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CHAPTER1
NICOLE
Nicole flung herself onto the couch in her sweatpants and pajama shirt, hair still dripping wet and every muscle in her back and shoulders aching. She was used to hard work — her entire life had involved physical labor, like that of every other kid who grew up on a farm, hauling around hay bales or clambering around in the back of trucks with questionable safety standards. But now that she was running the place with her brother, the physical toll had skyrocketed.
She couldn’t even be bothered to grab the TV remote resting a foot to her left and turn on the television. That would require energy and hand–eye coordination, and Nicole had run out of both of those things. She’d rather sit staring at the blank screen in silence than move her hand another few inches. After standing under a scalding-hot shower till her skin was red, her muscles now felt like jelly, melting into the couch — and that was where she intended to stay for the foreseeable future. She doubted whether there were any bones left in her body at all. You could probably fold her up like origami, into a neat little Nicole puzzle.
Green Acres Farm had been in the Brooke family for four generations, Nicole and her brother Scott being the fourth. Their dad had built it up into what it was currently: a small but efficient dairy farm with a hundred head of cattle. They couldn’t keep up with the supermarkets, it wasn’t even worth trying to do that, so Adam Brooke had shifted gear and focused on providing fancy organic milk products, processed on-site and selling it on to rich folks who cared about things like the cows being grass-fed. But it was days like today that it was hard. Hard to get up out of bed, hard to get going, hard tokeepgoing… The only thing that kept her going at all was the fact that her dad was no longer here to run it himself and she was the oldest so it had fallen to her. She wasn’t going to let the place fail not even two years after he had died. She refused.
And besides, if her dad could do it all, then Nicole could run the place just fine. And she wasn’t alone, either; she had Scott to help her. They ran it together as a team, which came in handy seeing as she was barely over five feet tall in her boots and always got told that she was never eating enough even though she could put away a dinner meant for five full grown men without breaking a sweat. Having blond hair and blue eyes didn’t help all that much either, not when she’d go to farmers’ markets or supply stores and have the old-school ranchers dismiss her within half a second. She was twenty-eight and got treated like a twelve-year-old more often than not.What’s a pretty little thing like you doing in a place like this?was the general consensus.
Having to offset how she looked had led to some of her less-than-admirable qualities… She could curse better than any sailor when she wanted to, and if words weren’t enough she could produce a sneer that would turn a man’s blood cold. Nicole was loud, her voice able to carry over the sound of a herd of cattle, and she could shoot a bullseye with any firearm at a hundred paces or more — not that that particular skill came in handy on a dairy farm all that much, but still, it was a neat party trick.
Even without the physical effort the job took, it was exhausting purely because it wasn’t enough to beas goodasthe men; she had to be better. It was only then that they shut up and started paying attention.
Nicole, getting some feeling back in her bones, managed to flop down on her side, resting her face against the couch cushion with a deep sigh. She needed to stop thinking about this stuff, the thoughts going round and round her head like a morbid little carousel. Worrying over it all didn’t help any; all it did was stress her out more than she already was.
She could do the work, most of it anyway, so what did it matter what everyone else thought?
She certainly didn’t need to think about how it had taken its toll on her dad in the end; how he had been found by the gate of one of the fields, dead before anything could even be done for him. The coroner had said it was a stroke, instant and painless. That was the only silver lining Nicole had ever been able to find in the whole situation — that one second he’d been looking out at the herd, ready to do another day’s work out under the open sky, and then nothing. He wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
But the place still needed to be run, the cows milked, calving season prepared for, the milk processed and sold and then the whole thing over again. So she got up at dawn, worked all day and collapsed into bed in the evening. Then she got up and did it all again the next day and the day after that. She was just being sulky because it was winter and the cold always made things ten times worse.
Footsteps thunked down the stairs and through into the living room. Nicole didn’t bother moving, just flicking her eyes up at Scott as he came in and sat down in the armchair opposite her. He looked tired. But they both always looked tired — name one farmer who looked well rested. They would be a bad farmer.
“Hey,” he said, fidgeting with his hands, lacing and unlacing his long fingers.
“Hey?” Scott had been acting weird all day, not really talking, just mumbling responses and then wandering off to work on his own. He was the little brother so Nicole hadn’t really thought much of it; it was just like being twelve again, having to deal with a surly eight-year-old who didn’t want to share with you. But now… now Nicole was starting to think something was wrong.
“You okay?” she asked, still lying sideways on the couch. His sandy-blond hair, the same exact shade as her own, was hanging into his face obscuring his eyes, so she couldn’t read his expression. But his shoulders were hunched over and his fingers kept up their relentless fidgeting.
“Uh, yeah, but I need to talk to you. And you need to not be mad.”
Great. Well, this was great. Nicole sighed and braced herself for whatever bad news was about to be sprung on her.
“Did you get another speeding ticket?” she asked, because that’s what Scott’s confessionals usually revolved around — traffic accidents or fines.
“No, Nicole, it’s not about a ticket or anything.”
He finally looked at her, brushing his hair off his face and giving her an apologetic look from across the room.
“What’s with the face?” she said, sitting up on the couch to look at him properly. “You look like you’re going to ask me to help you hide a body or something.”
Scott didn’t answer, just hung his head a little more, staring at his hands as he picked at the edges of his fingernails.
A strange, cold feeling slid into Nicole’s gut. She’d received enough bad news in her life that she could tell when something was serious or not. Whatever Scott wanted to tell her, it wasn’t about a piece of equipment blowing up or the herd getting loose. Why couldn’t it just be a speeding ticket again?
For a moment she wished there was a big pause button that she could press, something to make whatever was going to happen hold off for just a little bit longer. But like every other time something devastating was just around the corner, she felt it speeding towards her with the force of a train.
“Scott,” she said, her voice smooth and calm, because what was the point of making it worse by getting wound up? “Just say it. Okay? What is it?”
Her little brother took a deep breath and looked her in the eye as he told her. “I… well, I’m moving to Nashville.”
He opened his hands up, palms out, as if that was all the explanation he needed to give. Nicole wasn’t entirely sure what sheshouldbe feeling in this instant, but mostly she just felt confusion. She’d been so prepared for him to say he’d found some sort of lump or a funny-colored mole on his person that amovingannouncement was making her mentally backtrack a bit.
“What?” she asked, feeling like she was tumbling through some sort of alternate reality. “What do you mean you’re moving to Nashville?”
“I mean that…” He licked his lips, steeled himself, and kept on going. “I mean that I applied for a new job, and I’m moving to Nashville because I’ve accepted the offer.”
