Chapter 2
LUCAS
“Damn, she looks pissed.” Wayne whistles under his breath as we watch Jenny lay into her dad in front of their house. “I was hoping she’d give him at least a day before she started yelling at him.”
She definitely does look pissed, but she also looks fucking gorgeous.
Her hair was longer in high school. Now, it’s cut in a bob that ends just over her shoulders, and the color is different — a little closer to auburn than the brown I remember.
She’s just as petite as she used to be, though, all long legs and narrow waist. And she clearly hasn’t lost any of her fire.
“They still do this a lot?” I ask with a grin.
It’s a blast from the past to see her up in Everett’s face like this again. Good to know she’s just as stubborn as ever.
“Constantly.”
I didn’t actually expect Jenny to be here at all.
We didn’t really have a funeral for my dad — I couldn’t afford much more than the burial plot and a cheap bouquet of flowers — but I didn’t see her when I got back into town, or when Everett offered me this job.
She talked about moving away so much when we were younger, so I figured that’s what she did.
Bit of a blast from the past to see her in action again.
“It’ll be worse now that you’re here,” Wayne says, jabbing his elbow into my ribs teasingly.
I wince, a little ashamed at the thought of her brother knowing about our past. It wasn’t a secret, exactly.
I was over at the house all the time, but Jenny and I mostly just hung out.
It wasn’t until junior year that we even started dating, and it was casual the whole time.
She always knew what she wanted, and our paths just weren’t going to align.
I stopped letting that thought hurt before we even graduated.
“Yeah, well, she’s always been a hothead. I won’t hold it against her,” I joke.
We didn’t end on good terms, and Jenny’s always been a pro at holding grudges. I’m sure she’ll corner me and ream me out at some point, if the way she’s laying into Everett is any indication.
“Good luck, man, she’s going to have it out for you.” Wayne shakes his head, both fond and exasperated as we watch Jenny storm into the house and slam the door behind her. “She only got meaner after you left.”
He laughs at his own words, but there’s a thread of truth to them.
She was always hard on everyone — herself included — but Dad told me how rough it got in the past few years.
I pause on this thought for a moment to remember Dad’s smile.
Rough — that’s how it feels now. It was good to share a few laughs with him before he passed, even if just to ignore all the stress and fear for a moment. But it wasn’t long enough.
“I’ll just keep my distance. Safer that way.” With everything I’ve got going on between paying off Dad’s medical debts and trying to pay off my own damn student loans, the last thing I need is to deal with Jenny’s anger over how things ended. “How long is she visiting for?”
Wayne shoots me a confused look, tilting his head to the side. “She lives here, man. She was just away for a side job, but she does the books for the ranch.”
That’s surprising. I figured she’d be out of here the second she graduated, never to return, just like she planned. “Side job, huh?” I muse, more to fill the silence than anything.
“Yeah, she takes gigs here and there when things are slow around here. Looks like the bigwigs in California paid for a new car. Think she’ll let us take it out for a test drive?”
God, same old Wayne. I can’t help but laugh, even as I shake my head.
“Me? No way.” I cut my eyes over to him, grinning mischievously. “You? Definitely not.”
Wayne slaps me on the back with a hearty chuckle, easygoing and friendly as ever, even if he does seem to take life a little more seriously these days. He is more mature now, even if he’s still got that edge to him.
“Still a little shit, aren’t you, Cross?”
“Always was, always will be,” I shoot back with a crooked grin.
“Well, it’s good to have you around, even if you are a douche,” he jokes. “Hopefully my sister won’t kill you and feed you to the pigs or anything.”
I scoff, but it does legitimately sound like something she’d threaten me with. I always did like the fire in her.
“What, uh, happened between y’all anyway?” Wayne asks, too casual to be anything but intentional.
My shoulders stiffen and an embarrassed flush climbs up my neck. I shrug, the movement jerky and nowhere near as nonchalant as I try to make it.
“Don’t really remember,” I lie. “We were kids, y’know? Just… didn’t work out. She took it hard, got mad. You know how she can be.”
It hurts to hear myself say it, even after all this time. It hurts even more to realize that I can remember damn near every second we spent together.
“I sure do,” Wayne says with a laugh. “I’ll leave you to it, man. I should go say hi so she can yell at me, too.”
I nod in farewell and wander back into the barn, leaning heavily against one of the stalls as I try to settle my mind. Seeing Jenny again without warning brings up so many emotions I’m not ready to deal with.
I don’t think Jenny ever realized how important to me she was, and I was a kid who was too scared to ask for more. She gave me more than I deserved back then, and I didn’t even have the balls to tell her how much it mattered to me.
How much she mattered to me.
After Rhonda left me and Dad when I was a kid, we barely scraped by.
Half the time, I only ate dinner because Jenny would drag me back to her house after school to study.
Dad was always busy, busting his ass on the ranch and picking up every odd job around he could find just to keep a roof over our head.
I focused on playing for the high school team and getting out as fast as I could.
That’s why I ran off on a football scholarship, even though I promised Jenny I’d follow her to college.
I probably would have gone wherever she went, otherwise, but truthfully …
she was always so smart it almost scared me.
She helped me apply to her top schools, even helped me fill out their scholarship applications, but I wouldn’t have been able to afford it anyway.
So when some no-name university in the middle of Utah offered me a full ride to play football for them, I took it.
I’d like to say I never looked back, but half of my life since then has been thinking about Jenny.
I never wanted to come back here — especially not without her around — but when I found out Dad was sick, I didn’t have any other choice.
I’d already pushed my leg past the point of no return, my ACL damn near in shreds by the time I finally gave up, and I had nothing else going for me.
Besides, Dad and I were never all that close, since he was always running himself ragged just trying to survive, but I did love him.
He was a good dad, even if he wasn’t very present. He tried his best.
It feels good to be on the ranch now, even if I have no clue what I’m doing.
I was never any good with horses, but I’m strong, so that’s something.
I can handle as much manual labor as Everett can throw at me, and I have no clue what I’d be doing for a job without him.
Besides, being here, where Dad spent so much of his life…
It feels like the right move to make. I feel closer to him now than I ever did when he was alive, in some ways, walking the same paths he walked for so long.
And, well, I won’t deny that it’s nice to see Jenny again. I have no doubt she doesn’t feel the same way, but I was always more into her than she was into me, so that’s not much of a surprise.
There’s nothing I can do about it—and I wouldn’t, even if I could.
Jenny may still be the most gorgeous woman I’ve ever laid eyes on, and my chest is aching in the oddest way every time I glance over at the house, knowing that she’s in there…
but it doesn’t mean anything. My life is too much of a mess to be thinking about a relationship, or even rekindling the casual thing we had going in high school.
I just need to keep my head down and figure out where to go from here.