Burned by Love

by Erin Wright

  “What beautiful flowe…what is that you’re wearing, young man?” Mom demanded from the doorway of the kitchen, her hands planted on her hips. “Don’t tell me you bought that jersey to impress me.” Her tone was at exact odds to her words – honestly, she couldn’t have sounded more thrilled at the idea.

  He handed the smaller of the two bouquets over. “Not at all, ma’am,” he said in a deep drawl, and Penny narrowed her eyes at him. It was almost like he was trying to sound more…country cowboy than normal. She’d mentioned one time that her mom adored the thick country accent – was he laying it on thick to impress Wanda?

  Troy avoided her gaze even as he continued, “Why, I just pulled this outta the back of my closet.”

  That was it. He was trying to impress her mom, and he knew just what he was doing. Mom would love the flowers, but the jersey and the accent was what would put her over the edge, and right into heaven territory.

  But why did he care so much about what her mother thought? Was he just one of those people who wanted to impress everyone? Or was he trying to impress her mom because he wanted something more than just a temporary relationship with Penny?

  Her eyes narrowed as she stared thoughtfully at Troy. In her experience, if you weren’t planning on marrying someone, there wasn’t much point in impressing their family. It wasn’t like you hung out with that family every Friday night after you broke up with their child. So this focus on what her mom loved…

  “And for you,” he said to Penny with a tiny bow as he handed over the gorgeous bouquet – an exact copy of the one he gave to her mom, except bigger.

  “I better get these into some water,” her mom fussed after drawing in a deep breath of their scent. “They’re just too gorgeous to have out in the air without anything to water ‘em. Penny, do you want me to grab a vase for you, too?”

  “That’d be great – thanks, Mom,” she tossed over her shoulder, not breaking eye contact with Troy now that she had it. “What are you doing?” she hissed at Troy. “Flowers for my mother?”

  “Every pretty lady deserves flowers,” he told her with a wink and a smile.

  She wasn’t charmed.

  Okay, she was a little bit charmed. But she hid it well, and that was what counted.

  “So I applied for another job last night,” she said bluntly. She took a deep, appreciative sniff of the flowers – it was only appropriate to admire them, right? No reason to be rude about them – even as she kept her eyes glued on Troy. “Down in Houston. I would be working for an oil drilling firm, creating their ad campaigns for them.”

  “They’d be dumb to pass you by,” he responded with another easy smile.

  She studied him, looking for a crack in his composure. There was no way that he was okay with her leaving, and she just needed proof of that so she had an excuse to break things off with him. It was better to break things off and save him from himself. It was kinder. More thoughtful. She shouldn’t let him hurt himself like this.

  But without a care in the world, he pressed a kiss to her cheek and headed into the kitchen. “Is there anything I can do to help?” he asked as Wanda arranged finger foods on a platter.

  “Grab that bowl of dip right there,” her mom said, nodding towards the bowl on the counter, “and follow me into the living room. The Dodgers are playing the Houston Astros today. Houston…can you even imagine living down there? Humid, hot…I just don’t understand being an Astro fan at all.” She said it like Houston fans were on par with murderers.

  Troy looked at Penny, his mouth curling up in silent laughter and she scrunched up her face with a silent grrr.

  Promptly, she decided that there was no reason at all to look at him. Not one. “Mom,” she said, scooping up the plate of sliced cheeses and following them into the living room, “I just applied for a job in Houston, actually.”

  Her mom froze and then slowly straightened to stare in horror at her only daughter. “There are days I don’t know who you are,” her mom said mildly.

  “Mom!” Penny cried, exasperated. “It’s a job. Houston is a perfectly fine city. And anyway, Los Angeles is hot, too. I don’t see why you think the Dodgers are still a good team.”

  “Because it’s a dry heat,” Mom said, as if explaining a simple concept to a four year old. She turned to Troy and shook her head mournfully. “I just don’t know where I went wrong.”

  This time, Troy’s laughter wasn’t so silent and Penny glared at the two of them. She was quite sure she didn’t appreciate them ganging up on her.

  “C’mon,” Troy said, holding out his hand to Penny to pull her down onto the couch next to him. “The game is about to begin.”

  She took his hand, slightly mollified both by him wanting to sit by her, and by the fact that she knew The Secret about him that her mom didn’t.

  He didn’t say, “The game is about to start,” because then he would’ve gotten tripped up on the st and stuttered his way through start.

  Whether he even thought about it consciously at this point, she had no clue, or maybe he’d long ago wiped all ch and st words out of his vocabulary whenever possible. But because she knew to listen for it, she could catch the thousand different times that he chose just the right word when no one else would even notice it.

  As she snuggled down beside Troy, listening to him and Mom banter about who was the best player in the Dodgers lineup, she frowned at herself. She wasn’t sure why she was so out of sorts about her mom and Troy teasing her. It wasn’t a big deal. It was cute that her mom adored Troy so much. It was cute that Troy had taken the time to not only buy a jersey to impress her, but even study up on baseball so he could relate to her.

  It was cute. It was all cute. She liked it, she really did.

  Just like she liked the idea of moving down to Houston, where there were…

  Her thoughts hit a brick wall just then. Thinking about it now, she had absolutely no idea what was in Houston. Oil rigs, cowboys who lassoed women for practice, and cow skulls on every wall?

  Why did I apply for a job in Texas, of all places? I’m trying to get away from hicks, not move in with them. Houston isn’t any better than Franklin; it’s just bigger. More Wranglers doesn’t equal civilization.

  “Are you okay?” Troy asked, interrupting her internal debate. “You seem…upset today.”

  “I’m fine,” she said, plastering a smile on her face. “It was just another long week at work and I’m not looking forward to everything that I need to get done this next week.”

  Troy squeezed her against his side. “I hope the newspaper appreciates what a hard worker you are,” he said loyally, and pressed a kiss to her forehead.

  “Thanks,” she said, but she didn’t feel thankful. She felt grumpy and out of sorts and on edge and…

  Totally not her.

  And she’d be damned if she had any idea why.

  Chapter 21

  Troy

  He was eating breakfast with Aunt and Uncle Horvath, listening to Aunt Horvath discuss which vegetables she needed to get canned out of the garden before the first freeze hit, when there was a knock at the back door. They all just froze and then looked at each other, waiting for someone else to know what was going on, but it was clear by the expression on his aunt and uncle’s faces that they were just as much in the dark as Troy was. He stood up to go answer the knock when the door creaked open, and who but Bryce stuck his head around the corner of it.

  Troy just gaped at him. He would’ve expected to find Santa Claus on the other side of the door before finding Bryce.

  “Surprise!” Troy’s cousin said, a huge grin on his face.

  “Bryce!” Aunt Horvath scolded, her hand over her heart with the shock of it all. “You’re going to kill an old lady off by doing that. Come here and give your momma a kiss.”

  Uncle Horvath, normally a fairly taciturn man, looked positively stunned and more than a little emotional. “Bryce,” he said, but his voice cracked, giving the depths of his feelings away. “Son…what
are you…I can’t believe you’re here.”

  Bryce gave a bone-cracking squeeze to his mom, a full-body hug to Troy, and then a manly one-arm squeeze with his dad. Uncle Horvath wasn’t much for hugging people, not even his own child who he hadn’t seen in two years.

  “Surprise!” Bryce said again, his grin even bigger, if that was possible. It was clear that he’d been looking forward to shocking his parents for quite some time, and now that he’d done it, was more than a little pleased with himself. “I’m on leave with the Air Force and wanted to come home to visit for a bit. I figured you guys still had my old room made up, or at least a couch for me to sleep on.”

  “Of course you’ve got your own room,” Aunt Horvath said, dabbing the edges of her eyes with her apron. “It will always be there for you. I may’ve moved a bit of sewing into it, but it’s still your room. Let me…uhh…uncover the bed. I was just working on some Christmas presents and had everything laid out.”

  “Christmas?” Bryce asked. “Mom, it’s September.”

  “It takes a long time to make handmade presents. You know that. I’ll be right back.” She disappeared down the hallway, muttering under her breath about old women’s hearts not being made to withstand this kind of shock.

  Uncle Horvath gestured Bryce to the fourth, and usually unused, chair at the breakfast table. “Come, sit. Mom can rustle up a plate for you when she gets back. How long are you planning to stay?” There was hope in his voice that Bryce would give an answer that wasn’t, “A week.” Uncle Horvath didn’t always get along with Bryce – they’d butted heads more than once, and if they were being honest about it, Bryce had joined the Air Force to escape his father’s overbearing attitude – but he was still his son, and Troy knew that Uncle Horvath would love to have him there in Long Valley again, for however long Bryce was willing to stay.

  “Not real sure at the moment,” Bryce said. “I…well, I’d better wait for Mom to come back.”

  Uncle Horvath’s bushy eyebrows went up at that and a gleam of hope in his eye appeared that could’ve been seen from the International Space Station. “Sounds good,” he gruffed out. They began chatting about the unseasonably warm weather and how the crops were this year – both fail-safe topics for any male Idahoan looking to avoid emotions – as Troy sat and watched his cousin quietly.

  The close-cropped haircut was flattering on Bryce – still a little weird to see after years of him wearing it long in defiance of his father.

  Just to piss him off, if they were gonna be honest about it.

  Bryce had only been home once since joining the Air Force, and it hadn’t been a real long visit that time. He’d made some excuse about needing to go catch up with some old military friends of his and disappeared before his two-week leave was even halfway over.

  “This town is gonna suck me dry,” Bryce had told Troy more than once. “It’s just…soul destroying. Everything pressing in on you; everything right in your face. Everyone knowing everything about you…”

  Troy had listened because that’s what Troy did, but inwardly, he couldn’t have disagreed more. Sawyer was warm and welcoming and comfortable. It was filled with people who cared about one another, and didn’t expect something out of you that you weren’t willing to give…like long speeches.

  No, in Troy’s estimation, Sawyer was just about perfect.

  “I got everything cleaned up in there,” Aunt Horvath said, bustling back down the hallway and over to the breakfast table. “Are you hungry? Of course you’re hungry,” she replied, not giving Bryce a chance to say a word. “You always could out-eat Mitchell and Jessie combined together. Let me just put a little something together.”

  “Bryce here had something he wanted to discuss when you got back,” Uncle Horvath told his wife, and just the fact that he’d brought it up spoke volumes to Troy. His uncle was on tenterhooks about whatever it was that Bryce wanted to talk about. Troy could only hope it wasn’t something like, “They’re sending me to the Middle East for the next ten years and I’m here to say goodbye.” It would just kill them to have their boy gone that long.

  “Oh?” Aunt Horvath said, looking up from her mixing bowl. “What’s going on, dear?” She looked straight at Bryce, her face a combination of terror and hope. Terror at the idea that it was news about some far-off place that the Air Force was gonna be sending him next; hope that Bryce was gonna announce he’d be sticking around for a while.

  “The Air Force is struggling with recruitment quotas,” Bryce said quietly, “and is asking people who are nearing the end of their term to re-up. I’d been planning on leaving, but they’re offering a $15,000 bonus to anyone who signs on for another four-year term.”

  The tempered excitement in his parents’ eyes quickly began to fade away. It was the worst possible news they could’ve heard, but they were made of stout Hungarian stock and wouldn’t dream of dissuading their son from serving their country.

  Aunt Horvath recovered first. “Fifteen thousand dollars is a lot of money,” she said with a nod, eyes focused on the mixing bowl, not looking up at her son. “You could do a lot with that much money.”

  Uncle Horvath said nothing, his face inscrutable. Troy knew he’d shut down to avoid showing emotions at the announcement. It wouldn’t be fitting to beg his son not to do it. Life was about sacrifices, and the Horvaths weren’t about to shirk their responsibilities in bearing some of those sacrifices.

  “I have two weeks before I have to report back to Nellis Air Force Base,” Bryce said quietly. “I wanted to spend it here, if that’s okay.”

  “You know you’re welcome here for as long as you want, dear,” Aunt Horvath said, a forced smile firmly planted on her face as she poured pancake batter on the griddle. No one said the words out loud, but they were all thinking it – it was no problem for him to stay for two weeks. It was the leaving at the end of it that was gonna be damn difficult.

  Troy watched the devastated faces of his aunt and uncle in silence, their pain reinforcing his duty once again. No matter what Penny thought, he couldn’t just turn his back on his family and choose a different profession on a lark. He owed his aunt and uncle almost everything he had, and to hurt them like this, after all three of their children hurt them…

  It was unthinkable. Troy was the Horvath child who would continue the family legacy. It was up to him, no matter what he might wish otherwise.

  The next few days sped by in a blur of hard work, now that the harvest season was in full swing. All thoughts of trying to woo Penny into staying, all underhanded schemes of making Mrs. Roth happy to further his cause, were pushed aside. His cousin stayed home with Aunt Horvath, helping her bring in the harvest from the garden and get the food into jars in preparation of the upcoming winter.

  More than once, Aunt Horvath mentioned how lovely it was to have help this fall, and how she was speeding right through what normally took weeks to get done. Bryce would simply pop a kiss on his mom’s cheek and say something like, “Helping my mom is what any good son would do.”

  Yeah, but you never have, Troy wanted to point out. When Bryce was at home before he joined the military, he hadn’t exactly been what one would call a hard worker. He’d fought his parents every step of the way when it came to doing chores, and would often disappear for hours at a time just when an extra pair of hands would’ve been the most appreciated.

  When Bryce had first announced he was gonna join the military, it’d taken every bit of self control that Troy had not to bust up laughing. Bryce, being forced to get up before noon every single day? Bryce, being forced to push himself physically and mentally?

  He hadn’t said a word, of course, but internally, he’d been laying bets on how long it’d take before Bryce was pushed out of the Air Force. Two months, tops.

  And yet, here it was, six years later, and they were begging him to stay in for another four.

  Will wonders never cease.

  It was on day four of Bryce being home that he pulled Troy off to the side. “Hey
, what would you think about me coming with you to the mill today?” he asked after breakfast.

  There he was.

  There was his old cousin back in full force. He wanted to come to the mill so he could sit in Troy’s office and play on his phone, far away from vegetables and hot canning jars and hard work. He’d lasted a full three days of real work before crumbling in the face of it.

  It’s a damn good thing you didn’t join the Marines. I think boot camp would’ve killed you.

  “Sure,” Troy said with a shrug. He wasn’t Bryce’s keeper. As operations manager of the mill, Troy had his own office, dusty and dirty and uninspiring as it was, and there was a real piece-of-shit couch against one wall that Troy sometimes snagged a bit of shut-eye on during the height of the harvest season, rather than wasting the energy of driving home at night. Dollars to donuts, Bryce would be snoring away on it by two that afternoon.

  I guess the Air Force wasn’t a miracle worker after all.

  It wasn’t until they got to the mill and Bryce didn’t plant his ass on the couch that Troy realized something was up.

  “What do you want me to do first?” Bryce asked, looking around the office as if searching for something to do.

  “First-st?” Troy echoed, wincing at the stutter but Bryce didn’t seem to notice.

  “Yeah. What do you need help on here at the mill? I might not have much experience running specialized machinery, but I do have a good back and two strong hands.”

  Troy simply stared at his cousin, too shocked to say anything. His cousin was asking for something to do? He wanted to work hard?

  And then the idea came to him, and he felt a tiny, minuscule, itsy-bitsy bit of guilt for the sheer assholishness of it, but mostly, he just wanted to laugh at the sheer genius of it.

  “C’mon,” he said, pushing the endless paperwork away for a moment and standing up. He could work his way through buyers and price per tonnage in a little bit. Right now, he had a cousin’s life to make miserable. “Grab that hard hat and coveralls there,” he said, nodding towards his own pair of work clothes hanging from a hook. “You’ll need it.”