Chapter 19 – Juliette #2
“You need to cool off,” he said, and tossed away the shovel. “I did it for your own good.”
I closed my eyes and willed myself to be calm.
“You win. I’m getting off this farm. I’m going to find a lawyer and divorce your ass and whatever the judge decides is what I’ll accept. But I’m not staying here with a whore fucker for one more second of my already miserable life.”
“Angie was no whore,” he said, and got to his feet, wiping off his hands.
“Give me the spark plugs you took out of the truck and let’s end this shit.”
“You’re mad,” he said dully, but not looking at me. “You’ll get over it.”
“I told you where my head was. I told you there was no going back,” I said. “You didn’t listen. Now let me go.”
“Tell me why you were so fucking upset,” he spat back. “Three months ago you would have been pleased as fucking punch if I told you I wanted to sleep with other women.”
“That was before I had…” My voice trailed off because the word didn’t immediately come to mind.
“What? Before you had what?”
I met his angry expression. “Hope,” I admitted.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. I dropped my head back on my shoulders and cackled at the sky above.
“You bought me at an auction! You basically paid cash out of pocket for me. My life, my future, my land. And I still had hope!”
My laughter stopped and I met his inscrutable expression.
“And you had Angie. I hope she was worth it. Wait,” I snorted, and started a slow clap. “Of course she was. Because I’m walking away. Fuck, Creed. Well done by you. Now you might get everything and lose me in the bargain. Win. Win.”
“You think that’s what I want?”
“I don’t give a shit what you want anymore. Now you’re going to give me those spark plugs or I promise you I will fucking get in the cab of the next eighteen wheeler that drives by this farm. Damn the consequences.”
I watched his brain work. He was considering his options. Assessing the situation. Making some internal decision about how serious I was.
Dead serious.
I wasn’t even sure where his hesitation was coming from. He’d won. I’d lost. What was the point of holding me here, when he knew he was all but guaranteed victory? He would tell any judge who would listen that I abandoned him.
The farm, outright, was in his grasp.
“I didn’t fuck her.”
It took a few seconds for the words to filter through my brain. Then it was my turn to determine how far he might go to win.
Except he already had. So why lie?
“I could hear you crying from upstairs.” He spat on the ground by his feet. “No matter how loud the music was.”
My lips twisted into a sneer. “Ruin the mood?”
He scowled. “I wasn’t going to…It doesn’t matter. I’m so fucking mad at you, Jules.”
That I understood. “I’m so fucking mad at you, too.”
He pulled the spark plugs out of his back jean pocket and handed them to me. I snatched them from his hand and took a step back out of his reach.
“Knew you’d bolt.”
“Why stop me?”
He shook his head from side to side, then looked down at his boots. When he lifted his face, that cold expression he’d been wearing since the hardware store was gone.
“I don’t really know. Hope?”
I bit down on my lip hard. “You promise me you didn’t fuck her?”
“Told her my sister had mental health issues and I needed to deal with that. She’d followed me in her car, so she just left.”
I couldn’t help it, that made me smile.
“I was a little cray-cray,” I admitted.
“You were full on batshit,” he accused me like he was mad all over again. “I seriously didn’t think you would care that much.”
I shrugged as if that was my only answer. Cautiously, I walked toward him and handed him back the spark plugs. “Fix my truck. I’m going to unpack.”
Walking away from him, he stopped me with his words.
“Goes both ways, Jules,” he said, on a low growl. “I catch you even looking at pimplefuckingface again, I will end him.”
I looked back over my shoulder even as I continued walking. “You don’t have to worry about that. I got my answer. Kissing him sucked.”
Later that night, I opened his bedroom door. We’d both gone to bed over an hour ago, feelings still hurt, but with less cursing at each other.
I hadn’t been able to sleep, though, and it was weird how obvious the answer was when it came to me.
He sat up with a sudden jerk.
“What?” he barked, prepared for some unseen battle, his hands in fists.
I walked over to the empty side of his king sized bed and pulled back the covers. I’d brought my own pillow with me, so I dropped it down on top of the pillow already there.
I didn’t bother to turn on a light. Tomorrow would be soon enough to pack my stuff up and move everything into his room.
“Are you kidding me?” he asked me. “After yesterday and today, now you’re going to sleep in my bed?”
“You’ll have a harder time explaining why your little sister is in bed with you next time you think about bringing someone home.”
“Don’t think this just fixes things, Jules.”
“Please, if I smell Angie’s lingering perfume on these sheets, I will vomit. On your side,” I replied.
I crawled into the bed and tucked myself into the smallest ball I could make of myself.
He laid back down, too.
“Don’t try to touch me, I’m still mad at you,” I reminded him.
“You don’t try to touch me,” he said back, and I could feel him twisting in the covers away from me.
A few minutes later I could hear him softly snoring and I felt myself drift off to sleep.