Chapter 33
Tad
Snow still blankets most of Red Bridge, but Bennett Bishop apparently took that as an invitation to start an outdoor bonfire like it’s the Fourth of July.
“We’ve got a problem,” I say, circling the old, rusted barrel he’s using as a burn pit and watching as the flames lick dangerously high.
He’s already tossed in a pile of cardboard, a busted chair leg, and—God help us—a splash of gasoline from a red can that may be on the back deck but is still way too close for comfort.
The snow around the barrel is melting fast, revealing patches of muddy grass and steam rising in ghostly curls. I dig my heel into the slush, dragging a line of dirt between the blaze and the nearest pine tree like it might somehow stop Bennett Bishop from burning down half of Red Bridge.
“Yeah,” Logan agrees. “We do, Ted. And it’s your attitude.”
“You don’t call him Ted,” Bennett sings, bouncing Autumn from hip to hip while she laughs. “I call him Ted.”
“You don’t own the name,” Logan asserts, his smile as brittle as Bennett’s high notes.
“How about the two of you call me Tad since that’s my name,” I suggest. “And I’m not the problem.
The three of us being dismissed to the outdoors without any answers or resolution to why the heck you were shouting down the whole world while Breezy cried in the first place is the problem.
” I sigh. “Not to mention, this burn barrel is getting a little wild.”
“Zip it, Ted,” they say in unison, making me sigh.
Autumn is still on Bennett’s hip, and he hands her a piece of cardboard, which she tosses into the fire hazard burn barrel with glee. “Burns! Poof!” she exclaims in glee, making her little pigtails bounce up and down.
Bennett looks over at me, and whatever he sees on my face makes him chuckle like a real asshole.
“Don’t get your panties in a twist over the barrel, Ted,” he says.
“There’s too much snow to start a forest fire.
And trust me, if I wanted to blow up your farm, I would’ve done it a long fu—effin’ time ago. ”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell Bennett—and that dickhead Logan too, frankly—to fuck off, but being responsible for one toddler-repeated f-bomb is enough on my conscience for the day.
“You know, Ted, I am curious, though. Why are you still here? In fact, why are you here at all?” Bennett asks, his eyes moving back to me as his gaze searches my face closely. “Even though Logan isn’t welcome here, I know why he showed up like an uninvited di—dummy. But you? I don’t—”
Before he can finish that thought, Norah and Breezy bust out of the house.
“We’ll be back!” Norah calls out, making pointed eye contact with Bennett as she leads the way by holding open the door and ushering Breezy through.
“Where are you going? When will you be back?” Bennett asks, and Norah doesn’t hesitate to answer with straight-up sass.
“None of your business. And we’ll be back when we get home.” No doubt, she’s still ticked off about the scuffle that just occurred in her house.
“Love you, Nore,” Bennett says, the man clearly trying to gauge just how pissed his wife is.
“Love you too, you big dummy!”
Bennett just chuckles, still holding Autumn on his hip, and the two of them wave bye to Norah and Breezy.
I fight to meet Breezy’s eyes the entire time, but she clutches her purse and takes great interest in the ground. So much so, I wouldn’t be surprised if she knew the count of every blade of grass.
I step away from the contentious bachelor group without delay, following closely behind the two women as they make haste toward Norah’s car.
My posture is as sheepish as my flock, however, since the last thing I want to be is antagonistic.
She’s already upset, and I don’t want to make it worse.
“Breeze,” I implore. “Can I talk to you?”
She shakes her head, and Norah steps in front of her, blocking me like a professional football defensive end. Her small stature suddenly seems like a six-four, three-hundred-pound hologram of Myles Garrett. “Now isn’t a good time. Later. Try again later.”
“I just want to make sure she’s okay.”
“She’s fine,” Norah answers for her again.
“I’d love to hear that from her,” I say as kindly as I can.
Not only is none of this Norah’s fault, but there are two very angry wolves temporarily pretending this is Show Tunes on Tour for the sake of the adorable toddler in Bennett’s arms. One wrong move, and I’m liable to be worm food. “Breeze, please,” I beg.
“I’m good, Tad,” she says, but her smile is fucking brittle. “Promise. Upset. A little off, but nothing you need to worry about right now, okay?”
“We’ll talk later?” I ask, needing the confirmation for some godforsaken reason. Her avoidance should be the excuse I need to shut down and bug off. Her business shouldn’t be my business. That’s part of keeping it casual—leaving the care and emotions at the moment of intimacy, no more, no less.
And yet, if the burn in my chest is any indication right now, when it comes to Breezy Bishop, all my usual careful boundaries left and slammed the door behind themselves a long fucking time ago.
“Yes.” She nods. “We’ll talk later. I promise.”
I take a deep breath as Norah ushers Breezy forward again, settling her into the passenger side of her car and then rounding the hood to climb inside.
Her eyes guard everything, and I watch avidly as she cranks the engine and swoops a broad turn around in the gravel drive.
I don’t take my eyes off the taillights until they’re completely out of the driveway.
When I eventually do turn back to Bennett and Logan and the burn barrel, danger is waiting for me in the form of two sets of very ominously keen eyes.
“Ted, I’ll be honest. I want an explanation,” Logan announces as Bennett fights a wiggling Autumn. “About why you hit me—”
“And why, oh why you have so much interest in Beatrice Bishop in the first place,” Bennett cuts him off.
“Tell me right now. Are you sleeping with my sister? Because trust me, I wasn’t exactly believing the whole ‘Breezy’s helping out on your farm’ bulls—crud.
And now that I see the way you’re looking at her, I’m starting to think she was spending more time in your bed than your god—gosh-darn farm. ”
“What?” Logan snaps. “You thinking Farmer Ted is plowing Breezy’s field?”
Bennett rolls his eyes, but I don’t shy away from the answer.
The truth is that, yes, Breezy and I have been sleeping together.
But we’re not teenagers, and her brothers have absolutely no reason for some self-righteous psychobabble about her virtue.
I mean, from what Breezy’s told me, for most of her life, it’s been she who’s taken care of their asses. Not the other way around.
“Yes.” It’s a simple word, but the tone is emblazoned by a chest full of air. “Not that it’s any fuuu—mbling business of yours.”
“Holy hel—lo.” Bennett’s jaw drops.
“Hello! Hello!” Autumn chimes in, waving her little toddler hand in the air. “Hello, baby!”
If I weren’t being currently stared down by the bull that is Bennett Bishop, I would probably acknowledge how cute it is and say hello back to her.
“Are you fu—dging kidding me?” Bennett questions through a tight jaw. “Breezy fell for your happy, yapping shi—crap and your sheepy fingers?”
“Bahh, bahhh!” Autumn shouts proudly. “Sheep go bahhh!”
And I have to admit, it makes me smile. She’s a sweet kid with a happy disposition and demanding energy.
She marches boldly through life, and Norah and Bennett do a great job of enjoying every moment of chasing her, but regardless of how sweet her pigtails are or how big her smile is, Bennett and Norah have still been left with a hell of an empty bucket that will never fill.
There’s a void when you lose a kid that can’t be—
“Well.” Bennett grabs my attention, having set Autumn down near her swing set that’s safely away from the burn pit and moved closer to me.
He’s maintaining a soft posture—for the sake of his marriage and his behavior in front of his toddler, no doubt—but from what I can tell, he’s been waiting on an answer from me for a while as my mind wandered. “What are your intentions?”
I blink. “My intentions?”
“Yeah, ass—butthole. With my sister. What are your intentions? Do you intend to date her? Marry her?”
A jolt of panic shoots straight through me. My stomach knots. My fingers tingle. Not because I don’t know how I feel about Breezy—but because I do.
And that’s the damn problem.
I know what happens when you let someone in too far. I know what happens when your entire world becomes them and what it costs you when you believe they’ll always be there.
I told myself Breezy was a distraction. Temporary. Casual. But somewhere between the lines of her laugh and her smile and the way she makes fucking everything better, that lie’s gotten harder to hold on to. More like, impossible to hold on to.
“Jeez, Ted. Are you having a stroke or something?” Logan sneers. “Why won’t you answer my brother’s question?”
“I…” My throat feels tight. “I don’t have intentions.” I clear it, forcing calm into my tone. “I care about her, and she cares about me, and beyond that, I’d say it’s our own, very adult, consenting, private business, wouldn’t you?”
“No,” Bennett says with an edgy shake of his head. “I wouldn’t say that at all.”
I shrug. “We’re gonna have to agree to disagree, then.”
Bennett postures more aggressively now, and I brace myself to earn my own bag of peas.
“Bahh, bahh, bahh!” Autumn exclaims from her perch on the slide of her swing set.
I look up to find my flock making a beeline for all of us and promptly remember the whole reason I ended up at Bennett’s in the first place.
Crosby, the bastard, is the ringleader heading the charge of fluffy terrorists toward us, and I guess I should be thankful that they managed to stay in the vicinity of the farm while I’ve been wrapped up over here for what feels like hours now.
All at once, my sheep choose Logan as their victim, surrounding him and circling him like gentle vultures.
Bennett and I back up, him scooping Autumn up and out of the way as she continues to make sheep noises, and Logan folds his arms up and to his chest as they get tighter and tighter around him.
“Yo, guys, you wanna do something about these sheep?”
“Not really,” I say, and Bennett actually laughs.
“What are they doing, Ted? Why are they circling me?”
I cup my hands around my mouth and yell. “Don’t worry! This is just their pre-attack ritual.”
“Pre-attack?” he questions nervously. “And what the hell does that mean?”
“It means when they get done with you, Bennett and I won’t have anything but each other to worry about.”
Bennett laughs, and it feels like a small breakthrough in the ball of tension we’ve both been wielding toward each other for years. I never cared that we didn’t particularly get along, but now that things with Breezy are the way they are, I don’t know…a civil relationship seems more important.
“You shut the hell up, Ted, and get these sheep away from me.”
I put a finger to my lips and whistle, and Crosby, Nash, Mackie, and Boris all peel off from the pack and head in my direction first.
“Bahhh! Sheep! Bahh!” Autumn cries excitedly, reaching down in an effort to pet them when they get close. I pull some feed from my pocket and toss it at the ground, and they all freeze up, heads down to get their fill.
“She can pet them,” I say to Bennett.
“Pet them?” Logan protests. “You just told me they were about to attack!”
I shrug. “Guess I lied.”
“Screw all this bullshit.” Exploding out of the circle of remaining sheep, Logan growls and storms over to his fancy Mercedes coupe, climbing inside and slamming the door. I expect him to start it up and pull away, but he reclines the seat instead, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Great. Guess he’s not leaving, then,” Bennett grumbles before sighing heavily.
“Well, don’t cry too hard. At least one of us is. And as a bonus, I’ll take the sheep with me.”
Bennett smirks and Autumn giggles, and for now, I take that as a sign of making strides.
Gone for now, but I’ll be back—just as soon as Breezy is too.