Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
BOWEN
Situated a hundred feet off the main road, Theo and James’s farmhouse looked like a base camp for someone ready to survive the zombie apocalypse with duct tape, chewing tobacco, and a rusty shotgun. My brother and my cousin had some serious work to do on the fixer-upper they’d bought together.
I watched from my Land Cruiser as Griff and Magnolia walked inside holding hands.
Then I turned off the engine, flipped the visor down, and opened my mirror. My vertical brow piercing was… “Sick.” I grinned at my reflection. Zero regrets.
Okay, zero regrets, but I did have a couple of worries.
Mostly about how my dad was going to blow a gasket.
Or what Granny Dupree might say. Not my other grandma though.
My mom’s mom, Grandma Lisa, was cool like that.
Secretly had a thing for tattooed bad boys—on TV from the safety of her recliner, of course.
I could always move in with her if I got disowned by my parents.
The real question was, what would Magnolia say?
Hopefully, she’d say it was hot. Okay, she’d never say that. But hopefully she’d think it. And maybe she’d understand the deeper meaning behind the metal.
You are treading a thin line. She belongs to someone else.
“Shut it,” I muttered. The way Griff had behaved lately, he didn’t deserve her, and though I’d never admit it, his d-bag behavior was what pushed me to get the piercing.
I swiped up on our text thread to remind myself of my why.
Griffin
I don’t want you training with her anymore.
You’re getting too close. Her eyes are doing this stupid glowy thing when she talks about you.
THIS is why I didn’t want you to be friends with her.
I swear, you emit some pheromone-laced love gas.
There are four billion women in the world. Go get your own.
Some of those women are babies, already married, and/or way too old for me.
I’d been trying to ease the tension. Unfortunately, he didn’t take the bait.
Griffin
Google says that still leaves at least a couple hundred million women in your available age range. So again, go find your own.
Maggie is crazy about YOU. Also, her eyes aren’t doing anything different around me than they ever have.
I would’ve noticed.
You’re imagining crap. Chill.
Griffin
No.
So, I’m just not supposed to show up for training tomorrow?
Griffin
I’ll train with her. You’ve done enough. She’ll see you on race day.
I think she can make up her own mind.
Also, if you keep being an overbearing, jealous douche, she’s going to want less and less to do with you.
I probably shouldn’t have said it, but it was the truth. Obviously, it struck a nerve because he texted back with a clown emoji. Meaning, he was calling me a clown. O-kay.
Girls don’t like clingy men. Just sayin’. They want a confident guy and they want to be trusted.
He shot back with another clown emoji. I would give myself TMJ if I couldn’t find a better way to deal with him.
Griffin
She told me what you said to her about moving out west. Stop screwing with my and Maggie’s relationship!
Recently, Griff had come up with a harebrained scheme to move to Arizona or Montana and become a hotshot firefighter. When Griff told Magnolia to give up med school at UVA and move with him, I couldn’t keep my thoughts to myself. Could. Not.
According to her, Abilene and I gave her the same advice: If she didn’t want to move, Griffin should respect that. And if he loved her, he’d wait until she was done with med school. And the fact that he kept pressuring her to do something she didn’t want to was straight-up manipulation.
Griff was twisting Magnolia in knots, and it wasn’t okay.
Stop treating her like she’s a commodity then. She’s my friend, and friends don’t let friends do something they don’t want to just because their boyfriend is pressuring them to do it. Especially when they’re about to live their dream and start med school.
Think with your brain, bro. You’re sabotaging your own relationship. It has nothing to do with me.
Miraculously, he hadn’t texted back, and I naively thought maybe I’d gotten through to him.
I’d screwed up my chances with Magnolia a long time ago. I’d come to terms with that. She was with Griffin now. Might even be my sister-in-law someday. I’d learn to live with it even if it destroyed me.
But over the past couple of months, I’d had the chance to really get to know her.
Magnolia was the kind of girl who stuck up for people, gave her Chick-fil-A sandwich to a hungry, homeless guy on the corner as everyone else drove right past. She prayed with her dad every night via FaceTime.
She weeded my mom’s entire overgrown garden once when Mom and Dad were out of town for the day.
She spent hours teaching Cash’s sister, Addie, to dive—a feat no one else had been able to accomplish since Addie had a fear of heights.
Over and over, they dove into that water together.
Magnolia was selfless to a fault, which was exactly why she’d be a fantastic doctor someday.
But her inner desire to take care of others, even at the detriment of her own mental health, also meant she might give up her dreams for Griff.
I couldn’t stand by and let that happen.
She needed to be a doctor. The world needed her to be a doctor.
So when she sent me this message…
Magnolia
I think I should train with Griff for the time being. He’s having a hard time lately. I promise I’ll be ready on race day.
And I saw her training with him at Dupree Ranch a couple of days later, and she barely looked like herself—no smile, no spark, just the weight of something heavy pressing down on every part of her—I decided to do something drastic.
Something to encourage her to be brave. To live life on her own terms.
I tore open the box of saline solution, squirted a small amount onto a cotton ball, and dabbed it around the piercing. Then I stepped out of the car and headed inside.
My dad indeed lost his mind about the piercing.
Almost everyone did, except for Charlie, who always had my back.
Magnolia didn’t say a word, but the discomfort radiating off her could have melted steel.
By the end of the night, I felt like a fool for turning my face into a human dartboard, all to motivate my brother’s girlfriend. Like, really. How stupid could I be?
Now I was in bed, lights out, trying to shut off my mind. But it was no use. So I opened a new note on my phone and began a to-do list for the next day.
Google how to remove a vertical brow piercing at home.
No need for a lifelong reminder of my dumbest idea yet.
Just then, a text appeared. From Magnolia. She hadn’t texted since she’d told me we couldn’t train together. I bolted upright, heart hammering.
Magnolia
I like your eyebrow piercing.
My shoulders sagged with relief and I pumped my fist.
Thanks. I’ve been thinking about doing it for a while. Two years, actually. A good friend put the idea in my head.
When her texting indicator bubbles wiggled, and wiggled, and wiggled, I thought maybe I’d gone too far. So I sent a laughing-face emoji to lighten the mood.
Magnolia
A friend of mine almost talked me into piercing my navel once. But I never went through with it.
My fingers flew over the keypad.
The race is a good reason to get one, maybe? We still haven’t ordered team shirts. Or matching compression socks. Maybe our thing could be that we both get piercings?
“Please, please, please.” I gripped the phone. Maybe if she could be bold enough for that, she’d be bold enough not to let Griffin talk her into moving.
“Be brave,” I said as she typed a response.
Magnolia
I think that would upset Griffin, and I’m trying really hard not to do that. I just wanted you to know that I liked your piercing—sorry, I didn’t say anything earlier.
I knew exactly why she hadn’t said anything earlier. Griffin would’ve lost it.
Magnolia
G’night Bowen.
I fell back against my pillow and exhaled. Well, at least she liked the piercing. Maybe I’d keep it after all.