Page 129 of Chasing Home
“Wait, you ordered them? I thought you wanted to talk about it more still.”
“Do you want me to return ’em instead?” he grunts.
I rush toward him, my head shaking furiously. “No, sir. I’ll load them up as soon as I get back.”
“Good. Loren can meet you out there with the welding gear. Do you need anyone else?”
“Thomas is always a good bull distractor. Could send him runnin’ around the field with a red flag.”
His straight-lined lips tug into a tiny smile. “I don’t need a death on my shoulders along with all this fuckin’ other work. I’ll send him over with the first trailer. Get the bulls tucked up and out of the field before startin’ to tear the old fence down. Two in the trailer at a time, and get Zeus out of there first. Take ’em to the empty pasture on the east side.”
Zeus is the meanest fucking bull I’ve ever met, and while he’s kept in a paddock all his own, if he sneaks out amongst the others, we’ll be breaking up bull fights all day.
“The one with the runoff?”
He jerks his head in a nod. “Take a radio and keep me updated.”
“Will do.” My chest hums with pride. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. If this doesn’t fix the problem, it’ll be your ass chasing the bulls down the highway when they break out,” he threatens.
“I thought you were positive they wouldn’t break out?” I smirk, feeling ballsy with the built-up energy pulsing through me.
“You know, I was plannin’ to give you love advice, but now you can continue sufferin’.”
I stop smirking. “Hold on, hold on. I want your love advice.”
“Yeah, I bet you fuckin’ do. All that attitude in you, you’re no better than my wife when it comes to convincin’ me to watch those damn reality shows with her.”
I think he secretly loves them, but I keep that to myself. “Consider it dropped. I don’t think I’ve ever needed advice more than I do now. I’m already going out of my head, and it’s been less than twenty-four hours.”
“Since what? Somethin’ to do with why Aurora’s already here and looked like she was fightin’ off tears?”
My heart thumps hard. “She’s here?”
“She came to talk to Eliza. Last I knew, she was in with her grandparents.”
“Oh, right.”
“Stop poutin’, Johnny. You’re workin’, and I swear to God I’ve been dealin’ with you boys and your love problems more in the past two years than I have in my entire life.” He huffs, glancing around the field. The giant metal-sided shop is up ahead, surrounded by trucks and tractors and every kind of attachment for them known to man. “She’s leavin’, yeah? Goin’ to spend time with her daddy up in Toronto?”
“You’re an eavesdropper, Wade,” I note.
“Eh, they were chattin’ in my house. It’s my right to listen. But that doesn’t fuckin’ matter. Are you plannin’ on respectin’ her decision to go?”
I frown, trying to figure out why he’s asking me such a pointless question. “Yes.”
“Then you’re as good of a man as I thought you were. Forcin’ a woman to stay in this town when she wants to stretch her legs and explore would make you both a coward and a man undeservin’ of her. I can’t say that I expected you to find a woman this summer or that, if you did, she’d be eight years older than you in both age and life experience, but there’s no one I would have chosen that would have been more fitted for you than her.
“She keeps you grounded, your head level instead of in the clouds. I admit I don’t know her all that well. Hell, I doubted whether she’d fit here at first, but I plan on changin’ that when she comes back. She’s just right for you, and I think you do the exact opposite to her that she does to you. You make her feel young and alive. Opposites attract for a reason. This is exactly why.”
I swallow the sticky feeling in my throat and say, “You said when she comes back. You really think she will?”
“I’d bet the entire ranch on it.”
My eyes bulge. “Fuck. Really?”
He looks at me like I’m a goddamn idiot, and while sometimes I am, now I just feel desperate. Desperate for confirmation that I’m not being a hopeless fool by anticipating her return only to be left fucking crushed months down the road when she’s living a new life in Toronto without me.