6. Chapter Four
CHAPTER FOUR
SAMMI
G ene stared at her and blinked several times. What was going through his head? Why was he staring at her like she had two heads? She had a perfectly good reason why she didn’t have her water bottle. Did he know that? No, but she did.
“Can you repeat that?” Gene asked.
Warning bells went off inside her head as he asked that. Sammi didn’t think she said it quietly or stuttered.
“Are you losing your hearing?” She searched his face as she asked the question.
“No, why would you think that?”
Sammi shook her head and held in a wince. “Oh, no reason. You know what they say, though, right?”
“What do they say?” he drawled out.
“As you get older, some of your senses weaken. You might want to get your hearing checked out and get on top of it before it’s too late,” Sammi suggested. “My dad didn’t wait, and by the time he did go in, he was practically deaf, and they really couldn’t do anything. He had strained for so long. The last couple of years were hard, but he’s in a better place now. I bet he can hear now.” Her voice cracked toward the end.
“Oh, Little One,” Gene cooed at her. “I’m sorry for your loss. Is there anything I can do?”
She waved her hand in the air. “No, it’s been several years. Sometimes, I do wonder though if he did something to accelerate death since he couldn’t hear, didn’t know sign language, and basically couldn’t do anything.”
It had been hard. She wasn’t going to lie. She had taken care of her dad the whole time and saw how rapidly he declined. Almost like he had no will to live.
Sammi looked at Gene and then Nolan. They were both staring at her with anguished expressions on their faces. Without thinking, she reached across and touched Gene’s hand.
“It’s okay, really. It’s been several years. I try not to think about it too much. He’s in a better place, I just know it. It’s for the better. Now, I can live my life as bad as that sounds. But really. I’m fine,” she tried to reassure them, but she wasn’t doing a very good job of it. “I just wanted you to know so that you should get it checked out if you needed to. Since you asked me to repeat what I said. I just don’t want you to go without it, and then it is too late like it was for my dad.”
Gene looked behind him and at Nolan. “Did she just call me old?”
Her eyes went wide, and she scrambled to get to his level.
“Did I say you could move?” Gene asked.
“No, but I was not trying to imply that you were old. Okay, maybe I was but it’s not in a bad way. Everybody gets old. I just wanted you to be prepared in case you didn’t think about that. Not everybody does. My dad surely didn’t, and I didn’t either until I saw him go through that. I just didn’t want you to do something that you might regret later. I’m pretty sure if my dad was still alive, he would go back in time and get looked at sooner,” she rushed out.
Gene cupped her face with his hands. “Deep breaths. Take one in, hold it, and slowly let it out. Let’s do that again. Deep breath in, hold it and slowly let it out. Good girl.”
A shiver went through her body as he called her good girl. Never before in her life had she been called that, and it felt amazing. She wanted him to call her that all the time.
“Are you okay? Are you feeling hot or cold? Do you need to be seen?” Gene rushed out.
Her cheeks went red, and she shook her head. She definitely needed to get checked out by a doctor, but not because she shivered from pleasure from him saying good girl. Gene couldn’t know that.
“Then why did you shiver? Are you okay?” he asked again.
Before she knew what was happening, he set his lips on her forehead, and she froze.
“You don’t feel warm to me. How about you take a couple more sips of your water.” He pulled back and let go of her face.
Sammi whimpered as his touch disappeared. Both of their eyes went wide, and she quickly looked in a different direction and closed her eyes.
How could she whimper like that in front of both of them? Why couldn’t she be normal?
She was touch-deprived. Not by choice, but her brother didn’t do hugs, and she didn’t know many other people who could just hug her without asking too many questions. Having Gene’s lips on her was sweet torture. She wanted more, but she knew she couldn’t have it.
This was off-limits, no matter how much she wanted it, craved it. It would always be out of reach, a fantasy since he was her boss. But also because she had so much going on in her life that she had no clue how it would pan out.
Were the Springfield Sinners going to take her when they couldn’t pay off her brother’s debt? Was she going to have to strip in front of men, be forced to have sex with them?
Those were the rumors she had heard about the Springfield Sinners when they moved into town. And now it was becoming a reality. She never expected her brother to come to her, explaining that he owed a large debt to them, that if he didn’t pay, they were going to take her instead of him.
They were both adults, not living together, and yet she got dragged into it against her will. Now, everything she earned that didn’t go on her bills was going toward paying off that debt. She didn’t know how long they had until they came knocking on her door to take her, but she was determined to pay it off before it came to that.
“Boss,” Nolan spoke. “Her water bottle.”
Gene looked at her and made a tsk sound several times. “Were you distracting me, hoping to get out of that question?”
She shook her head. “No.”
It really wasn’t her intention to distract him by that. She was just very concerned and wanted to make sure that he was okay and knew what to look for. Was it an added bonus that he got distracted and forgot he’d asked that question? Yes, it was.
“Are you lying to me?” He tilted his head to one side.
“Promise I’m not. I was genuinely worried about you,” she quietly said.
“So, repeat what you said.”
She sighed. There was no way of getting out of this. Not when Nolan was here and would continue to remind him what they were talking about.
“That I forgot mine at home?” she said.
“I think her exact words were ‘I don’t have one anymore’ but I could be wrong,” Nolan offered.
Sammi glared at him, knowing that’s exactly what she’d said. She shouldn’t have said that. It made it seem like she wasn’t going to bring it to work, which is true, but they didn’t need to know that.
“I didn’t mean that. I just meant that I left it at home. I was running a bit late, and I knew the walk was going to be hard work,” she rushed out.
The walk to the farm seemed to be getting longer every single day. Probably because she was so exhausted, nauseous, and out of sorts.
“You walk here?” Gene asked. “From where?”
“You know where the donut shop is in town. I live around there,” she whispered.
Her eyes went back and forth from Nolan to Gene. Both of them were looking at her like she was absolutely crazy.
“You walk that every morning and night?” Gene asked.
“Yep.” She popped the P at the end. “It’s really not that bad. It’s exercise that I could use.”
That was a lie. She didn’t need any more exercise than she was getting since she had already lost a lot of weight, but she sold her car to give money to her brother. Was it smart? No, but it was money they needed. Did it make everything ten times harder? Absolutely. Now, she had to walk everywhere, which took up a ton of energy. Energy she probably didn’t have to spare, but she had to do it anyway.
“I thought you had a car.” Gene looked at her
“I do, but something was wrong with it, so I had to give it to the mechanic. Apparently, there are parts they need to order, and it could be a while,” she rushed out, lying through her teeth.
Guilt was festering inside of her as she told yet another lie. She knew if Gene found out she had sold her car, that it wasn’t going to end well. But he wasn’t going to find out because it was none of his business. She was an adult who could make her own decisions. Were they always smart, no, but no one always made smart decisions.
“I’ll pick you up and drop you off,” Gene said.
“No! You don’t need to do that. You aren’t going to do that. I am perfectly capable of walking. It gives me the exercise, and I enjoy the scenery,” Sammi explained.
It was more like she didn’t know whether the Springfield Sinners were watching and didn’t want to get anybody else involved. They were a dangerous club and she didn’t want to have anybody else’s lives on her hands.
“You don’t need exercise. Do you even eat?” Nolan asked.
“First off, that’s none of your business, and second, I do eat. I eat a lot. Food is life. When I am sad, I eat. When I’m frustrated, I eat. When I’m happy, I eat. I’m constantly eating food.” Sammi was offended.
“But you don’t drink water,” Gene said.
“I do, too, drink water. It might not be as much as everybody else wants me to drink, but I do, and I have other stuff to drink, so I’m giving my body fluids. I just forgot my water bottle at home this morning. I was in a rush since I overslept.”
“Next time, it’s okay to be a little bit late to grab your water bottle and fill it up,” Gene suggested.
Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen because she wasn’t going to bring her water bottle again. Not until she figured out why she was peeing so much. And even then, if she was continuing to pee even after she found out, she still wasn’t going to bring it. She had a job to do, and she couldn’t stop to pee every fifteen minutes. She wouldn’t be able to do her job if she did that.
“Do you understand?” Gene asked.
“Yes, boss, I do understand,” Sammi replied.
“You can go, Nolan. I’ve got it from here.” Gene looked back at him.
“Are you sure, boss? I can make sure that she gets home safely,” Nolan suggested.
Gene turned his whole body toward Nolan so Sammi couldn’t see his face. “I’ve got this. You can go back to work.”
Gene whispered something to Nolan, but she couldn’t hear. What were they saying? Was Gene going to fire her?
“All right. I’ll see you later, Sammi,” Nolan said before he left.
It made her feel a tiny bit better, knowing he would apparently see her later. Which meant she possibly still had a job. Hope filled her as Gene turned around to look at her.
“Do I still have my job?” she blurted out before she could stop herself.
She needed to know, or else it was going to bug her until she found out. If he was going to fire her, then she needed to start thinking about other jobs that would provide her with health insurance and fast. Sammi didn’t know how much longer she was going to last. It was a scary thought not knowing if today was her last day.
“You still have your job. Don’t worry. I’m not going to fire you over forgetting your water bottle at home,” Gene calmly said. “But you are going to start doing something.”
She scrunched up her nose as she looked at him. “Do what?”
“I want to see you every morning before you start work to see if your water bottle is with you and full. I want to see an empty water bottle by the time lunch comes around and a full one before you go back to work. Then I want to see you right before you go home with an empty water bottle. Not a small four-ounce water bottle, but the water bottle you first brought here was about thirty ounces if I’m correct.”
Her mouth fell open as she stared at him. He couldn’t be serious. He was joking, right? He had to be.
“You can’t do that,” she stated. “You aren’t allowed to do that, right?”
This was her first time working on a farm, but it was like every other job, right? He couldn’t demand that she come to him four times to see if she’d had her water. It was bizarre, crazy.
“I just did. You weren’t taking care of yourself, so I’m stepping in, and I’ll be doing it,” he stated.
“I am taking care of myself. You may not like the way I’m doing it, but I am. You can’t take control. I’m not yours.”
Sammi stared at Gene, waiting for him to say something. A thoughtful look crossed his face and she wasn’t so sure she liked it. What was he thinking? Was he going to back off?
“Good thing I’m making you mine then,” he declared.
Her mouth fell open, and she stared at him.
“Your lost for words? Good. Because from now on, you will report to me in the morning, at lunch, before you leave to work again, and before you leave at the end of the day. With your water bottle, and if you fail to do that, you will find yourself over my lap.”
“You can’t do that!” she yelled.
“I just did.”
Without thinking, Sammi stuck her tongue out at him. Before she even knew what was happening, Gene had her tongue between his fingers. Her eyes went wide as he got closer to her.
“Stick your tongue out at me again, and you’ll land yourself over my lap with a hot bottom.”