Seeing is Believing (Cuttersville #3)(20)
Author: Erin McCarthy

Amanda stared down her son. “Really? Piper was cleaning the coop when you were in diapers.”

“Man up,” their father told him. “It’s not that big of a deal.”

Piper felt bad for Logan. It had been an accident. Sort of. He certainly hadn’t meant to hit Lilly in the eye, even if he had been smacking the crap out of a snake. But whereas she normally would offer to do the task herself, she bit her lip and resisted the urge. She spent far too much of her time trying to please other people instead of herself.

“Piper.” Her brother turned big, brown, pleading eyes on her. He might be a sullen teen a lot of the time, but when she looked at him she still saw the toddler who’d snuggled up with her and followed her everywhere.

“I’ll help him,” she said.

Her parents protested. She knew she was undermining their intention, but truthfully she couldn’t say no to her brothers. Given that Lilly was gasping with laughter from being swung around by her father, it seemed she was already over her injury, so there was no permanent damage.

Piper moved with Logan across the hard-packed dirt of the yard to the perky yellow coop. Her brother was as tall as she was now, and it was a little disturbing. He wasn’t a little kid anymore. They both pulled on waders from the vintage cabinet sitting next to it and went inside. Logan reached for a rake while Piper shooed the hens up the plank to their nests.

“Sometimes I hate living on a farm,” Logan commented.

“I’ve lived in a trailer, and trust me, this is a whole lot better,” she told him. A farm was smelly and hard work, but Piper loved it. It was Tucker land and it would always be there. Like her father—consistent, reliable, steady. But Logan didn’t appreciate that as much as she did, and why would he? He didn’t know any better, hadn’t experienced hardship. Their younger brother, Jack, was more likely the one to wind up running the farm someday. Not only did he look like their father, with a stockier build and caramel hair, he loved the farm, had been clamoring for tractor rides since he was a toddler.

“Why do you still live with us?” Logan asked, giving a halfhearted pull at the straw and the muck beneath it. Then he seemed to realize how that sounded. “I mean, not that I want you to leave, but I don’t know why you’d want to stay. I’m not coming back home after college.”

“Because I love you.” Piper made kissy sounds in his direction, laughing at the look of discomfort on his face.

He stuck out his tongue. “Don’t you want to have a boyfriend or anything? I mean, I would kill to be alone with Jasmine. Mom won’t even let her over here to watch a movie.”

Piper was a little startled by the vehemence in his voice. Oh, Lord, puberty had kicked in with a vengeance. “Yeah, I don’t think Mom is going to let that happen anytime soon.” Their mother didn’t like Jasmine, and there had been under-the-breath comments about sluts sniffing around. She wasn’t about to trust Logan and Jasmine in a dark room.

It brought to mind the challenge of dating even at her age, because she did live with her parents. Until now, it had never particularly bothered her. Now it suddenly seemed to matter. If she did want to pursue a flirtation with Brady, how was she even going to do that? Once she came back home from Shelby’s the next day, they wouldn’t have any opportunities to be alone. Then when Brady left town, she would regret it.

There was no guarantee that he’d want a repeat of the night before, but she certainly did. How many opportunities was she going to have for sex like that? Not a lot. She shouldn’t have done it in Shelby’s house. If she had her own place, she would at least have had a shot at knocking boots a second time. Without any ghosts around.

Maybe she was still living at home because it was safe. Easy. Maybe it meant she didn’t have to date, to go out there and risk getting hurt. Or being lonely. She had never been alone, not since she was eight years old. Her stepfather had left her alone a lot, and it had scared her to the point she’d made up an imaginary friend to keep her company. Anita had moved to the farm with her but eventually had stopped turning up altogether.

But the fear of being alone was still there, deep down, in a dark, ugly spot.

She wasn’t a kid anymore, and she wasn’t fragile. But if she didn’t move on, she couldn’t really expect her parents to treat her any differently.

She didn’t want to live her life making decisions based on fear. She wanted to be in control.

Maybe she hadn’t gotten enough sleep the night before, what with Rachel staring at her half the night and memories of Brady’s body over hers clouding her thoughts, and her judgment was impaired, but as the smell of chicken waste clogged her nostrils, she felt a swell of conviction. “You know, Logan, maybe it is time for me to get my own place.”

* * *

BRADY’S GRANDMOTHER WAS EXACTLY WHERE HE would have expected her to be on a Saturday afternoon. She was on her front porch, rocking, a baseball cap on her head. Only whereas ten years ago she would have had a book in her hand, now she had an e-reader in front of her. As he came up the walk, she glanced up.

“Heard you were in town,” was her dry greeting. “About goddamn time.”

“Hi, Gran. It’s good to see you, too. How are you doing?”

“Fine.” She assessed him. “Well, your hair’s not blue. That’s a start.”

Geez, you dyed your hair as a rebellious teen and you never lived it down. “My hair hasn’t been blue in fifteen years.” Though he couldn’t be too annoyed. Seeing her face, he suddenly felt his gut clench. He had missed her. She looked older than he remembered. Her skin was thin and she’d lost weight. Her feet were a road map of blue veins and her hand shook a little. It shocked him. Scared him. Had a flood of guilt rushing over him.

“Thank God—that’s all I can say about that.” She patted the chair next to her. “Remember when you had that Mohawk? Your hair was jacked all the way to Jesus.”

That made Brady grin. “It was a statement.”

“You can call it what you want. Come sit down and tell me what’s going on in your world.” She held up the e-reader. “I’m just reading a novel I downloaded by that guy who writes those smaltzy books. It’s crap, but at least on this thing I can make the print huge. Easier on the old eyes.”

Brady kissed her on the cheek and sank into the chair next to her. “You think every book you read is crap, but you keep reading books. So I’m not sure I believe you.”