Page 72 of Beat around the Bush
Cal nodded as he organized the supplies on his horse, stuffing tools in the saddle bag. “You’re not closing alone,” he said in a mocking tone.
“I care about my employees.” It was true. And I wasn’t about to leave her alone there because I had something I needed to do.
“You mean you care about Oakley,” Cal corrected. He mounted Ace, then spun him around to start heading through the field.
He was right.
But I cared about Leo and Jacey, too. It was just a different kind of care that I had for Oakley now. Like if anything happened to her, I’d stop at nothing to make sure she was okay.
My dad was on the opposite side of Cal as we made the trek back to the barn. Thankfully, it wasn’t snowing, but the foot or so of snow still stuck to the ground made it a slow hike back.
It took everything in me not to urge Winston into a gallop to get across this field and to my truck where my phone was so I could call her. Hear her voice. Feel the way she made my heart stutter.
28
Oakley
“All done,” Leo said as he threw the planogram sheet into the drawer under the register.
He’d been working on the planogram Lennon had left for him to do and had just finished it with ten minutes to spare before closing.
“Thank God you did it because those sheets look confusing.” It was all pictures and random numbers, none of it making sense to me with the glances I took at the sheets while Jacey, Leo, and Lennon did them here and there.
He gathered the spare supplies he’d set on the counter, now standing on the opposite side of the register facing me. Thankfully, the end of the day had been slow, with only a few customers coming in after Lennon left.
“When you’ve done over a hundred of them, it’s pretty easy. Just tedious. Do you mind if I head out a few minutes early? I have a package I need to get in the mail for my sister.”
“Yeah, of course. Something special?” I asked. I didn’t mind him leaving early, and it really wasn’t my place to tell him no.
He smiled, clear that thoughts of his sister made him happy. “Yeah. She’s been looking for this record, and I found it yesterday at this little shop. I was going to send it out earlier today, but you know...” Then he was called in to cover.
“You better get it there quick, then. I’m sure she’s antsy to listen to it.”
“It’s a surprise. I can’t wait to hear her scream into the phone when it shows up on her doorstep.”
I grinned. “I bet. Package it with, like, forty feet of bubble wrap.”
“Oh, don’t worry, I will. It’d kill me if it broke in shipping. Thanks, Oakley. Get home safe, alright?”
“I will.”
He headed for the back of the store with the spare supplies, and about two minutes later, he was walking out the front door with his coat and beanie on. “Night, Oakley.”
“Goodnight, Leo,” I replied.
While I waited for the clock to tick down the minutes until I could lock the doors, I faced some shelves of rabbit and chicken feed. I wasn’t expecting anyone to come in a few minutes before closing, but I stayed by the front just in case.
Hopefully Lennon wasn’t out too long in the cold trying to round up the cattle. I was antsy to be off and to possibly see him tonight.
I’d never had sex in a public place before, and with Lennon, it was seeming to become a habit. It was like we couldn’t resist the temptation of each other, and being out wasn’t going to stop us from giving in.
We’d been beating around the bush of our obvious attraction to each other for what felt like forever, and now that we’d finally crossed that line, there was no going back. Not that I’d even want to go back anyway.
I hadn’t been expecting to find solace in this small town when I’d arrived here, but slowly, it was starting to feel like a home. I had the job, the makeshift house, the guy. There wasn’t much more I was seeking out of life besides being happy, and after a long time of feeling like I’d never feel that way again when my parents separated, I was finally starting to feel joy again.
It was hard to put into words how it felt when the world you’d always known came crashing down in front of you. I’d never thought I’d be a twenty-four-year-old being brought into the middle of my parents’ divorce, and as much as I wanted to stop it, to keep my parents together in the hopes we could all fall into that comfortable world again, it wouldn’t make the past year disappear.
And now that I was finding a home in Bell Buckle, making friends and enjoying my job, part of me didn’t want the bad to go away. My mom cheating was a shock, their divorce inevitable,but without all of that, I would have never ended up here. I would have never met Lennon or his family; probably never would have even stepped foot in Bell Buckle.
