“Me? No way.” I cut my eyes over to him, grinning mischievously. “You?Definitelynot.”
Wayne slaps me on the back with a hearty chuckle, easygoing and friendly as ever, even if he does seem to take life a little more seriously these days. He is more mature now, even if he’s still got that edge to him.
“Still a little shit, aren’t you, Cross?”
“Always was, always will be,” I shoot back with a crooked grin.
“Well, it’s good to have you around, even if you are a douche,” he jokes. “Hopefully my sister won’t kill you and feed you to the pigs or anything.”
I scoff, but it does legitimately sound like something she’d threaten me with. I always did like the fire in her.
“What, uh, happened between y’all anyway?” Wayne asks, too casual to be anything but intentional.
My shoulders stiffen and an embarrassed flush climbs up my neck. I shrug, the movement jerky and nowhere near as nonchalant as I try to make it.
“Don’t really remember,” I lie. “We were kids, y’know? Just… didn’t work out. She took it hard, got mad. You know how she can be.”
It hurts to hear myself say it, even after all this time. It hurts even more to realize that I can remember damn near every second we spent together.
“I sure do,” Wayne says with a laugh. “I’ll leave you to it, man. I should go say hi so she can yell at me, too.”
I nod in farewell and wander back into the barn, leaning heavily against one of the stalls as I try to settle my mind. Seeing Jenny again without warning brings up so many emotions I’m not ready to deal with.
I don’t think Jenny ever realized how important to me she was, and I was a kid who was too scared to ask for more. She gave me more than I deserved back then, and I didn’t even have the balls to tell her how much it mattered to me.
How muchshemattered to me.
After Rhonda left me and Dad when I was a kid, we barely scraped by. Half the time, I only ate dinner because Jenny would drag me back to her house after school to study. Dad was always busy, busting his ass on the ranch and picking up every odd job around he could find just to keep a roof over our head.
I focused on playing for the high school team and getting out as fast as I could. That’s why I ran off on a football scholarship, even though I promised Jenny I’d follow her to college. I probably would have gone wherever she went, otherwise, but truthfully … she was always so smart it almost scared me. She helped me apply to her top schools, even helped me fill out their scholarship applications, but I wouldn’t have been able to afford it anyway. So when some no-name university in the middle of Utah offered me a full ride to play football for them, I took it.
I’d like to say I never looked back, but half of my life since then has been thinking about Jenny.
I never wanted to come back here — especially not without her around — but when I found out Dad was sick, I didn’t have any other choice. I’d already pushed my leg past the point of noreturn, my ACL damn near in shreds by the time I finally gave up, and I had nothing else going for me. Besides, Dad and I were never all that close, since he was always running himself ragged just trying to survive, but I did love him.
He was a good dad, even if he wasn’t very present. He tried his best.
It feels good to be on the ranch now, even if I have no clue what I’m doing. I was never any good with horses, but I’m strong, so that’s something. I can handle as much manual labor as Everett can throw at me, and I have no clue what I’d be doing for a job without him. Besides, being here, where Dad spent so much of his life… It feels like the right move to make. I feel closer to him now than I ever did when he was alive, in some ways, walking the same paths he walked for so long.
And, well, I won’t deny that it’s nice to see Jenny again. I have no doubt she doesn’t feel the same way, but I was always more into her than she was into me, so that’s not much of a surprise.
There’s nothing I can do about it—and I wouldn’t, even if I could. Jenny may still be the most gorgeous woman I’ve ever laid eyes on, and my chest is aching in the oddest way every time I glance over at the house, knowing that she’s in there… but it doesn’t mean anything. My life is too much of a mess to be thinking about a relationship, or even rekindling the casual thing we had going in high school.
I just need to keep my head down and figure out where to go from here.
JENNY
Coffee with the sunrise is a habit of mine … at least, when I’m home.
It’s not something I bothered to do in California, because the view just wasn’t the same. No lowing cows or pigs rolling in the dirt together, no chickens pecking away at scattered seeds.
Admittedly, I’m up earlier than usual today, but that’s intentional. I want to have the day to myself. If Dad catches me wandering around the property, double-checking everything, he’ll either throw a fit at my lack of trust or insist on following me around to show off what a good job he did in my absence. Neither of those sound particularly appealing.
I just want a day to go through my own checklist on my own time.
There are apparently some new calves that were born late in the season, and it’s about that time of year when I should get some updated pictures for social media and the website. It’s exhausting to keep up with everything, but marketing is what keeps the money rolling in, and we’ve long since realized that Mary isn’t the best photographer. She’s done perfectly finekeeping up with things while I’ve been gone, but there’s no reason to have her continue now that I’m back.
The ranch may not bemine, as Dad so harshly reminded me last night, but I’m still the reason it hasn’t gone under yet.
