My eyes followed him as he stood to refill his punch then meandered a few steps away from the group, looking out across the pasture again.
Suddenly, Jackie’s sharp voice broke my focus on Jesse. She stood on the dance floor, facing Cooper, who wore a smug smile on his face. She looked ready to slap him, but he threw his hands up in surrender, sidestepping away from her. Shaking a finger in his face, she scolded him, and I would’ve paid big money to hear what she said.
He slinked off as Jackie stalked over to my table, face red and angry.
She smacked her hands on the table, crouching down to whisper. Wisps of nearly black hair framed her face and brushed against her fair neck. “You willneverbelieve what that giant asshole just asked me.”
“What…” My words trailed as I realized Jesse was leaving. He tossed his cup in the trash and walked through the field toward the barn. The urge to follow him was so strong, I shot out of my seat, wobbling on my feet a little.
“Um! Excuse me! Where are you going?”
“I want to hear what happened, but, uh…” Was I really doing this? “I—forgot something.”
“What did you forget?”
“I’ll tell you later.” I called over my shoulder, “Can you watch the girls?”
She scoffed. “Okay?”
The cool night air brought goosebumps to my skin, helping me devise a plan.
If anyone asked, I would say I was getting a jacket. Just walking through a huge, dark ranch to rifle through my sisters’ suitcases in order to find a thin cardigan so I didn’t freeze in the seventies temperatures.
Perfect.
I rolled my eyes, pressing forward through the grassy pasture anyway.
Up ahead, Jesse’s silhouette disappeared into the barn. When I made it into the barnyard, I stopped in indecision. What was I doing? There were nocardiganswaiting for me in the barn. If Jesse saw me, he would know I followed him. My heart thumped in my chest as I stood frozen in the moonlight.
A distant, warm-up guitar strum filled the air. Then Bea’s voice over a microphone. “Hey guys, you know I would never pass up an opportunity to sing for Tag. The first time we met, I sang for him…”
I should’ve stayed for her song. I forgot she wrote something for Tag.
What do I do?
I should’ve walked back to the reception, but my feet were frozen to the gravel.
Garrett would ridicule me if he could crawl inside my brain right now. My thoughts and feelings were fickle—completely erratic and unstable.
“Just make a damn decision, Hollie.”
My chronic indecisionwasirritating, even to myself.
Why couldn’t I lean into what I wanted without hearing him or doubting myself for a few blessed moments? Why couldn’t I just makeHolliehappy?
I gritted my teeth and urged my feet forward. The gravel crunched beneath my sandals. The background noise from the reception faded as I opened the barn doors, and the squeaking hinges joined the pounding of my heart.
A single patch of light from a side room fell across the dirt floor of the barn. The corridor beyond was dark and shadowy. I inched my way up the hall, uncertain if I should call out and announce my arrival or peek through the doorless entryway to make sure it was really Jesse in that lit up room. A tinkling noise, like the clinking of metal against metal, filled the air. I stopped just outside the light’s boundary and peered around the door frame.
Jesse leaned over a work table, fiddling with some sort of…horse bit, maybe? His soft waves hung off his brow.
What did I hope would happen?
I wasn’t entirely sure.
That hug last night started off as a simple goodnight, but by the time my arms clasped around his neck, I was searching for something more—tenderness.
The lack of tenderness in my existence festered like an unattended wound, but Jesse was an abundant source of it. He felt like a safe place to fall. And I wanted to drop my weapons and fall more than I wanted my next breath.
