23. Brooks
23
Brooks
I am plum exhausted and so fucking behind on work. And worse, the guys are starting to doubt my dedication and even my authority. No one has actually said that, but I can feel it. This girl has me off my game. She is making me soft. I have to get my shit together. I’m glad she is leaving.
I throw myself into work and don’t realize what time it is until I see Gemma walking through the field towards me.
“Hey babe, it’s lunchtime,” she says touching my arm. But I stiffen and she pulls back. “You okay? You’ve been acting weird all day.”
“It’s better than acting fucking stupid like I have been since you came to town.”
Gemma looks confused.
“This whole thing–” I start, waving my hands around. “This whole thing with me and you has been fucking stupid. We can’t be together. We never could and we knew that. But we acted like dumbass kids anyway. It’s time to quit pretendin’ and get back to being adults. You got shit to handle back home and I have a fuckin ranch to run here. I don’t need you distracting me anymore.”
“Brooks what the hell are you talking about? Where is this coming from? Last night … we were so happy … everything was so good.”
“Yea it was great. A fun little fling. I’m sure you have plenty of stories to take back home now. And now it’s over. Back to the real world for me.”
“Fun fling? I was just some type of temporary fun for you? Are you serious right now? This was never just a fling to me Brooks. I fell in love with you. I thought…”
“Yes, I’m fucking serious. None of this is real! It was just for fun. You have a fancy little life in Texas, and I have the nitty gritty ranch life here. There’s no fucking fairy tale meant to be shit for us Gemma. We’re too different.”
“Brooks, we could make it work. Magnolia Creek isn’t that far away. I don’t want a fairy tale life I want you. Please don’t do this. Please don’t push me away like this. You’re just scared. This is new. And yes, it will take work but everything worth having does. You of all people know that.”
“I also know what is worth working for and what isn’t.”
She replies with silence this time but the tears streaming down her face say it all.
“Go ahead and hate me. Everyone else does. Fuck, I hate myself most days. I don’t even give a rat’s ass anymore,” I say. I can hear the exasperation in my own voice, so I know I’m not doing very good at hiding it from her. But her face takes me back a little. I expect her to hear my defeat and self-loathing and turn it against me. I am bracing myself for her to twist the knife I can feel in my heart, but it is as if what I say has the opposite effect on her.
Gemma looks as if my words have stung her. “I...” she begins. Her voice sounds wounded somehow. Her words come out almost like she is trying not to hurt me. “I don’t hate you. I never could. I hate what you did that’s all.” She looks down at the ground as if she is unsure of herself.
But I know I have to keep this going. I can’t let my feelings for her cloud my vision. I want to grab her and hold her and kiss her until she smiles again. But I know that wouldn’t change anything. She would still leave in the end and the time I am losing on my ranch wouldn’t be able to be made up. I keep my voice cold and clipped as I reply, “And just what do you think I did darlin’?”
I watch the strength flow back into her veins. The tangible anger spreads across her face as she near-shouts back at me, “You were careless. You made me fall for you when you had no intentions of catching me! You could have just let me be and not made me your problem in the first place, you ass!”
It is my turn to feel the flood of anger. How dare her? “I was careless?” I roar back. “I could have let you be? I had everything going in the right direction. I knew who I was and what I was doing. This whole town was doing fine without you here. We all had our shit together. And then you get bored in your little paradise and come waltzing into town like you belong here. You didn’t do anything but turn our world upside down and fuck everything up!”
“I never belonged here!” Gemma spits back at me. I know that isn’t true. I also know that she knows it. She’s fit in from the moment she stepped out of that car in my parents’ driveway. It had been unnerving how well she fit in so easily. But I want her to believe that she doesn’t belong. I need to believe it myself.
“Damn right!” I spit back. I can’t let my eyes settle on her face too long. The pain there is heart wrenching. It is killing me, and she can’t know that. She needs to get the hell out of this town, and she won’t do that if she sees what she means to me. “I don’t know why the hell you are even still here. You have your life in your fancy city with your fancy friends and that ass hat fuck boy. Go live it and leave us the hell alone to get back to our lives here.”
Gemma takes a step back this time. She takes a physical step backward away from me. As if I had physically harmed her. Or worse, as if she is scared of me. I didn’t want to hurt her, not really. I just need her to leave. She is wrecking me.
She has her picture-perfect life to run back to. This is all I have. This ranch is all I have. And it will never be the same now that she came and changed the way I see it. Hell, she has changed the way I see everything. She has changed me.
I school my face into a smooth mask. If I have perfected anything, it is shoving down my emotions and doing what has to be done regardless of how I feel in the moment. Years of ranching has taught me that. This is just another task where I have to let my brain lead and tell my heart to sit the fuck down and shut the hell up.
But I am not the only one who can master my facial expressions. The tears still glisten in her eyes, but Gemma’s hands ball into fists at her side. Her face goes expressionless as she calmly says “If that’s how you see me then you can kindly fuck all the way off. Thanks for showing me who you truly are. Just another piece of shit I wasted my time on.” With that she spins on her heel and walks off. Somehow, she keeps at a slow and steady pace as if she is fully decided and fully in control of each step.
What have I done? No, I don’t have the time to think about that right now. I storm off myself trying desperately to hold on to my anger.