasn’t all I had left of Mom, I’d let you run the ranch into the ground just so I wouldn’t have to deal with you anymore.”
I swallow hard around the lump that wells in my throat. The truth of the statement is right there on her face, anger and betrayal and hatred, and I deserve every last bit of it. She fixes her snarl on Mary again, shaking her head.
“To think I was happy I got to see you again,” she says scathingly. “Get your shit and get out. I don’t want you anywhere near my dad, or my home.”
I look back at Mary in confusion only to find her pale in the face and shaking as she stares down at the ground. Whatever Jenny meant about being happy to see Mary will just have to wait, because I can’t stand the thought of losing her. I step forward, cutting Jenny’s line of sight off from Mary, and frown down at my daughter. She sneers right back up at me, not cowed in the slightest.
“Jenny, I understand why you’re upset,” I say. “But you can’t just make these decisions on your own. This isn’t Mary’s fault, and I won’t let you take it out on her. Be mad at me all you want. I deserve it. But Mary has nothing to do with this.”
The angry mask on Jenny’s face slips just long enough for me to see the bitter pain in her eyes. It’s not fury that lies there, it’s betrayal.
“Shut the fuck up!” she shouts, her hand trembling as she points her finger furiously at me. “You sit there and act like you know everything all you want, fuck if I care. It’s always the same shit with you. You don’t understand a single fucking thing, Dad.”
She turns away from me just as the first tear slips down her cheek, and I reach out for her just a second too late to stop her from marching away. I have no idea what to say, no idea what to do. Isn’t that just the story of my life? A day late and a dollar short, never quite enough.
“Jenny,” I whisper, too scared to call out properly and have her ignore me.
I drop my hand back to my side, my mind a mess of worry and bitter guilt. All I can do is turn back to Mary and assure her I’ll figure this out, but she flinches away from me when I reach for her hand. Her eyes find mine, but they’re unfocused and terrified, and her mouth doesn’t even try to lift into her usual bright smile.
“Hey,” I whisper, shaking my head as she steps further away from me. “Mary, hey, I can fix this. I’m going to fix this.”
She just stares at me with those wide, scared eyes as she steps backward toward the stall door.
“I don’t know if this is fixable, Everett,” she chokes out, panic ripe in her voice.
I take a step forward as she stumbles her way out of the stall, reaching out to her. She glances at my hand, but doesn’t take it.
