Rough Country (Tannen Boys 3)

“Ah!” I shout, laughing as I look up so that his tongue swipes along my chin rather than French kissing me.

“Got it!” she exclaims. “That’s gonna be a good one, I bet. Well, not that I bet. No gambling allowed.” She’s mimicking a lower voice, presumably one of her brothers. At my lifted brow, she asks, “You haven’t heard about our dad? Hell, girl, what rock have you been living under?”

I confess, “All I know is Unc said your dad put you through the wringer, but you all seem okay to me.”

She laughs, plopping ungracefully to the dirt next to me. “We do seem okay, but most folks do on the outside. It’s the inside that’s all twisted up like a ball of baling wire.”

That’s actually really insightful, especially for something delivered so off-handedly and casually. I eye Shayanne with new appreciation. “So you’re not okay?” I ask gently, not sure if I’m getting too close to dangerous territory.

She shrugs, but I see that she’s picking at a ragged spot on her cuticle. “We are now, for the most part. But how you grow up, it shapes you. I reckon you mostly want to know about Bobby, so here’s what I’ll tell you—”

I wave a hand, not wanting to push her. “You don’t have to say anything.”

She ignores me. “Yes, I do. I think it’s good for you to know, and fuck knows, he ain’t gonna tell you shit unless he’s singing it in a song.” She throws another eye roll, something that seems to be a habit. “Bobby was right on the edge of greatness, has always been too good for this place. You ever heard the expression about roses needing fancy soil, but dandelions just pop right up through the concrete whether you want them to or not?”

I nod, getting what she’s saying even if I haven’t heard the phrase.

“Bobby’s like a rose that decided concrete was good enough for him. And not just any old rose, but like one of those fancy heirloom ones that have to be cultivated from generational stock and cared for better than a newborn baby. He’s like one of those that decided pit gravel was just fine. He blooms, and it’s pretty as can be, but it ain’t right and we all know it.” She looks around, but I can tell she’s seeing something other than the goats and fence around us. “But he’s a hold-on-er. He lost so much—Mom, Dad, his chance at the life he wanted, the farm. So now he holds on to everything with both hands and an iron will, even if it suffocates the tar out it. He damn near killed Brutal that way one time, just hanging on so tight, trying to protect him with everything he had. He and Brutal had it out.”

“Who won?” I can’t imagine a battle between the two brothers. One, they seem so close, and two, their reputations as fighters definitely precedes them.

Shay’s brows climb. “That you even ask tells me something about you, Willow. You think Bobby has a chance against Brutal? Hell no, but I like that you’re on his side anyway.”

I let that sink in.

“Tell me about you,” Shay orders. “What’s your damage? And don’t say nothing, because we all have something, and you showed up here out of the blue, making all the tongues wag.”

Those are two separate questions with very different answers. I actually grew up pretty fortunate with Mom and Dad, and even Oakley, something I didn’t know to be thankful for until I saw that other people didn’t have it quite so well. But as for why I came? I’m not willing to answer that. It’s not my place, so I stick with my standard answer, even though it’s hard to do so when Shay is giving me so much more insight to Bobby and the Tannens. “Nothing, really. I’m just a regular girl who needed a break. A fresh start somewhere, but not too fresh, you know what I mean? I figured I knew someone here, at least.”

“Hank,” Shay fills in for me. “Is it true you hadn’t seen him in years when you showed up?”

I nod. “Yeah, since I was fourteen. Seemed about time to lay old bones to rest.”

Before she can ask me anything else, a whining noise fills the air and the goats get up to check it out.

“Damn, that was faster than I thought. Bobby’s coming,” she tells me right as another Gator comes over the hill. It nearly catches air on the bumpy, grassy surface before sliding to a stop.

Bobby gets out, striding straight toward me. Automatically, I rise, setting Trollie down, which he argues about loudly. Baaaaaa!

Bobby doesn’t go for the gate. No, he hops right over the pen fencing, making the shortest distance between point A, that’d be him, and point B, that’d be me, his direct route.