Chapter 20
JAKE
I’d never fully comprehended how annoying Shelby was until this moment.
Growing up, how many times had we talked in the treehouse or after a basketball game in front of my garage?
She had a knack for pulling out more from me than I wanted to give her, but every time she did, I always felt…
better. Though I never admitted that to her.
Or worse, when just the feel of her at my side had a way of making things better.
Those thoughts were enough to drive me crazy.
It should have been the way her hair kept blowing into my face or the way her body fit snug against mine while riding Jimmy that drove me crazy. But no. I didn’t have anything bad to say about that.
“Come on,” she pressed, patting the top of my thigh.
She kept touching my leg. That was going to be a problem too.
“What do you want to know?” I asked, trying to figure out how much to tell her to satisfy her. My mom knew a part of this story, but even she didn’t know the whole of it.
“How did it happen? Her, I mean. You never really had a type, but if you did…she wasn’t it.”
“She wasn’t. That was the whole point, I guess.”
“Huh?”
I sighed, adjusting my position on Jimmy’s back. “I think I can pinpoint my decision-making process down to the day my dad dropped off the new truck.”
“The ‘new' truck parked in your mom’s garage that has 722 miles on it and is now almost six years old?”
“That’s the one.”
“The one you keep claiming you’re going to blow up?”
“Just as soon as I find the right landmine.”
“What do you think it’s worth now?”
I shrugged. “It’s worth the same to me now as it was back then. Nothing.”
“Why don’t you sell it, then?”
“Do you want to hear this or not, Miss Nosy?”
“Sorry.”
“About a year or so after I graduated high school, I got home one night from working at Layne’s to find two trucks in my yard. One of them was my dad’s. His rodeo buddy was sitting inside of it when I got there.”
My jaw clenched, willing myself to be calm while I told her this. But it was hard to hold back the feeling of blind rage that the thought of that night always brought me.
Him in our house.
“I told myself to try to be nice. I didn’t know why he was there. But when I walked in, they were in the middle of a fight. I got there in time to hear my dad yelling at my mom.”
My voice went on autopilot, telling the story while Shelby sat, nestled against me. It felt like a shame to ruin the feel of this with talks of Cole Evans, but like an idiot, I kept going.
“My mom was dressed for the diner, about to go to work. I learned later that she’d been blindsided by him being there.
He just walked into the house like it was still his.
That’s how it’s always been with him. He’d promise to be somewhere with us, at one of my rodeos, or my graduation, or a scout camp-out, but he’d never show.
Then he’d walk in on a random Thursday without warning and act like he was doing us all a huge favor by being there. ”
Shelby turned her face so that her cheek rested against my chest. I sucked in a breath and kept talking.
“That first year after he left, we kept waiting for him to come back. We’d watch him on TV and get all excited seeing him make a name for himself. But he never came back. For so long, we were just waiting for him to realize he had made a mistake and come home. But he never did.
“So we started moving on. Hardening up. And then pretty soon, we were better off without him. So when I walked into the house and saw him standing over her and yelling—” I broke off, willing myself to take a breath.
I kept talking, but the vision of that day emblazoned on my brain was what used to keep me up at night.
My mom had stood her ground. And I’d never been prouder. Her eyes were blazing as she defended herself, refusing to be bullied or shamed by this man who had abandoned his family for a mediocre amount of fame and fortune.
But there had been relief in her eyes when I opened the door.
Her voice had been shaking. Her hands were shaking.
And that was all I saw.
I grabbed his shoulders and yanked him out the door. It was him calling me ‘son’ that had me throwing the first punch on our lawn. When my dad’s friend finally pulled me off of him, my dad stood up and wiped a stream of blood from his nose.
The whole time I was telling Shelby this story, she hardly moved a muscle. As for me, it happened like it always did with her when she finally got me to start talking. I started to get more comfortable doing it.
“Anyway, my dad reached into his pocket and threw a set of keys on the grass. He told me I’d probably be a blue-collar man my whole life, but now I couldn’t say he never tried to help me.”
Shelby’s hand gripped my forearm in outrage. “He said all that after he up and left you and your mom when you were a kid?”
“Yep.”
“I hate him,” she said.
“Yeah,” I whispered, huffing out a humorless laugh. “So that was my present from dear old Dad.”
Her tight, indignant clench on my arm brought with it a feeling of peace I hadn’t felt in a while.
I’d buried that night deep down a long time ago, though the constant reminder from seeing the truck at my mom’s house never allowed it to go away completely.
But Shelby’s anger validated complicated feelings I’d had my entire life and reminded me how she’d always had my back.
I was beginning to realize how much I’d missed that in the years we’d been apart.
“Lock me in a room with him next time. I’ll take care of it,” she said.
“Your bloodthirsty nature is truly touching.”
“Don’t let it be said I’d never go to jail for you.”
I snorted. “Those lily-white hands wouldn’t last a day in jail.”
“Alright,” she said after she squeezed my leg. “After that, you tried to give away the truck, but that didn’t work out, right?”
“Logan and Tessa fell into my trap with all the eye-roll-inducing, clichéd love story I counted on.”
Shelby laughed. “They’re cute together.”
“Logan was a mess before I got to him. Complete idiot. They'd better change the name of that kid.”
She turned and gave me a knowing look. “That kid? The one you steal out of Tessa’s arms every time we see her and refuse to let anybody else hold?”
A smile slipped out of me just then. “That’s the one.”
“So what did the truck have to do with Miranda?”
I sighed dramatically.
“That’s right, pal. That story was just the prologue.”
“You’re as annoying as ever,” I said, inching closer.
“Spill it.”
“I met Miranda at one of my rodeos. She was there with some friends and we started flirting and…she was different from anybody I’d dated before.
She seemed really into me. Her family was filthy rich, not that I really cared about that, but…
deep down, all I could think about was what my dad had said, and I figured it couldn’t hurt for that detail to stick it to him.
” I glanced down at her. “I know this is making me sound really great.”
She smiled. “Keep going, cowboy.”
“I did like her. At least, I liked the version of herself that she showed me, and then I just ignored all the red flags.”
“Did you love her?”
I paused, thinking back to those early days of Miranda and me. It felt like a lifetime ago.
“I thought I did. Looking back, though, I only loved her as well as I could without knowing what that word meant,” I finally stated.
“She was like a puzzle for me to figure out every day. She loved playing hard to get, even after I thought I had her. She was a master of manipulating emotions. We’d have a great day together, and then the next day, she’d be moody and unpredictable.
I’d spend the next week trying to figure out how to win her over again.
And that became the pattern for our dating life.
I became consumed by the idea of winning her, not thinking as much about the actual prize.
Looking back now, that whole arrangement was mentally exhausting, but…
I was a natural hunter, and she made for great prey. ”
“Natural hunter?” Shelby scoffed. “Has she ever seen you shoot?”
“For that comment, I will be shooting with my right hand next time we compete.”
“I guess I’ll shoot with my eyes open, then. Keep going.”
“Like I said, I was an amazing hunter. And an idiot.”
“Nobody’s disputing that.” My hand dropped to her stomach, tickling her until she said she was sorry.
“We dated for a while, just like that. I had this feeling that if things got too boring, she’d leave. And instead of recognizing that as the massive red flag that it was and breaking up with her, I proposed.”
Miranda had been so excited to be engaged. She was the first of her friends to get married. I knew she’d been more excited about the ring than me, but I didn’t care. I had won her. To the world, she wanted me. I was good enough.
“And just like that, she became immersed in planning our wedding. We started having way more good days than bad, and I was back to being the most exciting thing to her.”
“I remember your wedding,” Shelby murmured. My arm drew Shelby in closer without consulting my brain, and soon enough, strands of her coconut-scented hair began clouding my thoughts.
“You know what I thought?” she asked.
“I could take a wild guess.”
“I kept waiting for Rodeo to be the ring bearer and botch the whole thing up, but imagine my surprise when it was just some cute kid in suspenders.”
“I asked her if Rodeo could be in the lineup, and she just laughed at me.”
I had expected Shelby to laugh at that, but she didn’t.
“You asked her if you could have something you wanted at your wedding?” She said the words softly, like she was explaining something to herself. “Did you get anything else?”
I knew where she was going, and I hated it, even though she was calling me out on something I kicked myself for every day.