Chapter 8
CHAPTER 8
Trey
W ade and I live in a single-story, ranch-style home with a redbrick exterior and white shutters in the heart of Shelbyville. We decided to rent it a few years ago, neither of us wanting to live in the main house at the farm or in one of the employee living quarters. While we’re both devoted to Blackburn Farms, we wanted some measure of freedom away from it.
When I pull into the gravel driveway, I note the grass is due for a cutting, but it’s Wade’s turn. We alternate every week, even though the lot isn’t that big and over half of it is surrounded by mature shade trees. It’s a forty-five-minute job, tops, along with weed-eating.
I step inside the door that opens directly into the kitchen and it’s like stepping back in time. The house was built in the early eighties and not much has changed other than some newer appliances our landlord put in. The kitchen is dated with laminate countertops and golden linoleum with a geometric pattern that hurts my eyes if I stare at it too long. The walls have either wood paneling or flowered wallpaper and the brown carpet is worn but clean.
When we moved in, our landlord told us to feel free to redecorate but neither Wade nor I gave a shit about what it looked like. It’s a place to sleep and relax in our downtime and we moved in comfortable furniture, which is all we really needed.
As Kat would say, we’re typical dudes.
The house is small, with only two bedrooms and one shared bath, and my first order of business is to shower and wash off the stink of a hard day’s work at the barn. As I’m setting my keys down on the counter, Wade exits the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist and a waft of steam following him out. He’d left the farm about half an hour before me as his last lesson of the day didn’t show up.
“You better have left me some hot water,” I grouch. Wade loves his long showers and we’re usually racing home to see who can get in there first.
“About thirty seconds left,” he says with a grin. “Better wash fast.”
“Asshole,” I mutter, moving past him to my bedroom. “And when are you going to cut the grass? It needs it and it’s your turn.”
“I know it’s my turn,” he mutters as he follows me in. “You don’t have to remind me.”
I reach into my drawers, pulling out fresh jeans, underwear and a T-shirt. “Apparently I do because you could have done it as soon as you got home. Instead, you showered.”
“Going out with the guys tonight,” he says unapologetically. “I’ll cut it in the morning before I go to work.”
“You’ll have Mrs. Hamersby over here tearing you a new one if you do,” I remind him. Wade tried to cut the grass very early once, and she came out in curlers and her bathrobe, a flyswatter in hand threatening to smack him. Wade turned on his innate charm and next thing I knew, she’d invited him over so she could make him breakfast.
“It will hold one more day,” he says, considering whether he wants to deal with our eighty-year-old neighbor tomorrow morning. “I’ll do it after work. What are you up to tonight?”
Going to track down Holland , I think to myself. She’s been ignoring my texts all day.
“Probably just chill out here,” I say vaguely, pushing past him to head to the bathroom.
“Kat had lunch with Holland today,” Wade says, and I jerk at the revelation, turning to face him. I know Kat had been wanting to get together with her but had no clue they’d connected. I barely saw Kat today as we were all so busy.
“That’s cool,” I say, not wanting to appear too interested. Because Holland and I are keeping this—well, whatever this is right now—secret, I hold myself in reserve. Had to do a lot of that eleven years ago and it sucked, especially when we were all together. It was torture for us to speak to each other just as friends, and not to touch each other, and… it just sucked not being out in the open.
“Good to see Holland back, huh? Brings back memories.”
“Yeah, it does,” I agree, and because I feel the need to act somewhat normal around my brother, I say, “Feels like old times.”
“Just as hot as she ever was, huh?”
Hotter. “Dude… she’s like a sister to us. Don’t say things like that.”
Wade snorts. “Just saying. But you know what I was thinking… we should all go camping like we used to. Just the gang, you know? We could even talk Abby into coming in for the weekend. Could be fun.”
I hesitate, the idea of spending a weekend sharing Holland’s attention not sitting well. “Yeah, maybe,” I say noncommittally, stepping past him and into the bathroom.
“Or we could hit up a bar in Louisville. Get out, have some fun.” Wade moves to his bedroom door. “Think about it.”
“I will.”
But I won’t. I intend to lock Holland down with some sort of plan for us to see each other. It could be we go to Louisville but not a bar. Maybe dinner, then a hotel where I’m going to take advantage of this tryst idea.
But that’s three days away and I don’t want to wait that long to see her.
Wade disappears into his bedroom, and I jump in the shower. Surprisingly, there’s ample hot water left and as it cascades over me, I ponder how to handle Holland.
This morning, in her dad’s office, things got crazy. Never in a million years did I think we’d have sex on the desk, but fuck… there was no holding that train back once we started. I feel like she had an ulterior motive in going all the way with it, but I can’t work it out. While I have no illusions she wants to resume where we left off, she seems more than amenable to us hooking up while she’s here.
That’s all well and good and sex with Holland is the best I’ve ever had. Even I know that’s because I loved her then, and I still love her now. But I’ve got long-range goals in mind and they all center around finding my way back into her heart. Only then might I have a chance at her forgiveness, and better yet… getting her to stay.
As expected, Holland is proving to be stubborn. I’ve been trying to reach her all afternoon, but she hasn’t answered my calls or texts. Frustration gnaws at me. I want more than just a tryst. I want to make amends and try for something real. Letting her go the first time was a colossal mistake, and I don’t want to repeat it. But if she won’t give me the time of day, I can’t start my nefarious plan to win her back.
I have to go searching for her.
After my shower, I sit on the edge of my bed, towel wrapped around my waist, and try calling her one more time. No answer. Determined, I dress quickly in jeans and a gray T-shirt, grab my keys, and head out to her mother’s house.
?
Debbie Rhodes’s house—the house Holland grew up in under her father’s alcoholic abuse and mother’s apathy—is a modest, two-story home with peeling paint and overgrown shrubs. It’s clear that maintenance hasn’t been a priority, but I never remembered it being anything other. While neither I nor my siblings ever hung out at the Rhodes’ household, we’ve been here before to pick up Holland for a group outing or to travel to a horse show.
After marching up the creaking wooden porch steps, I knock—three sharp raps. I hear raised voices that immediately fall silent and after a moment, Holland opens the door. She’s wearing jeans shorts and a green tank top, her hair pulled back in a ponytail.
Eyes flashing with surprise and irritation in equal measure, she asks, “What are you doing here?”
“I’ve been trying to reach you,” I say, glancing past her shoulder where I see her mother standing in the living room, her arms folded over her chest.
We lock eyes and I see that Debbie’s are red and puffy. “Hello, Trey,” she says, her voice strained.
“Mrs. Rhodes,” I reply politely and then look back at Holland for a more critical scan. She’s clearly not been crying but her face is pinched, and her gaze is flat. “Are you okay?”
Before she can answer, Debbie says, “Holland… we need to finish this.”
Holland sighs, her eyes closing briefly before they reopen. She stares straight at me but it’s to her mother she speaks. “I’m going out for a while.”
“Holland,” Debbie snaps, her tone firm and no nonsense. “We are in the middle of something important.”
Turning to look over her shoulder, she says, “It will be just as important when I get back.”
And with that, she marches past me and jogs down the porch steps, heading straight for my truck. I stare at Debbie before giving her a nod and following Holland.
Already in the passenger seat with her seat belt on, Holland doesn’t say a word when I get in. She’s quiet as I start the truck and remains mute as I pull out of the Rhodes’ driveway. I let the silence fill the space between us and it’s only when I pull onto the service road to Blackburn Farms that she speaks. “What are we doing?”
“Threw the fishing poles in the back before I came looking for you. Thought we’d toss some lines in and see if we’re lucky.”
I glance over at her to find a dubious return stare. “You want to go fishing?”
“Yeah, why not?”
“Because we agreed only to hook up,” she says blandly.
“I didn’t agree to that,” I reply as I turn my attention back to the gravel path that cuts among the pastures. “You suggested hooking up, and I’m okay with that, but I never agreed that’s all it would be.”
“Well, I don’t want any more than that,” she grumbles.
I decide to take a chance to see if she’s bluffing. “Duly noted. Want me to take you back to your mom’s or do you want to fish?”
Holland sighs dramatically and settles into the seat. “Might as well fish.”
I keep my face blank but I’m grinning on the inside. If she truly only wanted to hook up, she’d demand I take her somewhere to do that very thing. Of course, I also threw a blanket in the truck bed because once the sun sets and the stars come out, it’s very private at the pond and no one would be able to see us canoodling.
Tension vibrates off Holland and if I had to guess, it’s likely from whatever I disturbed between her and her mother a few minutes ago. I let Holland process and drive in amiable quiet until I reach the pond.
We exit the truck and I pull out the poles, tackle box and heavy-duty wool blanket. Holland eyes it but doesn’t comment.
“Can you grab that small cooler back there?” I ask, nodding toward her side of the truck bed.
She reaches in and hefts it out, turning for the dock, and I follow along. I spread the blanket, the fringed ends hanging over the wooden edge. “There are sandwiches and beer in the cooler,” I say as I ready the poles.
“Not hungry,” she says, but pulls out two bottles and twists off the caps. Holland removes her sandals and sits on the dock edge, her long legs hanging over with toes just inches above the darkening water.
When I sit beside her, leaving a foot of space in between, she hands me my beer and I give her a pole already sporting a spinner bait lure on the end. I take a swig of my drink and set it down before I cast my line, slowly reeling it back with tiny jerking motions. We do this a few times, sipping our beers, and from the corner of my eye, I see Holland’s body visibly relaxing.
It’s nice to see her like this. I glance at our surroundings with the pastures shadowed a dark green from the late sun and the sky firing up with pinks and oranges. Holland and I spent a lot of time alone together at this pond. It became our go-to place to hide out from the rest of the Blackburns so we could see each other in private. It’s where I first told her I loved her.
Right on this dock, she gave me her virginity, and I’d never felt closer to another human being in my life, before or since.
I’d love to ask her if she remembers those days but I expect it would piss her off. Instead, I take advantage of her mellow mood. “Want to tell me what was going on with your mom when I picked you up?”
I expect a denial, then a fight to poke her into spilling, but she says, “We had a fight about the business. She wants to run it, but she can’t. She doesn’t have the ability and I don’t say that in a mean way, but she’s just not business minded. She’ll run it straight into the ground and I tried to explain that to her in gentle terms. She’s not getting it.”
“Is the business itself viable?” I ask, executing another toss. “I sort of got the impression your dad left it a mess.”
After we’d had sex today, Holland went back to her dad’s office, ignoring me completely. I finished up the remainder of my work, but I heard a few phone calls and gleaned enough to know things aren’t so good.
“It’s a mess but I can clean it up, and being the only printshop in town, the business can thrive if someone puts solid effort into it.”
“And you’re sure your mom can’t do it,” I surmise.
Holland reels in her line, opens the bail and executes another perfect cast. She closes the bail and starts to drag it back in. “My mom hasn’t been able to do anything her entire life.” The words are bitter and full of frustration. “She never helped with the business for over thirty years, so it would be like pulling a stranger off the street without a lick of business sense and handing over the keys to the shop. In her mind, I can just coach her through this, but I don’t want to do that. I have my own life, my own career. I’m angry she’s not understanding that.”
I ponder that, focusing more on what she’s not saying. “Sounds like you’re angry about some other things too.” Holland doesn’t reply, taking another sip of her beer. “There’s a lot of things your mom didn’t do over the course of your lifetime that she should have, so I’d say it’s only natural to feel the way you do. You have a right to it.”
The closer Holland and I got that summer together, the more I learned about her family dynamic. Her father was a drunken, abusive fool, but her mother was worse, in my opinion, because she did nothing to protect Holland. She was a doormat and still is, for that matter.
Holland pins those gorgeous brown eyes on me that have a sheen of gold over them from the late dying sun to our left. “She never did anything for me, so why should I have to do this for her?” Her gaze drops, and she shakes her head. “Jesus… it sounds awful to say that.”
“It doesn’t,” I reply simply. “You don’t owe her a damn thing, Holland.”
She lifts her eyes and locks them with mine as she considers my words, then nods and turns back to her line, throwing another cast. I follow suit and we quietly fish and sip our drinks.
“My father left the shop to me, not her,” Holland says.
I jerk slightly, set my pole down and turn to face her. “He what?”
“He left the whole thing to me. I have no clue why because he didn’t care about me, knows I wanted nothing to do with it, and should have rightly left it to my mom. My mom’s also upset about that and wants me to give it to her.”
“And will you?”
Holland nods. “I mean… I don’t want it, so my plan was to get it in order and turn it over to her. But she’ll drive it into the ground in less than a month. So I think it’s best I sell it and give her the money.”
“If you can get someone to buy it.”
She nods, reeling her line all the way in and placing her pole on the dock beside her. “I could keep it. Give up my job in Zurich and move back home.”
A thrill shoots through me at the possibility that Holland would entertain the notion of returning to Shelbyville. I mask my excitement though. “You’d want that?”
“No,” she says. “Too many bad memories here.”
That stings because I know we’re not just talking about her parents. “Holland—”
She holds up a hand. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“Tough shit,” I growl, putting my hand behind her neck and squeezing just enough to get her attention. “I am so fucking sorry for what I did. I know those words will never make it better, but I need you to know, it was the biggest mistake of my life. I would give anything to go back and change things. I would have put you first. I should have fought for us, for you, instead of letting fear and misplaced loyalties get in the way. You have no idea how many nights I’ve lain awake, replaying every interaction, wishing I could turn back time. You were my everything, and I let you slip through my fingers because I was too scared to stand up and fight for what we had. I know that probably doesn’t change anything, but I needed to tell you that.”
Holland slowly pulls away from me, staring out over the water. I doubt my confession had any affect, so I’m surprised when she murmurs, “Thank you for saying that.” Her eyes slide to me. “That sounded genuine and I think I can actually forgive you.”
“It was genuine.” My heart soars. She’s opened the door and I’m ready to step through. “I can’t let you walk away again without trying everything in my power to win you back. I will spend every day proving to you that I can be the man you deserve. I’ll—”
“Stop,” she says, her hand gentle on my forearm. “I forgive you, Trey. But I don’t want you to fight for me.”
My stomach plummets. “Why not?”
“Because I don’t think I can ever trust you again,” she says, and that brutal admission feels like a stake driven into my heart.
Holland isn’t being dramatic. In fact, she’s being rational and I get it. But there’s no way in hell I’ll give up. “Are you still willing to see me until you leave?”
Because she is leaving. She’s not going to stay here and run the printshop. That was never her dream.
“Yes,” she whispers. “But I have to be honest with you about something.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m doing this so you know how it feels,” she admits with naked truth in her eyes. “I’m willing for us to spend time together and I’ll enjoy the hell out of it, as I imagine you will, but in the end, I’m going to be the one to walk away from you. I think only then will I have closure.”
“That’s about as fucked-up a thing as I’ve ever heard,” I mutter, still grateful she’s not cutting me out completely. I’m still of the mindset I can get her to change her tune.
Get her to fall for me again.
But I think we’ve talked enough. We’re definitely done fishing. I bring my hand up to cup her cheek and lean in to kiss her. She would have every right to pull away but instead she leans in to meet me halfway. Our lips tangle with immediate need to forget all about our past, because all we have is right now.
As our mouths meld together in a fusion of sweet and spicy desire, nothing matters but the two of us. The gentle lapping of the water against the dock synchronizes with the racing of my heart and somewhere in between gasps and soft moans, I lower her onto the blanket beneath us. I trace the curves of her body, causing Holland to arch into my touch. Her skin is so soft and my mouth waters at the thought of tasting her again.
Fingers working at the snap of her jeans, I’m surprised when she suddenly bats them away. With the sun completely extinguished and the moon newly risen, I watch mesmerized as Holland pushes away from me to stand up.
I expect her to walk away but she pulls her shirt over her head and tosses it down. Next she undoes her bra and my throat goes dry as her breasts spill free.
My entire body comes alive when she shimmies out of those jeans shorts, taking her panties right along with them, and then she’s standing gloriously naked before me.
“You’re a vision, Holland Rhodes,” I murmur.
“I’m glad you can see clear enough,” she says as she kneels down at my hip. Her hands go to the button on my jeans and she pops it open. “Because I’m about to make your eyes roll into the back of your head.”
I know this is just sex because Holland has made it clear that’s all she wants. In her mind, she needs to hurt me the way I did her, and she’s going to do that by walking away again. I suppose a prouder man would turn down this deal, but I love her too much not to let this play out the way she wants and hope to hell I can deviate her from her path.