Page 6 of Crossroads
He’s clearly not from around here. His dark hair is shaggy, almost to his shoulders and wavy—it looks like he just doesn’t give a fuck. But his face is too pretty and his clothes too nice for that to actually be true. He has high cheekbones that almost seem feminine, but his face is sharp, the lines of his face and jaw cut so severely that it gives him a masculine look at the same time. His blue eyes are cobalt, but they seem familiar.
That’s when I turn to look at Millie, and it clicks into place just as Kelly arrives at the front door, pushing it open to walk out onto the porch. “I see you made it.”
“Who is he, Mom?” Millie asks. Clearly, I’m not the only one with their hackles raised.
Kelly Wright is a beautiful woman—one who is pushing sixty, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at her. Her skin is a little worn from the sun, and she has some laugh lines by her eyes, but she’s still pretty damn stunning. Her hair is more gray than red like her daughter’s now, but she wears it in a thick braid she tosses behind her shoulder as she starts to walk down the stairs of her porch. Her blue eyes—blue like Millie’s and like this stranger’s—are trained on him.
“This is Emerson. He’s your cousin, Millie. He’s come to help us out for the summer.”
Millie and I both freeze, just staring at the guy who closes his car door but doesn’t walk any closer to his aunt. She’s, of course, not bothered at all. Just walks right up to him and hugs him tight.
“I wasn’t sure you’d make it. Your mother didn’t say.”
“Sounds like her,” he says curtly.
Kelly releases him but stands close with a warm smile on her face. “Well, I’m glad you came.”
“We don’t need help,” Millie says, folding her arms. Good. I’m glad she’s on my side on this.
“Yes, we do,” Kelly says in a no-nonsense tone Millie for sure got from her. And Kelly has perfected it. “Your brothers have all moved on to their own farms. I need some more hands around here, and my sister and I came up with the perfect solution for the summer.”
“He’s a city boy,” I say, even though I didn’t actually mean to say it out loud. And when Kelly and Emerson’s eyes snap to me, I stand tall and own what I said because I’m not wrong.
“That’s why I’ll need you to show him the ropes, Jasper,” Kelly says, her smile happy but her eyes telling me not to push my luck.
“Your name’s Jasper?” the guy’s deep voice rasps, a sneer on his lips as ifhe’sjudgingme.
“Yeah, it is,Emerson,” I say with a snarl of my own.
“Jesus fuck, I really am in the boonies now,” he says like he can’t believe it. Like he didn’t choose to come here, apparently.
“Kelly, are you sure about this?” I have to ask her. If anything, this guy is going to make our jobs twice as hard.
“Absolutely,” she says, her arm going around Emerson’s shoulders. Kelly is tall for a woman, and we aren’t sure why Millie is so small. I think it’s because she’s the runt of the litter—the fifth and last kid of John and Kelly Wright. She doesn’t love hearing that though. “Come on, Emerson. I’ll show you to your room.”
“Wait, he’s staying with us?” Millie squeaks. “He’s a stranger.”
“He’s family, Amelia. You will treat him as such.” That’s all Kelly says—like it’s gospel—before she leads Emerson up the stairs and into the house.
Millie and I stand there, dumbfounded. “Did you even know you had a cousin?”
“Yeah, but I’ve never met him. My mom and his don’t talk. She went the city and money route, marrying some finance guy in Kansas City. Hasn’t been back since.”
My heart goes cold, thinking about that—reminding me of Lucy. I can’t believe I misjudged her so much.
And now, on top of that, I have to deal with some city boy who I give a week before he’s crying and running far, far away from here.
Maybe I can help speed up the process.
THREE
“You can bring your stuff in later, but let me show you your room,” my Aunt Kelly says as I follow her into the old farmhouse out in the middle of nowhere. I got lost four times trying to find this place.
Every time I thought I was on the right track, I wound up on a dead-end road. The GPS pretty much told me I was shit out of luck. It finally took me asking a farmer, who was mowing his lawn outside his house and wasn’t too thrilled to have to stop and talk to me, by the way, to lead me to this desolate piece of land.
Seriously, not another house for miles.What the fuck was my mother thinking?
My aunt leads me up stairs that creak under my shoes, and while the house is clean and well taken care of, it’s apparent this house is old as dirt. She leads me to the end of the hall, pushing open a wooden door that’s as creaky as the stairs and the wood floor leading to it. “This’ll be your room. It used to be my sons Dakota and Dylan’s room, but they’ve moved out and have families of their own now.”
