Chapter 41
41
JOHNNY
My feet hit the ground hard enough for my ankles to hurt when I jump from the tractor. With a slap of my hand, I shut the door and leave it parked between two others. It’s been at least six months since I was behind the wheel of a tractor, let alone to do something as time-consuming and boring as moving bales, but it was therapeutic.
I hate how quiet it is around here today, like everyone’s made themselves scarce around me. I’m antsy, so full of nervous energy that I feel like an over-shaken bottle of Coke with the lid starting to loosen.
“You need somethin’ to do, boy?” Wade shouts, appearing with his hands on his hips in a power stance.
“Please.”
“That fence you seem so damn set on? I ordered the materials last week, and they just showed up. Load ’em up and get started.”
“Wait, you ordered them? I thought you wanted to talk about it more still.”
“Do you want me to return ’em instead?” he grunts.
I rush toward him, my head shaking furiously. “No, sir. I’ll load them up as soon as I get back.”
“Good. Loren can meet you out there with the welding gear. Do you need anyone else?”
“Thomas is always a good bull distractor. Could send him runnin’ around the field with a red flag.”
His straight-lined lips tug into a tiny smile. “I don’t need a death on my shoulders along with all this fuckin’ other work. I’ll send him over with the first trailer. Get the bulls tucked up and out of the field before startin’ to tear the old fence down. Two in the trailer at a time, and get Zeus out of there first. Take ’em to the empty pasture on the east side.”
Zeus is the meanest fucking bull I’ve ever met, and while he’s kept in a paddock all his own, if he sneaks out amongst the others, we’ll be breaking up bull fights all day.
“The one with the runoff?”
He jerks his head in a nod. “Take a radio and keep me updated.”
“Will do.” My chest hums with pride. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. If this doesn’t fix the problem, it’ll be your ass chasing the bulls down the highway when they break out,” he threatens.
“I thought you were positive they wouldn’t break out?” I smirk, feeling ballsy with the built-up energy pulsing through me.
“You know, I was plannin’ to give you love advice, but now you can continue sufferin’.”
I stop smirking. “Hold on, hold on. I want your love advice.”
“Yeah, I bet you fuckin’ do. All that attitude in you, you’re no better than my wife when it comes to convincin’ me to watch those damn reality shows with her.”
I think he secretly loves them, but I keep that to myself. “Consider it dropped. I don’t think I’ve ever needed advice more than I do now. I’m already going out of my head, and it’s been less than twenty-four hours.”
“Since what? Somethin’ to do with why Aurora’s already here and looked like she was fightin’ off tears? ”
My heart thumps hard. “She’s here?”
“She came to talk to Eliza. Last I knew, she was in with her grandparents.”
“Oh, right.”
“Stop poutin’, Johnny. You’re workin’, and I swear to God I’ve been dealin’ with you boys and your love problems more in the past two years than I have in my entire life.” He huffs, glancing around the field. The giant metal-sided shop is up ahead, surrounded by trucks and tractors and every kind of attachment for them known to man. “She’s leavin’, yeah? Goin’ to spend time with her daddy up in Toronto?”
“You’re an eavesdropper, Wade,” I note.
“Eh, they were chattin’ in my house. It’s my right to listen. But that doesn’t fuckin’ matter. Are you plannin’ on respectin’ her decision to go?”
I frown, trying to figure out why he’s asking me such a pointless question. “Yes.”
“Then you’re as good of a man as I thought you were. Forcin’ a woman to stay in this town when she wants to stretch her legs and explore would make you both a coward and a man undeservin’ of her. I can’t say that I expected you to find a woman this summer or that, if you did, she’d be eight years older than you in both age and life experience, but there’s no one I would have chosen that would have been more fitted for you than her.
“She keeps you grounded, your head level instead of in the clouds. I admit I don’t know her all that well. Hell, I doubted whether she’d fit here at first, but I plan on changin’ that when she comes back. She’s just right for you, and I think you do the exact opposite to her that she does to you. You make her feel young and alive. Opposites attract for a reason. This is exactly why.”
I swallow the sticky feeling in my throat and say, “You said when she comes back. You really think she will?”
“I’d bet the entire ranch on it.”
My eyes bulge. “Fuck. Really? ”
He looks at me like I’m a goddamn idiot, and while sometimes I am, now I just feel desperate. Desperate for confirmation that I’m not being a hopeless fool by anticipating her return only to be left fucking crushed months down the road when she’s living a new life in Toronto without me.
Slapping a hand on my shoulder, he leans close, a no-bullshit expression on his rugged features. “Yeah, Johnny. She’s goin’ to come back. I was wrong to think she was goin’ to take off on you the way I did, but now, I know it deep in my bones that she’s meant to be here. Right now, you just have to let ’er go so she can learn what it is she really needs.”
“And that’s me?”
“A family. She needs a real family. And you can give her one.”
“Crazy fucker!” Thomas shouts, jumping back after he locks the back of the trailer.
Zeus grunts and snorts, and the trailer shakes as he throws himself around it. The three of us stand around rigid and huffing, the past few minutes a lot more than we expected.
Loren takes his hat off and bends at the knees to shake his hair out, sweat flying. “I’m not touching another one of those again. It nearly bit my goddamn hand off.”
“Pain in the ass he’s such a good breeder,” Thomas grumbles. “Wade won’t give him up. He actually reminds me of you when we first met, Lo. Fucking everything that breathed your way and taking bites out of anyone who tried to get to know you. But hey, you’ve softened right up for us, eh?”
“Do you ever get tired of hearing yourself speak?” Lo throws back.
I chuckle. “No, he doesn’t.”
“Don’t even get me started on you, Jonathon,” Thomas snaps, a long finger jabbing my chest .
“What the fuck did I do?”
“You took my tractor out this morning without permission.”
I roll my eyes. “Your tractor? Be for real.”
“Is it true that Rory’s leaving with Wanda?” Lo asks, the level of curiosity in his expression making me glare.
“It’s Aurora to you, fuck boy.”
Thomas holds his hands in front of him before spreading them out in a rainbow shape. “Lo, the emotionally available fuck boy. That’s a good one. Has a ring to it.”
Loren flips him off but repeats his question for me. “Is it true?”
“Yeah. It’s true. They’re goin’ to Toronto with Lee.”
“When?”
Panic flares in his eyes, and I tug my brows together while trying to piece together why. “Tomorrow. What does it matter to you?”
“If you’re going to admit to wanting Johnny’s woman, Lo, I’m going to have to encourage you not to. I’d have to hand you over to Zeus,” Thomas says.
Whatever it was running through Lo’s mind clears enough for him to snap back into the conversation long enough to frown. “What? Fuck off with that. I don’t want Aurora.”
I believe him. “So? What was it, then?”
“Wanda?” Thomas asks, a smirk slowly spreading his lips. “Ah, shit. You’re into Wanda? You’re fuckin’ with us.”
Loren reaches out and shoves Thomas in the chest, but the instigator just laughs. “I’m not talking about this with you.”
Thomas covers Loren’s hands and keeps them on his chest, encouraging him to shove him again, the fucking masochist. “So you admit it, then?”
Loren doesn’t answer him. He rips his hands away and starts toward the truck hooked up to Zeus’s trailer. I chase after him, leaving Tommy behind to collect himself.
“Hey, don’t fuck off yet,” I say when he reaches for the driver’s door. He stalls, huffing. “He’s just trying to get a rise out of you. Ignore him.”
“I know. He’s a shithead.”
“It’s more than Tommy, then, I take it?”
He nods once. “Yeah.”
“If you ever want to talk, you find me. Okay?”
“Alright. And for what it’s worth, Rory’s obsessed with you. You guys will be fine,” he says, surprising me.
“Thanks, man.”
Opening the door, he hops inside before tipping his chin at me. “Yeah.”
“You coming back after dropping Zeus off?”
He’s the only one of us who knows how to weld, so we’d be screwed without him once we get the current fence down.
“I’ll be back.”
I shut the door for him and slap it once before he starts the engine and pulls away. Thomas is waiting when I spin and head back. He looks like a naughty child after being scolded and sent to the corner.
“One of these days, you’re going to get your ass beat, you know?” I ask.
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll apologize when he gets back.”
“If he is interested in Wanda, that’s his business unless he makes it ours too.”
“You’re a giant softy, Johnny,” he teases, but it’s true, and we both know it.
“Yeah, well, my girl likes it, so I’m pretty content.”
“Should I start calling you Mom and Dad now?”
I bust out a laugh, and it feels really damn good.
“Yeah, might as well. We’ll save you a seat at our dinner table when she gets back.”
** *AURORA***
Bryce frowns at me as I lean forward on the top of my suitcase and try to yank the zipper closed. It hasn’t been long enough since the last time I struggled to fit all of my things in a suitcase.
“What’s wrong with you?” I ask, staring over my suitcase at her, my brows lifted.
“It’s a sign that your suitcase won’t close.”
“Ice,” Poppy warns.
She holds her phone in front of her, Anna’s face on the screen as we FaceTime. She’s only been gone on tour with Brody for a couple of weeks now, but even already, I’ve grown to hate FaceTime.
Bryce keeps her eyes on me. “You shouldn’t be leaving.”
I huff and abandon the zipper, planting my palms on the hard shell of the suitcase instead. “Why not? Because you don’t think I should?”
“Yes. But also because you’re not going to feel any better after getting to know Lee than you do now. You just think you need to get to know him because of blood obligation, so you’ve convinced yourself this will somehow make everything better. It won’t.”
“And you have experience with situations like these? You’ve suddenly learned about a father you never knew and were given the chance to get to know him the way I have?”
“No. But I do know what it feels like to know both of your parents and still not be important to them. Have you thought about how you’ll feel if your father tells you everything you want to know but doesn’t want to know anything about you? Are you ready for that pain?”
Anna gasps over the speaker, and Poppy’s quick to insert herself between Bryce and me. It’s silly. Neither one of us is going to beat the other up. But I appreciate the sentiment either way.
I extend my hand to Bryce, and with a reluctant sigh, she takes it. “It’ll fucking suck, Bryce. I’ll feel like shit if that happens. But at least then I can move on. I’ll know without a doubt that he’s a terrible man, so I can stop wasting my time thinking about him. This is the choice I’ve made, and I need you to act like you support me, even if you really don’t.”
“He’s a piece of shit for how he treated you, and I’d knock his teeth out if you let me,” she declares like an angry guard dog.
“I know. I love you for it.” I glance at Poppy and then Anna. “I love you all for it. You took me in and showed me true friendship when I didn’t know that’s what I needed. Thank you.”
Bryce yanks on my hand and brings me into a hug. She smells like spiced oranges, and I never thought I’d find comfort in that smell until now. Poppy curls around my back, her cheek on my shoulder and arms covering Bryce’s. Tears prick my eyes, and I swallow down a cry, not wanting to ruin the moment.
“I’m going to need you to come back, Rory. It isn’t fair I can’t join in on this hug,” Anna sighs through the phone.
“I’m coming back, and we’ll have a thousand more hugs,” I promise.
The women around me agree and hug me that bit tighter, as if they’re afraid to let me go. Truth is, I’m afraid to let go too.