I glare at them both. “What do you mean?” The waitress delivers another shot glass in front of me, much to the disgust of my friends, and I smile gratefully up at her, actually looking in her eyes versus her tits. I wonder if she appreciates that.

Probably not.

“Go after her,” Gage urges. “Go to her hometown and tell her you want her back.”

I grimace, finish off the contents in my shot glass and then grimace again as the vodka slides down my throat. “You make it sound so easy.”

“That’s because it is,” Gage says with a slight smirk. I’d like to wipe it off his face with my fist. Must be the vodka still talking. “Just hop on a plane and go to that little Podunk town of hers and find her. Can’t be that hard to figure out where she lives, her address. When you see her, tell her how you feel.”

I let his words sink in and swirl around in my brain along with a heavy dose of vodka. I could do that. Maybe. “What if she rejects me?”

“Then at least you tried,” Archer adds. “Then you won’t have any regrets or what-ifs. Those what-ifs will kill you, man. Trust me.”

Huh. He’s right. I wonder how I would even get to Cactus, Texas. Fly into somewhere and rent a car, I assume. I don’t know her grandma’s name. But I bet everyone would know who Bryn James is. The most beautiful, sweetest, kindest, sexiest woman ever.

“I’ll do it.” I curl my hand into a fist and pound it on the table, making my shot glasses and the now-empty beer bottles on top of it rattle. “I’ll go make flight arrangements right now.” I start to stand, but both Archer and Gage wave their arms at me like they’re trying to flag my ass down or something.

“Slow your roll, my friend,” Gage says, shaking his head with a chuckle as I fall back into my chair, my head spinning. “You need to sober up first. Look at you, three shots of double vodka and you’re done for.”

“Whatever,” I mutter, my mind filled with images of Bryn. Smiling Bryn. Beige Bryn. Naked Bryn. Sad Bryn.

I frown. I never want to see sad Bryn again. I need to find her.

I need to go make that woman mine once and for all.

Chapter Fourteen

Bryn

“GIRL, YOU BETTER clean out that chicken coop and something quick! That rooster looks ready to tear into his girlfriends. He sure don’t like walking in shit!”

Sighing, I toss my phone—the very iPhone Matt let me keep despite having purchased it for work purposes—onto my mattress and exit my bedroom to see what my grandma is hollering about now.

She’s standing at the kitchen sink washing dishes. I wish we could afford a dishwasher but that’s so not happening. Staring out the window, she’s watching the chicken coop in the backyard, a fragile-looking structure one of the neighbor boys built for her a few years ago.

“What did you ask me to do?” I sound resigned. Of course, I am, when the only job I can seem to find in this godforsaken town is doing odds and ends for my grandma around the house. I didn’t get that job at the Soap-n-Snip, answering the phone and sweeping up hair. Stacy Jo Nesbitt got that job. She graduated two years after I did, and she already has two babies to take care of.

She deserves the job far more than I do.

“The chicken coop, baby doll. It’s a shit storm of epic proportions and that snotty, mean-as-hell rooster hates it when the crap piles up.” Grandma cackles again. She loves saying crazy things, shocking people. As she gets older, it gets worse and usually I ignore it or laugh with her.

But today, the very last thing I want to do is laugh. It’s hot outside, and I don’t want to be out there scooping up chicken crap.

“You want me to clean it out now?” I ask, my shoulders slumping.

“I sure do. Look at that cock.” Another cackle. “He’s gonna peck the head of every chicken out there if you don’t take care of it and quick.”

I go to stand next to my grandma and see that she’s not exaggerating. The rooster is strutting around in the small fenced-off chicken yard, pecking the head of every poor innocent chicken that approaches him.

Typical male. That rooster is a complete ass**le.

“Fine,” I say with a sigh. “I’ll go clean it.”

“Don’t forget your waders,” she calls to me as I head toward the garage. “And a bucket and a shovel so you can scoop up all that crap!”

I grab the bucket and the shovel she uses special for the chicken coop then slip on the old rubber boots I bought at Walmart years ago that I’d wear when it rained or snowed, which is rare but still. They’re white and hideous, scuffed up after years of wear, but I don’t care. I’m wearing an old ratty tank top and a pair of denim cutoffs along with them. The people of the great Napa Valley would probably shit themselves if they saw me, but I’m out here in my grandma’s backyard with no one around for miles.

I’ve got nobody to impress.

Rounding the side of the house, I head for the chicken coop and open the gate, thrusting the shovel out to hold back the rooster, who’s a mean old jerk that would love nothing more than to jump me from behind and spur me with his claws. He’s done it to me before, and I nearly had a heart attack, he scared me so bad.

But this time I’m prepared. You can’t turn your back on him or he’ll sneak attack you, like your worst enemy.

God, if I really thought about it, I could learn a lot of life lessons out here cleaning up the damn chicken coop. I laugh and shake my head as I start scooping up the chicken poop, which has somehow piled up into little mountains along the inside of their caged area.