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“What the hell are you doing?” I barked.
Ruth shrieked and turned around, finally noticing me. As she did, her foot banged into a can of paint, knocking it over.
It spilled onto the plastic—and over the edge onto the carpet.
“Son of a bitch,” I yelled, leaping forward to try to rescue the situation. At the same time Ruth gasped and dropped to her knees.
She was trying to shove the paint back into the can with her hand, a completely fucking useless gesture at this point.
“Get out of the way,” I said, shouldering in as I dropped to my knees, trying to grasp the edges of the plastic to lift it, but it was too late. The paint had overflowed onto the carpet in a gush of gray goo.
Ruth’s eyes flashed at me, and at the same time, we both yelled, “Look at what you did!”
“What I did?” I scoffed. “You’re the one painting with an open can of paint right at your feet.”
Her mouth dropped open. “I was doing just fine until you came in and scared the shit out of me.”
“Doing just fine?” I laughed. “You were painting the goddamned walls without painting the ceiling first.”
“What?” she spat. “You don’t paint ceilings.” Then she looked up. And blinked.
“Yeah, you do, genius. What the hell else do you think you do to them?”
“I don’t know.” She looked flustered. “I’ve never painted ceilings before.”
I looked at the splotchy wall. “Because you’ve done so much painting in your life.”
She stood up and backed away, finally. I scooped up the plastic, containing as much of the paint spill disaster as I could.
“Oh, pardon, I was just trying to help your ass out,” she said. “This isn’t even my house anymore.”
I glared up at her, arms full of plastic, paint oozing out onto my shirt as I strode toward the front door. “And thank fucking Christ the tornado took care of that at least.”
“You better run,” she called after me, sounding furious, “otherwise I’d kick you in the balls for saying that!”
I slammed out the front door, startling Reece and Charlie who were still in a cozy tete-a-tete over her phone.
Reece’s eyebrows hit his hairline. “You were only in there like three minutes. How the hell did you two piss each other off that fast?”
2
Ruth
“Why does the man you fell in love with have to be related to that oaf?” I asked as I jammed my truck into drive, spitting gravel as I sped away from the ranch I’d grown up on. Every time I came back here my heart ached because I knew there’d be this moment when I’d have to drive away again.
Because it wasn’t mine anymore. Dad had made sure of that with his gambling and terrible management, driving us into debt so that when he’d died, I’d had no choice but to sell.
Even with the insurance money from the tornado, I’d only finally been able to pay off some more creditors who’d came out of the woodwork at the news of my so-called “big payday.”
Charlie sighed and I felt bad. I knew she was stressed to the max and she didn’t need my petty bullshit with her fiancé’s twin added to it.
“Sorry,” I hurried to say. “Don’t worry, we’ll play nice.”
“I didn’t realize about the ceilings anyway. He shouldn’t have gotten mad at you. I’ll tell Reece to talk to him.”
I waved a hand, eyes on the narrow gravel road leading out of the ranch to the main road. It was dark and deer roamed all about these parts after nightfall. “No, seriously. You’ve got enough on your plate.”
“So do you. I know it was a big ask for you to take on all the wedding planning.”
I shook my head. “Come on. We both know you did me a favor throwing this gig my way.”
“Well, if Mom wants to buy my love by spending sixty thousand dollars on a wedding, it only makes sense to send some of that my best friend’s way.”
I rolled my eyes, glad for the dark. From everything Charlie had told me about her mother, the woman sounded like a piece of work, but it was true enough about the money. And I’d lived in the area long enough to know a lot of vendors, so I was mostly confident I could do the job. Since I’d paid off all Dad’s debt, I was back in good standing with the community at least. People accepted that Dad was a fuck-up, but they’d finally stopped taking it out on me.
And with the money from this and the little bit I’d been able to squirrel aside from the house insurance money, hopefully I’d be able to put a down-payment on a place of my own and really start over.
First, we all just had to survive this wedding.
“So is the carpet for sure ruined?” I asked as we finally pulled onto the backroads that would take us back to Austin and the little apartment we shared there. Charlie didn’t know it yet, but I’d be leaving just a few weeks from now too. I hadn’t renewed the lease after all.
