When he turned to me, he squared up against me as if he was ready to fight.
“What the fuck do you want? Are you the manager?” he asked, his eyes squinting, sizing me up.
“Nope. I’m a friend of Sammie’s,” I said, throwing my arm over Sammie’s shoulder casually. She looked up at me questioningly. “Right Sam?”
“Y-yes…” she stammered.
“Sir, I don’t know who you are or why you’re so upset, but if you’ll kindly lower your voice, and show a little more respect to the lady, I’d appreciate it.” I tipped my hat at him, and watched silently as he took in my words, his rage growing with each slow second. “I’m sure whatever is wrong with your order can be fixed.”
“What the hell kind of stereotypical bullshit excuse for a cowboy are you? Did you just step out of a Ford truck commercial?”
“Sir, I beg your pardon, but —,”
“— and that hat!” he exclaimed, pointing.
My blood began to boil at this asshole’s insulting bullshit, and I let a slow smile spread across my face as I let go of Sammie and subtlety pushed her behind me before I geared up to slam my fist into his smug grin.
“I take it you aren’t from around these parts,” I replied.
“Hardly,” he scoffed. His birdlike nose was begging for my fist to make contact. I took a step backwards, just as Seth and Jesse appeared at my side.
“There’s three of you?” he asked, his voice full of sarcasm.
“What’s going on?” Seth asked, his gaze welded to the jerk in front of us. I felt Jesse puff up next to me quietly.
“Seems this fella doesn’t know how to properly talk to a woman. I was just letting him know that we do things differently around here. But apparently, he doesn’t know how to talk to anybody at all.”
“I see,” Seth said, nodding and tensing up.
Norma walked out from her office, after being summoned by a worried Sammie.
“What’s going on?” she barked. Norma was a no-bullshit kind of gal, and it was the secret to her success with the diner she had run for the last twenty years.
“What’s going on is that this is a shit show, and the food is complete garbage!” the stranger yelled at Norma.
“Well, I’m sorry you feel that way, mister,” Norma replied, her voice full of steel and anger.
“Fuck you!” he snarled.
“That’s it,” I said, stepping forward. “It’s time to go.”
“Who the fuck are you? The town’s cowboy security force?”
“Nope,” Jesse said, standing proudly beside me. “We’re the Hope brothers.”
“The Hope brothers? Well, fuck you too!” the man spat out.
“Where are you from, buddy, that you think it’s okay to talk to strangers like that?” I asked, my face inches from his now.
“I’m from New York City! The only place that really matters in this goddamned backwards ass country!”
“I see. Why don’t you do us all a favor then, and go back then, Mr. New York City?”
“I will, soon enough!” He pulled out a twenty and threw it on the counter, squaring off against the three of us again. His eyes connected with mine, and he glared into them.
“If there weren’t three of you, I’d kick your ass,” he said, his voice low, his lip turning up in an ugly snarl.
“Is that so?” I replied cooly. My hands were itching to make contact with his ridiculous face, but I balled them up into fists at my sides. “If you weren’t such a little bitch, I’d kick yours, too. Now, get the fuck out of here before I change my mind and string your sorry ass up and give you a real taste of Sugar Hill county.”
“Wait!” Jesse said, gesturing to the cash lying on the table. “Leave another twenty for being such a prick. Sammie doesn’t get paid enough to put up with assholes like you.”
We stood menacingly in front of him until he pulled out his wallet and peeled another twenty from a thick bundle of bills. He scoffed again, shook his head and threw it on the table.
“Fuck this town!” he yelled, flipping us all off as he walked out of the diner. He was still flipping us off as he sped down the street, his New York plates only serving to prominently display exactly how out of place a man like that was in Sugar Hill county.
“Wow,” Sammie exclaimed, now safely behind the counter. “For such a handsome guy, he sure was nasty, wasn’t he?”
“A man like that won’t last long in Sugar Hill,” Norma said.
“No, I reckon he won’t,” Sammie replied. “Thank you, boys.”
“It was only right we defend your honor, Ms. Sammie,” I said, tipping my hat.
“You’re a good man, Crit,” Norma said, “all three of y’all are. Your Mama and Daddy raised y’all right.”
“Well, that’s about the biggest compliment you could give us, Ms. Norma,” I replied with a smile.
“Don’t get too full of yourself now, son. If you didn’t bring me those extra eggs I asked for, I’m going to take it all back.”
I shook my head and put my arm around Norma. She had been one of my mother’s best friends and I had nothing but fondness for her.
“You know I wouldn’t dare forget your eggs, Ms. Norma.”
“That’s my boy!” she said, hugging me and then padding away to the back with one of the boxes we had left on the counter.
My cell phone rang just as we walked out of the front door. I was sure it was probably Ruby, but I didn’t want to answer it in front of my brothers. They looked at me insistently, so I pulled the phone from my pocket.
“Hello?” I answered.
“Crit, it’s Barnard Johnson.”
“Hello, Mr. Johnson,” I replied. Barnard Johnson was my father’s lawyer. Now, he was mine. He handled everything that had to do with our land and my parent’s estate. All that stuff that I had yet to truly deal with. I had been overwhelmed with grief, drama and injuries for the last year. Luckily, Mr. Johnson had offered to take care of everything until I was ready. I had eagerly accepted, instead concentrating my time and energy on the day to day running of the farm, making sure Jesse went to all of his community service appointments and therapy, keeping food on the table, and all the while healing from being mangled by that damned bull.
“Something’s come up, Crit,” Barnard replied. “I was hoping you could come into my office tomorrow.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“Best we talk about it in person, Crit. It’s important, though. Can you come by at two?” he replied.
I looked over at my brothers and my heart skipped a beat. The last thing any of us needed was more bad news.
“I’ll be there,” I replied, my heart gripped with worry.
☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼
“Daddy, you have to eat,” I said, propping my drunk father up on the couch with a few pillows and plopping a chipped blue plate with a grilled cheese sandwich and a salad on it in his lap.
“Bring me another beer, darlin’,” he barked, setting the plate on the table in front of him.
“Oh, Daddy,” I said, sighing as I turned and walked back to the kitchen as he turned on the television. I had known while I was making his sandwich that he wouldn’t eat it, but I had to try, no matter how stubborn he was.
I brought him a beer and sat it down next to him.
“You’re a good girl, Ruby,” he said, smiling up at me briefly before turning his attention back to the rerun of Gunsmoke.
Cable TV and a consistent diet of beer had made my father into a ghost of his old self. He refused to watch anything that hadn’t been made before nineteen-seventy, or drink anything but Schlitz beer. Secretly, I suspected it was because he had watched those things and drank that beer with my mother, and they reminded him of her, but he’d never admit it.
He’d never admit he missed her either.
Or that his drinking had anything to do with why she left.
Now that I was an adult, I understood perfectly why she left him, though. Ironically, they wer
e the same reasons that I couldn’t bring myself to leave him now. Didn’t matter that I was almost twenty-two. Didn’t matter that she left me, too. He and I only had each other now.
He didn’t really give much back in the parenting department, so I had learned to parent myself by the time I was twelve. As the years rolled by, the roles reversed themselves, and I found myself taking care of him now, whether I liked it or not.
I didn’t. Not one bit.
But there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t just abandon him like she did. It was so cold-hearted, I had thought when it happened. I realized she was just preserving herself, grasping at a last chance to enjoy the short life she had without being tied down to a miserable alcoholic that had no interest in anything else in life but wasting away with a cold beer and a television parked in front of him.
It was pathetic, I knew this, but did she have to leave me, too? That was the million dollar question that lingered in my head for years before I began finding my own ways to silence the unanswered questions that seemed to haunt me every day.
If it wasn’t for the hours spent with my best friend, Georgia Hope, and her family, I would have probably turned out a whole lot worse than I did. They gave me a sense of security that I could never find at home, and welcomed me with open arms.
And Georgia’s brother, Crit? Well, he had welcomed me with much more than open arms. By the time Georgia and I had turned twenty-one, I was in love with him, and we were sneaking off away from the family every chance we got to spend time together.
Crit Hope is unlike any other man in this god-forsaken town, and I couldn’t help but take a likin’ to him when he flashed those baby blue eyes at me. He was kind, loving, and the most passionate cowboy this side of the Mississippi. When he made love to me, he made me feel like the only woman in the world.
There was just one problem. And it was a big one.
Crit insisted on keeping our relationship a secret, even after his parents died, even after his brother got caught setting fires on the farm, even after Crit was almost trampled to death by a two-ton bull.
I kept waiting, trying to be patient, calling on every ounce of understanding that I could muster, just to appease him. I tried reminding myself that he was worth it, that it would all work itself out eventually.
But when one month turned into two, and three turned into six, and then a year had passed and I was still sneaking into the Hope’s horse barn just to spend a few minutes alone with Crit. Well, let’s just say I was at the end of my rope with Crit Hope.
I was starting to question whether all the running around behind everyone’s back was worth it anymore.
I wanted a man to go out with. A man that I could stand next to and declare to the world that he was mine. A partner. Someone to walk through life with. Not just in the darkness of a barn, but out in the bright light of Sugar Hill county.
I hated sneaking around.
Crit had a million reasons to keep things between us a secret. Our romance had started off hot and heavy, and yeah, maybe it was just sex at first, but it quickly grew into more for me, and Crit said he had feelings for me, too. I agreed to keep it a secret at first because it added to the excitement, but after a while it just became a burden.
Not to mention the pain it caused, the insecure thoughts that ran through my head, the questions about his true feelings for me, the doubt that plagued me every single day. It was torture. I tried my best to convince myself that the reason Crit didn’t want to tell anyone he was sleeping with me was not because of the fact that I wasn’t good enough for him.
He had the perfect family, or at least he did before his parents died in that god-awful accident.
I come from one of the most broken families in all of Sugar Hill. Daddy and I live in a trailer on the edge of town, not some pretty farmhouse surrounded by flowers and rows of perfectly aligned crops, but I was more thankful to have Daddy than ever after the Hope’s accident.
I was planning to put my foot down, and give Crit an ultimatum after just a few months, but then his parents died, and all hell broke loose from there. There was no way I could go through with it then.
And then Crit got hurt. Badly. There was nothing I could do but sit by his bedside, and do what little I could do for him until he healed. Miraculously, he had been able to recover fully in just a few months time. I was sure he would come out of that tragedy ready to embrace our relationship publicly, but he continued to insist that we not tell anyone.
Now, he was back at the farm working full time and back to his usual, incredibly busy routine. Things had settled down nicely after Georgia and Beau Haggard’s wedding, at least in the drama department, and I was sure thankful for that.
I was beginning to think it was time to have that ultimatum conversation with Crit again.
“I’m going out with Georgia tonight, Daddy,” I said to the sad shell of a man sitting in front of me. “Will you be okay?” “Of course,” he mumbled, waving me away. “You make a better door than a window, Ruby! Get out of the way!”
I sighed and padded off down the hallway to my bedroom to get ready to go see Georgia, extremely grateful for somewhere to escape to.
☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼
The barn that I had thankfully failed to burn down six months ago smelled like it always had. Shit, hay, horses and leather. Only these days, it still contained the faint lingering scent of fresh lumber.
Every time I caught of whiff of it, or noticed how the new wooden boards in my sister’s horse’s stall were a different color than the old weathered ones that my father had used years ago, I was stricken with guilt.
The therapist that led my court-ordered therapy groups said it would pass, or at least fade a little. I was still waiting for that to happen.
For now, I did my best to avoid all thoughts of the past. I tried not to think about the way things used to be. I tried not to think about my parents at all, but I sucked at that, too.
Most of all, I tried not to think about all the damage I had caused.
Not just physical damage, although there was a lot of that - to the old shed, the tool barn, the horse barn, and even Mr. Evan’s bar - but the damage that I had done to my family and my relationships with my siblings haunted me. I still wasn’t convinced they had entirely forgiven me, and I was pretty sure Crit would never trust me again, no matter what.
That was the price I had to pay for being a complete idiot. Susan, my therapist in group, told me not to be so hard on myself, that I should forgive myself, but I didn’t seem to know how to do that.
After my parent’s accident, I was so lost, so heart broken, so completely devastated that I didn’t know how to communicate with anyone. Georgia, Seth, Crit and I all scattered in different directions, each of us trying to find comfort in our own way, instead of banding together and leaning on each other like we should have.
I internalized all the pain, and when it all got to be too much to contain, something inside of me ignited. I felt like I had a fire of rage burning inside of me, and I lashed out at the very people that I needed the most.
My family.
After that first fire, everything just spiraled out of control. I had set fire to the shed - I guess because I was so angry at my parents for dying, for leaving us all alone to figure everything out afterwards, and I couldn’t lash out at them.
I shouldn’t have been mad at them. The semi slamming into their car certainly wasn’t their fault.
But I wasn’t thinking logically back then.
All I knew was that I was hurting - a lot - and I needed to do something, anything, to let that pain out of me.
My family had been falling apart from the inside out. Crit was overwhelmed with the farm and the rodeo. Seth was just Seth - always self-absorbed and self-centered. Georgia was beside herself with grief, and when she told me about what Lee Haggard had tried to do to her, I turned my rage in his direction.
When I was walking by Evan’s bar one day, I saw him throw Lee out. In some c
razy misdirected anger, I set fire to the bar for letting Lee hang out there in the first place. I know, it was stupid. I know, it doesn’t make any sense at all.
And then, when Georgia told me that she and Beau Haggard were going to get married, all out of the blue like that, well I just snapped. It was the straw that broke Jesse Hope’s back, I guess.
All I wanted to do was go back to the way things were. Our farm represented the past, it represented my parents, and it represented everything that I had lost. And yet, because they had died, I was tied to it permanently. It was a constant reminder of their death. It was a sick twist of fate and I resented the fact that everyone just assumed we would all devote our lives to the farm just because they had died.
In that moment, I hated Hope Against Hope Farms with all my heart. I had set the barn fire in a rage-filled rampage, without thinking about the horses, and once I did, once I snapped back into reality - I desperately tried to get them out of there before they got hurt.
It wasn’t their fault I was hurting.
I panicked, and the fire blazed higher and hotter every second. As I opened Cherokee’s stall, he thundered past me with wild fear-filled eyes, pushing me to the floor. I hit my head and passed out, leaving the other horses locked in the blazing barn. I couldn’t save them, and I couldn’t save myself, either. I had put everything in mortal danger.
And then, somehow, in the end, it was Lee Haggard who saved me.
I owed him my life.
I know, none of it makes sense. It didn’t make sense to me then, and it doesn’t make sense now.
I just try to get through every day counting my blessings, as hard as it is.
If it had been anyone else’s property that I had burnt down, if Mr. Evans hadn’t been so forgiving, and if Judge Patterson hadn’t felt sorry for me because he had known my family all his life - I wouldn’t have gotten off with doing a year of community service, group therapy, anger management classes and a promise to help my brother rebuild the farm.
ABANDON ALL HOPE: The Hope Brother Series (Book Two) Page 2