and she never asked you for a damn thing, including stepping up to your responsibility. She’s too proud to beg. I like that about the girl. Chick like that only comes along once in a lifetime.” He nods toward the clubhouse. “You ain’t gonna find one like her in there.”
“I fucked up.”
“Maybe you need to tell that to the brave girl you pushed out the gate yesterday.” He leaves the joint with me and wanders to the clubhouse, yelling over his shoulder, “Meeting starts in ten minutes. Don’t be late again or you’ll piss Rusty off.” I take another hit and stare sightlessly into space, seeing Tess’s smiling face staring up at me as I lay on top of her.
I wonder what she’ll do about the baby, and I ask myself what I want her to do about it. I hadn’t planned this, hadn’t gone lookin’ for it, but here it is, fallen in my lap like a bolt from the heavens. I glance at the horizon, and the sun sinking low in the sky. Is anyone ever ready for life changing events like this? Am I?
I drop what’s left of the joint, grind it out under my boot, and head inside, knowing I’ll be sitting out on my back deck tonight trying to get my head together and figure this shit out. I need to see Tess; that much is clear. But right now my brothers and I have a trap to set.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Tess—
“So, what are we doing here?” Hayley asks, her hands jammed in her hip pockets, her eyes taking in the empty gravel lot with the big wooden shed on the edge of town.
“This place was my grandparents. My granddad used to sell Christmas trees here, pumpkins at Halloween, and in the summer he’d rent out spaces for a farmer’s market.” I shrug. “It was just a side hustle for him; he was a butcher by trade. But this”—I nod to the property—“this was his love. He would dress up like Santa at Christmas, and at Halloween he had this little train of cars he fashioned out of old barrels. He’d pull kids around the property. I used to love coming here.”
“Oh, yeah. I remember this place.”
She looks over at me, and I blink the tears out of my eyes.
“So, now what?”
“They left the property to me when they died. I always dreamed about starting the business back up, but now…”
“Now?”
“I guess I’m going to have to sell it.”
“Oh, no. Tess, don’t sell it. It’s all you have.”
“What choice do I have?”
“We just have to find that key. That’s all there is to it.”
“I’ve tried, Hayley.”
“I am not going to let you sell this place. You’ll regret it the rest of your life. What kind of a BFF lets that happen?” She looks around the place. “Maybe we could fix it up, get it going again. I mean, Halloween’s not far away.”
My eyes glaze again. It’s been my dream, and I hate to let go of it.
She nods to the big shed. “Got the keys?”
I move to the door and unlock it. I drag the big doors back, and we walk inside. It’s dark, but some sunlight comes in.
There are picnic tables stacked up, some stands he used to rent out for the farmers market, and all the painted wooden signs for the holidays.
“Hey, check it out. The little barrel train is still here.” She runs to it. Each car is painted a different color. She looks back at me. “We could totally do this, Tess. It’s all still here.”
“It takes money, Hayley. We’d need the power turned back on, and there are business licenses to get…”
She talks right over me. “Halloween’s coming up in a couple of months. My dad still has that little trailer he used to sell snow cones out of. I bet the equipment still works. We could sell apple cider slushies’ and kettle corn, and we could get one of those outdoor projectors and show old black and white TV shows on the side of the shed. You know, ones like the Munster’s and The Addams Family. We could even get some hay bales for the kids to sit on. You could sell train rides and pumpkins and decorations. It would be the bomb! There’s nothing like that around here for kids.”
I laugh at her exuberance. It all sounds wonderful. “Sweetie, that all takes money.”
She lifts a brow. “Then we’re just going to have to find that damn key.”
“But how?”
She begins pacing,