“I’m gonna get you back for this,” I threaten, knowing that I’m gonna push the limits if I ever get him to ride bitch in Foxy when I race. We’ll see if he likes that. On second thought, he probably would.
The camo-cow hat flies off my head when he does a quick turn, and I yell out. He glances at me and lifts a sardonic brow before turning around. He doesn’t stop, only slows to a crawl as I lean out to pick up the hat from the dirt. I feel a pinch to my ass and jump, only to hear him laugh. Still on a mission, I grab the hat, bonus dirt and all, but this time, I pull it on facing forward with my hair through the hole at the back, hoping that’ll help it stay secure.
Brody nods his approval, and at a more reasonable pace, he drives me out to see the farming operation—the ‘home garden’ that grows for Tannen and Bennett usage and the ‘business plots’ that are reserved for Shay’s products and the crops they sell at the farmer’s market. After explaining the differences, he shows me the cattle, who come ambling toward the Gator as we approach.
“They think it’s feeding time,” he explains. “Which it’s not,” he tells the cows, though they probably can’t hear him from here. Actually, I don’t know . . . do cows have super hearing?
We get out and walk over to the barbed wire fence, which seems like nothing to get through if they decided to mosey on wherever they want. “Can I touch them?”
“Yeah,” he says over the animals who are mooing in anticipation of his paying them a little loving attention. I feel ya, ladies . . . he’d get a moo from me too. Except that’s weird, so maybe not a moo, exactly?
I can see why he loves this life—a bit of wild, a heap of responsibility, some peace and quiet, and a family that feels the same way about the dirt that you do. I’ve learned more about Brody today than in all our weeks before. Or maybe now, in addition to knowing what makes him laugh and where his favorite place for me to nibble is, I also know his heart and soul. I think he’s known mine all along, but I’m finally catching up. And yeah, I get the irony that the race car driver is the last one to get anywhere, but I’m here now and that’s what matters.
He shows me how to approach them carefully and scratch behind their ears, and after a few minutes of easy, comfortable silence, it feels like we’ve been reset. Not like I didn’t fuck everything up, but maybe that because I did, things are actually better than before.
“Can I show you one more thing?” Brody asks, his voice deep and rough and his fingers playing with the end of my ponytail.
“Anything,” I answer. The scariest part of all is that I absolutely mean it.
Chapter 21
Brody
“Third door on the right,” I tell the fabulous view as Erica goes up the stairs. That my mind is distracted is a testament to how important today has been because her ass is begging for my tongue and her thighs are pleading for my fingertips.
She whispers, “Why does it feel like I’m not supposed to be here? Like we’re doing something wrong?” She sounds more than a little intrigued at the idea, which doesn’t surprise me about her in the least.
“Because you’re going into my childhood bedroom to fuck. Luckily for you, I just took down my WWE posters last week.” She glances back, brows raised in question. I smack her ass in pseudo-punishment. “Kidding. I seem like a fake wrestling sort to you?”
She smirks. “Abso-fucking-lutely, you do, Cowboy.” She drawls out the ‘cowboy’ in a fake accent that’d make John Wayne cringe.
I asked for that one, so I go ahead and give her the grin she earned and the grunt she’s expecting.
She opens the door, and I watch her, knowing exactly what she’s seeing. A full-sized bed in the corner, unmade, of course, because I don’t see the point when I’m getting back in it tonight, a nightstand with the latest John Grisham book laid open to save my place, a basket of clean clothes sitting right next to a pile of dirty ones, and a chest of drawers where all the clean clothes should be.
“Very bachelor pad-ish,” she says. I can tell the unmade bed is driving her nuts. She basically makes hers the second she gets out of it, a military habit holdover, she’s told me. Suddenly, she gasps. “You are a fucking monster!” She picks up the book from my nightstand, waving it around in offense. “Use a bookmark, for fuck’s sake!”
I shrug, not caring in the slightest. “It’s my book. I’ll crease the spine if I want to.”
She looks horrified, so I make a show of grabbing a condom packet out of the top drawer, placing it inside the book, and closing it with a sarcastically affectionate pat. I set it back on the nightstand, hugely implying ‘you happy?’ She smirks and wanders over to the chest of drawers, looking at a picture of my family, all six of us.
“I think I was around fifteen then, in high school for sure. Brutal must’ve been around thirteen, because that was one of the last times I was taller than him. He shot up that summer, passed us all, even Dad.”
“You look happy. You all look happy.” She touches the easy smile on my teenage face in the picture. There are flashes of this boy inside me still, but the man is more hardened and cynical from what I’ve gone through between that camera flash and now.
“We were. We are. It was just the in-between that was hard, but we’re all good now. Truly. And one day, we’ll be even better. I didn’t show you today, but over the hill to the west, Brutal is building a house for him and Allyson and Cooper. And Bobby lets us all come listen to him perform at Hank’s now, something he never did before. He’s gonna be on the radio one day, I just know it. And Shay is happy with someone who wants her to live the life that she wants and deserves.”
“You said everyone but you. What about Brody Tannen? Is he happy?” she asks softly, setting the picture back down and turning to face me fully.
“Yeah, Erica. I am happy. And I’m gonna carpe the shit out of this diem like it’s all we get.” I pick her up, and her legs go around my waist naturally.
I mean that. I still think relationships are a ticking time bomb, waiting to destroy you when they inevitably end, but I get why everyone risks it now. Why, even if you know it’ll gut you eventually, it’s worth it to be with the one person who can make every minute mean something. Without them, there’s no risk, but it’s merely an existence, not life.
If I can have one happy day with Erica, I’ll handle any days of pain later. I put off any worries and just focus on the now, a gift I’ve rarely gotten to truly appreciate.
I sit down on my bed, her tiny ass in my lap and her sweet pussy against my thickening cock. “I’ve never had a woman in here before.”
She looks at me skeptically. “I don’t believe that for one second. Teenage Brody Tannen was a bad boy who snuck girls into his room every chance he got, I’d bet money on it.”
I laugh. “You’d lose then. I live in the middle of nowhere. Ain’t nobody coming out here.” The important jump that she came out here to track me down whispers in the air between us, and her smile falls as something deeper takes root.
She runs her fingers through my hair, which is getting a little long, but it feels good when she scratches my scalp and tugs on the strands to get my attention so I’ve let it go longer than usual. “You’re worth chasing, Brody. Worth caring for. Worth sharing with. Worth living every day to the fullest with.”