Summer Sweat (Spruce Texas)

Harrison isn’t gonna make this easy, that much is for sure.

But what other choice do I have? No one’s hiring. For the first summer in as long as I can remember, there’s no money to be made anywhere in Spruce. Any option of driving to Fairview for a job went out the window the same day I almost flew out the window of my own truck when it crashed. I need money, I need a lot of it, and I can’t afford to be picky.

If I don’t make this work, I’ve got nothing.

Chapter 3

Hoyt

One minute, I’m at the side of the pig pen, staring at a bunch of oinking little monsters and plugging my nose.

Then my clumsy ass is sloshing through sticky mud, trying to get the stubborn oinkers into their enclosure.

“C’mon!” Harrison eggs me on. “Put some back into it!”

One of the pigs comes out of nowhere, zipping between my legs with a squeal of delight. I lose my balance, cry, “Holy shit!!” and fall backwards into the mud, earning an outburst of laughter from the nearby farmhands—none of whom lend a damned hand.

“C’mon, boy, get back up!” calls Harrison. “Up, up! Charlotte and Wilbur are getting away, look!”

I glare at him from the ground. “Charlotte’s the dang spider in the kid’s book! Why is there a pig named Charlotte??”

He shrugs. “Ask Gary. He’s the one with the sense of humor.”

A woman leaning against the fence nudges him. She’s maybe thirty or so with long, knotted brown hair twisted up underneath her hat, tangles of it hanging over her face, tanned complexion, long-limbed and sharp-eyed. “Why you got the poor boy playin’ with the pigs on his first day? You know one of us can do this work in half the time.” Her name’s Emmalea, but she goes by Lea.

“He’s gotta learn. This is how I learned. Dive right in, head-on. Now c’mon, get on up!” he calls out, and I swear he’s suppressing a laugh. “You got more pigs to round up! They’re waiting!”

I can’t give in. I can’t show that he’s getting to me. “Bring ‘em on,” I snap back. I get to my feet—only to be knocked right back on my ass by another pig who charges out of nowhere, oinking with unrelenting joy. Everyone bursts into laughter again.

I guess this is just a mere morsel of the hell that awaits me.

Harrison’s little “tour” has quickly become a crash course in how to humiliate myself in front of a bunch of strangers I’m going to be living and working with for the rest of the summer.

Then Harrison shows me the sheep, who are apparently due for a shearing soon. “See that big ol’ gal in the back?” His big arm flexes taut as he points across the enclosure. My eyes glue to his huge bicep, stunned. “You gotta watch out for her. Peepers. And I ain’t joking, because she will—” Seriously, does this dude bench-press cows to get those sick guns? They’re the size of my thighs. “—first thing in the morning, which I’ll show you. Fences are the most important—” I bet he can find a way to tie a watermelon into a knot with those suckers.

Then: “Hey, are you paying attention?”

I snap out of it. “Of course. Fences are important, blah, blah.”

“Yeah, because the lives of fluffy villains like Peepers depend on it,” he says, pointing again—and again, my eyes snap to his arm. “You’ll shear a few. And if we—”

Why am I tempted to grab that bicep like a sandwich? I bet it feels like a slab of goddamned granite.

“Hoyt?”

I nod. “Yeah, sure, I’m shearing the villainous sheep, got it.”

Harrison huffs at me, annoyed, then pushes away from the fence and saunters off. “C’mon, then. Horses are next. And I hope you’re retaining all of this, because tomorrow, it’s all on you.”

His arms aren’t the only thing big on him. His ass, too, like he’s got two steel globes squeezed in his jeans. The guy has to do a hundred squats a day, easy. Not to mention his thighs, which are each as big as my damned head. Why am I imagining him locking those suckers around me in a head scissor suddenly? I’d be choked out in seconds.

Better make sure it’s only pigs I’m wrestling in the mud and not him. I can take on his attitude all day long, but not sure I hold a candle to his actual strength.

And especially those thighs.

We finally arrive at the horse barn, which I’ve actually been pretty excited about—until I’m shown what I’m going to have to do to keep this enormous place “clean n’ pristine” according to Harrison’s high-ass standards, thus sucking out all the curiosity and fascination I had a second ago.

I keep feeling like some funky smell is following me no matter where the hell we go. Was it actually pig shit I fell in and not mud back at the pig pen? I can’t solve the mystery.