Chapter 15

Lincoln

“Hey, Hal.” I wave as I jog down the porch steps, barefoot, my hair still wet from my shower. Lark and Lily have their arms crossed at the foot of the driveway, watching as Hal jumps down from the cab of his truck.

“Lincoln, how ya doin’, man?” He shakes my hand, and then moves to the back of his trailer. Hal’s family owns some of the farmland that we lease; however, instead of corn and crops, they own livestock.

I’m not sure what he’s doing here, but I ask, “How’s business these days?”

Unlocking the right side of the trailer first, and then moving around to the left, he keeps the small talk brief. “Every year is a little different, but mostly this has been a good one.”

I rest my hands on my hips. He didn’t stop over for a simple hello. “What’s going on? Did you need something?”

Shaking his head, he lowers the back trailer door. “Nope, all good. This one is good natured. I really think she’ll take to y’all.”

And before I can even form the question, a sandy-colored cow moseys down the trailer bridge. Its hair atop its head is longer than the rest, but still short enough to see its big black eyes.

I laugh nervously. “Lark and Lily Foxx, what’s happening right now?”

Hal looks between them, shifting his focus back to me. “I’m delivering your highland cow.” The look on my face must tell him exactly how much I know about this. “Paid in full. Your girls dropped off the final payment a few days ago.”

Eyes wide and chest tight, I turn my head slowly toward my girls. “You bought a cow.”

You’ve got to be fucking kidding me . “I’m sorry, Hal. You’re going to have to take her back?—”

Lily yells, “No! Dad, c’mon!”

Lark stays quiet as she worries at her lip and plays with the hem of her Spice Girls t-shirt.

“How did you pay for this?” I ask quietly. It’s the even tone that tells my girls I’m about to flip my shit.

“Curse purse,” they respond in unison.

What. The. Fuck.

Hal smiles to himself and walks over to me with the cow meandering behind him. “It’s a great animal to have around, if you can afford to keep her sheltered in these cold weather months and fed with some mix of grass hay and alfalfa. If you need some time to decide if that’s something you’d like to do, I can keep her for a little while.” He looks behind me at who I would assume are my girls trying to figure out how to explain this to me. “Give me a call in a few days and tell me if you’d rather I find her a new home. My animals need to be somewhere they’re wanted and well looked after. And I’m real sorry, Lincoln. I shouldn’t have assumed you cleared this.”

“We’ll love her, Dad,” Lark says, looking right at me, eyes pleading. “Please.” And it guts me. It hits me in a way that has me realizing that I’m not the kind of man who’s going to say no without good reason. And I’m realizing I don’t have one.

“Lark, what are you going to do with a cow?”

“Dottie,” Hal corrects. “The girls named her when they bought her.”

I glare at Hal as Lark follows up by saying, “Doesn’t she look like her name should be Dottie?”

Taking a deep breath, I move my hands to my hips. “You realize we don’t have a barn or the type of property needed to house a cow, right?”

Lily chimes in with, “Dad, we’re Foxxes. We can figure anything out.”

Touché.

My eyes close for a moment as I tilt my head back. “Using my own hype words against me should be against the law.” I point at her with a quirked eyebrow. When I look between my two girls, all I can think is, how am I supposed to say no to this? Fucking fuck.

I scrub my hand down my face. “Alright. Hal, I’m going to need a little bit of time to figure out how this is going to work.” I watch as Lark’s eyes water and a big smile takes over Lily’s face. “You mind if my girls find their way to your place daily to learn the chores that are needed to take care of her, and then I’ll work on making sure we give her a good home in a few weeks.”

“I think that would be a great idea, Lincoln,” Hal says with a relieved smile.

I clap my hands in front of me. “This is the last time you do something like buy an animal without me knowing.” I gesture to the cow being loaded back onto the trailer. “That’s a family decision. Something that’s living and breathing is not a curse purse purchase.”

Lark side-eyes Lily.

“No.” I point between the two of them. “Nooo. Nope. What’s that look?” I know this look—it means there’s more. And my girls are smart; they aren’t going to divulge information that might prolong whatever it is they’re doing. It’s like they’re waiting for another shoe to drop. Then it dawns on me—the brown and black puppy. Kit . “Dammit, you bought the dog too, didn’t you?” I deadpan.

“Kit,” Lily says. “Her name is Kit, and we adopted her. We knew you weren’t going to say yes right away, so we hid her in the barn next door. But then Faye found us.”

Lark chimes in, “And she said she’d look after her until...”

“Until when? Girls, seriously? You’re just folding animals into our lives without my knowledge. How did you see this working out?”

But it’s Lily who smiles and says with a shrug of her shoulders, “If you build it...”

“No. You talk to me, and then we figure it out. Together.”

Lily and Lark slam the truck doors as they hop out and run up the driveway to greet Julep and the elusive puppy named Kit. I breathe in the good of being around my family and then exhale the self-hatred for not paying better attention. Whose fucking kids buy farm animals or bring home a dog without them knowing?

I rest my head along the back seat—it would be so much easier if Liv were here. Doing this parent thing alone is really fucking hard sometimes. It’s the first time I’ve let myself think about having someone who’d do this with me. Laugh after a parenting fail and figure out a way to avoid this happening again. Listen to me freak out about how smart my girls are—they just swindled me, for fuck’s sake.

The open space surrounding Ace’s house is postcard Kentucky. Between the flat landscape and the wide expanse of paddocks that are peppered throughout the left side of the property, and then the massive white stables that take up space all along the right side, it’s clear that my brother has two very distinct passions: bourbon and horses.

Dusk colors the horizon with a splatter of deep oranges and soft purples. Beautiful . I exit my Jeep and watch my girls talk a mile a minute to Hadley, who must have just pulled in right before us. Griz sits in his spot on the porch laughing at the same sight. And just cresting the knoll that runs along my line of sight, I see two people racing toward us on horseback—it’s hard to make out who it might be other than a man and a woman. The sound of hooves hitting the earth is still quiet as I watch on, but it echoes loudly when I really focus on the riders. Neck and neck, my brother gets closer, and the smile on his face isn’t one I see too often.

A few feet behind him is none other than Faye.

My stomach sinks, realizing that she’s the one putting that smile on my brother’s face. I’m positive she’s not going to let up either.

“What the fuck?” Hadley says as she approaches my side, her hands on her hips as we both watch them streak by. They kick up the wind and whatever dirt had been settled along the pathway.

I give my best friend a glance. “Didn’t get asked to go for a ride?”

“Not the kind of ride I want.”

I bark a laugh and look down at her hair pinned up high with curls spilling all over the place. “You just get here?”

“Hadley Jean Finch, your favorite Foxx needs a squeeze,” Griz interrupts, sliding up next to us. She gives him a good hug and the old man eats it up. Wrapping her arms around one of his, all three of us watch Ace and Faye jump down from their horses and laugh about something. When the fuck did Ace get to be funny?

Hadley says, “Griz, are you inviting every pretty girl who rolls into town to dinner?”

He chuckles. “Stunning, isn’t she? I have a good feeling about her.” Looking at me over her, he says, “My grandsons might know a thing or two about bourbon, but they don’t seem to know what chemistry looks like...”

Maybe not what it looks like, but I know exactly what it feels like. I haven’t been able to shake it since she’s been back. He squeezes my shoulder and walks back toward the porch, yelling, “Might want to start going after the things you two want instead of just sitting back and waiting for them to miraculously happen.”

“Read the room, Griz,” Hadley says under her breath.

I give her a kiss on her head. “Heard you were dating the fire chief.”

She looks up at me and smiles. “Define dating.”

“Going out for food. Enjoying each other's company...”

She sighs. “Linc, it’s like you don’t know me at all. I am absolutely fucking the fire chief...” Then she lowers her voice. “And his newest recruit.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Do they both know that?”

“They know.” She nods, grinning. “Oh, believe me, they know.”

“Dang, girl,” I shout with an added twang. I know there’s more to it, and when she wants to share, she will. Because as much as my best friend has a good time and goes wherever the wind takes her, she craves stability. It’s why she started spending so much time with us growing up, as wild as me and my brothers were. We’ve always had family dinners. Griz was there to ask where we’d been and what was coming. Nobody cared about her enough to ask until she ended up at our dinner table.

“Proximity is everything,” she goes on. “You know my roof deck has direct access to the fire station across the street...”

I do my best to listen, but I can’t stop myself from glancing toward the stables. Ace takes the reins of both horses as Faye follows him. Smiling, smiling, smiling . Why is she spending any time with him? I’m still thinking about the way she felt leaning against me. The smell of her that lingered on my fingers later that night. How close I came to storming next door and fucking her like I wanted.

And now she’s throwing her head back, laughing at something Ace is saying. He’s not that funny. My common sense snaps. “I’ll be right back,” I interrupt.

“Oh-kay...” Hadley says in response, and I can hear her chuckling as she realizes where I’m headed.

Hands twitching at my sides, I wrack my mind with what I’m going to say once I get there, but I come up blank. My boots scuff along the concrete pathway and into the stable’s double doors. The only thing I’m certain of is that I don’t want my older brother anywhere near her. Can you be considered unhinged if you know what you’re about to do is exactly that? Stupidly unhinged.

If it wasn’t for the cool breeze working through the open doors, you’d never know how many horses were in here. The place is pristine. Faye’s voice kicks up in another laugh toward the end stalls, and the sound of it shouldn’t do a fucking thing, but it does. The echo of it sneaks under my skin and edges me into a streak of anger I haven’t felt in a long time. One that makes me want to take things I have no business taking or wanting. She’s wearing an oversized men’s shirt she’s buttoned only halfway, one that better not fucking be his, and tight black pants that disappear into her tall cowgirl boots—these dirtier and more worn than the purple ones she wore at Bottom of the Barrel.

Ace laughs about something she said, that smile still stuck on his face when he notices me. “Hey, Linc.” He lifts the saddle off the horse he was riding.

“Hey,” I say with a labored breath, shifting my attention solely to Faye. “I need a minute.”

Faye looks at Ace quickly, and then back to me.

“Ace, I’ll make sure the horses are set before we come inside for dinner.” And because he’s my brother, he doesn’t ask any more questions. He respects that I need a minute alone here. With her. He pauses momentarily, trying to read between the lines. Yeah, brother, this one is mine.

“Great ride, Faye,” he says as he claps his hand on my shoulder. Then, with a half-tipped smile as he walks by me, he adds, “I’ll be here if you’re up for another.”

Under my breath I mumble, “Fucker.” Just loud enough for him to hear.

His shoulders bounce with a clipped laugh as he walks off.

Faye picks up the tack box and sighs before she says, “I’m starving.”

Lifting the tack box out of her hand, I put it back on the stool she pulled it from. With just one more step forward, I’m crowding her. “What are you doing here?”

As I keep moving forward, she steps backwards. “Pretty obvious I was out with your brother.” She lifts her chin in a challenge. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had a good ride.” The innuendo is loud and clear.

“No,” I grit out, and she searches my face for the meaning of that simple word. “You misunderstood me.” As her back reaches the wall, she stops, and I leave just enough space to breathe between us. “I don’t like being lied to, so I’m going to ask you again, what are you doing here? In Fiasco. And don’t give me some bullshit about headlining at Hadley’s place or what Maggie’s up to. You two barely look at each other.”

I lift my hand and let my fingers push the hair away from her face. I don’t know what it is about being near her that feels good. I should ignore it, move on, and forget all about the other night in that dark alley. Erase every moment of that night in the cornfield before my life got even more complicated and confusing. I shouldn’t want to be around someone I can’t trust. “Of all the places you could dance, why here?”

She tilts her face up, swaying into me as I twirl a piece of her hair. I pull it just slightly, tilting her head back a little farther, just where I want her. With her lips parted, it’s like she’s trying to decide if she should let me lead. “What makes you think it’s any of your business knowing what I’m doing here?”

Her eyes focus on my mouth when I say, “It’s my business when you start working at my best friend’s club. It’s my business when you come to my family’s house for dinner. It’s my fucking business when you have a secret that you keep from me when it’s about my girls.”

“Dammit,” she says on an exhale. “They’re very convincing. But then you fold a puppy into it...”

I can’t help but let out a small laugh, and it snaps me out of my anger. “Oh, I know.” Shaking my head slowly, I release a heavy breath. “Somehow, they’ve figured out how to skirt around asking me for what they want. They just do it on their own.” I don’t know why I’m telling her this. “They bought a cow, Dottie. Honestly, I’m more impressed than anything that they did it.”

She barks out a laugh. “And now you have a dog named Kit to add to the brood.”

Feeling more relaxed, I can’t help but laugh with her. “I feel like I should be mad, but I’m?—”

She moves her hand to my chest, my breath catches, cutting me off. Her fingers run along the seam of buttons as she says, “I never really knew my real dad. My mom had a lot of stand-in boyfriends. Maggie’s dad was in the picture for a while, but he never made me feel like he was glad I was around. Everyone who came after was interested in my mom, not in her insta-family.”

She watches my fingers brush and soothe along the inside of her wrist as she continues. “Your girls are lucky to know what it feels like to be loved by their dad,” she says softly. Hearing that from her warms my chest. The idea that my love for them is visible to a practical stranger has me feeling like I’m doing something right.

As I tip her chin up and push away a piece of blonde hair that fell in front of her eye, her smile fades. Our eyes stay locked for a moment just before she focuses on my lips. I don’t understand how we can so quickly go from anger and frustration to a sweet vulnerability to a heat that we’re both too damn smart to ignore. It’s reckless.

Yeah, Peach, I want to kiss you too.

I’ve wanted to kiss her again for longer than I’d care to think about.

“We both know this isn’t a good idea,” I tell her, but it doesn’t sound the least bit convincing.

“You’re right. It isn’t,” she says on an exhale. But her words die off when her fingers curl and she fists my shirt, pulling me into her. She holds on to me like the last thing she wants is to stop or let go.

I clear my throat, trying to remember what has me holding back. I’m coming up short at this proximity. So I give her the only truth that really matters. “I don’t trust you.”

Her breath hitches as my thumb runs along her jaw toward her mouth. “But you want to,” she says, her eyes never leaving my mouth. “Just like I want to hate you.”

I run my thumb along her lower lip, whispering, “But you don’t.”

She moves her head slowly right and then left, signaling no. As her tongue peeks out, wetting her bottom lip, despite all the probable reasons to stop this, the only thing I can think about is how she would feel wrapped around me. How with a few words and enough spitfire from her lips, I’m hard and so fucking ready for her to grant me the permission to have exactly what I want.

“So what are we going to do about it?”