Chapter 1 #2
I was still so pissed at myself for letting that damn animal get the better of me.
Now, not only could I not help my best friend, Rye, work our ranch and tend to our new stock, I also couldn’t help my brother finish the cabins he’d agreed to build for our new business.
I couldn’t do shit. Couldn’t drive. Couldn’t work.
Couldn’t take a goddamn shower. I would have to sit and stew in three inches of bath water with my leg sticking up over the edge of the tub so I didn’t get the cast wet.
It would be better than the sponge baths I’d had to give myself the first week, but I already knew it was going to be the biggest pain in my ass.
Before that overly aggressive animal had pinned me between the barn and the fence gate and then kicked at it with his hind legs like he had been trying to launch himself to the moon, I could stay busy.
I’d gotten really good at distracting myself with work or Athena or anything in between to occupy my mind so I didn’t think about shit I didn’t want to think about.
But now, thinking was all I did. I’d even started dreaming again about Candy and the baby I never got to meet.
In my dreams, they were both alive and vibrant and whole.
There was no deadly blood clot lurking beneath the shadows, catching me unawares to knock me numb when it lodged in her brain and killed the only woman I’d ever loved and my son, who, if he’d been born, would’ve been named Baxton Brennen Lee II. Duo for short.
In my head, I could see him so clearly. He had brown hair like mine, kind of wavy but not curly.
He’d love four wheeling with his old man and his big sister, and his eyes would be the same light blue as mine.
He’d call me Pops or something similar that would make me feel twenty years older than the thirty-eight I’d lived so far.
But I’d love hearing it every time.
The pain in my chest every time the realization washed over me that I’d never know the sound of my son’s voice leveled me. The wall around my heart cracked enough to let the pain slither in, and I staggered back, forgetting the cast on my leg, and fell into a chair at my kitchen table.
Losing him was different than the loss I felt for Candy because she had been a real-life person.
Her kind smile and the tender lilt to her voice when she read bedtime stories to Athena had been branded onto my memories.
And the belief and faith she’d had in me after my dad died and left me in charge of our family’s sheep farm was probably the reason it had taken me so long to let it go and focus on a new dream, one that could actually make a profit.
The baby was different because he’d gotten stuck in my head as an abstract idea. I’d never held him. Never heard the sound of his coos or hiccups. Never got to feel his heart beating inside his little body as I rocked him to sleep.
I’d long ago stopped crying. What good did that do besides make Athena worry about me? But it hurt, and I always had to take a few minutes to breathe and find gratitude for all the good things I still had in my life.
Athena. My family. My friends. Sunrises. Sunsets. Laughter. Athena’s laugh. Her smile. Her spirit. It’s crazy how different she is than her mama. Candy would’ve loved who our little girl’s turning out to ? —
My phone rang on the table in front of me— thank God —and I breathed a sigh of relief when I grabbed it and saw my brother’s name on the screen.
“What’s up, little bro?” I said, trying not to let him hear the croak in my voice or the sound of me trying to clear it from my throat. “You make it out of Jackson yet?”
“Yeah, just turned onto Highway 26. Only six more hours to go till I get back to Sheridan. I talked to Sweetie. She’ll be on her way to you in a few hours.
She got off to a late start today, but she’ll be there tonight.
I’m not sure exactly what time. She’s already complainin’ about the drive, so just beware. ”
“Beware?” I laughed, remembering vaguely the night I’d met Sweetie up at my brother’s place in Sheridan, and how feisty she could be.
I also remembered her green eyes. And I remembered getting rip-roaring drunk when those eyes and the way they’d stared into mine made me realize I was attracted to a woman who wasn’t my wife.
“You’re warnin’ me about the person you’ve sent to live here with me and your innocent, defenseless niece? What exactly should I be wary of?”
“Please,” Brand said. “Athena’s anything but defenseless, and Sweetie’s harmless. She’s just a little stressed about the job. I’ve put a lot of pressure on her, and she can be a bit… intense.”
“Okay.”
Whatever. With this godforsaken broken leg, it wasn’t like I could finish all the work Brand had started but couldn’t finish because he’d been called back to Sheridan for some kind of legal hogwash.
But I guess that was what happened when you became a big, successful contractor like my little brother had.
Brand’s forewoman, Sweetie, would be staying in the first finished cabin. She was our best hope of getting three half-finished houses and nine more cabins completed before the end of autumn.
If winter hit before then, we’d all be screwed.
I’d have to spend the next half year holed up with my teenager, my mama, who’d just put her trailer up for sale, and my derelict brother, Dixon, if he ever showed his face at home again.
If their studio rental fell through, my sister and her fiancée might be forced to live here, too, and probably my best friend Rye and his girlfriend Aubrey.
Until his house was ready, Rye had been sleeping on my couch some nights, on the barn floor in a sleeping bag on top of a blow-up mattress other nights, and at his girlfriend’s house in town, which she’d just sold.
Added onto that would be five to ten various animals, going in and out my kitchen door at their leisure. In an old, three-bedroom farmhouse with only one standing shower and a fifty-year-old tub?
If I had to endure Sweetie and her “intenseness” to avoid all that, I wouldn’t complain. Not one bit.