Page 64 of Thick & Thin

I reached out and put my hand on her arm to stop from opening the passenger side door. “Ash, it’s a crowded bar. I know you, and this place will send you into anxiety overload. It’s fine, really. I don’t mind going in alone.”

She tugged her arm away from me. “I don’t run from my demons … like some people I know.”

She stuck her tongue out at me before she opened the door and hopped down from my truck.

I followed her, opening the door to Sprints for her when we reached it. Within minutes, we were sitting at the bar and drinking a beer like normal people who could do that sort of thing. Above the bar, Ashley looked at ease, nursing her beer with a resting bitch face that would freeze any man in town, but beneath the bar, she bounced her shoes against the footrest of the barstool, making her knees bounce up and down. She was nervous, so when she needed to step outside every twenty minutes or so for a breath of air, I didn’t say anything.

She was a fucking champ, and I was thankful to have her in Walterboro with me. Seeing her strength as she pushed through her anxiety gave me the boost to do the same. When she left the bar to breathe, I stayed seated and relaxed. I nodded at familiar faces who nodded at me, but everyone seemed to stay away, unsure of how I would act if they approached.

I finished one beer and had already ordered another one. It wasn’t that I was out partying. I was drinking away the day’s anguish, taking a minute to breathe in and exhale the sadness of losing my father. I would have to move back. I would have to take his place at the head of the family and work the farm. Mom couldn’t do it, and Jimmy, my sister’s husband, couldn’t even get the tractor running, much less drive it.

No.

It was my responsibility, and I would do it.

I was drinking those thoughts away when I had looked up and saw Jenny sitting at the bar across from me. At that moment, something had happened that I couldn’t control. Every bit of anger that had simmered on low inside me for the past three years boiled over.

The moment my eyes clashed with her, my emotions reared their ugly head, and I turned as black as my last name. Jealousy pushed ahead of my anger, and images of a little boy I would never have sitting on my dad’s lap played through my mind like a broken movie. Without a second thought, I stood. There would be no hiding for me. Once I was on my feet, I knew she was going to pay with a lashing from my tongue. I could feel the words I longed to say to her pushing at the back of my throat, choking me with their dark hatred.

After the past three years of my life. After the terrible fucking day I had arranging my dad’s burial, I had excuses for my nasty words. I was a fucking mess. My dad was gone. My momma was inconsolable. My sister was angry with me for not being there and Jenny Michaels … fucking Jenny Michaels.

What could I say about Jenny?

She enraged me beyond control. Cruel words rushed through the vocabulary center of my brain, vile things I had never spoken to another person in my life. At least not to someone who wasn’t provoking me, but I supposed I wasn’t over it. Years had passed, but I was still raw as if it had only been hours. I was still burning from her betrayal, and those feelings alongside the loss of my dad had brewed the perfect storm.

The storm had begun when my mom had called to tell me about my dad. I went through several emotions. First was shock. I couldn’t believe he was gone. He had always been the strongest man I knew, working the farm from sunup to sundown without complaint. The second was guilt. All I could think was he might still be alive if I had gone home and taken over sooner. He was older. I was young and strong. While I was in Texas hiding from my heartbreak and working some other man’s farm, my dad had broken his back, the only other man in the family, until he had worked himself to death.

And lastly, I felt rage. If it hadn’t been for Jenny fucking Michaels, I would have gone home. I would have been there. I could have helped him. If she hadn’t been such a heartless piece of shit who jumped on the first dick as soon as I left American soil, I wouldn’t have been in Texas staying away from her and everything I wanted and could never have.

A family with Jenny.

Kids.

A life.

As I moved around the bar and toward her, I could feel the pent-up rage turning up in my gut. Heat enveloped my face, and my temples banged so hard I almost reached up to soothe them. She hurt me, so I would hurt her. She deserved the pain I was about to serve up for breaking me. For keeping me away from my family. For existing in a world where she and I were no longer anything to each other.

Seeing her again made the room around me shift.

Had it really been so long since I had last seen her face?

The girl I grew up with. The woman I had loved so inexplicably that I felt my heart crack with her betrayal. Three years had passed since I had last seen her smile. Since the last time I truly felt happy.

She looked different, yet she was the same old Jenny. Her hair had grown longer, and the sun had touched it, leaving the usual dark brown with strips of sunlight. The craziest thing was, she didn’t have it in a ponytail. I couldn’t even remember the last time I had seen Jenny with her hair down, but she was sitting at the bar without a worry in the world, and while I hated her, I found myself envious of the strands that rested softly against her shoulders.

Her green eyes glistened under the dim bar lights, and the moment they clashed with mine, I had seen shock and pain reflected at me like a ricocheted bullet to the chest. It was only there briefly before Jenny smoothed her features and put her usual fearless face forward.

Jenny didn’t usually break. No matter how badly she hurt. I knew her better than myself some days.

Her cheeks were plump, but her high cheekbones still pushed through, and her pouty lips, the same lips I had kissed, turned down as she set her expression into her resting bitch face.

My eyes dipped, taking in her shoulders before the rest of her body disappeared behind the bar. When I looked back up, she was still watching me carefully, waiting for me to come to her. Of course, she wasn’t going to come to me. She had already come to me once before, and I had pushed her away like she was nothing when she had been everything.

The truth was, I couldn’t see her. Or better yet, I couldn’t let her see me. Not the way I was. Broken and bloody. Bruised everywhere and blasted inside. I had been altered. I was still altered, but the outside of me had healed. And so, I moved closer to her, needing to be near her, needing to alter her inside somehow. I had thought staying away from her would work, and for a long while, it did. But I hadn’t anticipated how badly I would need to be near her, how badly I would want to hurt her, if I saw her face again.

I was confused. My emotions bounced around me, making me feel as though I was being pushed and pulled in all directions.

Hatred.

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