Page 120 of The Auction
Which was a joke.
I needed her and AP like I needed air. Sometimes it felt like talking to them was the only thing that kept me sane.
It was the truth that I had to start thinking about the future at some point. Whether or not staying on this farm long term was good for my mental health. With the cash Creed had left me, I could start over anywhere I wanted, really.
Just like the deal I’d tried to make with him at the beginning, when this all started. Give me the cash and let me be on my way.
If at some point I learned about his…death, well, then I could worry about selling the land then.
But for now, I had to consider there was another scenario. Another few scenarios actually. Where no one ever told me what happened to him. Where he decided not to come back after all. Maybe he scored a bunch of cash from whatever this last job was and just decided to take another job.
And another job.
Maybe distance didn’t make the heart grow fonder. Maybe it just dried it all up.
I pressed my hand over my heart, my fingers touching the chain around my neck like it was a living, breathing thing. Like it wasn’t my heart beating beneath my palm, but his. Ours.
Was it dried up?
I didn’t cry so much anymore. Only sometimes when I’d remember something he said or…
“Jules.”
When something sounded like how he said my name, like wind hitting the barn door hard.
“Jules.”
Yeah, just like that.
I brushed my dirty hands off on my overalls and turned around. Sam would have started hauling the hay off the truck and the least I could do was offer him something to drink.
Except no fewer than fifty feet away from me, standing there like he had all the right in the world, was Creed O’Mara.
He had a beard that was pretty scraggly, his hair was too long, and he had dark circles under his eyes so thick I wondered if he hadn’t gotten punched in both eyes.
The air left my body so fast I was afraid I might pass out. To say I hadn’t thought about this moment would be a lie and ridiculous. I’d thought about it a hundred times. A million times, if it was even possible to count that high. Still, when the moment came, I couldn’t think at all.
Not about all the speeches I’d practiced on Peasy or AP. Not about anything.
My mind was completely blank.
I had this strange idea I might be dead. Maybe he was, too. Maybe we both died and this was heaven, which meant he would have been wrong about everything because apparently he was my fucking soulmate.
I’d never loved another person the way I loved him. I’d never thought it was possible. So the removal of him was a pain I couldn’t have imagined, either. Which meant the return of him…this was unknown territory.
The sudden cessation of pain. Like all my body parts were suddenly coming to life again.
But I thought I was dead?
“Are we in heaven?” I whispered.
“No, Jules,” he said, and I watched him swallow a few times. His Adam’s apple running up and down his throat.
“Okay. Then wait here,” I said. Pretty calmly, actually.
I just walked around the house from where I’d been in the garden, walked up to the porch, stepped into the house where I knew I’d left it…oh yeah, right there. I grabbed it by the handle, (in hindsight it was a good thing I’d thought about this all those times so I was more prepared than I realized), walked back out to where I’d left him standing, and swung that shovel at his head with all my might.
“YOU ASSHOLE!”
