I would’ve sassed him for saying “ain’t,” but I knew no good would come from it. The last thing I needed was an eighty-year-old kicking my ass.
Befriend Hazel Stone?
I didn’t know the first thing about being a friend to a girl like her. We had nothing in common outside of the fact that we both worked at the ranch. How would I make a connection with someone who was the complete opposite of me?
Plus, I wasn’t really in the market for a roommate, let alone a friend. The only friends I needed were my bandmates, and sometimes that felt overwhelming.
I brushed my hands through my hair, knowing that there was no way I’d be able to get Big Paw to let up. When he made up his mind, there was no changing it, unless Grams was the one pushing for the change.
I grimaced. “I’ll do my best.”
“Do better than that,” he ordered. “It’s supposed to rain in a few days, and I don’t need no girl dying on my farm from pneumonia.”
Before I could reply, Grams poked her head into the office. She was wearing oven mitts on her hands and had the same caring smile she’d always worn plastered against her face. “Are you two done being blockheads? Because dinner’s done, and I don’t have a problem eating it without you.”
“Woman, can’t you see we’re talking in here?” Big Paw hissed, throwing a hand of dismissal at Grams. That only made Grams walk farther into the room.
“Harry Aaron Parker, if you ever talk to me like that again, I will shove this oven mitt so far up your butthole you’ll be wondering why your mouth tastes like poop. Now, apologize,” she ordered. My grandmother was a little woman, but boy, was she fierce. She didn’t take crap from no one, especially Big Paw.
And like always, Big Paw lowered his head and put his tail between his legs. “Sorry.”
“Sorry what?” Grams scolded.
“Sorry, my lovebug.”
I tried to hold my laughter in at the nickname. Leave it to Grams to soften the old man’s heart. The two of them were sassy and intense and filled with so much love. If I ever found the time to fall in love, I’d want a love story like theirs.
“That’s what I thought,” Grams said, walking over to Big Paw. She smacked him on the back of his head with the oven mitt. “Now, get to the dining room before I change my mind and take the dinner to the church for their Bible study tonight.”
That made us both shoot to our feet. My definition of cooking was sloppy joes. Sometimes I was fancy as hell, and I’d even toast the hamburger bun, but that was the end of my cooking expertise. That and ramen noodles. I could make a badass pot of ramen. Chicken flavored—obviously.
Outside of that, I counted on leftovers from Grams. She was pretty good at keeping me full.
As we walked to the kitchen, Grams complained about the creaking wooden floors. “We need to call someone in to fix those,” she grumbled.
“Hush, woman. I’ll get around to them when I get a chance,” Big Paw said.
“You’ve been saying that since 1995. I’m not holding my breath.”
“Maybe if you held your breath, you wouldn’t be able to sass so much,” he replied.
She shot him a look that could kill, and Big Paw smiled a little. It took a lot to make that man smile, and Grams controlled them. “Sorry, my lovebug.”
“You’ll be even sorrier on the couch tonight,” she said in return.
I couldn’t help but snicker at my grandparents’ dramatic conversation. Real love was funny, and I loved that my grandparents didn’t take their insults too seriously.
After stuffing my face at my grandparents’, I headed to my place with enough leftovers to get me through the next few days.
Thank God for that.
No sloppy joes this week.
As I reached my place on the ranch grounds, a huge knot sat in my gut. The shed Hazel was apparently crashing in was a dump. Unsafe too. Leave it to her to do something so idiotic.
Stop being an asshole. You don’t even know the girl.
I couldn’t shake off the fact that she was connected to Charlie, even though I knew Big Paw was right. So I went ahead and swallowed my pride, pulled up to the shed, and knocked on the door.
I heard someone shuffling around for a minute before it went silent. I cocked an eyebrow. “Hello?” I called out. More quiet shuffling. I knocked on the door. “Open up, Stone. I know you’re in there.”
More silence. Less movement.
A weighted sigh rolled through me as I flung open the door and saw Hazel sitting up against the far corner of the shed with those wide green eyes of hers. She looked as if I were coming to attack her, which was all the more reason that she shouldn’t have been staying in the damn shed. She was lucky it was me walking in on her as opposed to some town drunk crossing her path.
“Wh-what are you do-doing here?” Hazel asked, her voice shaky.
“What am I doing here?” I shone my phone light in her direction. “No. What in the goddamn hell are you doing in here?”
She got to her feet and blinked her eyes a few times. I hadn’t a clue what she’d been up to, but her hair was dripping wet, as if she’d just taken a shower. A few of her clothing pieces hung on the shelves, including her cotton panties, which had unicorns printed on them. She hurried over and snatched the panties from the shelf and shoved them behind her back.
“You’re living in here?”
“No!” she quickly replied.
I cocked a brow. “You’re living in here,” I repeated, this time as a statement.
She sighed. “Only temporarily.”
“You can’t live in this shed.”
“Why not?” she asked. “It’s not like anyone was using it.”
I groaned. “That’s not the point. The point is you can’t live in a damn shed like an animal. Half the roof is missing, Hazel!”
“I like to look at the stars.”
“It’s drafty at night.”
“I like the breeze.”
“Are you always this stubborn?”
“Are you always this bossy?” she countered, and holy shit, I couldn’t imagine living with someone as annoying as that girl right there.
“I’m only bossy to people who act like children.”
“I’m not acting like a child. I’m acting like a person who needed a place to stay for a little while.”
“Yeah, well, you can’t live here,” I said matter-of-factly. “This isn’t a home. It’s a broken-down shed. On private property, may I remind you. You can’t be a squatter here.”
For a split second, the hard exterior of Hazel cracked, and I saw a flash of worry race through her. The hard shell that she wore on the daily was to protect her from getting hurt, and in that split second, I saw her truths slip out through her eyes.
Shit. Maybe we had more in common than I thought.
My hard shell was made of the same material.
“You’ll stay at my house,” I said with a stern voice. I crossed my arms and nodded once. “You can take the spare room.”
“There’s no way I’m living with you!” she gasped, surprised that I was even offering her a way out of the shed.
“Hell yeah, there is. You can’t fucking stay here, Hazel. It’s stupid and not safe. I have a free room. Take it.”
“I don’t need your handout.”
“Says the girl literally living in a shed.”
“I hate when people say the word literally. It’s a stupid word that people use when they can’t come up with a better phrase.”
“Literally, literally, literally,” I blurted out. I gestured toward her garbage bags of things. “Grab your unicorn undies, and let’s go.”
“I know you’re probably used to women dropping everything to give in to your demands, but I’m not one of those girls. I said no, and I meant no. I am not going to take a handout from you. I don’t want or need your help.”
What in the goddamn hell was the matter with this girl? She was being offered a place to stay for free and turning it down b
ecause of her goddamn pride? How was I supposed to do what Big Paw wanted if she wasn’t willing to budge an inch? I’d never met such a stubborn woman in my life.
“You know what? Screw it. Fine. Stay out here with your creepy-crawlies and rodents. I’m not going to waste my time on someone who is choosing to suffer. Have at it.”
5
HAZEL
Ian left in a huff, cursing under his breath as he slammed the shed door shut. The whole space shook, and I swallowed down the knot that formed in my throat.
Jeez. That man sure knew how to make me feel uneasy. I was so confused by the whole interaction between us. It was as if he was still his rude, grumpy self but also . . . nice? Offering someone a place to stay seemed nice, but I couldn’t help but think that it came with strings attached. I’d vowed to never take something from a man. That way he’d never be able to hold it over my head. For years I’d watched Charlie throw in our faces the fact that Mama and I lived in his house. Ate his food. Slept in his beds. Nothing we had was our own, and I hated how he used that against us, making it seem like we were worthless without him.
From here on out, whatever I had, I’d get on my own.
Well, except for the shed I was squatting in. I’d have to pay Big Paw back somehow for the time I was spending in Betsy.
Yup. That was right. I’d named the shed Betsy. And boy, oh boy, if those walls could talk, I bet they’d have a lot of stories to tell.
Christ. I was getting so lonely that not only was I making friends with horses, I was making friends with objects.
I needed to stop being a loner as soon as possible.
I hadn’t always been this way—lonely. When I was younger, I’d had a best friend named Riley—not a horse or a shed. An actual living, breathing person. Riley was the daughter of one of Charlie’s clients. Sometimes they’d come over to the house for business, and the adults would kick us girls out into the backyard to get us out of their hair. Some days during those times, Riley and I would pretend we were witches and created magical potions to take us to magical worlds. Other times, we’d pretend we were an all-girls band, and we’d make up our own lyrics and sing to the squirrels.
Riley was so good for me. She was my best friend and the first person to make me feel as if I belonged in Eres. When her father finally got clean and moved away, Riley wrote me for a bit of time, but the letters began getting shorter and shorter until they completely stopped. I supposed she’d found a world outside of Eres, and I couldn’t fault her for it. Once I got away, I wasn’t planning on ever looking back either.
One in a million.
That was what Riley’s friendship was to me. I’d never made that connection with anyone else, and it broke my heart to think that a friendship like hers was a one-in-a-million type of situation.
I was certain I’d never find that level of connection with another again—besides Garrett. But to be honest, what Garrett and I had wasn’t a friendship. Sure, we’d dated for a while, but we didn’t talk about things. We’d mostly just make out, and I’d watch him get high and play video games for hours. Nothing to write a love story about.
So that left me with talking to walls and hoping that the wood was thick enough to hold all my secrets.
When I woke the next morning, I walked out of the shed and found a basket filled with a few goodies. Bottles of water, a toothbrush and toothpaste, a box of cold cereal, and a small jug of milk with a spoon and a bowl. Beside that was a twin-size air mattress with a set of sheets and a comforter.
There was also a note that read:
If you want to be stubborn, then be stubborn.
But don’t sleep on that damn floor without a bed.
—Ian
PS: Stop being a fool and take the fucking spare bedroom.
Never in a million years had I thought it would be Ian Parker who saved me during some of the hardest days of my life.
I had a bit of free time before I had to head into the stables that morning. I sat cross-legged on the inflatable bed eating a bowl of cold cereal while I wrote in my journal. I’d been writing every day of my life since I was eight years old. I used to write spells and other stupid kid stuff in the books with Riley, but over time it had just become a collection of things on my mind. Poetry and prose. My hopes, wishes, and dreams were all in one place.
One of my biggest dreams was getting into college. It was my dream to achieve a life the complete opposite of the one I was raised in, and college seemed like the first step to that future. I was going to do everything in my power to make that dream come true too.
I can’t become my mother. I can’t become my mother.
I didn’t want to turn into the person my mother had become. I wanted more. I wanted to get away so bad that my bones ached from the idea of staying in Eres forever. If I stayed, there was a chance I’d end up as sad and depressed as my mother was, in a relationship with a man who had no respect or love for me, losing every shot at living that was brought my way.
As I wrote in my journal, I thought about Ian. The grumpy boy who’d given me a bed. I couldn’t help but wonder what his angle was or why he was helping me. Truthfully, I was a bit surprised he hadn’t kicked me out of the shed and fired me on the spot when he’d found me squatting. I knew he’d been looking for a reason to let me go, and trespassing seemed like a stellar reason to send me packing.
During the day at work, Ian didn’t sass me like he usually did. He didn’t push me harder than he pushed the others and didn’t scold me for mediocre work. What was his deal? Why was he not treating me the way he had been for the past few weeks? Ian Parker went out of his way to make me feel terrible, but now, if I didn’t know any better, it seemed as if he was being . . . nice. No, not nice. That would be ridiculous. But he was being much tamer than usual. It made me both pleased and uncomfortable. It was a warning sign when someone went from cold to hot so quickly.
I tried my best to not overthink his shift, even though it was so blatantly obvious that a change had occurred.
That night, on the blow-up mattress, I fell asleep after spending hours looking up at the stars, and my back didn’t hate me come morning.
The next day, I woke to the sound of hammering outside the shed.
I hurried outside and found Ian standing at the top of a ladder, placing planks of wood on the roof to cover up the giant hole.
“What are you doing?” I asked, confused by his fixing the rooftop and a bit dazed by the fact that he was shirtless. His body was sculpted by the gods, and seeing him shirtless made chills race throughout my body, even though I didn’t find him attractive in the least.
Nope, not at all.
So ugly, Ian Parker.
The lies we told ourselves to keep from being turned on by men we were supposed to hate.
“What does it look like? I’m fixing the roof.”
“You don’t have to do that for me.”
“Who said I’m doing it for you? I’m in charge of this ranch, and it’s my job to do tasks,” he said with sweat dripping down his chest, and oh my gosh, how was watching a man sweat an instant turn-on?
I’d been single for most of my life, minus my mundane, passion-free relationship with Garrett, and obviously I’d passed the deadline where you got turned on by extremely awkward things, like sweaty men. What was next? Was Ian going to lick an ice cream cone, and I’d moan while watching him?
Chill out, hormones. We’ll watch a Chris Hemsworth movie soon enough and get all these feelings out.
Ian kept doing things like that. Fixing up the shed. Moving things around. Leaving food and supplies outside the door. I couldn’t keep up with him helping me, and every time I called him out on it, he’d make it clear as day with his Grumpy McGrump butt that he wasn’t doing it to help me at all. Whenever I felt like saying thank you to him, he’d say something catty and rude, which would turn my thank you into a fuck you.
Being around Ian was a weird thing. I’d never met an individual who was both hot and cold, all
within two minutes. He was confusing for my brain, and I felt as if I were going into overdrive trying to keep up with his mood swings.
When payday came, I knew exactly where the first part of my check was going to go.
“What is this?” Ian asked as I handed him one hundred dollars.
“Money.”
He grumbled and rolled his eyes. “I know it’s money, but why are you giving it to me?”
“It’s for the stuff you’ve been leaving outside of the shed for me. I don’t take handouts and wanted to pay you for it all. I’m not sure how much the blow-up mattress cost you, so if you need more, let me know.”
“I didn’t give it to you in hopes of being paid back. I figured you didn’t have enough to get yourself that stuff, seeing as how you were sleeping on that beat-up rug.”
“Well, now that I got my paycheck, I’m able to give you the money for it.”
“I don’t want your money.”
“And I didn’t want your help, but here we are.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Why can’t you take people helping you?”
“Because I know that they can throw it in your face down the road.”
“Have you honestly been burned that bad?”
I swallowed hard, and my silence was his answer.
He narrowed his eyes and looked at me—and I mean really looked at me. He stared as if he was trying to uncover my secrets, and I looked at him the same way, as if I could tap into the words Ian often felt and never showcased. He might’ve been a grumpy man, but that anger came from some source, and I couldn’t help but wonder where exactly. What root of past struggles fed his grumpiness? Who or what had made him that way?
And why in the hell were women attracted to him at all?
I couldn’t ever imagine being intimate with someone as cold as Ian. There couldn’t have been any heart in their interactions—he didn’t seem the type to give too much of himself to anyone.
Then again, being intimate with him would mean he was shirtless, and that wasn’t such an awful idea to me.
“Listen, it’s supposed to downpour over the next few days. You can’t stay in that shitty shed. Even with me fixing up the roof, it’s still not sturdy. Everything you own will get ruined, and you’ll probably get real sick. Just take the room at my place. I’ll even stay somewhere else if you’re uncomfortable with me being there.”
The Wreckage of Us Page 5
