Chapter 67

CHAPTER 67

JESS

E xhausted from talking to lawyers all day, I sagged into the passenger seat of the truck. Dad and I had been filling out all the appropriate paperwork to make sure the sale of oil on our property was legit. Slate had warned us to get this done as soon as possible so that no one could come after us for it once we started extracting, and we'd spent the last couple of days preparing.

I yawned, glancing at my dad as he turned over the engine. "Are you sure you don't want me to drive?"

"I'm fine, Jessie," he said, flashing me a quick, tired smile before he backed out of our parking spot. "Who knew getting rich was so much work?"

I chuckled. "Uh, I think probably everyone except lottery winners."

"Hey, you don't know that," he joked. "They might've gotten up very early or walked very far for those winning tickets."

"Fair enough." I smiled, tucking my hair behind my ears as I turned to the window.

Watching Fox Grove, our neighboring town, fade out of sight in our mirrors, I settled back in my seat and pondered what the lawyers had told us. It sounded like we had a lot of work to do to appease the environmentalists, and I'd put my hand up for the job.

I wanted to get involved. I had no interest in getting rich by ruining the very land I loved so much, and while Slate had mentioned that there were a few bad apples, I was eager to talk to those who had real ideas for protecting the land while we extracted the oil.

Dad glanced at me. "You okay, baby? You're very quiet."

"I'm just thinking about where to get started with the environmentalists. Those lawyers didn't seem to like them very much."

He hummed. "Maybe it's a good idea to talk to Slate about it. I'm sure he knows someone."

"Maybe," I agreed, but at this point, I'd sooner talk to Mira.

She'd been working on technology to make oil rigs greener. I was sure she'd have a few viable ideas for me, and if she didn't, she'd sure know who to put me in touch with.

Technically, Slate was still consulting on this project, and I knew I'd have to talk to him again sooner or later, but I just wasn't ready yet. It'd only been two days since he'd left and my chest was still very much aching.

Thankfully, my dad left it at that and we drove home in silence, both lost to our own thoughts until we pulled up outside the house. Before we climbed out of the truck he turned to me, stroking his white beard before letting out a soft sigh.

"He'll be back, baby. Mark my words."

"Yeah, I'm sure he will," I agreed, forcing a small smile before I reached for my door handle and got out, more than ready for a shower and an early night.

We walked into the house to find that Mom had fallen asleep in her chair in the living room, a book open on her lap. Dad paused in the doorway to watch her for a moment, smiling before he shook his head and whispered to me.

"I'm glad she's getting some rest. We'll fend for ourselves for dinner."

I nodded, wholeheartedly agreeing with him. We were out of frozen pizza, but I was sure we could scrape something together. Maybe Austin already had.

My brother had shown back up on Saturday morning. He'd been here when I'd gotten home from Sophie's. Apparently, Slate and Mira had copied him on their emails and he'd wanted to come find out how we were doing with everything.

I was happy to have him here. It made the house feel slightly less empty without Slate, but ultimately, nothing could fill that hole inside me right now—not even having my family together. Because it felt like the whole family wasn't here.

I wasn't sure it would ever feel complete again now that Slate was gone.

Closing my eyes, I dragged in a deep breath, then watched as my dad lovingly picked my mom up, lifting her against him and taking her up to bed. A pang of longing shot through me at the sight. I so badly wanted what they had, but I wanted it with Slate.

In fact, I'd thought that what we'd had was the beginning of the kind of love my parents had been showcasing my entire life. Shaking my head at myself, I wandered to the kitchen and got myself a glass of cold lemonade, carrying it out to the porch to drink it there.

I sat down, looking out at the fields and the farm road, the forest and the machines in the distance, and I wished so hard that Slate was here. I really felt like something had gone missing from my soul and I had no idea how to get it back.

After my lemonade, I'd go shower and see what I could scrounge together for dinner, and then I'd go have my early night, but now, I was just feeling too listless to jump into action. A creak sounded from the front door and I glanced at it, managing a weak smile at my brother when he walked out.

"There you are," he said. "I thought I should check on you. Dad said you had quite the day."

"We did," I agreed. "Whatever happened to weekends being about resting?"

He chuckled, lowering himself into the chair opposite mine. The chair I so wished Slate had been sitting in instead.

"Weekends have never been about resting to you," he reminded me. "The life you chose is twenty-four-seven, remember?"

I groaned. "What was I thinking?"

"No idea," he said, a slight grin appearing on his lips. He paused for a beat. "Have you called him?"

I shook my head. "There's nothing to say. Slate is amazing and for a minute there I even thought that he could be the one, but our lives are too different."

He slanted his head to one side, gaze flicking from one of my eyes to the other. "It didn't look that way from where I was sitting."

I shrugged a shoulder. "I couldn't ask him to give up everything he is and can be to settle for a small life on the farm with me. It wouldn't have been fair."

"You never thought about going back to the city with him?"

"Nope. He didn't ask me to either. I think he felt the same way I did, you know. He wasn't going to ask me to give up the life I love so much here to follow him back to the city. It just doesn't work."

Austin sighed. "I thought he was going to stay. Not at first, but these last few weeks? I was convinced he would never leave."

"You would've been okay with that?" I asked curiously. "Obviously, you know there was something going on between us, but you haven't really told me what you thought about it."

His jaw tightened, but then he inhaled deeply, held the oxygen in his lungs for a moment, and exhaled, his eyes on the land before he glanced back at me. "God, I can't actually believe that I'm about to say this, but I was okay with it. You guys were good together. It made sense, even to me."

Tears welled in my eyes and I battled to hold them back, eventually dropping my head to run my fingers through my hair. "Yeah, it was fun while it lasted."

As I lifted my head back up, I caught a glimpse of Austin standing. He came to sit on the armrest of my chair and wrapped an arm around my shoulders, pulling me in close. "Don't give up hope, sis. When something is right, it works itself out."

"I'd like to believe that it was right and that it will work itself out, but I just don't have it in me right now."

"I think you do," he countered. "I think you're just too scared to hope, but that's not like you, Jess."

I glanced up at him, misery filtering through the center of my being when I had to shake my head. This wasn't about me being scared to hope.

To be fair, I was scared to hope, but hoping wouldn't change anything anyway. This was my new reality and I had to face it.

Clinging to the past or to some misguided notion that he was going to race back here for me wouldn't help me move on with my life, and that was what I needed to do.

"Slate is back in the city, Austin," I said quietly, my voice catching as a sob rose up from deep within. "He left as soon as his original job was done. Shit, the ink on the contract wasn't even dry and he was already gone. He couldn't wait to get out of here."

My brother gave me a pinched look that said very clearly that he disagreed. "I'm not sure you're right about that. Something had to have happened for him to leave that fast."

"Nothing I'm aware of," I said. "He offered to leave right away and I agreed that it was probably for the best. It's not like we chased him off the property with pitchforks."

"Maybe not quite that obviously or that drastically, but did you ever ask him to stay?"

I snorted. "I just told you that I couldn't ask him to give up a whole, full life for this."

I waved a hand vaguely around, motioning at the farm in general. Austin let out a bark of dry laughter.

"You didn't have to ask him to give it all up to tell him you wanted him to stay," he said. "Let me put it to you this way. If you had been living in someone else's house for a couple of months for a job, would you just have stuck around randomly when that job was done?"

I blinked hard but shook my head. "No, I guess not. For what it's worth, I tried going after him the next morning, but he was already gone. He wanted to get out of Firefly Grove so desperately that he left at four in the morning, Austin. Trust me. This wasn't just about me not asking him to stay."

My brother looked deep into my eyes and I saw the doubt in his. Honestly, I'd seen the same thing from my parents.

They all kept looking at me like they knew something I didn't, but Slate was still gone. Everything had happened exactly the way I'd told them it had and yet they made me feel like I was missing something.

The feeling wasn't strong enough to make me hope, but I was getting pretty damn tired of it. Austin bent over and kissed my forehead before he stood up.

"I could kick some sense into him when I go back to the city in the morning?" he offered.

I smiled even as I shook my head. "It's okay. You don't have to do that. This isn't his fault any more than it is mine. We just lead different lives, is all."

As I looked back out at the farm, the purr of an expensive engine reached my ears at around the same time that I saw the cloud of dust starting to appear at the bottom of the road. Austin cursed under his breath.

"This better not be that Oden asshole."

I narrowed my eyes, watching the dust come closer until the vehicle that had been causing it sped into view. I stood up to get a better look at it. My heart catapulted into my throat and my eyes widened.

"No. Way."

"Is that…" Austin trailed off, a grin spreading on his lips. We both watched the familiar sports car coming down the driveway. "I knew he'd be back."

For a long moment, I was rooted to my spot, in a state of complete disbelief and wondering if I was dreaming, but when my brother's elbow landed hard against my ribs, an oof came out of me. But I was definitely not sleeping.

As the realization dawned, I kicked into motion, sprinting to the steps and flying down them before I rushed to the drive. Slate was here, and I had a feeling he hadn't driven all the way back to Firefly Grove just to deliver some papers for my parents.