Catch Twenty-Two (Westover Prep 2)

They sniff and gum my hand, looking for some kind of treat when I hold it out for them.

“I don’t have any treats,” I explain when they get louder, no doubt begging for something to eat.

They practically walk all over each other, fighting to be the one closest to my hand. They bleat over and over, begging until I feel bad about standing in front of them with nothing to offer, but when I look to the side, I see a bag of feed.

“Give me just a second,” I tell the little guys as if they can understand me.

I grab the cup beside the bag and scoop up the food before heading back to the hungry little goats.

“What the hell are you doing?” Ezekiel yells from the other side of the barn.

“Feeding the goats,” I snap. “You work here, you should know what it looks like. These little things are starving.”

Before I can angle the cup to pour the food through the fence, Ezekiel wraps his hand around my wrist.

“They’re not starving. Goats will eat all day if allowed,” he snaps. “They’ve already been fed.”

I try but fail to rip my wrist from his grasp. “A little more won’t hurt them.”

“Goats don’t eat chicken feed, City Girl. Why don’t you go back inside and play on your phone? Don’t come out here and make more work for me.”

The glare in his eyes as he looks down at me makes me release the cup when he reaches for it. He drops my wrist a second later. He genuinely hates me. I haven’t done a single thing to him, and he can’t even seem to stand the sight of me.

I feel his eyes on me, and as much as my body is screaming for me to run away, I refuse. Just like I refuse to let the tears stinging my eyes fall in front of him.

Instead, I walk over to where he set down the lemonade and grab the glass. Sweat pours down his face, and I don’t have a doubt that he was planning to drink the cold, refreshing liquid when I left. He watches me with narrowed eyes when I walk closer to him, but instead of handing him the glass, I turn it over and pour it on his boots.

His eyes widen, nostrils flare, but he doesn’t say a word.

“I’ll tell Nan you said thank you,” I say to him before walking away. As I near the open doors of the barn, I look back over my shoulder, finding him gawking after me like I’ve stunned him. “See you at supper, Zeke. We’re having meatloaf.”Chapter 5Zeke

I didn’t expect her to turn back around as she scuttled away, but she’s got more backbone than I anticipated. That’s how she almost caught me with a grin on my face. Thankfully, I managed to keep my eyes off her legs this time, or I would’ve been busted.

She’s a lot feistier than I gave her credit for, and it doesn’t even bother me that my boots are wet, sticky, and will be a pain in the ass to clean later. I think the smile sticks around until the hay is loaded on the back of the old farm truck. I catch myself grinning more than once, and even when I purposely school my face, it seems to reappear.

It disappears for good the second I hear the rumble of my dad’s old truck as it makes its way up the Jacobson’s driveway. I can’t remember when Dad stopped smiling. I know it was long before the bank took the last track of land from him. Things were bad for years before I was privileged to the information. I think my parents didn’t want me to know they were selling off the cows at discount prices just to keep afloat. I didn’t know if they wanted to keep me a kid a little while longer or if my dad’s pride wouldn’t let him admit failure. He took over that land for his father when Pops got too old to work it, and it killed him to have to relinquish his legacy to the bulldogs down at the bank.

I haven’t seen him smile since. Yeah, he plasters on fake grins for Mrs. Jacobson’s sake, but those smiles never meet his eyes. He no longer laughs or tells stupid jokes like he did when I was younger. Hell, he doesn’t even turn on the radio when he’s in the truck anymore. It seems he’s lost every ounce of joy, and each day the weight of his losses crushes him just a little bit more.

“This is the wrong stuff, Dad,” I complain when I open the tailgate to help him unload. “Mrs. Jacobson insists on the other kind.”

“Murdoch’s is out of the Blue Star, and I got exactly what I was going after.”