The corners of his mouth rose slightly. “Thank you, Gunner.”
“Want to join us?” I asked while pointing to the table that now had Jeff, Josh, and two girls I didn’t know sitting there.
Hank glanced at the table. “You should probably warn your friends about those two. I’m sure Kate and Lynn are only looking for a hookup.”
I laughed. “Trust me, those two can handle themselves when it comes to the girls.”
Hank flashed me a knowing smile, and we headed to the table. The rest of the evening was spent with Hank and I talking everything from cattle to John Deere tractors. Jeff and Josh had their fun with Kate and Lynn and quickly dashed their hopes of sex when they both told the girls good night and followed me out to the truck.
“Not interested in them?” I asked, jumping up into my truck.
They both grunted.
“I’ll take that as a no, or they weren’t interested in y’all.”
Jeff let out a gruff laugh. “Oh, trust me, I think all we had to do was give them the okay, and we could have taken them right there at the table.”
Josh laughed.
“So what happened?” I asked.
With a shrug, Josh answered first. “Wasn’t feeling it.”
Jeff nodded, his silent way of saying he wasn’t feeling it either.
The drive back to Grams and Gramps’s house was silent. I was almost positive Jeff and Josh were feeling the same way I was. They were tired of the games and longed for something more. We had one more year of college left, and all I kept thinking about was if this was how it was going to be.
By the time I pulled up to the house, I was wound up from thinking so damn hard. “Y’all want to grab a few beers and head to the barn?”
“Yeah, I’m not the least bit tired.” Jeff said as he pushed the truck door open and got out. His phone went off. and he pulled up the text message. He stopped halfway up the steps and cursed. “Shit.”
“What’s wrong?” Josh asked.
Jeff looked at me, and I knew it had something to do with his mother.
“Ellie’s locked out of the house, and my mother won’t let her in. She can’t get hold of any of her friends.” He pushed his hand through his hair. “Fuck! I kept meaning to give her a key to our place.”
“Do we need to head into Austin to get her?” I asked.
Jeff frowned. “Damn, I hate to do that to y’all. It’s late, and by the time we get there, she might have gotten hold of someone.”
“I don’t mind if Gunner doesn’t.”
I was about to tell Jeff I didn’t mind when his phone rang.
“Ellie, honey, are you okay?”
She was crying, and you could hear what she was saying to Jeff.
“No. She won’t let me into the house, and she’s screaming at me. The neighbors are going to start coming out soon if she doesn’t stop.”
The second I heard her voice over the phone, something weird happened to me. I couldn’t even explain it. An overwhelming sense of desire to rush into Austin and get her hit me from out of nowhere.
“I’m in Mason with Gunner, but we’re heading back.”
“No!” I heard her cry out.
“Ellie, listen to me . . . you’re not going to sit on the front porch of the house all night. Why don’t you go and get a hotel room somewhere; just use the credit card I gave you.”
Josh shook his head and looked at me. Jeff and Ellie’s mother was an alcoholic, and from what Jeff had told us, she had a tendency to take things out on Ellie.
“Ari’s calling! Hold on,” Ellie said.
Jeff let out a sigh of relief and looked at us. “Her best friend, Ari, is calling. Hopefully she’ll go and pick her up.”
Josh and I both nodded.
Jeff turned and started to walk back out into the yard.
“She is? Good. Don’t even bother, Ellie. Just go with Ari and call me if you need anything.”
I slipped my hands into my front pockets and waited for Jeff to finish talking to his sister. My heart was racing, and I couldn’t figure out why this phone call was bothering me so much. I was worried about Ellie because she was Jeff’s sister. That’s all it probably was.
When Jeff hung up, he faced us and let out a frustrated breath. “Her friend Ari is coming to get her. She only lives a couple of minutes down from us.”
“Damn, that sucks for your sister to have to go through that shit with your mom,” Josh said in a somber voice.
“Yeah, I hate it more than you can imagine. I wish Ellie would let me get her an apartment, but she keeps saying she can’t leave our mom. It’s so fucked-up.”
I glanced down to my boots and kicked at a rock that was on the front porch.
“I’m not in the mood for that beer anymore. I’m just gonna head in and get some sleep,” Jeff said as he walked up onto the porch.
I nodded in agreement. “Probably a good idea. Drake said he needs help hauling some hay tomorrow. Best if we get a good night’s sleep.”
“Sounds good to me. It just hit me how tired I actually am,” Josh said with a half-hearted chuckle.
The three of us quietly went into the house and up the steps before saying good night and retreating into our own rooms. By the time I got out of my clothes and crawled into bed, I couldn’t get Ellie Johnson out of my head.
When my eyes finally closed, I drifted off to sleep and into a dream that starred a girl I had never officially met, but who had consumed my thoughts as I drifted into sleep.
Ellie.
Chapter Seven – Gunner
The smell of my grandmother’s perfume floated around me as I leaned down to kiss her goodbye. I loved being on the ranch, and every time I had to leave, it gutted me.
“Bye, Grams, I’ll miss you.”
She kissed me on the cheek. “You be careful driving back to Austin, Drew. Don’t be gone for so long next time, okay?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Turning to Gramps, I reached my hand for his. “I hope we were of some help this weekend.”
He chuckled. “Son, just you being here was enough for me, but yes, y’all were a huge help this weekend. I can’t thank you enough. Next time I want to spend more time with ya, so no working.”
I nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“And you bring the boys back with you. I enjoy shooting the shit with them.”
“They love it here.”
Jeff and Josh were both saying goodbye to Grams when they turned to face Gramps.
“Garrett, thank you for everything this weekend,” Jeff said while shaking my grandfather’s hand.
“Thank you. You boys helped out a ton. You’re welcome here anytime.”
Josh followed Jeff’s actions and shook Gramps’s hand and thanked him for the weekend.
“Now y’all be careful driving back, and you boys behave!” Grams called out as we made our way to my truck.
The drive back to Austin was quiet. Both Jeff and Josh passed out before we even hit the end of the driveway. Even though each of us worked out every day, working on the ranch was exhausting and hard work.
I pulled up to Josh’s place and hit him on the leg. “Sleepyhead, you’re home.”
Jerking awake, he rubbed his hands down his face. “Holy shit. I slept the entire drive back?” he asked.
Laughing, I jerked my thumb back to the back seat, where Jeff was still sleeping.
“Both of you did. Looks like y’all need to go to the ranch more often to get into shape.”
He rolled his eyes and opened the truck door. “Thanks for driving, Gunner.”
“Dude, thanks for working your ass off this weekend. It was fun.”
Josh smiled. “It was fun! Talk to ya later.”
He shut the door and then reached for his bag in the back of my truck and jogged into the three-bedroom house he shared with two other guys from the football team.
I put the truck in drive and started for home.
“Can you swing by my mom’s place? I w
ant to check on Ellie,” a sleepy voice said from the back seat.
“You’re up?” I asked as I looked in the rearview mirror at Jeff sitting up, his hands rubbing over his face in an attempt to wake himself up faster.
“Yeah, I have been for the last thirty minutes or so. Just laying back here thinking.”
“About?” I asked as Jeff crawled into the front seat of the truck.
“My mom, Ellie, school, what in the fuck I want to do with my future.”
I knew what he was talking about. I’d pretty much had almost the same thoughts while driving back to Austin.
“Football isn’t in your future after college?” I asked.
“Hell no. It’s fun now, but I don’t see myself doing that for a career. Being at your family’s ranch this past weekend, I really think I want to move out of the city. Maybe I’ll open up my own business or something. Design barns and shit.”
Laughing, I glanced over at him quickly. “Barns, huh?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m worried about my sister.”
“What about her?”
“She’s so smart and so driven, but I feel like my mom is filling her head with shit and she’s starting to believe it. I don’t know what to do. Sometimes I wonder if I should move back home.”
“I’m sure if Ellie needed you to move back home she’d tell you, Jeff. Where did she stay this weekend?”
“Ari’s house. They’ve been friends since they were ten. The girl comes from a shit-ton of money, and her parents have offered more than once for Ellie to move in with them.”
“She won’t leave your mom?”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “No. She worries about her, and so do I, but fuck, when is she going to snap out of it? I get that my dad left her, but hell, it’s past the time to move on and get back to your life.”
I looked back at Jeff. “Maybe there’s more to the story than you know.”
He half shrugged again. “Maybe. Who knows? I just want to make sure she’s okay. You don’t mind stopping, do you? It’ll only take me a minute to run in and check on things.”
“Still don’t get to meet her, huh?”
He shot me a half grin. “Not yet. She gets one look at you, and I’m afraid she’ll be stopping by the house for unplanned visits just to see you.”
I couldn’t help but toss my head back and laugh.
We were soon parked outside of Jeff and Ellie’s mom’s house. Before Jeff got out of the truck, the front door opened, and out walked Ellie. I strained to get a better look at her, but Jeff was blocking her the entire time he walked up to the porch. They hugged, and our eyes met when she looked over his shoulder directly at me in the truck.
My entire body shivered.
Shit. What in the fuck?
I couldn’t pull my gaze away from her, and she seemed to be having the same problem. When she stepped back, I turned my head and stared out the front window. My heart rate picked up, and I gripped the steering wheel harder.
“Dude, it’s just because she’s off-limits. Calm the hell down,” I whispered.
When I glanced back over, Jeff and Ellie had walked into the house. I let out the breath I hadn’t even noticed I was holding.
“Christ almighty,” I mumbled.
My phone rang, and I answered it without even looking.
“Hello?”
“Gunner?”
I stared at the door, willing them to come back out for just one more look at Ellie. Then the voice on the line registered.
“Casey?”
“Hey, how’s it going?”
“It’s um, it’s going good. How are you?”
“I’m going pretty good! Busy, but who isn’t, right?”
With a chuckle, I replied, “Yeah, I hear ya.”
“Listen, a few of us are getting together later tonight, and I was wondering if you’d like to join us. Be my date and all.”
Casey and I met last year at one of the frat parties. We’d hit it off and had gone out a few times. Nothing serious, but we had fun together.
“What are y’all going to be doing?”
“Bowling.”
“Sounds like fun. What time?”
“How about seven?”
“Should I pick you up?”
“That would be amazing.”
I could hear the smile in her voice. Jeff walked out of his mom’s house, and Ellie waved from the door. She tilted her head so she could look once more at me in the truck. Her hand lifted, and she waved to me, so I did the same. Jeff kept getting in the way of my view as he walked back to the truck.
Damn it.
“Let’s go!” Jeff said as he got into the truck.
“Is that Jeff?” Casey asked.
“Yeah, that’s Jeff.”
“Invite him too. My cousin is in town, and I’m sure her and Jeff would hit it off really well. She has a thing for guys like Jeff.”
Guys like Jeff. I wonder what she meant by that? The bastard owed me one from the whole Crysti date, so without even asking him, I offered him up as well.
“I’m sure Jeff would love to come along and meet your cousin.”
His head snapped in my direction while his mouth fell open. It took everything I had not to start laughing.
“What? Come along where and meet whose cousin?”
I held up my hand to silence him. It was payback time, and Jeff Johnson was about to pay up.
“You bastard!” he whispered.
“Great! We’ll see y’all at my place around seven.”
“Sounds good, Casey. See ya then.”
Jeff groaned when I hit End and tossed my phone down. Putting the truck in drive, I pulled out.
“I’m not going on any date tonight, Gunner.”
I laughed. “Oh, I think you are. You owe me. Remember Jemma and Crysti?”
“Come on, Gunner. Casey? You really want to go out with her again?”
With a shrug, I replied, “Why not? She’s fun, cute, and I had a good time with her. I like her.”
Jeff shook his head and looked out the window. “What are we even doing tonight?”
I couldn’t wait to see his face when I told him. “Bowling.”
The weight of his death stare was heavy on me as I took a chance and glanced his way.
Yep. He’s pissed.
“Are you fucking kidding me? Bowling? We’re going bowling? What are we, in high school?”
“Hey, bowling’s fun. Besides, we’ll be with a group of people, and I’m driving so you can drink all you want.”
His hand pushed through his hair. “I hate blind dates. You know I hate them, and I’m not a fan of Casey either.”
My head jerked back in surprise. “What? Why not?”
“I just don’t like her.”
Pinching my brows together, I asked him again, “Why not? What has she ever done to you?”
He sighed. “I just don’t like her.”
I laughed. “Damn, I’ve never known you to be like this, Jeff. There has to be a reason you don’t like her.”
If I didn’t know better, I would swear Jeff was pouting. “Can we just change the subject?”
“You’re still going out with us tonight.”
“What the fuck. If you’re calling in on your favor from me, then so be it, even though I helped you coach that kid. Whatever. At least there will be other people there, and I don’t have to listen to Casey’s annoying-as-hell laugh.”
Chapter Eight – Jeff
The night hadn’t been too bad of a bust. Casey’s cousin turned out to be pretty nice. Not my type but a nice girl, and she was fun to talk to. Casey, on the other hand, was weighing on my last nerve. I’d gone to high school with her and would never forget what she did to Ari and Ellie their freshman year.
Bitch.
I lifted my beer to my lips and watched Casey get a strike. She jumped up screaming and ran back to Gunner. She sat in his lap and planted a kiss on his lips.
Blah.
Fuck, I hope he doesn’t end up with her tonight. She isn’t his type, and we both knew it.
“So I’m going to say it’s safe to say you don’t like my cousin?”
Nettie’s voice came from my right. Turning to her, I smiled. “You’re right. I don’t like her.”
“May I ask why?”
“She’s a bitch who embarrassed my sister and her friend the first day of school their freshman year.”
“Ouch, what did she do?”
The memory of that day popped back into my head and pissed me off all over again.
“One of the football players had walked over to my sister’s table. It was her and a few of her friends. Casey got pissed and went over there and started making a scene about how a freshman was trying to snag a senior football player. Ellie’s best friend Ari stood up and started to ask Casey to just leave them alone. Casey said something about Ari that I never did hear, but whatever it was, it upset her. Then all the cheerleaders starting laughing and teasing Ari that she was about to cry. The whole thing was ugly, and I just stood there and watched it happen. I didn’t even stop it, and I hated myself for that.”
Reaching for my beer, Nettie took a drink. “Sounds like Casey. She’s always been a bit of a bully from what I’ve seen.”
“No, go ahead, take a drink of my beer,” I said as I motioned with my hands for her to drink up.
She laughed and finished off the beer. “Sorry; I’ll buy you another one.”
“Don’t worry about it; I’ve had enough. I need to make sure Gunner doesn’t do something stupid.”
“I don’t think you have to worry. He isn’t into her.”
Turning to look at her, I asked, “What makes you say that?”
She shrugged. “I mean look at him. Casey is throwing herself at him every chance she gets. Yeah, he’s kissed her back a few times, but anyone can see he’s not into her into her. If you know what I mean.”
I focused back over on Gunner and Casey. She was sitting on his lap, and instead of him taking advantage of it, he was just sitting there talking to some guy. Doug, I think his name was.
“Huh, you’re right. You’re pretty good at this stuff.”
Nettie smiled. “Well, I’m a people watcher. And I’ve been kind of hoping he wouldn’t be into her since she pissed me off by setting me up on a blind date. I told her no, I wasn’t interested, but she did it anyway.”