“What’s she even been up to, anyway?” I ask, unable to help myself. “She just hangs around here, does the books? Goes to Cali when she gets bored?”
To be fair, accounting is what she wanted to do—she was always a math whiz, understood everything that went straight over my head—so that’s not much of a surprise. I’m just surprised she’s stillhere.
Every time we talked about the future, she always talked about wanting to leave. Get off the ranch, maybe even out of Montana, but not too far away to visit regularly.
Back then, I would entertain the idea that maybe we’d move together. I daydreamed about her finding her dream job and me travelling to play football, coming home on the off-season to find her hunched over her desk with a lamp on as she pored over paperwork. Not exactly the most romantic dream, but it was the only thing that felt attainable. The only thing that felt like I might actually be able to earn it.
“Thought you were just here for work?” Wayne asks, a slow, smug grin tugging at his lips.
I scowl at him, biting back the animal in my chest that wants to demand answers, starving for any knowledge about what Jenny’s been up to all this time. How does she spend her time off? Does she have new friends? Does shedate? She certainly isn’t going to tell me, so I was hoping I could slake my thirst by getting Wayne talking. Seems like he’s set on being an annoying little shit, though, just like I remember him. He might’ve grown up, but he’s still Wayne.
“Just making conversation, shithead,” I toss back, doing my best to act like it doesn’t matter. “You’re the one who brought her up in the first place.”
It doesn’t matter. It can’t. I don’t have the privilege of caring about Jenny anymore, and she made that crystal fucking clear this morning.
“Uh-huh,” he drawls, amusement oozing off of him as he grins even wider.
“If you’re just going to stand there and laugh about your sister dumping me, at least make yourself useful,” I snap, grinning back to take the sting out of my words.
He snorts, but hefts up a roll of chicken wire to toss in the back of the truck without another word.
Thank fuck, because I can’t keep talking about Jenny if I want to keep my head on straight. I didn’t think she was even around in the first place, since she was off in California when I started working here, and I’m woefully unprepared.
Every glimpse of her is like a punch to the gut, a reminder of what I could have had if I’d been closer to what she wanted. It’s hard not to blame myself sometimes, but Jenny was never shy about what she wanted. She was pissed when I told her I was going off to Utah for a football scholarship, but she never tried to stop me. If she wanted me to follow her, she knows I would have.
All she had to do was ask.
And… well, she didn’t ask.
That was enough of an answer for me, and I couldn’t bring myself to beg her to want me as much as I wanted her. Too late now.
It’s too late for a lot of things now. Better not to linger on any of them. I’ve got a life to piece together, after all. I can’t do that if I’m still chasing after a girl who barely wanted me in the first place.
JENNY
Grocery shopping with Mary is a good way to keep my mind off things.
Bythings, of course, what I mean is Lucas fucking Cross … and the fact that I can’t seem to avoid him. Every time I think I’m finally free of him, he wanders around a corner with a shirt so tight it should be illegal, humming a merry fucking tune. I want to throttle him most of the time.
I staunchly refuse to think about all the other things I want to do to him.
It’s only been three days since I’ve been back, and I get more and more flustered every time I see him. My face is in a semi-permanent state of blushing, and I’d rather not be stuck with tomato-face, even if I can brush it off as anger.
So when Mary mentioned that she was heading out to do the weekly grocery run, I invited myself along. The few precious hours away from the ranch were good for me, and Mary’s a natural chatterbox, so I had plenty to distract myself with.
I was actually in a pretty good mood by the time we turned into the long dirt driveway leading up to the house, but it all comes plummeting right back down when I see a familiar form in front of the house.
“What the hell is he doing here?” I spit, my words more a curse than a question.
His broad back is mostly bare, nothing but a thin, sweat-soaked tank top in between his skin and open air. Dirt is smudged halfway up his biceps, his hands covered by thick gardening gloves. Empty plastic flower pots sit in a stack to one side of his thighs, with a row of them still waiting to be planted lined out along the walkway.
“Everett asked him to replant the flower beds,” Mary says, a hint of a question in her voice.
I could’ve figured that much out myself, thanks. I wasn’t asking what he was doing right now, I was asking where he got the fucking balls to waltz right back into my life and who the hell told him he could look so at ease in front ofmyhouse. If he keeps going at this rate, he’s going to ruin my carefully constructed existence just as badly as he’s wrecking the flower beds.
“Fucking hell, has he ever ever heard of a color scheme?” I grumble when he stretches to the side, revealing a riot of blues and pinks and yellows.
Mary arches a brow, slowing the car to a crawl in the driveway as she glances between me and the hulking asshole hunched over in front of the porch.
