5. Chapter 5
five
Something’s off.
That prickling at the back of your neck—like a crawl you can’t quite place—and then a damn tick digs in before you can reach it.
I can’t put my finger on it…
“You won’t believe who I just saw.” Tanner busts through the office door, out of breath.
Trying to focus on an order, I don’t look up. “Who.”
He swallows. “Her.”
I look up. “Her who?”
“You know who.”
My scalp tingles as I stare, frozen, while Tanner rambles on. “Laurel’s not wearing a wedding ring, and she said she was maybe back for good.”
Fuck.
That was her. With the little boy.
Shit, I’d welcome a damn tick. It might make you miserable for a week, but Laurel… she’s a misery that never lets go.
I give him a tight-jawed nod and shift my eyes back to the laptop. “Maybe being the operative word.”
“She has a kid.”
“I know.”
“He’s like two or three or something. You know his name?”
“No.”
“Want to know his name?”
“Not really.”
He crosses his arms and tilts his head as he leans his shoulder against the door frame. “Bowie.”
Hits like cold water. Steals my fucking air.
Our gazes latch. “He’s not mine.”
“No fucking shit. I know that.”
Why would she do that? Because it’s her husband’s name. Or a family name.
“Don’t they need you at the Dust Devil?”
Tanner’s eyes narrow, piercing mine. “That’s all you’ve got to say?”
“She made her choice a long time ago.”
“You make a mule look downright flexible.” He gives me a smirk and a middle-finger salute before turning and striding out the door, and I fight to breathe, my shoulders in knots.
She’s back. With a son.
Good. Good for her. I bet she’s a great mother. She’s made for it.
But here? She has to come back here?
I scrub my hand over the back of my neck, scratching an itch that I never could shake—the one she left in me ten years ago.
I can’t go there. Not again. Hating her hasn’t been easy with her out of sight—how the hell am I gonna do it with her here? When Laurel walks into a room, the air shifts, the way it does in spring when a breeze rains fruit tree blossoms down on you.
Damn.
“You ready for the meeting tonight?”
Now Waddy Brown’s standing in my office doorway. He’s a scrawny guy who runs the cattle auction.
“Does any fucking body knock?”
I swear, Waddy can’t weigh much more than a feed sack.
“Door’s open, Calder.” He raps his knuckles on the door frame while he dribbles chewing tobacco into a Styrofoam cup. “Knock. Knock. Answer my question. Are you ready for the meeting tonight?”
Waddy’s as bowlegged as any man I’ve ever seen, like he came out of the womb straddling a steer.
In disgust, I close the laptop. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
I swallow a snicker. “Can’t say it any plainer. You want me to speak slower? It means I’m… as… ready… as I’ll… ever be.”
“There’ll be a big crowd.”
“I’m aware.”
“We need that new truck.”
“I know.” Shit.
“Okay, well you’re the boss.”
“I’m not the boss. I’m one volunteer of thirty-seven.”
“But Chief’s out of town and he said in his absence, you’re in charge. Makes you the boss. Tonight.”
I aim my arm past him. “Out.”
“Man, you’re testier than ever today. Holy hell.”
Waddy turns to amble off, and I holler at his back, “Close the damn door!”
He returns, spits tobacco in his cup as our eyes hold, and slams the door shut.
Thank fuck. Just give me a minute.
I need one damn minute to wrap my head around Laurel being back in town. Once upon a time, she was my everything. My sunrise and my sunset.
But she left. She made that choice.
I lean back in my chair, rest my head in my hands, stare at the ceiling, and close my eyes. And what comes isn’t the leaving. It’s the first time she kissed me.
We were sixteen, sitting on the tailgate of my truck out by the tanks, the night warm enough that the air felt alive. She kept pretending to watch the fireflies, but her knee kept bumping mine like she couldn’t help it. Laurel always tried to act braver than she felt.
Her fingers worried the hem of her blouse, and she kept stealing these quick little glances at my mouth.
I wasn’t sure if she wanted me to move first or if she’d bolt if I did.
Then she leaned in—barely, just enough that I felt her breath on my jaw. “Are you gonna kiss me or not?” she whispered.
I swear my heart stopped.
I cupped her cheek, slow, giving her time to change her mind. She didn’t. She leaned into my hand like she’d been waiting for it her whole life.
And when I finally kissed her… she made this tiny sound in the back of her throat, soft and surprised, like she hadn’t expected it to feel like that.
I’ve never forgotten it. I don’t think I ever will.
My cellphone trills, snapping the memory clean in half. I don’t know if I’m grateful for the interruption or not. Either way, I cross my fingers when I see it’s our volunteer fire chief, Truitt James. “Hello, Chief.”
“I’ll be back in time for the meeting,” he says, road noise roaring through his Bluetooth.
A breath I didn’t know I was holding slips out, my shoulders dropping. I’d been dreading running that meeting. It’s going to be contentious as hell. “Did you have any luck?”
“I got the numbers we need.”
“Can we prove the wind turbines are starting fires?”
“They paid claims to other fire departments accepting responsibility. Same kind of turbines, so they’re on record admitting they start fires. But they’re not admitting to any in our district.” A beep interrupts. “Wait, Calder. I need to take this call. See you at the meeting.”
The line goes dead, and I’m left staring at my phone, the weight of it all settling in. Those damn things are the biggest source of controversy in this part of Texas.
Those three-hundred-foot beasts obliterate the landscape and kill hundreds of thousands of birds a year. And they start fires.
Grass fires in Texas are… hellish. Lots of cedar, and cedar burns hot as fuck, killing livestock trapped behind barbed wire fences. Those range fires destroy homes. We’re lucky no one in our county has died. They have in other parts of Texas.
On the flip side, the wind turbines feed the power grid, and the companies that own them pay landowners about ten grand a year per turbine.
Add that up.
It’s craggy country. We lost a fire truck in June fighting one of those fires, which Truitt is positive was started by a turbine malfunction. We’re trying to get the company to replace the truck.
That’s the meeting. We either figure out how to get grants or get the company to replace it. But we’ve got to have another truck. Pronto.
Just as bad? Lone Star Wind and Power plans to put in another grid of turbines, and they want the transmission line to run across my family land.
That’s not happening.
Makes me a hero to some.
A villain to others.
Fuck it. Get in line. Besides, I’m not the only holdout.
Out of nowhere, I see old man Hayes in my face at seventeen, the uppity-ass banker looking down his nose at me and my land-poor family, saying he’d rather die than see his daughter end up with me.
The fucker won.
And I hate the feeling growing in my gut—an old familiar burn that I thought was gone, the one it took me years to callus over.