Chapter 10 Jesse
ten
Jesse
“And right here we keep the chickens,” I say as I open the gates, smiling over my shoulder.
Veda wears denim overalls dotted with cherries over a plain white T-shirt, and it’s the cutest damn thing I’ve ever seen.
As if her mission in life is to make me swoon, she’s also put her curls in pigtails and pink cowboy boots on her feet.
It’s sweet, and it’s also the perfect attire for working around the ranch.
Since breakfast, she’s followed me around the ranch, learning where everything is.
We all agree that feeding the animals is the perfect task for her. It’s something that takes time but not necessarily a lot of effort. She doesn’t need to be a big cowboy to feed the chickens, so that’s what I’m going to show her to do.
“If you can take care of them, that will be a huge help.”
“I can do this and more.” She arches an eyebrow as I pass her the small bag of pellets.
She carefully drops it over the feeder, making sure to do it evenly, as if the chickens will riot otherwise.
The chickens run at the first sign of food, and Veda steps back with a smile on her face.
We watch them eat for a moment until Margella, our eldest girl, comes out of the fray, done with the younglings.
“Are you done with their mess?” I ask as I take Margella into my arms.
“Ohh, she’s cute.” Veda comes over and tentatively tries to pet the chicken. “Tell me we don’t eat them. I don’t want to get attached accidentally.”
She coos to Margella, giggling at anything the old gal does. The sun shines over her, the rays making her skin glow and her hair redder. Air leaves my breath in one gush, and then I start wishing for the same thing as her.
I don’t want to get attached.
Veda watches me for a second too long, and I realize I didn’t answer her question. I shake my head and put the chicken back on the ground. “No, they are just for eggs. You don’t want to name the pigs, though. We try to be sustainable.”
She frowns. “I wanted to quit eating meat a long time ago after I watched a documentary, but Grandpa said I was already too fussy and made me eat it.”
Again, her grandfather pisses me off beyond belief. That goddamn old fuck.
“You have an autoimmune disease. You’re not fussy.”
She’s surprised by my sudden knowledge, and I shrug as if I didn’t run to search for everything I could about the moment I found out I was poisoning her.
It’s a serious thing, and it hurts that her grandfather, of all people, ignored her medical condition to the point of calling her fussy.
Nothing I learn about Anderson St. James makes me like the guy more.
“Anyway,” she says, averting her eyes from me. “I have a soft heart, I guess. I know I devoured the bacon yesterday. I think my heart is not as soft when I’m hungry.”
“You can quit meat if you like. It’s not a big deal. You won’t be hungry again, and you can be as fussy as you want to be.”
The promise sounds good to my ears, but she shakes her head and moves away, taking that sweet sugary scent with her.
"It’s okay. You don’t need to—”
“Can I be a little too honest, Veda?” I interrupt her before she can make more excuses for why she can’t eat whatever she wants.
“Please.” She sighs in a way that makes me think all she wants is honesty.
“I think your grandfather is an asshole.”
Veda chokes with a laugh as if the urge is too much, but she wants to hold back.
“It’s okay to call it like it is.” I shrug like it’s not a big deal because I want her to know she doesn’t need to hold it in. There’s no one here but this cowboy and a bunch of chickens, and we sure as hell prefer the truth.
Veda bites down on her fat bottom lip, and my desire curls inside my stomach, but I tell myself to chill. She doesn’t know how much power she has over me.
“Do you know what? He is an asshole.” She shakes her head. “It’s hard for me to criticize him for something, but—”
“Come on,” I whisper. “He can’t hear you from here. Tell me what’s the biggest assholey thing he ever did.”
She giggles and thinks about it for a moment before nodding when she finds the right memory. “I’ve never had a birthday cake.”
“Really?” My eyebrows lift. This is not where I thought she was going.
“Yeah. He refused to get me a gluten-free one growing up, and I always had to watch everyone having cake on my birthday while I couldn’t.”
I blink, perplexed, and all she does is smile. “That was an asshole move.”
“Sweetheart…” I shake my head. “Asshole doesn’t actually cover it.”
I can tell my honesty pleases her. The chickens are happy too, so I let them be and lead Veda out of the coop and to the right-hand trail leading to the golden acre.
It’s beautiful this time of day, and I want her to see Wilde Ranch in all its glory.
It’s not like I’m trying to entice her to stay here forever. Please, I only met the woman.
The lie echoes inside my head, but I push it aside.
“Can I ask about your parents?”
She lifts a shoulder. “You can, but there’s not much to know. I never knew my mother. All I know is that she got involved with my father, but she didn’t want me, so she gave me up.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. I hurt for her. I’m so close to my family. I can’t believe she didn’t have this.
“It’s okay. Grandpa said she wasn’t fit to be a mother, so she left me with my grandparents and went back to Brazil, where she’s from.”
I don’t trust old St. James to be making decisions of who is fit to be what, but I keep that particularly dark thought to myself. She doesn’t need all my truths.
“What about your father?”
“He was young when he had me. He was never in my life much. He married my stepmom and had a few kids, but I only met them once. I was kept apart.”
“That sounds like an asshole move too.” I try to control the anger in my voice, but I know she hears it. Her smile is soft, and she shakes her head as if she needs to soothe me.
“I never really cared about any of them. Grammie took care of me. She raised me good. But I lost her when I was ten.”
She delivers her story with a matter-of-fact tone that throws me off.
So much sorrow, yet she doesn’t look sad while telling me about the deaths in her family.
If anything, she looks numb, as all these disappointments are just facts of life.
It’s insane to think. One of my grandfathers died a few years ago, and I cried like a baby for far longer than I thought I would.
I don’t think it’s anything with her, though.
It’s not her fault that she had to get thicker skin to survive.
“I’m sorry you’ve been through so much.”
She shakes her head, looking at the trail rather than back at me. “I don’t think I’ve been through so much. It’s better to love and lose than never love at all, right? I was just never really given a chance to do the whole love part.”
Love doesn’t come when permission is given. It’s not because people didn’t stay with her that she didn’t wish they had or that she didn't stop loving them. I don’t say those things out loud. Something tells me that I’m treading in murky waters.
Her words might come off as indifferent, but I know better. Her eyes are always focused somewhere, her hands closed in a fist. It’s a self-defense mechanism. She’s not ready to see people in her life as they are because she doesn’t have anything better.
It’s a dangerous place for an Omega, and it makes it obvious that Veda was neglected in many different ways.
She’s been suppressed, knowingly or not.
The anger pulses against my breastbone, but I swallow it down.
She’s not ready to sit down with the hurt of what her family did to her, and it’s not my place to say anything.
Not yet. I don’t want to put her in a position where she has to calm me down. It’s not right.
“Come on.” I stamp a smile on my face and take her hand in mine. “I want to show you something.”
We make our way beside the barn, and finally, we can spot the golden acre along the trail.
The sun hits it just right, and like this, it looks like a painting.
Veda gasps, lips parting in awe, and I puff my chest as if this is all my doing.
She needed something pretty, and this is the perfect distraction.
“Oh god,” she whispers, her voice full of wonder, and for a second, I think I did something right.
Her eyes shine with unshed tears, her face scrunches into something, and I see how wrong I am. She’s obviously not as impressed as I thought she would be. The panic is written on my face, but before I can ask what’s wrong, she swallows all her feelings and waves my concern away.
“This is beautiful.”
It sounds sincere. I want to ask what made her so emotional, but I decide not to. She already gave too much of herself today.
I guide her a little closer to the patch. “It’s almost time for harvest.”
When we arrive at the first row, she has to crane her neck to see the yellow petals properly. The flowers are taller than her, taller than me even, shading us like a yellow parasol.
“This is incredible, Jesse. Thank you for showing me this.”
My name on her tongue feels so good that I shiver shamelessly. She looks at me with a funny expression, but thankfully doesn’t ask why I’m shivering under the sun. I don’t think I’m able to put into words the things she does to me.
It hasn’t been less than a week since Veda entered my life, but I know I’m beyond fucked.
She can crush me with her hands if she likes; she can do with me whatever she pleases.
It’s too early, so I don’t share all that with her.
My feelings don’t taste good, but I swallow them anyway and bring Veda inside the patch, showing her a few tricks to check if the plants are healthy.
“Is this all going to a flower shop?” she asks.
I shake my head. “Mostly goes to your grandfather. He needs the fiber from the stalk.”
Veda’s mouth falls open. “He takes them apart?”
Her hands reach for the nearest sunflower, the pad of her fingers brushing over the hairy stalk, frowning as if I just told her that her grandfather likes to kill puppies. It’s a strong reaction from someone who doesn’t seem to care about her own tragedies.
“I wish I could say each flower is going to be admired for what they are, but…”
“Of course, it is he who takes them apart.” True bitterness rings out in her tone for the first time. “Why do people love to destroy beautiful things?”
By people, I know she means him. I can’t give her an answer because I’m starting to wonder the same.