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In the moment, I fully understood why anyone would sell their soul to the devil.
I would have signed in blood right then and there.
26
There's a Snake in My Boot
JAKE
I’d had a lot of long nights, but none like this.
For the first time in weeks, I slept in my own bed, alone. If the loss of her next to me wasn’t enough to keep me awake, it would have been the replay of our fight in my mind.
I couldn’t make it stop.
Bowie jumped on the bed when he heard me stir from the thin sleep I’d managed. He charged for my face like a rocket, tongue first. Just when I wrangled him, he wiggled out of my arms, returning with a stuffed turkey leg. So I did as he’d asked—I took it, chucked it, and listened to him scramble off in its direction.
In my rib cage sat a cinder block, crushing my heart and lungs, radiating pain in thudding waves with every aching heartbeat. Everything was wrong. Olivia not being here. The things I’d said and the things she’d said back. The cattle. The farm. Frank’s absence.
Frank would have known what to do. But I wasn’t half the man he was. I had no idea how to handle what had been dumped in my lap, not until we had answers. I didn’t know what to do about my suspicions about Chase, either. My instinct was confrontation, one I’d also spent some time fantasizing about. Many scenarios played out in my mind that involved my fist and Chase’s ocular cavity. His nose was also a hit in the fantasy reel—I knew the sight of his broken nose and the bottom half of his face covered in gore would satisfy many, many things in me.
I’d settle for a confession, but that was about as likely as successfully fitting bicycle tires on a tractor.
Or me apologizing to Olivia.
My Olivia. Deep down, I knew she was trying to help, trying to be reasonable. She was looking for solutions. But she was sniffing around in the very last place she should.
How it was even possible that she could consider it was beyond me. Endlessly, she’d ignored my warnings.
Even after I told her what they’d done to me, to the farm. To Frank.
What she’d suggested was unforgivable. That she thought for one second that I’d ever comply was unconscionable. One thing was unmentionable, just one—the Pattons. But over and again, she’d pushed me in that direction, knowing I’d only dig in my heels and push back.
And then there was the matter of her lie. She’d known for weeks that Patton was actively after us and hadn’t told me. The only reasons I could figure were that she either had feelings for Chase or she didn’t trust me.
I didn’t want to walk away from her. I didn’t want to be anywhere she wasn’t. I’d been cruel to her, said things I shouldn’t have, things I didn’t mean. The last thing I wanted was for her to leave here. To leave me.
But I’d thought she understood how deep the division between our farms ran until she disregarded what I’d said and felt, called me stubborn as if this were just a matter of me being obstinate. And my wound was so deep, I couldn’t see her. Not right now. I couldn’t keep having the same conversation, the same fight. I was too tired, and there was too much at stake.
And so, it was what it was.
I flipped back my covers and got out of bed, making my way to the kitchen with Bowie nipping my ankles, his turkey leg abandoned in the threshold of my room. He was as bad as a toddler—his toys were strewn around the house, pulled from their basket and distributed evenly across the square footage. In the kitchen was a tennis ball, which I threw into the living room in order to buy myself a second to make coffee.
Today would be another whirl. Alice had been quarantined with the other cattle and checked out by Miguel. We’d ended yesterday with a total of thirty-two cows dead and no end in sight.
It was all too much.
Regardless of what Olivia said or did, the Pattons were the only people who would go to such great lengths to burn us down. It was true—I had no proof. But it was time for a reckoning. Even if I couldn’t shake anything out of Chase, I’d feel twenty pounds lighter if I could unload it all on him. If I didn’t do it soon, I was likely to explode, and what would the farm do with me in globs and pieces all over the barn?
But before I dealt with Chase, I needed to deal with the farm’s rounds.
I pulled on clothes while I waited for my coffee, pouring it into my Thermos when it was through. Stomped my feet into my boots and headed for the barn with the jingle of Bowie’s collar behind me.
