19. Wombat
Chapter Nineteen
Wombat
The barn was open, again. I walked through the building, searching the empty stalls and checking on the feed. Nothing was missing. That was a relief, but weird. Little things like this had been happening since early February. It wasn’t malicious, just strange.
Out of habit, I scanned the rafters. Hoot’s hole had feathers piled up by it. He must have cleared out some of the molt from last fall. I climbed up the ladder to check on him.
He was such a quiet thing that most of the time I didn’t know if he’d taken off or was just hiding. It was almost a relief when he’d fly to me if I whistled at him.
But I was trying to wean him off that imprinting. He’d do better in the wild if he didn’t trust people. I approached the nest cautiously.
He poked his little head out and tooted at me. The short series notes was cute, but proof he hadn’t progressed at all.
“Dummy. You’re supposed to hide from me.” I started back down the ladder.
Of course, he took that as an invitation to land on my head.
“I swear to god, if you shit on me, I’ll—”
“What the fuck are you doing?” Walt’s voice sounded below me. I didn’t dare turn my head to look for fear Hoot would fall off. Of course, he could fly, but it still wasn’t preferable to displace a sharp-toed predator from its perch. Especially when that perch was attached to my face.
“Hang on.” I wrapped an arm around the rung and used the free arm to move Hoot to my shoulder.
“What the fuck is that?”
Walt’s voice scared Hoot, and he fluttered into my face before taking off to the rafter above my head. From there, he scrambled along the beam until he had to fly around it to get to his hole.
“That’s an owl.” I climbed down the ladder and met him at the base.
“No fucking way is that an owl. It’s too small.”
I recited the latin name and the common name for good measure. “Look it up.” I’d had a shit day, sleepless night, and was still a little messed up because Honor had been avoiding my calls.
“Who shit in your cereal?”
“It’s kitten season.” While only one part of the reason for my attitude, it was a great answer.
He stared at me like I’d not spoken in English.
“Litters of kittens are born, abandoned, and dumped on the shelters. Most of them are sick. We’ve got twenty right now.”
“Aw… that’s cute. I like kittens.”
“Remind me to put you on butt detail.”
“What in the fucking hell is butt detail?”
“Newborn kittens can’t shit on their own. You have to express their poop manually.”
His face telegraphed the words before he even spoke. “That’s disgusting.”
“It’s either that, or they die.”
One eyebrow rose. “Is that what you make new prospects do around here?”
I grinned. “And worse.”
He nodded. “Fuck yeah. No wonder Fly hates this place.” He laughed.
Once it settled down, I asked, “What are you here for?”
Walt’s expression changed. “I heard a rumor.” His smug grin begged to mock me.
“From who, and about what?”
That grin grew. “It came from quite an unusual source. You know our law office?”
Oh shit. “I’m acquainted with them.”
“Biblically, I hear.”
He’d dropped the laughter from his tone.
I met his eyes to watch for his tell. He usually crinkled the corner of his left eye right before he threw a punch.
If both eyes crinkled, he was likely to go for a grab.
That was worse because he outweighed me by at least seventy pounds. All of that weight was muscle, too.
“You look scared.” The natural smirk on his face deepened.
“Should I be?”
He glanced away. “It’s been what, six years?”
Since I started hanging around the club? “Yeah.”
“In that time, we let you run pretty wild…you and that dick.”
Wild? I wouldn’t call it that. I’d call it calculated, strategic. Maybe even manipulative. I wasn’t going to say that to Walt’s face. Not with his current attitude. Instead, I waited for him to elaborate. He didn’t disappoint.
“And now you’re fucking our lawyer.”
“That’s not a crime.”
He didn’t react like I thought he would. Instead of turning red and getting pissed, he did something scarier. He asked, “How much does she like your dick?”
No. But if I disobeyed him, I’d probably be given shit jobs. Ones that took a lot of time away from helping Lemon, and didn’t pay nearly as well as the ones I was good at. I had to tread carefully. “It’s new.”
“So, you’re saying you don’t have a handle on it?”
That wasn’t what I was saying at all. “I’m saying don’t get your hopes up. She’ll leave me. They always do.” In fact, she was ghosting me now.
“Winter didn’t.”
“Don’t go there.”
He snorted. “You want what you can’t have, run from what you do have, and—”
“She’s a human being, Walt. Sure, she’s a lawyer. But isn’t that just a hop, skip, and a jump from what Mary does?”
“Leave my wife out of this.”
“I can’t, Walt. Because if—and it’s a huge fucking if right now— but if Honor comes around, she and Mary are going to hit it off. What then? Do you want to be that guy ordering me to use her friend?” I wouldn’t put it past him.
“It won’t be like that.”
“Are you sure? Because I think you were going there.” He’d asked me for shit like that before.
The barn was quiet. He studied me as I stood my ground. “Are you finally growing hair on your balls?”
“I’ve had hair on my balls since I was thirteen.”
He bit his lip, another tell. One he usually constrained. But it came out when his other emotions surfaced. “I had doubts about you.”
“Not a surprise. Everyone doubts me.”
“Boots didn’t. Kid didn’t.”
I’d call bullshit on that, but he had picked the two members who’d sponsored me. They’d been my tormenters and my champions. Two fucked-up sides of the same coin.
“Well. If you ain’t going to fuck her for us, what are you planning to do?”
That was easy. “Keep her all to myself.”
“Good luck with that. She’s hot.”
“I’m telling Mary you said that.”
“You do that.” He had that look. Both eyes squinting at me.
“I’m giving you shit, Walt. Mary knows you look. Just as long as you don’t touch, she’s chill.”
His jaw shifted a little. “You think they’ll be friends.”
“Mary’s friends with all the ol’ ladies.”
A heartbeat, maybe two, was all I got before he doubled over laughing. It got so bad, he was wheezing. “Ain’t no fucking way.” He gasped and tried to talk again. “Her? Your ol’ lady?” He almost fell over he was laughing so hard.
Asshole.
When he finally started crying from his amusement, I got mad. “What part of our relationship is so hard to believe?”
He wiped his face with a sleeve. “She ain’t going to be your ol’ lady.”
“Why?”
He blinked at the tone I’d used. “Caught a nerve there, didn’t I?”
“Why, Walt?” Seventy pounds or not, an extra four inches of reach or not, he was going down. It was either that or kill myself trying.
“Wombat, hard truth? You ain’t got shit to offer her. Look around. Your farm? You share it with your sister. It ain’t making money. Your house? It’s a garage. She’s used to more. You know that, right?”
“You’re pointing out material things.”
“That’s what women want.”
“Bullshit.”
His left eye twitched and his forehead tinted pink. “Before I slap that insubordinate mouth of yours, enlighten me. What do women want?”
The tone he used was too condescending to stomach. It only made me angrier. “To be seen. Loved.”
“You forgot, taken care of. And you don’t have that. You wonder why none of ’em stay? It’s because you ain’t got shit to offer. Kittens with butt problems. That’s what you got.”
“Leave.”
“You don’t tell me what to do,” he fired back.
“I’m asking you. Leave my farm.”
“Your sister’s farm.”
I let my head dip slowly into a nod. “Leave my sister’s farm. Please.” It came out through gritted teeth the last word tacked on as gruesomely as possible. But I wouldn’t apologize.
“She’s got you twisted in knots, doesn’t she?”
“Leave.” I couldn’t do this.
Walt changed tactics. “Brother—”
“For the love of fucking god, Walt, get your fat ass off my property!”
His nostrils flared. “You need to calm down.”
“I’ll be damned if I fucking listen to you.” I was a half-second away from doing something stupid.
Honor’s car rolled into the driveway. I gave it one glance and took off into the woods. I didn’t run. Nor did I look back.
Most importantly, Walt didn’t come after me. He probably saw who it was and stayed behind to betray me harder. Dick.
Two hours later, I’d repaired a broken barbed wire fence, cleaned up the chicken coop, relaid straw for the goats, and finally stopped fuming every time I remembered Walt’s words. I wasn’t calm by any means, which meant I wasn’t thinking straight when Lemon approached.
“You okay?”
I glared at her, unable to speak without screaming.
“Honor asked about you.”
That wasn’t good news. “Did Walt talk to her?”
Lemon’s eyes searched for answers. “I think he said hi. Do they know each other?”
“Through the firm.” I kept my reply short so I wouldn’t explode.
“Oh.” She stared at the ground. Her posture resembled a beaten dog’s.
“I’m not mad at you.”
She grunted and kicked a clump of mud. “You’re really angry though. I can see it in your aura. It’s so…dark that it’s painful.”
That was a good way to describe it. “Wha—” I cut myself off.
I was going to ask her what she saw when she looked at Honor.
But maybe I didn’t want to know. Or maybe I was trying to avoid the truth.
Walt was right. I couldn’t offer Honor anything.
I was such a dumbass to think there’d be more than just fucking between us.
Her eyes lifted to peek at me. “Are you going to be okay?”
Aw man, if it were anyone other than Lemon asking I’d have lied. “Remember when Mom and Dad left? When they took Hal and just left us?”
She nodded.
“This hurts almost as bad.”
A small sob leaked out of her, and she threw her body against mine to hug me. I couldn’t hug her back.
She squeezed me tighter. “I got you.”
I wished she’d let go—just…let me go. She should do her own thing and leave me out of her life.
Then, maybe I could take off and… I didn’t know where my head was going with that.
It fluttered away in so many directions like dreams that couldn’t face the dawn.
The fact was, I needed my sister. She was all I had left.
I wrapped an arm around her shoulders and squeezed back. “It’s cold out. The kittens are probably hungry.”
She laughed quietly. “They’re fed. Walt sent Fly here to, and I quote, do butt detail.”
“No shit?”
Her face twisted into a half-grin. “More like all the shit.” A twitch of her shoulders was all it took before the joke jumped to my chest.
“When did Fly get here?” I asked, curious about the timing.
“An hour ago.”
Which meant I’d stewed longer than Walt had. He’d sent Fly as a peace offering.
My sister must have caught onto some of the tension because she knocked her shoulder into my arm and silently urged me to get out of my funk. “Call Honor back. Maybe take a shower, get laid. You’ll feel better.”
“Ew. My little sister just told me to get laid. Disgusting.” I was teasing her.
She laughed. “Maybe with you gone I can finally seduce Fly.”
Over my dead body. “Don’t you dare fucking go there. He’s… No. Off-limits, understand?”
Lemon made a face at me. “I was kidding.”
“I hope so. And it wasn’t funny.”
“Why wasn’t it?”
“Didn’t you learn your lesson from Tom the Tinder Turd?”
“His name was Tim.”
“Tom, Tim, whatever. He was a dick.” I pointed at the house. “And Fly? He’s a bigger dick. He hates this place. Tim only didn’t like it because it was competing with him for your attention. Neither of them deserve you.”
She stared at me as if she saw through me. It was kind of creepy.
“What?”
“Honoria.”
I took a step back, flinching.
“Huh.”
“What kind of woo-woo shit are you thinking?” I knew it had to be that. She wasn’t exactly focused on me.
“When I say her name, you flash red. Usually that indicates anger, but it isn’t quite red. More pink.”
No way I was going there. I remember Mom teaching her about the colors. Maybe she was too little to understand, but it was one of the oddball lessons from her that I’d committed to memory. Pink meant love. She claimed she and Dad were constantly pink.
Lemon told me in confidence that they were rainbows.
Whatever. It was strange shit. All of it.