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“Dad.” Grabbing another handful of steaks, I line them up on the freezer paper and start to wrap them.
“Son, your mom and I are glad you’re finally home to stay, but you need to start making plans for the future and being serious about them. You need to quit joking around about everything.”
“Right.” I don’t look up at any of them. The joking tone of the room has effectively been dragged down. Like usual when Dad comes in. I know they don’t want me to be lonely for the rest of my life—Mom especially—but it pisses me off that they can’t accept the joking side of me.
Mom and I already had a long talk about things this morning when I was helping with breakfast. She and Dad, who won’t say a word, just want me to find a good woman and give her more grandkids.
Dinner is finished just as we start to pile up the deep freezer full of the meat we wrapped. Talk is light around the table, per usual with my dad, and cleanup comes just as quickly.
Once I get away from any other chores there might be, I head outside to my truck and take off for town. I know my family only wants the best for me, but I think I know what would be best.
At first, I don’t have a set destination, just point toward town and drive. I’m not in the mood to head over to Patience and Duke’s to bring down their mood as well. They’re about to welcome their kid into the world. I don’t want to feel like the third wheel either.
I don’t know where I’m going until I find myself in the parking lot of Grizzly’s, a local bar. I sit in my truck, keeping the engine running for a few minutes before I decide to cut it. “Fuck it.”
What would it hurt to go in and see some familiar faces and maybe a few new ones?
When I walk in, the usual country music plays through the speakers. For a weeknight, it’s pretty full. After I order a drink, I turn around and take in all the people. I recognize a few people as regulars from when I was in here the last time.
Back then, I was ordering pop or water instead of alcohol.
I don’t feel like a kid anymore. In fact, as I look around, I feel old. None of the women in here are close to my age, and if they were, they’re already come attached to a man.
I take my time drinking my beer and catching up with a few people who stop by to talk, but when I’m done, I’m ready to head home.
When did this happen? When did going to the place that always made me feel like an adult and used to be so exciting change to a placed filled with younger people? And where the hell is Holt? Doesn’t he run the bar now that he’s home for good with his own girl?
“I should have gone out hunting instead.”
Chapter Six
Angelica
“Goodbye, Chase.” I wave over my head as I once again try to escape the man from my past. Like yesterday, there isn’t a single flare of recognition in his handsome honey-colored eyes.
It makes my anger ebb just below the surface of my self-control. He has seen me every weekday for an entire school year in our shared math class, so there should be some detection there but nothing.
Instead, I was eyed like a piece of meat hanging in a processing plant waiting for the FDA seal of approval. But unlike hanging in a giant-ass freezer, I’m boiling with inner rage.
How am I now worth the attention of his lustful eyes? What makes me so different from the girl I once was who wasn’t worth the time to look me over unless it was to help him with his homework?
Once more, Ridge accompanied me to the parking lot, where his overzealous uncle waited, leaning against his truck. I was too late to tuck tail and run away, so I held my head high as I walked straight into the player’s clutches.
And just as soon as I deposited Ridge in Chase’s care, I turned away to see to the rest of the students.
If I were only so lucky.
He reached out to touch me while Ridge climbed into the truck, and hundreds of millions of sensations ran up from my wrist where he grabbed me, going from my brain straight down to my heart and somewhere else I don’t want to focus on.
Can’t he just leave me alone?
I’m sent back to the last time he touched me like this. The last row in the high school library when I attempted to flee his confusing attention, the whispered words he spoke with such conviction my young heart fell for each of them, and for the power I felt when his flesh grazed against mine. His lips had ever so briefly brushed past my untrained ones.
Not so gently, I shake the memory from my head and refuse to turn around to give him any satisfaction my attention will grant him.
“Can you at least tell me why you aren’t interested in me?” I’m astonished by how unaware he is of our linked past.
My hair fans around me, temporarily blocking my vision as I whip around to glare at him. “Where should I begin?” The wrath in my voice causes him to take a step back and release his hold on me.
