Page 34 of The Little Things

The wine I’d sipped turned sour in my mouth. I forced it down past the painful tightness in my throat, swallowing audibly. “You... know? Like, everyone?”

She nodded.

The bites of cheese I’d eaten curdled in my stomach as I set my glass on the table and pushed it away.

“I knew who you were the moment I saw you,” Ivy admitted, casual as could be. “I have an addiction to trashy tabloids.” She shrugged unrepentantly and smiled. “I never claimed to have good taste.”

“If you thought we were going to judge you because you made a few stupid mistakes, you don’t know us very well,” Lennix continued. Her expression had never wavered, never darkened or turned even the slightest bit judgmental with all the bombs she’d just dropped on me. She didn’t look at me any differently than she had the day she showed up here to introduce herself. “You aren’t your mistakes, babe. You might not have come here of your own free will, but from everything I’ve seen, you’ve made the best of it. You haven’t complained or whined that it’s too hard. You’ve worked hard and pulled your weight, busted your ass to do so.”

Ivy held her hand up in the air like a middle schooler sitting at the front of a classroom. “I can confirm that.” She looked at me, her expression dead serious. “Sure, it’s only cleaning rooms and stuff, but when you’ve worked for me, you’ve taken every single aspect of your job seriously. You don’t slack off, and you don’t expect anything to be handed to you. You screwed up. Who hasn’t? I know I’ve done my fair share of dumb things.”

“Same,” Lennix agreed resolutely. “I grew up on a ranch, for crying out loud. There was no limit to the amount of trouble I could get into. Not to mention I had a big brother thirteen years older than I was who was already an expert at mischief and shenanigans by the time I came along. He taught me well.”

“Zach?” I let out a bubble of incredulous laughter. “You’re kidding me? I didn’t think he was capable of causing trouble. He always seems so... responsible.”

Ivy and Lennix both burst out laughing. “You’re talking about my brother?” Lennix squeaked. “Please! I think he spent most of his teenage years grounded. By the time I was old enough to cause trouble, there wasn’t anything I could say or do that my parents hadn’t already experienced. The most freaked out I’d ever seen my mom was when she caught Zach in the hayloft with a girl. I remember hearing her slam into the house, screaming incoherently about her eyes burning.”

I ignored the sharp pang in my chest at the mention of Zach with another girl. It wasn’t like I had any business feeling jealous. We’d only shared one kiss, after all, and that had ended disastrously. But it was nice to hear he wasn’t as perfect as I had been thinking this whole time. And it was really nice to know my new friends didn’t judge me for the things I’d done in the past.

For the first time in my life, I had real friends. True friends. And it was one of the best feelings I’d experienced in a really long time.

Chapter Eighteen

Zach

It had been a shit day. If anything could possibly go wrong, it had, starting with a call from the cops before the sun started to rise. Some kids had decided it would be fun to hotbox their car while cruising down some back roads around the ranch and ended up taking out a section of fence. A number of our cattle had gotten out and were blocking traffic.

That had been fun.

After getting the cows wrangled back where they belonged and fixing the section of fence, I got a call from Hal that one of our balers was busted. I’d spent the better part of the day trying to get the damn thing running, but it had been no use. It was the start of haying season, and being one baler short put us behind before we really had a chance to start.

I had to drive nearly an hour out of town to get a new one in Hidalgo, which cost precious time I didn’t have. But none of that compared to the damage done from some kind of stomach bug that had run through the bunkhouse like headlice through a kindergarten class. We’d been short on manpower for a week and a half now. As soon as one man returned another two would get knocked on their asses.

The shitty mood I’d been in the past several days could have easily been attributed to the string of bad luck I’d been having, but the truth of my short fuse and surly attitude had started even before my crew began shitting and puking their guts out.

I’d been a miserable pain in the ass since the day after I ran out of Rae’s cabin. Since then, she’d gone out of her way to avoid me like the plague. Even on the days she worked with my crew, she’d managed to keep her distance, refusing to look at me, and if I tried talking to her she’d either find a reason to get the hell away from me as quickly as possible, or give me short, clipped answers that left no opening to further the conversation.

At first I worried it was because I’d crossed a line with that kiss and made her uncomfortable, but the more time that passed, I had the feeling it wasn’t about discomfort. She seemed mad... at me personally. One moment she’d be smiling and laughing with the other guys like there wasn’t a thing wrong, but the minute I walked up, all that humor disappeared. Her face grew hard and her eyes narrowed. She’d even stopped using my name and had started calling me boss like all the other hands. Only, the few times she said it, I could have sworn it almost sounded snide. I fucking hated when she called me boss. I much preferred to hear the sound of my name coming from her lips.

The moment I walked away, she reverted to the light, breezy, smiling woman she’d been before my arrival, and if I were being honest with myself—something I was struggling with a lot lately—the lack of attention I was getting from her was pushing my buttons in a way I had never experienced before.

I wanted her to look at me. To smile at me. I wanted her to laugh at whatever lame joke I told her. But she wasn’t giving me any of that, causing me to lash out at my guys as jealousy twisted in my gut like a rusty nail drilling down deeper with each turn.

The sun was dipping by the time I got back to the ranch, hauling the new baler behind me. Twilight had turned the clouds from white to peach, the color against the green trees that lined the mountains creating a stunning sky. It was my favorite time of day. Whenever I had the chance, I liked to sit on my back deck with a cold beer, or a bourbon in the colder months, and watch the sunset. It always managed to calm me down.

I pulled up to the barn and parked, climbing out of the truck and heading inside in hopes of finding someone to help me unload the machinery. This time of day things should have been winding down. Dinner was less than an hour away, and most of the crew would have headed back to the bunkhouse to wash up beforehand. But as soon as I stepped foot inside the barn, I heard the sound of voices coming from the other side. More voice than I’d been expecting.

I followed them through the length of the barn and out the other side where the corrals were, finding a decent sized group hanging along the rungs.

Spotting Hal among the crowd, I headed in his direction and stopped alongside him. “What’s goin’ on?”

“Oh, hey, Boss,” he greeted jovially enough. “Get everything taken care of with the baler?”

“Yeah. It’s all sorted. Why’s everyone standin’ arou—” The question died on my tongue the moment I spotted Rae sitting on Sassy’s back in the middle of the corral. “What the fuck is she doing?” I barked, panic reaching in and wringing the air from my lungs before grasping me by the throat and squeezing.

“Relax. Everything’s goin’ just fine.”

“Have you lost your goddamn mind?” I bellowed, a sense of rage and fear unlike anything I’d ever experienced before crashing into me like a tidal wave, making my skin turn cold at the same time my vision turned red. “What the fuck, Hal? You let her up there? She’s gonna get herself killed!”

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