“Being twenty-one,” he slurred.
“It feels just the same,” I said. “Sorry to disappoint you.”
“Oh, come on now, kid, you are hardly a disappointment,” he murmured quietly, his gaze locked on mine. I tried to look away, but this was the first time he had ever looked at me like that. I’d seen him give other girls that look, but never me. I couldn’t tear my eyes away.
“Men will look at you differently now,” Lora’s words echoed in my mind.
I swallowed hard, and took a deep breath. Lee reached up and pushed a strand of hair behind my ear.
“Well, you look a little different to me,” he stepped back and trailed those sexy smoldering eyes up and down my body. I wasn’t dressed up at all, in fact, I had just thrown on a t-shirt and jeans, but I was suddenly wishing I had put more thought into my appearance. “You look good, George. Real good.”
“Thanks,” I muttered, confusion beginning to set in. This was Lee. Lee Haggard. Someone I had known all my life, and now he was looking at me like this? Like…like I was a woman?
My heart sped up, and I bit my lip and tore my gaze away from his, thankful that I had managed to find the strength to do that. I was just being ridiculous, I thought. It was the beers. I was seeing something that wasn’t there.
My head was swimming with confusion when I looked back up at him. His lips landed on mine and I froze. He tasted like beer, but I guess I did, too. He began moving his mouth, kissing me hard, and instead of kissing back, I was motionless while my mind was spinning, trying to process what was happening, and how I was supposed to react.
This was Lee!
And that was Lee’s mouth. On mine!
What harm would one kiss do? It’s not like I hadn’t been kissed before.
I softened and began kissing him back, his warm, wet lips so strange against mine. He put his arms around me, pulling me in closer to his hard, muscular body. But he was kissing me too hard, so hard it hurt. When I felt his hand squeeze my breast roughly, I opened my eyes in shock.
What was he doing? I wondered.
“No, Lee,” I said, pulling away and grabbing his hand with mine and pulling it away from my chest.
“What do you mean, no?” he snarled, pushing me against the wall and smashing his lips into mine again. I struggled against him, trying to push him off but he was twice my size, and he didn’t budge.
“Stop!” I said, tearing my lips away from his. “Please! Lee!”
His hand snaked under my shirt, grabbed hold of my bra and pulled hard until I heard the cloth rip and tear away from my body. His hand fell over my right breast again, squeezing hard.
I cried out as he began kissing my neck, his body pressing me against the wall so hard I couldn’t move.
“Lee, please, stop,” I cried. “You’re drunk, please…”
“No, Georgie,” he slurred, “I’ve been waiting a long time for this.”
“Lee, no!” I pushed up against him, but the weight of his body had me pinned securely to the wall. When he pushed my shirt up and engulfed my nipple with his mouth, hot, wet tears began falling down my face.
CHAPTER FIVE
GOLDIE AND WARD
“I can’t see the Haggard’s car behind us with all these balloons,” Ward said, as he maneuvered the car down the winding back roads that led back to the farm.
“Well, they really helped make everything festive, Ward,” Goldie said. “I wanted things to be special for George. You only turn twenty-one once.”
“I know, sweetie,” Ward said, squeezing his wife’s knee. “It’s not a big deal.”
Goldie put her hand over her husband’s, feeling a wave of gratitude wash over her. Her life was perfect. She had never dreamed she would be so blessed. Life as a child had been rough for her, stricken with poverty and the abuse that seemed to almost always come with it. But now, she had Ward and all the kids, and they had made a wonderful life for themselves. Now, the kids were all grown up and everything they had taught them over the years would pay off.
“I’m so excited for our trip to Hawaii,” Goldie said. The sky had fallen dark now and she stared up at the stars. “I bet you can see millions of stars there.”
“It’s going to be great, babe. As soon as the preliminaries are over, I’m all yours,” Ward replied. They had been planning this trip for months. “Even if you are making me go to Hawaii. I would have much preferred Montana, something a little more…country.” Ward and Crit had been bull riders for years, and Crit and Beau were competing in the Sugar Hill Round-up that was coming up next week. If they won, as was predicted, then they would advance to the finals, to the Texas State Championships in Houston in a few months.
“I’m making you go to paradise, and you’re complaining?” Goldie asked teasingly.
Ward looked over at his wife lovingly. All these years together, and she was still the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on.
“It’s always paradise when I’m with you, my love,” he said, winking at her before turning his attention back to the road.
But it was too late. It was too late to swerve and miss the semi-truck that passed over into their lane. They didn’t even see it until its bright headlights were shining down on them.
When it was all over, their car lay torn to pieces, lying upside down in a mangled pile of twisted glass and metal, the wheels spinning in the air, as smoke rose from the wreckage.
The Hope’s bodies lay crumpled and lifeless on the bare asphalt.
Rising up into the inky blackness of the night sky, the red balloons peacefully floated towards the bright moon that lit up the devastation below it.
CHAPTER SIX
Georgia
SIX WEEKS LATER
As soon as I opened my eyes, reality came crashing down again. It happened every morning since my parent’s accident, since that awful traumatic night where my entire world changed in an instant.
I sighed and rolled over, putting the pillow over my head and wishing once more that it was all a bad dream. A bad dream that I hadn’t woken up to everyday for the last six weeks.
My brothers and I had numbly stumbled through the days that followed, trying to wrap our heads around losing the two people who managed to make us always feel safe and loved. Our entire foundation was shattered.
Crit was doing his best to hold everything together, and Seth, Jesse and I were doing as much as we could to help. Dad had taught Crit everything about the farm, so at least he knew how to keep the crops alive and keep the business running. I knew it was taking a toll on him, even if he tried to deny it. Crit was like a rock, though. If there was a crack in his armor, you’d never see it.
It was this fact alone that got me out of bed every morning. I was tempted to stay in bed all day every day and wallow in my misery, but I knew Crit needed help. There was so much work to be done, and I knew my parents would be devastated if we let the family business perish.
It was odd how life just kept rolling along after my parent’s death. As if the world didn’t have time to pause for reflection or grief.
After the funeral was over, nothing seemed to change, and yet everything changed. The crops continued to grow and flourish, lushly covering the field behind our house in perfectly growing rows of vegetables and flowers in various stages of life. Soon, it would be harvest time, and after dropping their nutritious life-giving bounty, they too would die off. Only they would have the amazing ability to recreate themselves and live again to produce over and over again.
My parents weren’t so blessed. They were gone. Where to, I wasn’t sure. I had never been one to blindly believe in heaven and hell. My brain processed things in a much more logistical way to enable that line of thinking. As far as I was concerned, nobody truly knew what happened after death, but the ones who were experiencing it. And so far, nobody had returned from the dead to let me in on the secret. I would remain agnostic until then.
Everything that used to seem so important paled in comparison to the trag
edy of them being gone.
For the millionth time, I thought of Lee. It had been so weird seeing him the day of the funeral. I had kept my mouth shut about what happened between us. I had learned about my parent’s accident just hours after I had run into him in the cabin. There was no time, no right time, at least, to tell anyone. And when I finally saw him again at the funeral home, he seemed to not even remember anything. When he hugged me, I clenched up, but he didn’t even seem to notice.
He was drunk, sure. But you’d think he’d remember assaulting me and getting his balls kicked in when I finally came to my senses and stopped crying. It had taken me a second or two, but when I felt his hand start to slide down the front of my jeans, I knew that wasn’t the way I wanted this to go down. I slammed my knee up between his legs, and he fell to the floor gasping for air. I ran to the back bedroom of the cabin, locked the door and changed out of my torn shirt and bra. When I came back out, he and his truck were gone.
I didn’t see him again until he showed up at the funeral home. To be honest, at that point, I hadn’t given him too much thought because I was so overwhelmed with the tragedy of my parent’s deaths. But as time wore on in the last few weeks, he’d been in my thoughts a lot more.
And I was pissed.
I didn’t give a shit that he was drunk, that was no excuse for what he did. But after all this time, I still hadn’t told anyone, and even though I wanted to tell someone, at least Ruby, I still hadn’t found the strength to say the words.
I hadn’t seen him again since the funeral, but that was normal. Lee took off all the time on road trips or visiting friends. He seemed to stay away from his parent’s ranch as much as possible.
I sighed at the irony, and turned over and stared up at the ceiling, all my dreams streaming across my mind like a shattered fairy-tale that I would never get to experience. Moving away was out of the question now. I was tied to the farm now. There were no other choices. I had given up my internship at the sanctuary so I could help out more here. It was the only right thing to do.
A soft knock on my door jarred me from my thoughts.
“Come in,” I said. Crit opened the door and walked in. He sat on my bed, the weight of his strong body sinking into my mattress.
“Hey, kid,” he said. “I made breakfast. You hungry?”
“I don’t know…” I said, my voice trailing off.
“Breakfast is on the stove waiting for you. Seth and Jesse are helping me mend the fence in the lower pasture today. Renegade tried to get out again last night. Managed to get the door of his stall open again and made it all the way to the fence before getting stuck in it. Hank found him this morning.”
“That freakin’ horse is going to kill himself,” I said. Renegade was Dad’s horse. Ever since the accident, he hadn’t been quite right. This was the third time he had tried to escape.
“Yeah, I think he misses Dad,” Crit said softly.
“He’s not the only one,” I replied. My eyes filled with tears, as they had a thousand times since I realized I would never feel my father’s arms around me again. As if reading my thoughts, Crit reached for me, pulling me into a bear hug, his huge biceps almost smothering me. I inhaled his familiar, Earthy scent, and gratitude filled my heart. At least I still had my brothers.
“Are you okay, George? I know this has all been so difficult.”
Lee’s face flashed in my mind again, but I pushed it away.
“I’m okay, I’m getting through it.”
“You know you can talk to me about anything, okay? I’m always going to be here for you, no matter what.”
“I know, Crit. Thank you. What can I do to help you today?” I looked up at him, and was filled with admiration. He had the weight of the world on his shoulders, and he was worried about me. I decided then and there I wouldn’t add to his burden.
“Can you clean the stalls? I’ve already fed the horses for you and put them out in the small pasture. I’d do it but I need to mend this fence pretty quickly. And then, I have to head down to the arena for practice.” The week after the accident, my brother had decided to go ahead and compete, even if Dad wasn’t there. It was what he would have wanted, and Crit and Beau Haggard were the two top winners of the bull riding portion of the Sugar Hill Round-Up Rodeo. Crit had been practicing every free moment since then to get ready for the state championship. Beau, and all the other riders from around the state, were going to provide some fierce competition for him, though. However, Crit had one advantage - he had the biggest heart of any of them, and I just knew he was going to blow them all out of the arena.
“Of course I can,” I replied, smiling at him. “I’ll pay the bills, too, and have dinner ready by six.”
Crit leaned over and kissed me on the forehead.
“You’re a good kid, George.”
“I’m twenty-one, for fuck’s sake.”
“You’ll always be a kid to me, so don’t say ‘fuck’, it ain’t ladylike!”
He stood up, ruffled my hair and walked out of the room.
I laid back in bed, the harsh reality of my life now washing over me. I felt nothing but dread.
“Fuck,” I whispered to the empty room.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Beau Haggard
Being the oldest son comes with a lot of responsibilities. To be honest, it’s kind of a pain in the ass. You’re supposed to be the role model, the strong one, the perfect student. All the while, my dumb ass brother, Lee, gets to be the one to fuck off and get in trouble. I’d say that he gets to be the one having all the fun, but jail and the after-effects of booze and drugs was never all that fun to me.
I knew, because I had learned the hard way. The real fuckin’ hard way. As soon as I started running with the wrong crowd when I turned thirteen, my life plummeted down an ugly spiral of drinking and doing really stupid shit. I shuddered when I thought about it all, still to this day.
It’s been so many years, and I can still see Marisa’s face. We were seventeen, and I’d lost her in a stupid split-second mistake, on an empty back road with a lifted truck and a handle of whiskey. I had made the fateful choice to race a friend and instead of winning, I rolled the truck. I made it. Marisa, my sweet girlfriend, did not.
If it hadn’t been for that whole thing, I’d probably have ended up just like Lee. I’d not been much of a drinker since, to say the least. A few beers here and there, a whiskey or two when I was stressed, but that was it. After the accident, I spent a year in juvie, a small price to pay for Marisa’s life. Once I got out, I stayed on the straight-and-narrow for the most part.
As much as I tried to convince the black-sheep of our family of the existence of greener pastures, the more he resisted. He was as stubborn as a black Angus bull, that fella. Lee wasn’t known for taking advice well. Anything I said to him, he took as a criticism. After a while, I just gave up. He was a grown man now, hell, we all were, and it was time we all took responsibility for ourselves.
Lee was a mess, it’s true. Thankfully, he wasn’t here today, so I didn’t have to deal with his bullshit. He was around less and less often these days. Where he went was anyone’s guess, since he wasn’t too keen on keeping us informed of his whereabouts. But if I had to guess, I’d say he was laid up with a woman somewhere. That was just how he worked. Booze, drugs and women were all he ever seemed interested in.
The thing that pissed me off the most about Lee was that he had no real reason to rebel so hard. These days, he was only fighting against himself, but he had always been like this. It started with getting in fights at school, stealing from the corner gas station, and it just escalated from there. Maybe it was because he was the middle child, and he always thought he was ignored or something. I don’t know.
But what I do know was that Lee Haggard came from a damn good home, with a loving family, and wonderful parents. He had no reason to act like such a fool. He was blessed to have parents like ours. Hell, we both were, but I figured it out pretty quickly.
Not every
one was so lucky.
I thought about the Hope kids as I sat at the kitchen table surrounded by my family. I knew what it felt like to lose someone close to you, but I couldn’t imagine how it would feel to lose your parents.
We had tried to help out as much as possible, with Mom delivering casseroles and Dad volunteering to mow their fields or help out with their crops. Finn was good friends with George, since they had always been in the same class together before she went off to college, so he tried to spend as much time as he could with her.
I tried to help Crit out with the horses, but the truth of the matter was that the Hopes had trained their kids so well in the family business, that they knew everything that needed to be done and exactly how to do it.
As time passed, they needed less and less help. I admired the way Crit stepped up and took charge. He was a good man. His parents would have been proud of him.
It was just as well, anyway. There was more than a little animosity between us. Not only were we competitors, but now our parents had turned into the ones that had survived instead of theirs. It was awkward, to say the least.
Because of all of that, I hated having to compete against Crit in the rodeo so soon after his parent’s death, but that was just how everything fell. There’s something about having a heart full of grief that drives a man to be able to break through any limitations, and Crit did just that. I fully expected him to do it again at State, when I’d have to compete against him once more.
And yet, he had accepted his win with perfect humility and grace. It was hard not to admire the man.
“Finn, I heard you on the phone with George earlier,” my mother said as she passed a platter of biscuits to my little brother.
“Yeah, I’m going over and helping her with her chores today and we’re gonna hang out afterwards,” Finn said. Finn was a quiet boy, sensitive and kind to everyone he met. He was so different from the boisterous and rebellious Lee and I was incredibly grateful for that. Our family couldn’t handle two Lee’s, or two of the younger Beau’s for that matter. We were known as the bad boys of Sugar Hill, much to our chagrin. I was happy Finn saw right through our bullshit and had learned to be kind and respectful.
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