Page 68 of More Than Anything

“Yeah.” He took a couple of minutes to tell her the basic story, then finished with, “And Lydia won’t have anything to do with me as long as I’m legally married to that redheaded bitch.”

Danette nodded. “That’s what she told me. Damn, Avery, this is horrible!”

“You don’t have to tell me.” The cup of coffee she’d poured for him tasted good, but not as good as the way Lydia made it.

“What’s she driving?” Danette asked.

“Silver Lexus. It’s the kind of car she was planning to buy when we divor… when she kicked me out. Why? Don’t do anything stupid, Danette,” Avery warned her.

“I won’t! I’m just thinking that I need to be able to spot her if she’s around,” the feisty young woman told him.

“Oh, you won’t have any trouble with that. Everywhere she goes, good or bad, she attracts a crowd,” Avery said, taking another sip of coffee and feeling a little life soak back into his body. “I suppose I should go feed the cows.”

Danette looked like she’d just remembered something, then asked, “Hey, whose car is that out there?”

“My friend Jason’s. He’s come to stay with me.”

Danette scrunched her nose up a little. “Why?”

“Long story. Maybe he’ll get up and tell you. But I’ve gotta go feed my cows.”

“Okay. I’ll still be here when you get back,” Danette assured him.

He stood and looked down at her for a few seconds. She’d turned out to be a good friend, the kind he could count on. He almost laughed when he realized she was the first woman he’d ever fucked who hadn’t turned out to be a disaster?her and Lydia. If he couldn’t get the shit with Shannon rectified pretty fast, that relationship would be a disaster too. He couldn’t have that.

He loved Lydia like he’d never loved anyone else. She was the part of him he’d never known was missing until he’d found her, and then he’d turned around and lost her through no fault of his own. Damn Shannon. Damn his brother. Damn the whole damn mess.

It took him a while to feed the cows and before he got finished, it started to rain. Soaked to the skin, he took refuge in the newest barn and watched the cattle in the pasture. They didn’t seem to care one bit that the heavens had opened and water was pouring from the sky. It wasn’t letting up even a little, so he sat down on an overturned bucket and watched it fall. Nothing mattered. Without Lydia, it might as well rain every day. No matter what the weather was like, there’d be no sun. Without her, it was gone.

When it finally slowed, he took a chance and hopped on the four-wheeler, then tore out toward the front barn. Once he’d stashed the ATV in the barn and set all the buckets up to dry out, he ran from there to the house, glancing across the other pasture to see Dixie and Buttercup standing inside their barn, looking toward the house. He wondered if Buttercup was asking herself where that pretty lady who loved her was keeping herself.

He hit the back door to find Danette and Jason sitting in the kitchen, talking and laughing, so he gave them a half-hearted wave and headed back upstairs to the shower. The hot water felt good, and he reached down and wrapped his hand around his cock, but he couldn’t. Nothing felt right. A little soap and shampoo later and he was finished, and once he was dried off, he found a pair of sweatpants and an old tee shirt with the sleeves ripped out and pulled them on, not even bothering with underwear. He wasn’t going anywhere.

But he hadn’t made it back downstairs when he heard a racket and he stepped to the top of the stairs to listen. What he heard made him almost laugh. The first voice to hit his ears was Danette’s.

“You need to get the fuck out of here! Nobody wants you here!”

He recognized the other voice instantly. “He’s my husband. I have every right to be here.”

“Don’t you get it, bitch? He doesn’t want you here! He wants nothing to do with you! Why don’t you just crawl back under the rock you came from?”

“You don’t get it! I belong here! With Avery!” Shannon’s voice shrilled from below.

Then a male voice cut through the chaos. “Shannon, why the hell are you here? You didn’t hurt him enough, so you thought you’d come back and finish him off?”

“Jason! What are you doing here?”

The deep voice chuckled. “You can cut out the lies, Shannon! I know you followed me here. What did you do, put a locator on my car?” There was silence for a few seconds and then Jason blurted out, “You put a locator on my car! Oh my god! You’re worse than I thought! You need to get the hell out of here before Avery comes…”

All three pairs of eyes turned to him as he stepped down the stairs. “There you are!” Shannon sang out. “I wanted to see you, baby!”

Avery could feel his blood turning icy in his veins and his jaw tensing. “You and I need to come to a little understanding.”

“Oh? What’s that?” she chirped out.

“I’ve got an attorney working on the paperwork. As soon as they get it all sorted out, I’ll be getting a divorce. That’s over. And the state of Tennessee is looking for you, Shannon. Bigamy charges. As soon as Texas gets the paperwork, the Texas state police will arrest you and you’ll be extradited. End of discussion.” Spitting all of that out actually made him feel a little better.

But not as much as the look on her face.

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