Chapter 6
PACE – MID-SEPTEMBER
Fine Eyes
It’s Annie’s first driving lesson with me today. We’ve been driving around the ranch in her dad’s rusty old truck that looks and rides like a sentimental heirloom.
She isn’t a confident driver and it’s hard to differentiate between the bumps in the uneven surface and her fighting with the clutch but put the girl in a straight line and she’s not that bad.
Is she likely to kill someone? No.
Seriously injure someone? Well, there’s potential because…
“You need to check your mirrors from time to time,” I tell her.
“Why? So I can see the huge black rings under my eyes?”
“You have fine eyes, Annie Quinn.” I immediately search my mental cogs for a take-back button because my words and my tone of voice sound like the exact opposite of what I’m permitted to do here today.
They sound like flirting. Unintentionally, for the record.
But I know they hit home because Annie’s smooth cheeks flush red beneath her freckles, as I envisage her brother coming at me with a meat cleaver.
“You’re so used to driving on the ranch where there’s no traffic, it’s easy to forget,” I say, trying to keep this lesson on point. “You need to focus on mirrors, signal, maneuver all the time.”
She makes a theatrical show of checking every mirror and her blind spot, despite driving in a straight line with no hazards across the plateau of gold and green.
“There isn’t anything dangerous out here in the wilderness,” she tells me.
“The aim is to make you test ready. Then you can drive as recklessly as you want.”
She looks skyward and grinds that clutch again as she battles with the stick. I look out of my window to stop her from seeing my smirk. Teasing Annie is as fun as messing with the guys.
“Why d’you always use my full name, anyway?” she asks pointedly, checking her rearview.
“I don’t know, Annie Quinn. Kinda rolls off the tongue now, doesn’t it?”
Stone-faced, she tells me, “Not at all.”
“Eyes on the road now, girly, and two hands on the wheel. Would you rather I call you just Annie?”
“If you don’t mind me calling you Just Tanner.”
I chuckle. “Alright, then, Annie Quinn it is.”
She changes gear, grinding her clutch again and making all two hundred and fifty pounds of me lurch forward.
“Sorry, these darn pedals are so far away from me.” She gives me the protest of a woman who’s very familiar with slamming her passenger into his safety belt.
“You’re good. Take your time. That’s it. Atta girl.”
She slips into an easy drive and I forget that I’m supposed to be teaching her as I hang a lazy arm out the window and feel the breeze across it. This place is beautiful. Longhorns graze on the green pastures; a couple ranch hands are out riding in the distance.
I let my eyes close and roll my neck, stiff from the weekend’s game. Damn, it feels good. I bring a hand to my traps, my shoulders, my chest and rub out the tension.
Until I’m startled back to the driving lesson as Annie screams. The car swings left, right, left.
“Annie, a cow!” I yell as she continues to scream and, un-fucking-helpfully, squeezes her eyes shut.
“We’re going to die!” she shouts at decibels I’ve never heard as she takes her hands off the wheel.
As the truck makes directly for a longhorn, I grab the steering and swing us hard left. We spin and spin, dirt kicking up, until eventually we stop in the field, the cow running into the distance as its fucking dung splats onto the windscreen.
I gag at the stench and the smattering of cow shit that’s come through the window onto my arm. Annie’s chest rises and falls with the intense speed of her breaths and slowly, one by one, she opens her eyes.
Her jaw hangs loose as she takes in the scene. The stink. My filthy limb.
“I. Am. So. Sorry.”
And I am starting to think acts of goodwill come with a dirty price tag. The only responses running through my mind are what the actual fuck? And why in hell did you close your eyes? And how did this happen?
So I consciously say nothing.
“You did the—” She wiggles her fingers near her neck. “With your—” Then leans her head from side to side. The proverbial penny drops.
“Did you get flustered by my hot man bod, Annie Quinn?” Despite the situation, I chuckle as her cheeks flame.
“I did not!”
“Whatever you say, Annie.”
Creases form at the sides of her eyes as she scowls but there’s a twinkle in them. “Well, no one would say you have a hot man bod now that you’re covered in cow dung.”
That does kill my amusement. “Is there an old rag in this truck?”
Despite the cow incident and the very real prospect that I could be risking my life by giving Annie driving lessons, we do stay out a while longer, not least because we’re far from the house.
“I didn’t appreciate this place was so vast,” I say. “When I was here in springtime, I only really saw what we were working on for Sunshine Ranch.”
My mind is cast back to the spring dance, and the week I spent watching Annie and the Quinns fuss around all the ranch staff and my teammates as we made that event something special.
That week of helping, of watching the family unified, of watching Annie flushed under the sun, hair wisped from being sweaty in the heat, dirt on her skin with a baby strapped to her back, is a memory I’ll take to my grave.
There was so much love for the Quinns, for Mama Quinn, and we were all working toward something incredible. And the faces of those kids and their families who come here for respite… They lit up when they saw the place. They shared joy and they laughed.
“It’s a real magical place, isn’t it?” Annie asks, though it’s a rhetorical question. “We reopen this weekend, after the summer break.”
There’s a slight tensing in her cheeks that I’ve seen on her brother – it’s a Quinn trait. A stiff upper lip. But something about it makes my residual annoyance at the longhorn near death incident disappear.
I’ve made a living out of reading people and intuition tells me I’m not supposed to be my usual self right now. That I’m supposed to sit back into this conversation, as alien as the concept is to me.
“It’s going be strange without Mama at the helm.
She was the Chair of the non-profit and she was a trained social worker in a former life.
It stood her in good stead when she and Daddy took in foster kids.
Of course nothing could prepare us for some of the cases but I can tell you that every child who came into our home left better than they started.
Mama saw the good in everyone. She was so full of—”
Annie’s breath hitches and she brings her hand down to rest on the gearshift.
Instinctively, I put my hand over hers, meaning to comfort her as I would with my sister, my mom, or a friend.
But her skin is so soft beneath mine that I feel as if I’m the one soothed by the contact.
It seeps into me like a smooth bourbon, traveling my system and warming the organ that’s suddenly pumping hard under my ribcage.
She slows down the truck and, together, we nudge it into neutral, then she turns those dark irises on me and I swear I’ve never felt the kind of tightening in my chest that I do in this moment.
I think it’s sympathy. Maybe empathy. I was raised by a single mom who didn’t have either of her parents around.
But the way my eyes are drawn to the pale skin of Annie’s shoulders, exposed in her dress, and the nook at the base of her neck, makes me contemplate something I shouldn’t be.
Not about Annie. Something like I felt last April when I held her in my arms in the barn because no other Bear would dare lead her onto the dance floor under Quinn’s watchful glare.
She swallows deeply and I wonder if I’ve overstepped, if I’m making her uncomfortable. I’m an old man next to her. Her brother’s best friend and teammate. A footballer she’s probably tarred with the same brush as her shithead ex.
I pull my hand back. Guy code. Woman code. All the codes.
Anything other than helping Annie learn to drive is 100 percent out of the question, for all the right reasons, whether she feels like drinking a smooth liquor or not.
“She was so full of joy and love,” Annie says, focusing back on the road, stoic again. “I don’t know if the rest of us will be able to fill her boots this year.”
She clears her throat and knocks the truck back into gear, jerking us from stationary into motion. I don’t tell her how to make that smoother because I’m too busy chastising myself. Out of bounds. For so many reasons, Annie Quinn is off limits and my brain needs to give my body the memo stat.
Annie, though, clearly felt no surge of anything between us, which is perfect, great. She’s managing to drive, while I’m stuck in my head, somewhere between panicking and rationalizing. Putting that twinge of something down to wanting to help someone who deserves a turning tide.
I’m dragged from my reverie abruptly when Annie’s phone chimes loudly, sounding like a freight train vibrating off the door frame of the rickety ride.
One hand on the wheel – I choose not to tell her this is a bad idea for someone who can’t properly drive – she retrieves her phone.
“Sorry, it might be Daddy telling me that Nelson is awake from his—”
It isn’t Sonny. I know this because she sucks in a sharp breath, fumbles with and drops the phone in the footwell, then bends down to grab it. Forgets everything to pick up her phone, while her foot stays on the accelerator. Jesus.
I reach over and grab the wheel at the same time as pulling on the emergency brake. As I do, I see the name on Annie’s screen.
Auston
Are you there?
Her breaths are ragged and her fingers tremble as she apologizes to me and drops the device back into the door frame.
I’m about to say don’t worry about it, at least I didn’t get splattered in excrement this time, when she lies…
“Nelson’s awake. Can we head back?”
I study her while she keeps her focus forward, holding a long blink as she exhales slowly, trying to compose herself.
Clearly Auston messaging her isn’t a normal occurrence. The severity of her reaction makes me think it’s been a long time since she heard from him. Since he fucking turned his back on her and their kid.
I shouldn’t feel as worked up as I do. It’s her life. I’m an outsider. I don’t know everything there is to know about her and Auston. But I do know that what he did to her is the absolute pits. Exactly what my own father did. What my stepdad did.
Clearly, she doesn’t want to share their story with me and it’s not my business. My anger is my own. Anger I didn’t appreciate until now that I still hold close.
“I’ll drive us back,” I say.
She shakes her head, restarting the ignition after stalling the truck. “I’ve got it,” she tells me. But the keys rattle on their chain with her unsteady hand.
“Annie, you’re shaking.”
“I just—” Her voice breaks. “I got a shock. I’m fine.”
“You’ve done enough for one day. Switch seats.”
She climbs across to my seat as I get out and walk around the truck to the driver’s side, then she spends the short ride back to the house clutching her phone and staring out the window.
Auston fucking Rogers. I wish even more than last season that we weren’t both on the offense because I’d like to sack his sorry ass.
As it happens, when I pull us up to the house, Sonny is sitting on the porch in a rocking chair with his grandson on his lap.
Should I tell Sonny what I saw? He’s Annie’s dad. He’d want to know if Auston’s messaging her after all the shit that’s gone down.
But I don’t really know Sonny. I doubt many people truly know him. He’s the source of Colton and Annie’s height, Colton’s breadth, and both their stoicism.
So maybe I don’t tell her dad but I tell Colton. Quinn should know. He’s her big brother. But isn’t that Annie’s decision, to handle her own life?
Sonny carries Nelson in the crook of his arm as he comes down the porch steps.
“The little guy got big,” I tell Annie as she comes around to my side of the truck.
“He sure did.” She practically bounces toward Nelson, arms outstretched. “Where’s my boy?”
Nelson holds out his arms right back, giggling before he says, “Mama.”
That word stops Annie dead in her tracks. “What did you say? What did he—? Did you call me Mama?”
She grabs her son and kisses him all over his fine head of dark hair. “That’s right, baby. I’m Mama.”
I swear my torso swells bigger than Quinnen Jones’ in his playing days as I watch the scene play out. Auston’s message is forgotten. Mama’s got her boy.
I’m so lost to them, I hardly even register Sonny boring holes in me. But I decide I won’t share Annie’s secrets. They’re hers to keep or share… for now. I’ll watch out for her and I’ll make sure she’s genuinely doing okay. Because here and now, babe in arms, she looks just fine.
I also try to tell Sonny from behind my shades that he’s got nothing to worry about here. I’m just a thirteen-year vet helping someone I care for. Being a buddy to my teammate.
“Tanner, d’you still want to use the pool?” Annie asks. “I might bring Nelson in for a cool off.”
I’d like to splash around with these guys but something tells me to call it quits.
Maybe the knowledge that I’d be in a pool with Annie in swimwear.
Or that it’s not my place to goof around with someone else’s boy, much as he’s cute as hell, with a face and eyes like his mama’s.
Most likely, it’s the silent threat from Sonny that I’m not yet trusted with his daughter, no matter how pure I declare my intentions to be.
I scratch my head, not wanting to seem like I’m bailing on what was loosely a plan, but… “I should probably head back and leave you guys to it. I might catch the boys for the back nine this afternoon.”
“Lemonade then? For your troubles? I make a good fresh lemonade, don’t I, Nelson?”
On cue, he twists his face as if he’s been sucking on a lemon.
“Come now, Nelson, it’s not that bad,” Sonny says, heading into the house. Scantily clad frolicking in a pool is a hard no but a lemonade on the porch he can stretch to.
“Sure. That sounds good.”
As we’re walking inside, Annie tells Nelson, “Say it again, baby. Who am I? M– Ma– Mam– Mama.”
A bitter lemon couldn’t stop me grinning at how adorable these two are. But one thing can…
Sonny calls out from the kitchen, “Pace, I won’t ask why you smell like mess from a cow’s ass but if you don’t mind, I’d like you to wash up before sitting at my table.”
Annie splutters a laugh behind her hand and I swear the sight of her happy is the one silver lining to me smelling of crap.
She deserves to smile after everything she’s been through over the last year.
I see so much of my own mom’s struggles in her, which, I think, is what’s got something deep in my abdomen contorting every time I see those dimples appear at the side of her red lips.