Chapter 5

Yoga…because boys like bendy.

-Fact of life

Ellen

Two months later

I smiled at Sean and his new woman, so freakin’ happy for him I could cry.

I thought that I’d broken something in him, but he’d gone and proved to me, and everyone else, that he could find someone who made him happy.

Though they were still in the early stages, I had no doubt in my mind that this relationship would be getting serious quickly.

It hurt a little bit that she looked at me like I was a rude cow who’d hurt Sean just to see him bleed.

I hadn’t.

But I wasn’t fooling myself, and I wouldn’t have fooled him. If he really looked closely at our relationship, he would’ve seen that I wasn’t giving it my all.

Though, now I could tell that he knew I had the hots for a man who didn’t have the hots for me.

I raised only my eyelashes to watch Jessie from my perch across the room.

It physically hurt to have him within reaching distance.

I looked away, studying the baseboards and wondering how long it would be acceptable to stay at a club event when my brother wasn’t even there.

He’d called me, about twenty minutes ago, to inform me that he was called into work, but I should go to the party anyway.

According to him, I was being antisocial and everyone missed me.

I highly doubted that.

If they’d missed me, they could’ve come to visit me. They didn’t.

I was alone.

I might go somewhere else. Visit some faraway place where I didn’t have to constantly see the man who still held my heart—after all of these years—at every turn.

“Dad!”

I turned my head to see Linc jogging toward where his father sat huddled around the group of men.

“Yeah?” He partially turned, and that was when I saw his face clearly for the first time that night.

He’d toned his beard down. Went to the barber shop or something, because those lines were way too clean and straight to say ‘I did this myself.’

“I got a call from the Sooners! They want me to play for them next year.”

Excitement started to bubble in my veins as I thought about Linc playing for one of the most prestigious football colleges in the entire United States.

My excitement dimmed when I caught Jessie looking at me. His face was blank, no longer the animated mask of excitement that’d been painted all over it just a few seconds prior.

He took one look at my face, curled his lip, and then turned so he could no longer look at me, but still hold a conversation with the men around him, as well as his son.

I felt utterly dejected.

I smoothed my skirt with shaking hands, bit my lip and finally decided that this was a mistake.

Only, my brother showed up just as I was about to take off, halting me before I could leave.

“Hey, where are you going?” He caught me by the arm.

I plastered on my fake grin that usually worked on him, and he smiled pleasantly before tossing one thick arm around my neck and pulling me into him.

He smelled sweaty, and I curled my nose up at him in disgust.

“You stink.” I cleared my throat when it hitched up.

Luckily, he didn’t notice, because, by that point, he’d dragged me into the main room again, allowing me to see Jessie clearly.

His eyes clashed with mine, and for just a second, I didn’t see that blank mask in his eyes.

I saw relief.

But the relief was gone in a flash, making me question whether I’d seen what I thought I had, or if it’d just been my imagination. My stupid hope getting the best of me.

“I brought a new card game!” Tommy announced to the room.

It was a party, yes, but this was a family one. One that meant it was only club members, and their families here.

Thank God.

I didn’t think I could handle seeing a woman rubbing up against Jessie’s side, as I’d had to see at the last event I’d been unfortunate enough to attend.

“And what is this card game?”

Tally, Tommy’s wife, drawled from the opposite side of the room where she was speaking with Sean’s new woman, Naomi.

My eyes skated away from the woman since she was glaring at me, too. She had done so each and every time I’d made eye contact with her over the last hour.

“It’s called Would You Rather?”

Groans filled the room.

“What’s Would You Rather?”

That was from Big Papa.

“It’s a game that gives you two different scenarios, neither of them good, and you have to choose which one you’d rather do. Such as: Would you rather fall, smack your face on the ground, and lose two teeth or would you rather sit down, fall asleep, and wake up with fire ants covering every inch of your body and crawling down your urethra.”

The room went silent at Jessie’s son’s words.

My gaze flashed to Jessie, who was trying hard not to laugh.

“That’s very interesting, kid. I think I’d rather lose my two front teeth,” Big Papa said.

“You can’t play this one,” Tommy Tom pointed at him. “It has adult language.”

Linc’s eyebrow rose, just like Jessie’s did, and he grinned.

Then he looked over at his father and the two of them shared a secret laugh.

My heart kicked at seeing the smile on the man’s face, and I clenched my hands into fists as I tried to look at anything but the gloriousness of that man wearing a grin.

Tommy walked forward and finally dropped his hand from around my neck, allowing me to stand up straight for the first time in five minutes.

I stretched my shoulder out and took a seat, trying to ignore the fact that Jessie and his son took a seat almost directly across the room from me.

Though they were as far away from me as they could get, they still were in the same room.

And just like it always did lately, my heart started to pound, and my cheeks started to flush.

Memories assaulted me, and I pulled my phone out to give myself something to do besides staring at my long-lost love, who now hated me.

Though my phone had changed a lot over the last fourteen years, I still had his number stored in my contacts.

Though, that was irrelevant. I didn’t forget his number.

Each year that went by, I knew that number. Knew it like I knew my middle name.

I pulled that number up now, knowing that he didn’t have it anymore.

I’d texted that number over and over throughout the years. One of the many times I’d tried calling it, about a year and a half after he’d left, I’d found it disconnected.

Now, the phone number was like my lifeline. Something I used when I needed to escape.

To talk to the boy that Jessie used to be, not the man he’d become. The one I didn’t know.

I pressed on his name in my address book, then typed out a text, hitting send before I could even think about it.

It was such a habit, to share my life with the disconnected phone number, that it never occurred to me that it actually might be in use at this point.

But, like the dumbass I was, I continued to do it.

I hate the new you. I miss the old you.

***

Jessie

I watched her out of the corner of my eye, her brother’s bulky arm wrapped around her neck as he kept her close to his body.

I should’ve fucking known, now that I thought about it.

Tommy Tom was actually Tommy Tomirkanivov. Ellen Tomirkanivov’s brother.

The girl that held my heart.

How I’d never put their two names together, was beyond me. My only excuse at this point was that back then, I’d only ever heard Ellen pronounce her name. Tom-kann-of.

When I’d started prospecting, Tommy had introduced himself as Tommy Tom, and that’d been that. I’d read the name, of course, on ledgers and such for the club, but I’d never put together the two names since what I remembered hearing, and what I was reading, sounded completely different in my head.

Goddammit, I was so fucking stupid sometimes.

“Do you want to play, Dad, or do you want to leave?”

I turned to study my son.

Fourteen years ago, Ellen had loved him. She’d been enamored with my little black-haired pain-in-the-ass, and I’d been enamored that she was enamored.

Now, watching him all grown up, talking to her once again, it brought back memories that hurt too badly to dissect.

“I’ll stay for an hour or so,” I told him. “But I have to be at work at six, and it’s already half past ten.” I gestured to a seat that was about as far across the room as it could get from Ellen. “I don’t want to hear any bitchin’ when we leave, either.”

Linc gave me a droll look.

“When do I ever complain when you need to go to work in the morning?”

“Smart ass,” I grunted as I took the seat.

I tried, really I tried, not to look across the room to see where Ellen sat, but I couldn’t help myself.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, but I ignored it, instead watching Ellen out of the corner of my eye as she fiddled with her own phone.

Then cursed inwardly as I realized that I was watching her.

Nothing good ever came out of that.

At least, this time, Sean had someone with him. It wouldn’t make me feel absolutely terrible if I was caught watching her.

Though, seeing the haunted look in her eyes when she caught me looking at her was enough to make me feel like I’d just taken a boot to the gut.

But I’d done the right thing!

She was successful—although not in the field I thought she’d be successful in—and was happy. I’d done the right thing!

Maybe if I kept telling myself that, it would be true.

I had to think that I’d done the right thing. Because, if I didn’t do the right thing, I just caused both of us needless heartache.

I knew, on my end, that I’d done the right thing.

At the age of eighteen, I’d still had a lot of growing up to do. I’d made a lot of mistakes. I’d almost fucked my life up royally.

Thankfully, I’d climbed my way out of the hellhole that was my old hometown and started traveling wherever the oil field needed me.

Ideally, the oil field wasn’t the best place for a family. I’d had that proven to me over and over again throughout the last fourteen years, as I tried to juggle being a single father and working.

Sure, it would’ve been a hell of a lot easier with someone else to help, such as a certain brown-haired goddess, but I didn’t have an easy life. Neither did Linc.

We were dirt poor for the first ten years of his life, and even now, I still didn’t have what I wanted. Until Linc was eight, we’d lived in a trashed out bumper pull RV that was seconds away from falling apart. Each time I hooked that bitch up to my truck, I feared that it’d collapse on the way to where we were going, leaving us homeless and me fucked in the ass since I’d had no back up plan.

I worked my ass off. Went home. Blew off steam with my kid when he was there, and when he wasn’t, I enjoyed the peace and quiet. In a home that still wasn’t up to the standards that I knew Ellen had.

My phone buzzed again, reminding me of the message I received and ignored earlier, and I pulled it out.

My heart started to pound as I saw the number.

It didn’t have a name attached to it. But I didn’t need the name. I knew the number by heart. Had for fourteen years now.

I should.

I’d been ignoring the calls from that number for a very long time.

Though, at one point, I was weak and disconnected it, saying to myself that I wouldn’t keep reading those messages.

But I felt it was my due.

Felt that the least I could do was read those messages.

I’d left her.

I should have to read her sad words.

But, over the years, as her anger at me dissipated, the messages came slower and slower, but they were still there.

It was like hearing from an old friend.

I knew that, no matter what, they’d be there when I needed them most. Time and distance didn’t matter.

And this was the same thing.

At least on her end.

I never responded.

I couldn’t.

Just like I wouldn’t this time, even though her words tore a hole straight through my heart.

I hate the new you. I miss the old you.

I couldn’t help it then. I had to look up. Had to see her.

Her face was blank. No longer was the phone she’d been playing on in her hand. Now it was on the table beside her as she looked down at her hands.

And I blew out a breath.

“Shit.”

“What?” Linc shifted in his seat to stare at me.

I shook my head.

“That from your secret messenger who you still won’t tell me about?” he eyed my phone.

I pressed the home button and got rid of the message screen, then closed it completely before shoving it back into my pocket.

My son laughed, and I smacked him upside the head. “Get your cards, boy. And bring me mine, too.”

My son got up and reached for the cards that Tommy was holding out to him. He didn’t notice the sad way that Ellen watched him. Nor did he see the way her eyes flicked to me, and back to him, as if comparing the two of us.

I just looked at her, blank faced, and studied her right back.

When she was seventeen, she’d been curvy.

Now, at the age of thirty-one, she was much curvier. Her hips were round, and her breasts were a little larger. Her face wasn’t as angular as it once was, it was rounder, almost angelic.

But that didn’t detract from her beauty at all.

No, she was fucking stunning.

So stunning that it took my breath away every time I looked at her.

Even now, in a faded blue jean skirt and a solid black baby doll t-shirt, she was magnificent.

“Here, Dad,” Linc said, interrupting my contemplation of Ellen’s clothes.

I reached up and took the cards from him, smirking when I read the top card.

“Would you rather smoke weed in front of a cop or be slapped in the face by an angry mother who doesn’t want you dating her daughter,” I murmured, shaking my head.

That sounded too close to real life for me to read aloud.

The next one wasn’t much better.

Would you rather leave your significant other behind to live a full happy life without you, or would you rather stay together knowing that they’re going to die in five years and you’ll remain single for the rest of your life?

I frowned.

“Okay, this is how it works. The first person to go, which will be me, asks the person to his or her right a question. They have to answer one or the other. Then it’s their turn to ask the question. They choose a number out of this jar, and they ask the person that has that number the question. Simple enough, right?”

Tommy Tom got nods and grunts of understanding from the men, who looked less than pleased to be playing this game, and giggling laughter from the women.

I picked up my beer and took a healthy swallow, wondering if I could get out of this somehow.

I couldn’t read these questions to anyone.

Even worse, if I happened to pick Ellen, how the hell could I ask her something like what was on these cards without making her burst into tears?

Tommy Tom turned to Ellen, who was on his right, and grinned manically.

“Would you rather watch your mother using a vibrator, or never have an orgasm induced by a person of the opposite sex for the rest of your life?”

Ellen made a gagging sound, and my lips twitched.

Linc, of course, being the loud mouth that he was, said, “I’d rather watch my mother use a vibrator.”

Ellen’s eyes turned to him.

“You don’t even know your mother all that well, son,” I sat back in my seat.

Linc shrugged.

“So, obviously, that one doesn’t apply to me.”

I rolled my eyes.

“I’d rather not have an orgasm induced by a man again,” she said softly.

Her voice hit me like a ton of bricks right to the center of my chest.

I snorted, as did the rest of the room.

Who did she turn that glare onto, though?

Me.

My lips twitched at the pissed off look on her face, and she caught it, narrowing her eyes even further.

Would it be bad to tell her she looked like she was sucking on a lemon?

“All right, now you draw a number from the stack. And the person with that number is the one you ask the question.”

Ellen did as Tommy Tom asked, and showed the number to the room as she said, “Four.”

I glared at the stupid red four on my card, then tilted my head up to look at the woman that was about to ask me something.

Great. I now had to politely converse with her without saying anything inappropriate or letting on that I knew her beyond meeting her here.

“Oh, Dad! That’s you!” Linc said helpfully from my side.

Ellen’s eyes tipped up as she stared at me with barely controlled glee.

Then, she lifted the card up to her face, and promptly blushed from the tips of her toes to the roots of her hair.

“I can’t read this,” she hissed at her brother, turning on him with an accusing look.

Tommy Tom grinned.

“Yes you can. Just do it.”

She licked her lips nervously, looked at me, and then cleared her throat.

“Come on, read it!”

That was Tally, who was laughing on the perch of her seat on the other side of Tommy.

Ellen scratched her head.

“Would you,” she cleared her throat again. “Would you rather…would you rather watch me have sex with someone or have sex with someone while I watched.”

She read it so fast toward the end that I held up my hand and made a ‘repeat’ motion.

She gritted her teeth and read it again.

“Would you rather watch me have sex with someone or have sex with someone while I watched.”

She about choked on the last two words, and it took everything I had in me not to laugh at the predicament that her brother had put her in.

The only reason I was able to hold in the laughter was the look of terror in her eyes.

She didn’t want to know the answer.

I could read the truth in her eyes.

She was scared of what I might say, and not because she cared that everyone would know that, at one point in time, we’d been an item. But because she didn’t want to know I’d be willing to do either one.

Which was the truth.

I wouldn’t. Not ever.

It didn’t matter how upset I was, I wouldn’t do that to her.

I wasn’t that type of man.

“That one sucks. Read another,” I finally answered.

Relief poured through her shoulders, but then Tommy Tom spoke, pouring fat into the fire.

“You have to answer. Those’re the rules of the game.”

I shrugged.

“Then I won’t play,” I finally answered.

Tally’s eyes widened.

Linc snorted at my side.

Ellen looked down at her hands.

“Party-pooper. Ask him another one, Sis.”

Thankful that she would have a reprieve, Ellen flipped to the next card and blanched even whiter.

She flipped to the next card, and then grimaced.

“Shit, I’m getting a phone call.”

Ellen stood up and answered her phone, walking out of the room without a backwards glance, leaving the rest of us reeling.

“I think you found a winning game,” Tally laughed. “Operation embarrass your sister is in full effect.”

Tommy Tom grinned.

“Shit, Dad,” Linc said. “I think I forgot my gear in the back of Atley’s truck.”

I turned my annoyed glare on my kid.

“I told you last week that if you ever did that again, the gear was staying.”

Linc snorted.

“Yeah, I also remember you saying that if I ever forgot my backpack or lunch you wouldn’t bring it to me. Yet, you’ve done that about eighteen thousand times over my school career.”

I ruffled Linc’s hair.

“Let’s go then,” I grunted, standing up.

“Awww, not you, too!” Tommy Tom said. “You said an hour!”

“That’s because this game is stupid,” Big Papa grunted. “We will never be in any of these situations, picking between which one of these crazy ass things we’d rather do. Like, when will I ever be given the opportunity to suck some woman’s tits in public? They’d run screaming, and I’d lose my job in a fuckin’ heartbeat.”

Chuckling, I offered Tommy Tom my cards, as Linc followed suit.

I stopped beside the chair where Ellen had placed her cards, the four slick pieces of hard paper falling to the floor in her haste to get out of the room, and I realized exactly why she wasn’t willing to read any of them.

Would you rather have one day to do anything you wanted to do with me or have mediocre sex with a famous actress of your choosing?

Would you rather lose your first love or live the rest of your life together but hating each other?

Yeah, like I thought. Impossible to answer.

Not because I didn’t know the answers, but because I didn’t want to voice the answers aloud and let everyone in the room in on exactly what I felt towards the woman.