Twelve
ANYHOO.
That’s how I wound up moving to Jack Stapleton’s parents’ five-hundred-acre cattle ranch—against all my better judgment.
Not that I had a choice.
But compared to living next door to Taylor, it suddenly didn’t seem so bad.
Compared to staying in our fourplex with its papier-mâché walls, eating cereal in my kitchen, and listening to Robby and The Worst Person Ever making waffles on the other side, compared to overhearing the two of them watching horror movies on her sofa, or ordering takeout, or going at it all night in her bedroom … compared to all that, moving in with The Destroyer was definitely an upgrade.
I called my landlord from the car after that fight with Taylor to cancel my lease.
I’d find a new place online and rent it sight unseen. I’d hire movers to pack up my entire apartment, dirty laundry and all, and haul it away.
I’d leave on assignment, and then I’d never set foot in that apartment again.
And I’d make sure my next rental had a working fireplace so I could unpack, find all the things Taylor had given me over the years—the Wonder Woman T-shirt, the journal with the YOU ARE MAGIC glitter cover, the picture book of the world’s cutest hedgehogs—and throw them in the fire one by one to burn them all to ashes.
A purge. A cleansing. A new frigging start.
THE MORNING JACK and I moved out to the Stapletons’ ranch, it was Jack who was in a bad mood.
Like he was the one who’d earned one.
Gone was that aggressively nonchalant vibe he wore most of the time like a cologne. His shoulders were tense as he drove, his jaw was tight, and his blood pressure—I swear, I could read it from across the car—was elevated.
He barely even spoke to me the entire drive.
It was the loudest quiet I’d ever heard.
It was only then, on the interstate, in Jack’s passenger seat, that I realized Taylor had done me a favor, in a way: She had turned going to Jack’s ranch into a kind of escape.
It wasn’t the escape I’d been wanting.
But it would do for now.
That realization brightened my mood quite a bit.
By the time we got to the Brazos bridge, and Jack got out to walk across, he looked almost nauseated. And by the time we pulled up to the house itself, the air around him was positively brittle with misery.
An escape for me. But maybe the opposite for him.
Though Kelly hadn’t been kidding about House Beautiful. It was a 1920’s Spanish-style hacienda with a red-tiled roof and pink bougainvillea blossoming everywhere. We parked on the gravel drive, and as I stepped out of the car a breeze brushed past us and fluttered the sundress around my bare knees.
It felt nice, actually.
I guess girlfriend clothes had their perks.
“It’s so idyllic,” I said, of the house.
Jack didn’t comment.
But that whole “think of it like a paid vacation” thing?
I could suddenly see it.
This wasn’t where Jack had grown up. He later told me that his grandparents lived here when he was little, but after they were gone, it became a weekend place. His parents had only moved out full time after they’d retired, and that’s when his mom started the garden, and his dad had converted half of the old barn into a woodworking shop.
I’m pretty sure Jack didn’t speak even one unnecessary word as he walked me around and gave me the tour.
I was totally charmed by the stucco walls, exposed ceiling beams, rounded doorways, red ceramic-tile floor, and his mom’s collection of chicken figurines on the breakfront. Plus, the decorative painted tiles in the bathrooms and in the kitchen. Windows everywhere, and sunlight, and bougainvillea blossoms in every view. There was a garden that seemed to go on forever near a side porch draped with honeysuckle, and a screened porch bigger than a living room off the other side. It was like an enchanted place from another time.
It was a late October day, and all the windows were open. The kitchen had cotton gingham café curtains, and a bread box, and an old-timey radio on the counter. There were salt and pepper shakers in the shapes of ears of corn at the table. Jack’s dad kept a record player on the counter at the far end of the kitchen, and Jack opened up the cabinets above it to show me—instead of dishes, like you might expect—his massive record collection, arranged by decade.
I mean, the whole situation was charming.
Except, maybe, for Jack.
I followed him through a long living room, with three sofas arranged around a giant stucco fireplace, and then into a hallway that led to the bedrooms.
The hallway was covered—absolutely wallpapered—with framed family photos. And half of them, at least, were of three boys, smiling big and goofy into camera after camera.
Jack and I both stopped at the sight.
Like neither of us had ever seen it before.
I touched a photo of a young Jack up on a young Hank’s shoulders—while Hank held their youngest brother upside down by his ankles. “This is you and your brothers?” I asked.
Jack nodded, his eyes traveling around the wall.
“Looks like you had a lot of fun.”
Jack nodded again.
Then he said, so quiet I could barely hear, “I haven’t been here since the funeral.”
Jack kept his eyes on the photos, so I did, too.
Most of them were snapshots. The boys as toddlers running in a field of bluebonnets. Down at the beach in the waves. Eating puffs of cotton candy bigger than their heads. Then, older: Tall and skinny in football uniforms. Doing matching handstands. Dangling fish at the ends of poles. On horseback. At the top of a ski slope. Playing cards. Shooting baskets. Dressed up for prom. Hamming it up.
Totally ordinary.
And so heartbreaking.
Just as I found myself thinking I could admire those photos all afternoon, Jack pulled in a sharp breath, opened the door to his bedroom, and charged away, like he couldn’t take it one more second.
I followed him inside.
Jack’s room was the same as the rest of the house—same ceramic-tile floor and stucco walls, same French doors overlooking bright pink flowers, same arched doorways. But his room felt more manly, somehow. Leatherier. It smelled like iron, and had an old saddle in the corner, and an Eames chair by the window.
“This is your room?” I asked, to be sure.
“Our room,” Jack said.
Of course. We’d be sharing a room. We were adults, after all. Adults in a fake relationship.
“You can have the dresser,” Jack said, dropping his suitcase on the floor beside the saddle.
“We can share,” I said.
But Jack shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”
Next, I looked at the bed. “Is that a double bed?”
Jack frowned, and it was clear he’d never thought about it. “Maybe.”
“Do you fit in that bed?”
The tiniest flicker of a smile. “I have to hang my feet off the end.”
It had occurred to me that there was a good chance this room would have only one bed.
But here we were.
“I’ll take the floor,” I said.
Jack tilted his head like it hadn’t occurred to him that anyone might take the floor. “You can sleep in the bed,” he said, and, at first, I thought he was letting me have it—before he added, “I’ll share.”
I gave him a look. “It’s fine.”
“You realize that’s a ceramic-tile floor?”
“I’ll make it work.” It was certainly better than my closet.
“I get it if you’re uncomfortable, but I promise I won’t touch you.”
I didn’t want to admit I was uncomfortable. That was need-to-know information.
I gestured at him, like Look at yourself. “We wouldn’t both even fit in that bed, dude.”
Now an actual, wry smile, and I felt glad to have led us to a less painful topic. “I’ve squeezed girls into it before,” Jack said.
“I prefer the floor,” I said, to settle it.
“There’s no way I’m making you sleep on the floor.”
“There’s no way I’m sleeping in your bed.”
“Let’s not be fussy.”
“I think I’m being remarkably unfussy, actually.”
He thought about that. “Yes. You are. Thank you.”
I hadn’t expected to be thanked.
“But,” he went on, “you still get the bed.”
“I really don’t want it,” I said.
“Neither do I.”
“Fine. We’ll both sleep on the floor.”
Jack studied me like I was odd. “Are you saying that even if I sleep on the floor, you’ll also sleep on the floor?”
This might be my only area of autonomy for a month. “Yes,” I said. “I’ll be on the floor no matter what.”
“You’d rather sleep on cold, hard, ceramic tile than sleep next to me?”
“I bet you don’t get that a lot.”
Jack smiled like he was impressed. “Absolutely never.”
“It’s probably good for you,” I said.
Jack shrugged, like Maybe so. Then—and it’s possible a gentleman would have fought me a little harder—Jack said, “Suit yourself.”
That settled, I looked around.
I honestly had no idea what this assignment was going to mean for me. Almost all my normal responsibilities had been shifted over to the remote team, which had secured an off-site rental house just across the farm road as an operations base. They were handling video surveillance, monitoring the perimeter of the property, watching social media, and doing all the things I’d normally do.
Plus we were at threat level yellow.
And we were in the middle of nowhere.
In a house surrounded by five hundred acres of pastures. So there wasn’t even that much to do. Besides possibly track the positioning of the cattle.
I mean, it might as well be threat level white.
A paid vacation, everyone said. But there was a reason I never took vacations. What, exactly, was I supposed to do with myself all day?
I’d be technically working. I just wouldn’t have … any duties.
But before I could panic, there was a rap on the door as loud as a shotgun.
We both jumped.
Through the door, we heard Hank. “Jack, I need to talk to you.”
It wasn’t until all of Jack’s tension snapped back into place that I realized how much joking around about our sleeping arrangements had relaxed him.
Even his posture shifted. He straightened up and left the room.
Should I follow him?
I hadn’t been invited.
In a normal job, whenever I was on shift, I always kept the principal in my sights. But this was anything but a normal job.
Still uncertain, I made my way back to the kitchen, but I stopped when I neared the back door. Jack and Hank were just past it, on the screen porch. I couldn’t see them, but I could hear their voices through the open kitchen window.
And they were talking about me.
“You actually did it,” Hank said. “You actually showed up here with that girl in tow.”
“You seemed fine with it at the hospital.”
“Yeah. I seemed fine with a lot of things at the hospital.”
“What am I supposed to do? Mom invited her.”
“Only because she thought you wouldn’t come without her.”
“Mom was right. I wouldn’t come without her.”
“You’re making things harder on Mom. And you don’t even care.”
“You’re making things harder on her. And I care about that very much.”
“Doesn’t she have enough to deal with right now?”
“I’m only here because she asked me to be.”
“She wants to see you. Not some stranger.”
“Hannah’s not a stranger. She’s my girlfriend.”
I winced a little at the lie.
“She’s a stranger to us.”
“Not for long.”
“Tell her to leave.”
“I can’t. I won’t.”
“Tell her to leave, or I’ll kick you both out.”
“I dare you. I dare you to do that and then tell Mom what you did.”
“This is a private, family matter. The last thing Mom needs right now is to be entertaining some Hollywood bimbo.”
Then I heard a scuffle. Then a clunk. I stepped closer to peek through the screen, and I saw that Jack had shoved Hank up against a wall.
“Does anything about that girl seem like Hollywood to you?” Jack demanded.
It’s a heck of a thing to see two grown men fighting over you. Even if you know it’s not a real fight. And even if you know the fight is really about something else.
Still. I held my breath.
For a second, I thought Jack was going to defend me.
“She’s as un-Hollywood as it gets,” Jack said then, his voice low and menacing. “Have you seen my other girlfriends? Have you seen Kennedy Monroe? She’s nothing like any of them. She’s short. Her teeth are crooked. She barely wears any makeup. She doesn’t self-tan, wear extensions, or dye her hair. She’s a totally plain, unremarkable person. She’s the epitome of ordinary.”
Wow. Okay.
“But she’s mine,” Jack said then. “And she’s staying.”
I was still coping with “epitome of ordinary.”
Another scuffle, as Hank pushed Jack off of him.
I stepped way back so they wouldn’t see me. Of course, that meant I couldn’t see them anymore, either.
“Fine,” Hank said. “I guess I’ll just have to make her so miserable that she leaves on her own.”
“If you make my Hannah miserable—”
My Hannah!
“—I will make you miserable right back.”
“You already do.”
“That’s more about you than about me, buddy,” Jack said.
But Hank was still trying to win the fight. “I’m telling you I don’t want her here. But I can’t even remember the last time you cared about what anybody else wanted.”
“You don’t want her here, but I need her here. And so do you, even though you don’t know it. So back the hell off.”
I guess, at that, one of them decided to storm off, because next I heard the screen door whap closed. Then, on the heels of that, I heard it again.
Out the kitchen window, I could see Hank stomping off toward his truck—and Jack charging in the opposite direction, along the gravel road toward a thicket of trees.
What I wanted to do … was go hide my plain, unremarkable, epitome-of-ordinary face.
For, like, ever.
But Jack was my principal. And this was my job.
So I followed him.