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“Doe.” My voice was raspy with emotion, but her gaze didn’t so much as flicker in my direction. “Little lamb—”
“I think we should break up.”
My heart stopped, causing the blood in my veins to turn to ice. All I could see was the side of her face. A tear spilled down her cheek, but from the set of her chin, I had no doubt that she wasn’t playing with me.
“I’m going to move back to the farm. Luckily, everything is already packed, so I’ll send a few of the farmhands to pick up my stuff.” She tightened her arms around herself, and another tear dripped off the tip of her lashes.
“No, stop it. Talk to me about this.” I grasped her elbow and gently pulled until her hand was in mine. Her fingers were cold as ice even though the temperature outside was above average for a spring day in Nashville. “You’re going to just walk away without even attempting to work this out?”
Slowly, she shifted her head. “You already have everything worked out, Jenner. You’ve got your new job and a house right beside two of the most upstanding families of West Bridge, Tennessee. Your future is already laid out, and I’m sure from where you are standing, it looks promising. But from here, I can’t see where I could possibly fit into this new life you’ve chosen for yourself. Not once did you pause and ask me if I was okay with you becoming a cop. You didn’t hesitate to buy a house you expected me to live in that was right between two families who’ve shunned me if they saw me at the grocery store or simply walking down Main Street. Grown women who’ve whispered about me just loud enough for me to hear the nasty things they were saying as I passed them. Calling me inbred and Godzilla. Cackling like the witches they are about how the Niall farm had so many cows because I probably ate an entire steer for dinner each night. Old men who looked at me like I had two heads whenever I helped load fifty-pound bags of grain from the feed store.”
“What?” I had to work hard to keep my voice from rising at this new information. “They were mean to you?”
“Everyone but a very few people in West Bridge has always been horrible to me.”
“Baby, why didn’t you say something? I know about Courtney and the bullies in school, but—”
“Because it was embarrassing!” She scrubbed her free hand across her cheeks, wiping away tears that were quickly replaced by more as they dropped freely from her pretty eyes. “Who wants to admit that nearly every single person in their hometown seems to take pleasure in making nasty, snide comments about them?” She released a dry, pained laugh. “And they knew I would never say a word about it, because I refused to be the reason my parents suddenly developed feuds with people they had grown up with. Or risk my brothers doing anything to get themselves in trouble with the law and ruining their futures. I put on a smile and pretended that what people said about me behind my back didn’t bother me, when the entire time, all I could think about was one day moving out of this stupid hick town.”
“You should have told me. I would have—”
“You know, I’ve had to put up with a lot of people walking over me my entire life. The adults in West Bridge. The bullies at school. Sometimes, even my own family. Although I’m not sure they realized what they were doing.” Those glittery, tear-filled eyes looked up at me with so much pain, it pushed the air from my body. “But I never thought you would do it too. It never once entered my mind that you would trample all over my feelings and make me feel like I wasn’t worthy of being with you.”
“Doe, baby, please listen,” I begged. “I didn’t mean for any of this to turn out the way it has. Hurting you was the last thing I would ever want to do. If I ever do it again in the future, you have to speak up. To me or anyone else who makes you feel less than you are. Because, little lamb, you are everything. We don’t have to live in West Bridge. We can go anywhere you want. I have money saved. I can buy us another house. Anywhere you want, in any state. Fuck, any country you want. Let’s go back to the apartment and grab the boxes and just leave. Right now.”
A small, pained sound left her. “It doesn’t matter anymore. I love being close to my parents. The farm is mine, Jenner. I’m the one who takes care of it now that my dad has basically retired. The foreman answers to me. It’s where I’ve always been the most at ease—except for when I was beside you.” She shrugged. “That’s why moving away was just a passing thought. I had my parents, the animals, a few honorary family members who lived just a few miles away in either direction. And you. I had you, and life was perfect.”
Teas burned my throat, stinging my eyes as they filled them, making it hard to see her. “You still have me.”
“No, you stopped being mine the moment you started making decisions about our future without including me.”
“I made a mistake. More than one. I’ll own that. Give me five minutes, and I’ll rectify it all.” I grabbed my phone from my slacks pocket with my free hand while still clinging to her with the other. “Just… I just need to make a few phone calls. We can start this entire day over. I’ll tell Stafford and Teller they have to find someone else for the job. I’ll call a real estate agent and put the house back on the market. We can…”
My fingers shook as I flipped through my contacts, unable to read any of the names. Ah, fuck. I needed to see so I could call the mayor and the ex-police chief and tell them to find someone else. I couldn’t lose my little lamb over something as unimportant as a job, damn it. “We’ll move wherever you want. Buy a farm of our own. You’ll be able to choose everything. Where we live, the house, where I work.”
She grabbed my phone out my hand and angrily tossed it into the front seat. “Keep the job and the house you already have. I won’t be the reason you give up two things you wanted so badly that you forgot all about me.”
“I didn’t forget about you!” I exploded in frustration, the tears spilling over, making it hard to breathe. To fucking speak. “You were the reason I wanted the house and the job, damn it. They were for us. For our future.”
“There was nothing ‘our’ about any of it, Jenner. They were your choices.” Jerking her hand out of mine, she reached for the door handle, and I struggled to find the words to stop her.
Before she opened it, she paused, causing my heart to lift with hope that she would give me a chance to correct the shit I’d inadvertently fucked up. Taking a deep, steadying breath, she destroyed me when she whispered, “I’ll have all my things out of the apartment by tonight.”
Chapter 4
Doe
After I tripped over a crack in the sidewalk for the third time, I stopped and pulled off the ridiculous heels. Going barefoot on the streets of Nashville was a safer bet than breaking my neck in the shoes I’d been pushed into wearing.
Tears poured down my face as I looked down at the stiletto heels in disgust. I had no idea where I was going, but I knew I couldn’t return to the restaurant. I’d already embarrassed myself enough in front of my entire family for one day. How I was going to face any of them now, even my own parents, I didn’t have a clue.
Angrily, I tossed the shoes into a trash bin as I passed it. I didn’t know who I was more upset with. Jenner, my parents, or myself.
How could my mom and dad just go behind my back and help Jenner like that? It was as if they didn’t even know me. They’d helped him find a job and, no doubt, the house he’d bought. But there was no way they could have thought I would be on board with any of it…
Then again, they had been known to run over top of me more than once throughout my life. I didn’t know if they realized what they were doing, or if they just thought they were helping. Maybe Dad thought he was protecting me. He could be a little overzealous about that. But this… All of this was too much.
I was an adult, whether they wanted to see it or not. The worst part was, they never did shit like this when it came to my brothers. They never interfered with those three. When the boys decided to go to Arkansas for college so they could play baseball together, my parents had been overjoyed. They were states away, rarely came home even on breaks, but Mom and Dad didn’t try to run their lives.
