Page 21 of Written in the Charts

I shook my head as I ran the brush over the mare's sides, smoothing my hand along behind it to make sure I got all the dirt off her coat. I didn’t understand women at all. How could they carry a man’s baby and lie to him about it, whether to keep it from him or tell him it was his when it wasn’t? I scowled and brushed the horse a little harder. I saw Peter look at me, but I avoided eye contact.

“What about you?” he asked, the question completely going over my head.

“What?” I looked up, brush in hand. The mare took a sidestep, nearly getting my toes, and I backed away, hand on her hip. “Easy, now...”

“You got a lady friend? Derek seems pretty happy with Maggie around.” Peter kept his hand on the mare’s ass as he walked around behind her to brush her other side out. “Seems like you ought to put down stakes now.”

I shrugged, wanting to avoid the topic entirely. The horse was my focus, and with the way my emotions had a tendency to be explosive, I’d rather not talk about anything to do with relationships at all. But Peter was apparently a talker.

“You meet any cute soldier girls on deployment?” He waggled his eyebrows at me and I scowled. “They say—”

“Can we not talk about this?” I snapped, but not aggressively. I just hit my threshold for the moment.

“Woah, gee. I’m trying to figure you out, Miller.” Peter shook his head and chuckled. “Trying to figure out why they call you Hammer. Is it because you bang those ladies?”

I gritted my teeth. Peter had about as much tact as an elephant in a rodent store. He’d been this way since we met, but he’d never had the audacity to be so pushy like this. I was irritated, to say the least. I rounded the horse, ducking beneath the rein clipped to her bridle, and began brushing her other side—with my back to Peter.

“I knew a guy we called Hammer back in high school. It was definitely because he pounded it out in the sheets. Got like two girls pregnant at once.”

“Peter!” I whipped around. The horse’s ears turned back at my shout, and Peter straightened. “Shut the fuck up before you’re swallowing your fucking teeth.” I knew the look on my face and the way my fist was raised and ready for a strike made my point.

Peter held his hands up and backed away a few steps. His brush hung from his wrist. “Dude, I was just giving you a hard time. That’s what guys do.” He shrugged his shoulders and furrowed his brow. “Why are you so touchy?”

My shoulders tensed. I could have struck him right then if there hadn’t been a horse standing between us. He reached his arms up and draped them over the Lusitano and clasped his hands together. Peter’s sincere look of concern took the edge off and I realized I had done it again.Always on edge and ready to pick a fight. I sighed and rolled my neck.

“Man, I’m sorry. I have been so fucking uptight and angry about shit, sometimes I just take it out on people.” I turned my back to him again and finished brushing the mare. Peter led his mare away, putting her in her stall with fresh hay and water. He returned just as I was clipping the lead rein on the quarter horse, so he followed me to her stall and got her water as I filled her food bucket.

“You know, it helps to talk about shit like that.” Peter leaned against the stall door as I stuffed the hay into the bucket.

“Not really. It doesn’t change a fucking thing. What good would it do to talk?” I turned and walked toward the next two horses we needed to exercise. One last mare and a stallion. He was a big boy, and I’d been looking forward to exercising him. I was disappointed that we couldn’t ride today.

“Nah, you're right. Talking won’t change the circumstances, but it might help you gain understanding on how to feel about them.”

Peter never struck me as an “up in your feelings” sort of guy. From the day I met him, he was a bit flighty. He’d run off at times, spend his money on stupid shit. I waved him off, not wanting to get into personal shit with a guy I hardly knew. But he was persistent as fuck.

“Evan, stop and listen to me.”

I whipped around, hands fisted at my sides, glaring at him. “What?”

“Look, when my mom died, it was really bad. Half the stupid shit you’ve seen me doing was a result of my not talking about what I was going through. Take two minutes. Tell me the worst of it. See if you don’t feel better.”

“You want to know what’s wrong?” I stepped up to him, our faces inches apart. My chest was puffed out, shoulders squared. This bastard was a real piece of work. Even Serah got the fucking point and backed off. What was his problem?

“Yeah, I do,” he shouted, scowling at me.

“Try being off at war and getting a knee injury that sidelines you. The only good thing out of it was leave to come home. Only you get home and find out your woman is cheating, and the baby you thought was yours wasn’t. Then you reinjure that knee and your best friend rats you out to the fucking CO, thus destroying any trust you had in her. Then you meet the girl of your dreams. You used to date her but you lost touch.

“This starts going really well, and you think finally, your luck with women is changing. But that woman tells you she was pregnant and lost the baby and it was yours. Try that, Peter.” I gave him a hard shove, and he stumbled back a few steps then came at me with a hard shove. It knocked me backward into a stall door, frightening the horse.

“What the fuck!” I seethed, getting ready to come at him again.

“Go ahead, take it out on me. Beat the shit out of me. It’ll make you feel better.” Peter taunted me, and I charged him, fists bared. But he stepped to the side at the last minute, and I rammed into the center beam and hugged it. “Evan, you're ridiculous.”

I didn’t turn around. I felt like leaving and never coming back to this place, but I owed Derek a great deal more respect than that. I’d seen how Peter pushed every button Derek had, and they always worked things out.

“That’s a lot of really shitty things that happened to you, but not every woman is like that.” I heard him approaching, and I pushed myself off the beam and looked down at my feet.

“You don’t get it.” My hands would not unclench.

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