Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
Stone
I haven’t stacked hay since I was a sixteen-year-old kid, desperate to do anything that would make me enough money to get out of here. I’m ashamed to admit that these days, it’s triggering my sciatica.
I refuse to let it bother me. I may use more mental work than physical these days, but I don’t shy away from hard work.
The nerve screams like a banshee but it doesn’t show on my face as I grab another bale from the truck and “toss” i.e. roll it to the waiting teenager who should then load it onto the waiting truck.
The bale comes to a stop near the backs of his legs.
I say to get his attention, “I got another one here for you.”
He doesn’t hear me over the blaring music coming from his earphones.
Contrary to popular belief, I do not enjoy scaring children.
This one, Devon, gave me one cursory look underneath his cowboy hat when I introduced myself before the crack of dawn and hasn’t said a word to me as we drove into the field to the very tall stacks of hay, climbed out of the vehicle, grabbed a bale, and swung it at my chest.
Death by hay squash. That is what this knee-jerk of a sperm sample almost did to me.
“Devon, is it?” I try again. “Another’s incoming and we’re running out of room.”
Devon turns enough for me to see his lips moving, but I’m confident he’s mouthing the lyrics to a song and not responding to me.
“Have it your way,” I warn, then swing another bale in his direction.
Devon moves just enough for me to clock him in the chest with one, and he goes down.
I lean in as his muffled screams come from under. “It’s always wise to pay attention when you’re on the clock.”
Thundering hooves draw my head up as I’m mid-lean, angling the hay bale enough for Devon to roll out from under.
“Heard I had a new hire,” a lazy, graveled voice says from atop a gray gelding. “As I suspected, he’s a pretty boy who tries to kill all the other pretty boys so he can stay king of the pretty boy castle.”
“Rome,” I greet while wiping sweat off my brow. Except I think I smear more dirt on it. “Good to see you.”
“Wish I could say the same.” Rome swings his leg over his horse, then lands beside it with a cocky grin and pulls me into a one-armed hug. “How long’s it been?”
“Not long enough.” I stagger away from the truck, the stacked hay bales, the stumbling kid who’s found enough of his voice to curse at me while pulling twigs from his mouth. “I forgot how shit this job is.”
“Good thing I ain’t paying you, then.” Rome’s gray eyes shine bright under his cowboy hat. “Remind me to send your mama a stack of pies as thanks for the free labor.”
“Don’t be surprised if you find a pile of these hay bales in your bedroom tonight,” I retort.
“That would mean you’d have to carry them there and we both know that ain’t happening.” Rome looks me up and down. “I thought you were meant to be a big honcho now.”
“I am,” I say. Spotting a kerchief looped through his belt, I swipe at it and use it to wipe my face. “And don’t you use your fucking cowboy stance on me.”
Rome Miles, my elementary nemesis and then best friend from high school, stands with his feet apart and hands on his hips like he’s still on his goddamned horse.
He’s dressed in a Canadian tuxedo and rounds out his fashion choice with beat-up cowboy boots I would consider murdering Devon over, now that my ruined Ferragamo’s cover blistered feet.
“How long you been out here?” Rome asks.
“Before the sun came out and after everyone sane went to bed.”
“Devon welcome you properly?”
I glance at the boy, who’s recovered enough to step into the driver’s side of the truck and slam the door. “Sure. Real friendly.”
“He’s efficient. You can ride with him to the Merc, drop off the bales, then come back and uncap a beer with me.” He studies me again, his expression unreadable but his eyes saying enough: look at how much you’ve changed and how different we now are.
I pull at my dark-green tee, realize the uselessness, then just peel it off and use it as a sweat collector, too.
Rome whistles. “I see what has all the ladies hollering!” He tosses a pitchfork at me, which I catch before I’m stabbed. “Prove those muscles are more than just for looks and tidy up the stray blades. Devon’ll wait till you’re done.”
“You are too kind.” I blow out a breath, tie my shirt through the belt loop of my jeans, and get to collecting. I can’t bring myself to banter with my old friend or complain about my current farmhand circumstances. All I can think about is Ma, then Noa, then more Ma, then a ton of Noa.
Obviously, I’ve drawn more of a silver lining around our past than she has.
I remember her as shy and obedient until I got my hands on her.
I convinced her to break into the fairgrounds after hours, climbing up the darkened Ferris wheel as high as we could go without falling to our deaths.
It’s where we shared our first kiss. Her tongue tasted like the cotton candy I stole for her after leaping over the snack counter and picking the storage door lock.
It’s also where we found a stranded, half-starved kitten that I jokingly said looked like a rabid mouse and a mad cow had a baby and Noa insisted we take him with us and name him Moo.
I introduced her to pot. I dragged her onto the rocky lake shore and dared her to swim with me under the moon.
Naked. I watched her bloom from a quiet, unnoticed sixteen-year-old into a confident, clever woman who would then challenge me to a swim race, naked.
Then I broke her.
The years helped heal me. Keeping busy was crucial. Becoming successful is an insanely useful tool. I didn’t have time to think of the girl I left behind or the pain I left her in.
It’s safe to assume she had all the time in the world to hate me.
To wish me dead for the callous way I brushed her off when she told me she was pregnant, or for my utter silence when I learned she’d miscarried while getting my first real merger that ended up an enormous success and changed my career.
I shove that feeling aside with the strength of slamming a pitchfork into the dirt, leaning on it, and cursing.
“You almost done, man?” Devon asks.
His head pokes out from the orange pickup truck, hair flopping over his forehead and eyes as he watches my cleanup with the amusement of a teen boy who’d rather be looking at his phone.
I wipe my hair off my sweaty brow, suggesting, “You could always assist by suffocating underneath it again.”
“Nah.” His head pops into the interior, and I hear an added, “You’re good.”
“Little fucker,” I mutter, but get back to work.
“Put your back into it.” Rome comes up behind me, and I jolt.
“I thought you’d gone.”
“The stealth I used to steal us beers from my pop’s cooler never left.” He tosses another pitchfork he pulled from somewhere between his hands.
“Funny. I was just thinking about our youth.” I toss more loose hay into a pile that a handy machine will collect later.
I could use this moment to ask why we aren’t using machines to pile hay bales onto the truck, but I assume Rome has me doing manual labor as passive-aggressive punishment for not coming around more often.
It’s a legitimate grudge, so I keep my mouth shut.
Better than facing the agony etching across Noa’s face when she confirmed she’ll never forgive me.
“We had some good times,” Rome says as he arcs a tangle of dried grass onto the growing mound. He glances over his shoulder. “Not like these soft jellyfish men who think online comments hold more power than good, honest work.”
I allow a gruff laugh. “You sound like your pops.”
“Shit,” he drawls, then sticks his pitchfork into the dirt. “I do, don’t I?”
“He harped on us all the damn time for being boneless fuckheads who’d rather chase girls than muck horse stalls.”
“And look where it got me.” Rome spreads his arms. “A farmland all to myself and my best buddy mucking stalls for me.”
“You better be joking.”
Rome chuckles. “Today, I am. Go on with Devon. You should learn the ropes at unloading at the Merc since I heard you’ll be here for a while.
” The laugh lines around his eyes and mouth, deepened by his constant presence under the sun despite his relatively young twenty-seven years on this earth, soften. “I’m real sorry about your ma.”
“Yeah.” My ego deflates. “So am I.”
“I had no idea. Otherwise, I would’ve found some way to let you know.”
I nod, believing him.
“Though you’re a hard man to contact these days with all those suits surrounding you.”
“Those suits are a lot, I know, but they allow me to keep my private moments private.”
Rome’s easygoing stare narrows. “From what I’ve read, you’re making your teamwork overtime. What happened over there? Did it become too much for you?”
Deflecting, I say, “I didn’t know you kept up with the gossip.”
“Nice try. I may be a lowly farmhand, but I can read you as easily as I could a decade ago. What’d you do?”
“Got a bit too public with my irritation.” I shrug it off, handing him the pitchfork. He takes it willingly enough but keeps his stare pointed.
“I admit, I worried about you when I heard. Your infamous temper and all that.”
“They don’t see much of it over there. Don’t worry about it.”
“Oh yeah? Because here it was a real problem.” Rome slides his gaze to Devon and back, then steps closer.
“I took Devon under my wing after he got too into drugs and fuckin’ flipped a switch in his personality.
His momma—Serena Lanson, remember her? She couldn’t find him one night after one of these kids’ stupid ragers at an abandoned barn on the outskirts of town.
Dogs from a search party found him sleeping by the creek with a nice purple egg on the side of his head from falling and hitting it on a rock.
I offered to take him in, teach him the ways of old, and get him away from temptation.
Kind of like what I have to do with you now. ”
“I’m not a dumb kid experimenting with illegal narcotics. I can handle myself just fine.”
“It’s not my responsibility to keep you on the up-and-up.” Rome’s gray eyes harden into metal. “I’m doing your lovely ma a favor, a lot like I’m doing for his. You’ll forgive me if I add that if you fuck around enough, I will be forced to fuck you up.”
“You’re serious?” I set my jaw when Rome doesn’t smile.
“You really think I’ll lose my mind if I even wanted to fuck over this hick town again, with what Ma’s going through?
And Noa, too? Who do you think I’ve become, Rome?
I’m not leaving her until Noa all but tells me to get lost, and even then, I’ll be damned if I leave.
I’m not some unhinged kid, and I’m sure as hell not some heartless asshole willing to put them through hell. ”
“Oh yeah? You already did.”
I am truly thrown by the way my old friend stares at me. Like I’m horse shit he stepped on with his boots. I say slowly, “What I choose to do and how I do it is none of your goddamned business. I shouldn’t have to explain my past actions. You, of all people, should understand.”
“Not anymore.” Rome backs away.
“Don’t talk to me like you’re my father,” I snap against my better judgment.
This heat, this environment, this guy , brings my old self raging to the forefront.
“All high and mighty with your farm and good morals and boring fucking life. I’ve made mine exciting, and I sure as fuck can’t wait to get back to it.
” I wish I still had the pitchfork so I could toss it at him instead of handing it over like we had some kind of friendship after all these years.
I stomp to the passenger side of the truck, throwing the door open.
“I really am sorry about your ma,” I hear him say as I slide in.
“Me, too.” The door latches with a hard click, and I jerk my chin at Devon. “Drive.”
“Uh…”
“Your boss isn’t mad at you; he’s pissed at me. You’ll be fine.”
Devon’s pacified enough to turn the engine. He’s stopped from pressing the gas when Rome steps up and folds his arms on the open passenger window.
“Damned old trucks with manual window rollers,” I mutter.
“Despite your shit, I’m glad you’re back,” Rome says.
I palm his face and push him out of the window. His rough laughter almost overpowers the rusty cough of the engine.
Jesus, and I’m the one who’s fucked up.
Still, the tightness in my chest eases as the last thing I see through the blinder is my old friend’s quick and easy smile.
After a few minutes of driving down the gravel road, I say to Devon, “So. Which is it?”
“Huh?”
“Oxy or coke?”
Devon’s chin juts out, but keeping his eyes on the road, he gives a single, tight, “Coke.”
“I find you with that stuff, either on Rome’s property or in any vicinity where my private jet, my super yacht, or my fucking submarine can get to you, I will make sure you will never succeed another day in your life.
If I hear you so much as made your mamma cry, I will ruin your chances of a happy future. Anywhere, or with anyone.”
Devon turns to me in what I will now always refer to as gobsmacked horror.
“But if you walk the line?” I continue. “If you get straight and become a welcome addition to Rome’s ranch and a godsend to your mother, I’ll make sure there’s a place for you. At my firm, here, wherever you prove yourself.”
Devon blinks rapidly.
“Now drive.”
He does as I say.
Devon’s jaw hardens, and he stares through the car’s window like if he glances at me again, I might shatter it just to prove a point.
I smile internally to myself while leaning back in the seat. “And they say I scare children.”