The Simple Life

by Tara Sivec

  “Yes! We’re making cookies,” I announce, stepping out of the pantry and into the kitchen.

  I come to an abrupt halt, making Clint slam into my back since he was following me out, when I see Mrs. Sherwood and Ember standing by the island.

  “This is just perfect. Now Lincoln will be homeless,” Ember mutters.

  “Looks like I’ll be taking that vacation to Hawaii I’ve always wanted,” Mrs. Sherwood says with a smile.

  “You two should be ashamed of yourself,” Clint scolds, pointing his finger at both of them.

  You know, one of the fingers that was just inside of me. No big deal.

  With a huff, he grabs Mia’s hand, thankfully with his other hand, because eeeew, and starts walking her out of the kitchen.

  “Come on. Let’s go outside to the cupcake truck and you can have whatever you want,” Clint tells her.

  “Yippee!” she shouts, as they disappear around the corner, with Clint looking back over his shoulder and giving me a wink.

  Mrs. Sherwood turns to walk out after them, and I join Ember to follow behind her.

  Wrapping my arm around her shoulders, I give it a squeeze.

  “Don’t worry. There’s still a chance your kid won’t have to suck dick for money,” I reassure her.

  Chapter 22

  CLINT

  Family Life

  “Oh. Oh my. Well, that’s unfortunate.”

  Brooklyn doesn’t even bother to hide her amusement, or the damn snort that comes out of her. She’s lucky it’s a cute fucking snort. And that she’s wearing those sexy red cowboy boots and cut-off jean shorts.

  “It’s not my fault. I literally looked away for two seconds.”

  “Wow. She drew quite an impressive dick in two seconds,” Brooklyn quips.

  We both turn and stare at Mia’s cheek where she did, in fact, draw a dick on her cheek with a black Sharpie. She told me it was a unicorn, but I’m not buying it. The damn thing even has hair on its balls, which Mia claims are its legs.

  When I was little, the only chore on the farm I actually enjoyed doing was when my dad would have me sit with him next to the piles of recently picked pumpkins. Each pumpkin was priced according to weight. We would put a pumpkin on a regular bathroom scale, my dad would calculate the price, and he’d let me write it on top of the pumpkin right by the stem with a black Sharpie. Here’s a fun fact for you. When you’re carving your Halloween pumpkins and want to use a Sharpie to draw the design, but don’t want all that black color to still be on the pumpkin when you finish, spray it with aerosol hairspray and then wipe it off with a rag. Ember and Brooklyn were in charge of wiping off the price up at the checkout stand when a customer would bring their pumpkins up to pay, and we still use that trick today.

  Even though this farm does ten times as much business as it did when I was little, I still like this tradition and have brought the girls out here every year to let them help me price the pumpkins that will be put out in front of the store. This is the first year I let Mia help with the pricing instead of just handing me the pumpkins she could lift. Clearly, that was a mistake.

  “Do you think I could spray her cheek with hairspray and it would come off?” Brooklyn asks, squatting down next to me to hold Mia’s chin in her hand, tilting her head to the side to get a better look.

  “Doubtful,” I sigh. “So that means she just won’t be going out in public until it washes off in about a week.”

  “Does this mean I get to call her wiener face for a week?” Grace asks hopefully, not even looking up at us from a few feet away as she concentrates on writing the price as neatly as possible on the pumpkin in front of her.

  “No!” Brooklyn and I both shout at the same time.

  We look at each other and laugh, but my heart fucking clenches inside my chest.

  It’s been two weeks since the opening of the farm, and every time the four of us are together, I forget that we aren’t really a family. I forget that Brooklyn’s not mine, and I forget she isn’t the girls’ mother.

  I mean, technically she’s mine in the sense that we’re kind of dating, but I still have no idea what the future holds for us. The only time she’s even mentioned New York was when that famous-for-doing-nothing chick did an interview, apologizing publicly to Brooklyn and clearing the air. I made a joke about how it wouldn’t be long now before no one would remember what her underwear looks like and she’d be able to walk through the city without people saying something to her. I only said that shit to try to get her to give me something about where she was at, but she just made a little hmmm sound and changed the subject.

  “Come on, my little hellion. Let’s go inside and try to do something about your cheek,” Brooklyn says, grabbing both of Mia’s hands and pulling her up from the ground.

  My little hellion. She said my little hellion. Fucking hell, why does that sound so good?

  Before they walk away, Brooklyn glances over at Grace and then gives me a wink. I told her last night that it was way past time for Grace and me to talk, and she agreed. I know this is her way of telling me that she’s going to keep Mia occupied and give the two of us some alone time. I’m almost more nervous right now than I was the first time I held her after she was born and I was afraid I would drop her. There’s definitely been a happiness in my girl that I haven’t seen in a while, but I can tell she’s still holding back, and that needs to change.

  After I watch Brooklyn and Mia walk hand-in-hand over to the house and disappear inside, I turn around where I’m sitting so I can face Grace. She’s bent over another pumpkin, and her tongue is sticking out of the corner of her mouth as she concentrates on writing the price on it. I watch her finish, lean back, cock her head to the side, and smile, admiring her work.

  Aside from the light dusting of freckles on her nose that she got from her mother, she looks just like me. She’s got my hair color, my eye color, my smile, and my dimples. Melissa used to call her my little mini-me, but she always said it in a condescending way. Like she couldn’t handle the fact that there were two of us. She couldn’t stand that Grace always wanted to be where I was. If I was out in the fields, walking up and down them after seeds were planted to check on things, Grace would follow behind, jumping into each of the footprints I made in the dirt. Whenever I took a tractor out to plow, Grace would sit on my lap with a pair of children’s sized ear protectors on to save her ears from the loud noise. If I needed to have a meeting with the farmhands, she would be perched on my shoulders, her stomach resting on my head and her arms draped down with her hands clutched under my chin.

  My eyes start to burn and there’s a lump in my throat that’s making it hard to swallow. I have no idea when she stopped being my mini-me, following me around everywhere, and it fucking hurts that it’s all my fault and I didn’t even notice. I blink my eyes rapidly when Grace puts the cap back on the marker and tosses it to the ground.

  “I’m sorry,” I say softly.

  She pauses reaching for another pumpkin, and finally looks up at me.

  “Sorry for what?”

  “Sorry for not talking to you about important stuff. Like your mom.”

  Her eyes widen just a fraction when I say the word mom, and it makes me feel like an asshole.

  “It… It’s okay.” She shrugs, quickly dropping her head and playing with a string hanging from the hole in her jeans over her knee.

  Scooting forward, I grab her chin and lift it up so she’ll look at me again.

  “It’s not okay. I never should have made you feel like you couldn’t talk about her. I guess I thought if I didn’t say anything, you would just forget and move on, and it would be easier on you. I didn’t realize I was making everything worse by doing that,” I tell her.

  Her chin quivers against my fingers, and her eyes start to fill with tears. There is nothing worse than seeing your child cry and knowing that you’re the cause for their tears.

  “Brooklyn said she didn’t leave because of anything I did,” she says softly.<
br />
  “Brooklyn is a very smart woman, and one hundred percent correct. It had absolutely nothing to do with you. Some people just aren’t cut out to be moms.”

  Grace sniffles and nods her head.

  “Brooklyn said that too. And that her mom wasn’t cut out to be a mom either.”

  “You two have a lot in common,” I tell her, dropping my hand from her chin. “If you ever want to know something about your mom, or want to talk about her, don’t ever feel like you can’t, okay?”

  She nods again, rubbing her nose with the back of her hand.

  In the distance, we hear the slamming of the screen door from the house, and we both turn to see Brooklyn and Mia come back outside. Their arms are loaded up with a ton of coloring books and a few containers of crayons. Brooklyn sets a blanket out a few feet from the bottom of the steps, and they both flop down and start spreading everything out around them.

  “You really like her, huh?” Grace asks, as I look away and back at her.

  “Your sister? Eh, she’s all right.” I shrug, giving her a teasing smile.

  Grace rolls her eyes and leans over to lightly smack my arm, and I finally feel like I can breathe again. We’re gonna be okay.

  “No, duh. I mean Brooklyn. You really like her. You’re always staring at her and smiling. I know you guys kiss and go on dates and stuff.”

  Oh, God. Maybe we aren’t going to be okay.

  I can feel my face heat with embarrassment, and I suddenly wonder if this is how I’m going to feel when I have to talk to her about the birds and the bees.

  Shit! She’ll be eleven in a few weeks. Should I have already done that? Oh, holy fuck, I am not prepared for this.

  “Um… uh… yeah… yep. I like her. Is it okay that I like her?” I ask.

  “Yeah, it’s okay. I like her too. You can marry her if you want. That would be kinda cool.”

  Fuuuck.

  “You know she technically lives in New York, right?” I ask gently.

  I don’t want Grace to get her hopes up, and then have her heart broken if Brooklyn does go back. I know there’s no way Brooklyn would ever cut the girls out of her life like their mother did, though, so there’s that. She puts on a good front about not liking kids, but I can see it in her eyes that she has fallen in love with my girls.

  If only she would fall in love with me.

  “I know. I heard Mrs. Sherwood talking to someone about it. But, Dad, she doesn’t have to live there, you know. You just need to step up your game and make her stay.”

  Out of the fucking mouths of babes….

  “Oh yeah?” I laugh. “And what would you suggest I do?”

  She scrunches up her face and taps her finger against her chin, thinking very hard about my question. After a few minutes, a smile lights up her face.

  “Just tell her you love her.”

  Of course I laugh when she says that, but then I immediately sober.

  Just tell her I love her… like it’s that simple.

  Fuck. Just tell her I love her. Maybe it is that simple.

  Brooklyn moans around my tongue when my hand slips under her shirt. I pull the lacy cup of her bra down and start circling my thumb over her nipple. She grinds her body down harder onto my lap, and my hand clutches tighter to her ass, helping her rock back and forth against me.

  As soon as I put the girls to bed, I had every intention of having a serious discussion with her, but when she crawled onto my lap and straddled me as soon as I sat down on the couch, my dick started doing the thinking for me.

  And for all those people with money in the sex pool, I’m sorry to report that if you’ve picked any day prior to now, you lose. My goddamn willpower is seriously being tested. I am very well acquainted with third base at this point, since we can’t keep our hands off each other whenever we’re alone. Or when we’re not alone.

  Brooklyn charged into my office the other day, the store full of customers, locking the door behind her. She dropped down on her knees in front of my chair and gave me a blowjob that almost made my head explode. Her bright blue eyes looked up at me as she wrapped her lips around the head of my cock and then fucking deep-throated me.

  Her soft hands cupped and massaged my balls. She slid her fist up and down my shaft while she sucked me off. And the entire time, her eyes never left mine. It was the hottest experience of my life, and I lasted an embarrassingly short amount of time. I knocked my laptop onto the floor and cracked the screen, and spilled a cup of coffee all over the week’s purchase orders when I tried to move her away and she refused, swallowing like a goddamn champ when I came down her throat.

  Thinking about that blowjob isn’t really helping matters right now, so I quickly block it from my mind. Pulling my hand out from under her shirt, I end the kiss, bringing my hand up to tuck some of her hair that’s curtaining our faces behind one of her ears.

  She lets out the tiniest of frustrated sighs, and I really wouldn’t blame her if she called me a cock block and stormed out of the house. I’ve stopped us every time we’ve gotten too close to having sex, and I know she’s got to be more than a little annoyed with me. I’m annoyed with me, and want to kick my own ass. My dick will probably remove itself from my body and leave forever if it doesn’t get to sink inside her soon. Taking it semi-slow until I know where her head is at is starting to make me a grumpy son of a bitch.

  Brooklyn slides herself off my lap and plops down onto the couch next to me, reaching her hand under her shirt to pull her bra back in place.

  “So, you had a good talk with Grace today, I assume?” she asks.

  “I did. Thank you for giving us some time alone.”

  She gives me a smile and pats my thigh.

  “It was a little depressing though. That girl is growing up right before my eyes. She already started giving me those half-assed, one-armed hugs with her butt sticking out so she can touch me as little as possible,” I complain.

  Brooklyn laughs softly.

  “You know, I saw a quote the other day when I was searching for craft projects,” she states.

  I hold up my hands and stop her from continuing for a second.

  “Brooklyn Manning! Were you on Pinterest looking at craft projects for kids? What has happened to you?” I ask in mock surprise.

  She pinches my thigh and glares at me.

  “First of all, how do you even know what Pinterest is, Farmer Joe?”

  “Hey, I’m hip with the times. I know what all the cool kids are doing with their SnapGram shit.”

  “You’re ridiculous. Anyway, as I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted. Yes, I was on Pinterest looking up craft projects to keep your daughter occupied so she stops drawing dicks on things. I saw this quote that said, We’ve been teaching them how to walk away from us since we taught them how to take their first steps,” she tells me. “Don’t worry. She’ll come back to you eventually.”

  We sit in silence for a few minutes, and that quote plays on a loop in my head, over and over.

  “What if I don’t want her to leave me?” I ask quietly.

  “She has to. She can’t stay here forever.”

  “I know. I get that. But there’s no guarantee she’ll come back to me,” I say, knowing damn well we aren’t talking about Grace anymore.

  “She will. But she has a life to live,” Brooklyn whispers.

  “But I’m part of her life. A really important part. At least I hope I am.”

  She opens her mouth to respond, when a loud shriek interrupts her.

  “Brooklyn! You’re still here!” Mia screams, standing in the living room doorway in a pink and purple unicorn nightgown, a stuffed animal tucked under her arm, and a faded dick on her cheek thanks to Brooklyn scrubbing as hard as Mia could stand so it wasn’t so dickly vibrant.

  “What are you doing awake, little miss?” I ask, pushing up from the couch and walking over to her, squatting down in front of her and running my hand over the top of her head.

  “I couldn’t sleep.
Can Brooklyn read me a story? Pretty, pretty please?” she asks.

  Brooklyn quickly gets up from the couch and crosses the room, bending over and lifting Mia up in her arms.

  “One story, and then lights out,” Brooklyn tells her.

  “One story, and three pieces of candy,” Mia tries to negotiate.

  “Nice try. Two stories, and no candy.”

  I watch them walk out of the room and down the hall, listening to them talk softly as Brooklyn carries Mia up the stairs, wondering how in the fuck I’m going to survive it if Brooklyn walks away.

  Chapter 23

  Love Life

  When I don’t find Clint in the house, in the store, or in his office, I walk across the grass toward the stables, where a light is shining brightly out of the main door. The girls were fast asleep in the house, and Mrs. Sherwood was snoring on the couch, so I’m assuming there was an emergency Clint needed to take care of, and he asked her to come over. Thankfully, it’s late and all of the workers have gone home, because it’s time for us to talk, and I don’t want an audience.

  After the moment we shared on his couch the other night, when I told him that quote, I don’t think he was talking about Grace at all. But how the hell am I supposed to be sure and not make a fool of myself? I know he has feelings for me, but are they big enough? Are they the same that I have for him, the ones that make me catch my breath every time I’m near him? The ones that make me want to cry when I even consider the idea of moving back to New York? Maybe this is just a fling for him. Maybe this is just a way to satisfy his teenaged curiosity and the crush he had on me back then.

  Ember and I shared a much-needed girl’s night out at the Maple Inn tonight, and when I told her all of these things, she punched me in the arm and told me I was being an idiot. Which I already knew. But this is scary shit. I am falling hard for him, but what if he’s not there to catch me? There’s only one way to find out. I need to suck it up and act like an adult.