Page 20 of Chasing Forever
“I get that you’re…” I peek at her parents, who have decided to stay out of the conversation for now. “…worried. But can we just talk about it back in Willowbrook?”
She huffs and crosses her arms, sitting straight and pushing back into the truck seat. “Fine, as soon as we’re back in Willowbrook, we’ll talk.”
Darla peeks over her shoulder at me, while Brad looks at me through the rearview mirror for the tenth time in the last twenty minutes. Then they look at one another and smirk.
I have to admit, I thought I knew the Owens well. I practically grew up on Plain Daisy Ranch with the entire Noughton, Owens, and Ellis families, but this isn’t the reaction I thought we’d receive. They seem to be encouraging us to stay married.
All of it makes me a lot more confident in my decision to tell Lottie that I’m not signing the annulment papers until she agrees to do something for me first.
Chapter Nine
Lottie
We pull up to Brooks’s house. It’s an older house on a good-sized plot of land with a big barn where he restores old trucks when he’s not on duty.
“Brooks, is that a new one?” My dad points out the window at a truck that looks as if it has sat in the mud for ten years. “You’ve got your work cut out for you there.”
“Yeah, the guy is in desperate need of it for his dad’s birthday, so I had him drop it off. I’m off tomorrow, so I’ll be looking at it to see what it needs. When he said it was in bad shape, I didn’t think he meant that it’d survived the flooding that ravaged parts of our county years ago.” He opens up the door. “Thank you for the ride back, Mr. and Mrs. Owens.”
“Please, we’re Mom and Dad now.” My mom giggles.
I inwardly sigh, although I’m sure my expression reveals my annoyance over the fact that my parents are treating this like a joke. As soon as we get back to the ranch, I know they’re going to have “the talk” with me.
Brooks’s smile is timid as he shifts his attention to me. “Walk me to the door?”
I was hoping for a quick goodbye and that maybe he’d text me when he wants to talk. But the faster I get this over with, the faster the gossip train will shift onto someone else’s track. So I open the door and hop out of my dad’s truck.
“We’ll be sure to close our eyes,” my mom says. Both my mom and dad laugh.
I slam the door. “Make it stop.”
Brooks doesn’t say anything. I’m sure if I had to guess, his parents won’t be as light and jovial about the fact that we got married. In fact, he might just be kicked out of his family.
“At least your dad didn’t punch me. He had every right.”
We step up on the front stairs leading to his front door.
He drops his suitcase on the porch and leans against the siding of his house. The weight in his shoulders says more than his words. “When do you want to talk?”
“We can talk right now. I want an annulment.”
His gaze flows down my body, taking in my crossed arms and wide stance, my tilted head. I’m prepared to fight for this, and all the man does is smirk. That quiet smile that used to unnerve me now feels like a chisel revealing a slow crack in my resolve after this morning.
“Yeah, I’m not talking to you until you sleep and eat.”
“What? You can’t tell me when I can talk to you about this.” My arms fall to my sides, and my fingernails dig into my palms. I remind myself this is what’s best.
He crosses his arms, and that smirk still hasn’t left his face. “You don’t dictate when we talk about our marriage either.”
I can’t deny that he has a point, so I ask the question I’m most curious about. “Why won’t you just agree to an annulment?”
“I never said I wouldn’t.”
I clench my jaw. I’m sure there’s smoke coming out of my ears at this point. Or maybe it’s not anger at all. Maybe it’s panic. “You keep saying we’re going to talk. Let’s just do it now.”
“Listen, we were up until who knows when last night. It’s been a long day, and we’ve barely slept. I just want a night. I’m off tomorrow, so you name the time, and we’ll talk.”
How is he able to stay so centered through this situation we’ve put ourselves in? It’s as if he’s a monk at peace inside of himself. Meanwhile, every part of me feels jagged, ripped apart in ways I don’t know how to stitch back together.
