Chapter Twenty-Five

Collin

We heard her get back in the car and start the engine, but she didn’t say anything. I waited, wondering if they were still watching her, hoping she would give me some indication she was okay. We’d been waiting forever under the canvas and were extremely overheated, sweat pouring off my face as I tried to hang on and not panic at the lack of fresh air in the truck.

Then I heard her sniffle.

The truck backed up, pulled forward and then looped around, driving away. She stayed quiet, and I worried for a moment that maybe it wasn’t her. That maybe someone else was in the truck. But the next sniffle I heard was definitely in her voice, and I calmed down, waiting for her to say something, anything.

The truck came to a stop, turned, and then started going again. When it felt like it had hit a decent speed, she finally spoke.

“You can get up now,” she said.

Flinging the canvas away, Owen and I both took huge breaths and wiped our faces. I reached forward and grabbed a water bottle, tossing it to Owen before cracking open another for myself. We guzzled them down and went on to the next ones from the pack I always kept in the car. They were hot too, but it didn’t matter. Water was water.

When I’d finally gotten two bottles of water in me and was working on a third, I relaxed a little and tried to get a look at Brandy. I was in the seat behind her, so I couldn’t see much, but something seemed wrong.

“Hey,” I said, my voice scratchy from being so parched for so long. “Where’s the camera?”

“I don’t have it,” she said flatly.

“Why? What happened?” I asked.

“They knew,” she said. “They knew you were in the truck.”

“Son of a bitch,” I muttered. “Dammit. They must have been watching the house.”

“Which one?” Owen asked. “Ours?”

“Probably not,” I said. “But they probably saw us getting into the backseat when we got to Brandy’s. I knew we should have ridden there in the canvas too.”

“Damn,” Owen said.

Brandy said nothing. She seemed extremely angry.

We rode in silence for quite some time, only punctuated by the sound of Owen’s phone dinging with messages from Luke or Jesse. They were on their way down still and were wanting updates as to what was happening. Owen kept looking up at me as if he wanted some kind of confirmation, but I had nothing to give him. I didn’t know what was going on or what to do. Brandy was being very quiet.

Suspiciously quiet.

When we arrived back in town, she drove not to the ranch, but back to her place. As we pulled in, I went to question her, but she hopped out of the car immediately and started for the door. I scrambled out of the car after her.

“Brandy, hey, what’s going on?” I asked. “What happened back there?”

“I just got to thinking,” she said. “Maybe we shouldn’t talk about it right now.”

“Talk about what?” I asked. “Whatever it is, you can tell me. I know it’s disappointing we didn’t get the footage, but I think we can figure this out. If we just all go back to the ranch and meet up together, we can pick each other’s brains and…”

“No,” she said, rather forcefully. Her eyes were filled with tears, and her lips were peeled back, showing gritted teeth. “Don’t you understand? I can’t have anyone else involved. In anything. Ever. It always ends up like this.”

“Brandy, what are you saying?” I asked. “We can help you. All of us, Luke and Jesse and Owen and Logan, we can all help. The girls too, we can all band together, and…”

“I am not part of your family,” she said. “Don’t patronize me and act like I am. You and I barely know each other. We’ve been on one date. The only thing we’ve really done is have sex, and we got punished for that too. I should know better than to let myself like someone. All this started because I thought I could have a relationship, but clearly, I can’t.”

“It’s not you, Brandy,” I said, completely blindsided by this sudden attitude change. “It’s whoever these people are. Be it the production people or the Andersons, whoever it is, they are the ones causing the problem. You and I being together isn’t the issue.”

“We shouldn’t be together,” she said, tears streaming down her face now. “I shouldn’t be with anyone. Ever.”

“Brandy, hey, no,” I said. “You and I, we have something special. At least I thought we did. It’s more than just sex. I like you. I’ve liked you since the moment we spoke at the wedding. You were so funny and sweet and beautiful. I’ve been smitten with you since then.”

“You will find someone else,” she said. “But we need to stop seeing each other. Effective now.” She sniffled loudly, wiping tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. “Eugene Anderson was right about us, only he got it backwards. You aren’t the one who is bad news. It’s me. I ruin everyone I come in contact with. My mother was a mess because she had me. My grandmother literally lost her mind trying to raise me for her. My best friend moved across the country to a podunk town to help me and now is trapped and wants out. I ruined my marriage, my career, my life, Collin. I ruined everything. Over and over.

“And I will ruin you too. So, please, because I like you, because I want to be with you, because I have that impulse, understand that that’s the reason you need to go away. Because I can’t do this. I will only destroy it all.”

“Stop,” I said. “You are upset, and I understand that, but you are drawing the wrong conclusions.”

“No, I am not. I can see clearly,” she said. “Don’t call me. I will call you if I need you for some reason. Or if one day I get out of this curse. But don’t wait for me. If you find someone, just go. Be with them. They will be better than me. They won’t destroy you.”

“Brandy?”

The door opened behind her, and her grandmother poked her head out.

“Hello, Mrs. Shaw,” I said.

“Is that Collin Galloway?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

“Oh, how lovely,” she said. “Did you walk my granddaughter home from school?”

“I’m sorry?” I asked.

Brandy simply shook her head and turned to her grandmother.

“Grandma, go back inside. I’ll be in in just a second.”

“What’s going on out here?” she said. “Why are you crying?”

“It’s nothing, Granny. Just go. Please.”

“All right… Nice to see you, Collin. You come on back tomorrow for your sandwich. Turkey and rye. I remember.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

After she disappeared into the house, Brandy walked through the door as well. She looked back once, opening her mouth like she was going to say something, then stopped, shook her head, and went in, closing the door behind her.

Shocked, I turned around and stumbled to the truck. Owen was in the front seat now and had unloaded the baking equipment into Brandy’s car, which had been unlocked. He looked confused as to why Brandy wasn’t joining us and why I looked so odd, and I didn’t know what to tell him. As I climbed into the truck and turned on the engine, I could feel his eyes on me.

“Brother? What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Brandy… Brandy just broke up with me,” I said.

In the silence that followed, I backed the truck up, turned it around, and headed for the ranch. For a long while, no one spoke.

“Are you sure she broke up with you?” he asked.

I nodded. “She told me if I could find someone else, to go be with them.”

“So she broke up with you because of her? Not because of something you did?”

“I suppose so,” I said.

“Oh. I thought she caught wind of the gun and got spooked,” he said. “I was afraid I’d done something wrong.”

“No,” I said. “Nothing you did. And for the life of me, I can’t think of something I could have done either.”

“Maybe you didn’t,” he said. “Maybe it is her. Maybe she just realized that she wasn’t as into the relationship if it had to be difficult.”

“What do you mean?”

He sighed. “I never told you guys, but I had a girlfriend last year. For about six months. We were dating off and on, and then just kind of stayed on. But she didn’t want the seriousness of a relationship. She didn’t want to meet you guys and be part of family gatherings and come hang out on the ranch or any of that. She wanted to exist in a bubble. I don’t exist in a bubble.”

“So you broke it off,” I said.

“No, she did,” he said. “She broke up with me. Much the same way you described Brandy. She told me to go find someone who would make me happy and be what I needed a girlfriend to be. But that it wasn’t her.”

“I guess it’s better to find that out early,” I said. “Granted, I’d rather it not be this early.”

“Yeah, two or three days seems a bit quick,” he said. “But sometimes you just know. Or sometimes you just get scared.”

“Of the tape?”

“Of the relationship,” he said. “Some people don’t handle that level of intimacy with another person well. The second there are real stakes, the second they have to depend on someone else other than themselves, they freak out. Jesse was like that, from what I heard, back before he just started going through the phone book and dating every girl in a fifty-mile radius.”

“Hundred,” I said. “I think it was a hundred-mile radius.”

“Maybe,” he said. “But I talked to one of his old girlfriends once. She was friends with a friend of mine from wrestling. She said Jesse was just scared of commitment. He was scared to actually be held responsible.”

“How did she take the news that he was engaged?” I asked.

“Not… well,” he laughed. “But I don’t think she’s going to go off and get hitched. I think you might just need to give her a little bit of time. This is a big deal, you know?”

“I do,” I said. “Thanks, Owen. Who knew you were so wise in the ways of the heart?”

“I might be a big guy,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean I’m dumb.”