“I’m choosing the farm over pride, not him over you. You’re just too blinded by your grudge to even consider he’s not the evil you’ve made him out to be.”
“And you’re too gullible to consider he’s full of shit. He’s got you eating out of his fucking hand, Olivia. If you think that a hundred-and-twenty-year-old feud is all of a sudden dead and that taking money from the Pattons is a solution, you haven’t been paying attention.” He shook his head, ran a hand through his hair, his eyes on the ground for a long moment. “You say you’re loyal to the farm. To me. But if that were true, you’d never have uttered those words. You’d never have opposed me on the matter of the Pattons.”
He turned to leave. I scrambled up from beneath Alice to catch him, touching his arm.
“Jake, let me explain—”
He shrugged me off with a jerk so sharp, I nearly tripped. He didn’t look at me, just kept stalking toward the barn door.
“I understand just fine,” he said coolly. “You’ve done enough damage for a lifetime, Olivia. No amount of explanation will change that.”
I stood in the middle of the barn and watched him until he disappeared. My cow lay sick and dying behind me, our farm caught in quicksand, our future slipping away.
He’d cool off, I promised myself. We’d talk just like we always did. We’d work together. Talk about what-if. Find a solution. But we couldn’t do it without help, not if things got even a little worse.
In the moment, I fully understood why anyone would sell their soul to the devil.
I would have signed in blood right then and there.
26
There's a Snake in My Boot
JAKE
I’d had a lot of long nights, but none like this.
For the first time in weeks, I slept in my own bed, alone. If the loss of her next to me wasn’t enough to keep me awake, it would have been the replay of our fight in my mind.
I couldn’t make it stop.
Bowie jumped on the bed when he heard me stir from the thin sleep I’d managed. He charged for my face like a rocket, tongue first. Just when I wrangled him, he wiggled out of my arms, returning with a stuffed turkey leg. So I did as he’d asked—I took it, chucked it, and listened to him scramble off in its direction.
In my rib cage sat a cinder block, crushing my heart and lungs, radiating pain in thudding waves with every aching heartbeat. Everything was wrong. Olivia not being here. The things I’d said and the things she’d said back. The cattle. The farm. Frank’s absence.
Frank would have known what to do. But I wasn’t half the man he was. I had no idea how to handle what had been dumped in my lap, not until we had answers. I didn’t know what to do about my suspicions about Chase, either. My instinct was confrontation, one I’d also spent some time fantasizing about. Many scenarios played out in my mind that involved my fist and Chase’s ocular cavity. His nose was also a hit in the fantasy reel—I knew the sight of his broken nose and the bottom half of his face covered in gore would satisfy many, many things in me.
I’d settle for a confession, but that was about as likely as successfully fitting bicycle tires on a tractor.
Or me apologizing to Olivia.
My Olivia. Deep down, I knew she was trying to help, trying to be reasonable. She was looking for solutions. But she was sniffing around in the very last place she should.
How it was even possible that she could consider it was beyond me. Endlessly, she’d ignored my warnings.
Even after I told her what they’d done to me, to the farm. To Frank.
What she’d suggested was unforgivable. That she thought for one second that I’d ever comply was unconscionable. One thing was unmentionable, just one—the Pattons. But over and again, she’d pushed me in that direction, knowing I’d only dig in my heels and push back.
And then there was the matter of her lie. She’d known for weeks that Patton was actively after us and hadn’t told me. The only reasons I could figure were that she either had feelings for Chase or she didn’t trust me.
I didn’t want to walk away from her. I didn’t want to be anywhere she wasn’t. I’d been cruel to her, said things I shouldn’t have, things I didn’t mean. The last thing I wanted was for her to leave here. To leave me.
But I’d thought she understood how deep the division between our farms ran until she disregarded what I’d said and felt, called me stubborn as if this were just a matter of me being obstinate. And my wound was so deep, I couldn’t see her. Not right now. I couldn’t keep having the same conversation, the same fight. I was too tired, and there was too much at stake.
And so, it was what it was.
I flipped back my covers and got out of bed, making my way to the kitchen with Bowie nipping my ankles, his turkey leg abandoned in the threshold of my room. He was as bad as a toddler—his toys were strewn around the house, pulled from their basket and distributed evenly across the square footage. In the kitchen was a tennis ball, which I threw into the living room in order to buy myself a second to make coffee.
Today would be another whirl. Alice had been quarantined with the other cattle and checked out by Miguel. We’d ended yesterday with a total of thirty-two cows dead and no end in sight.
It was all too much.
Regardless of what Olivia said or did, the Pattons were the only people who would go to such great lengths to burn us down. It was true—I had no proof. But it was time for a reckoning. Even if I couldn’t shake anything out of Chase, I’d feel twenty pounds lighter if I could unload it all on him. If I didn’t do it soon, I was likely to explode, and what would the farm do with me in globs and pieces all over the barn?
But before I dealt with Chase, I needed to deal with the farm’s rounds.
I pulled on clothes while I waited for my coffee, pouring it into my Thermos when it was through. Stomped my feet into my boots and headed for the barn with the jingle of Bowie’s collar behind me.
Almost all of me was tuned to the big house as I passed it, looking for motion or a streak of red hair with a contrary tug-of-war in me. I wanted to see her. I didn’t want to see her at all. I was afraid of what I’d do if I did. Whether I kissed her or picked a fight, it’d be the wrong thing to do, and I couldn’t face the choice or its consequences. Not until I had some time and a full night’s sleep.
When I pulled open the barn door, Bowie shot in and ran straight for the goats to tease them as he did, the asshole. Alice’s stall was painfully empty, and it seemed like every furry face in the barn was pointed at it. But I made my way around the pens and horse stalls like Olivia and I usually did together, making sure everyone had feed and hay and salt licks. Saying hello and petting heads. Kit would bring pig slop and take the chickens’ eggs. Stalls would be mucked and horses groomed by one of the crew.
Bowie barked his little bark at Brenda the kid, who’d once nearly brained him with her thick skull. Sometimes I wondered if he remembered, as relentlessly as he pestered her, running into the pen to nip her haunches before hauling ass right back out before she could catch him. If Jolene were here, she’d just chase Bowie like a hype man, giving him the glory while she offered moral support.