Page 10 of Crossing the Line (Small Town Love #7)

Six

BIXBY

Bixby knew that he was losing his mind. He'd basically opened his mouth in front of a whole collection of friends that he and Janice shared that he was going to help Janice build a chicken coop.

He... himself... was going to help build a coop for Janice's chickens.

Yeah, he knew how crazy he sounded saying that.

Lucky for him, Hank, ever a good friend, offered to help him build it.

Which meant that Hank was going to save his ass.

Which had earned Hank a forever discount at the butcher counter.

So while Bixby was worried that he'd make an even bigger mess of things using a hammer and a nail, Hank had invited him over to his construction office to learn the basics. It was there, over a few sodas and sandwiches, Bixby had practiced his newfound and resurrected skills with basic tools.

Resurrected in that he'd built a few things as a child in Cub Scouts and the year or two he'd been in the Boy Scouts. But those skills had fallen to the wayside years before.

He'd hung a few things at home over the years and tried unsuccessfully to fix a leaky pipe under the sink when they'd been married.

So it was helpful that Hank had let him come over to practice.

Hank explained it in two different ways. "If you don't know the basics and you end up mashing a finger, I'm going to get my ass kicked by my wife. And I think my insurance carrier would throw a hammer at my head."

Bixby had laughed at that, but he'd sobered at the rest of it.

"And Jenny's rooting for you."

"Rooting for me?"

"Well, we are rooting for you both ." With the lip of his soda can almost touching his lip, Hank had gone on to explain.

"When you two broke up," he shook his head, looking as sad as Bixby was feeling himself, "we were surprised.

A lot of people were. You two were always together.

Bread and butter. Peas and carrots. When we saw you, we saw Janice.

"Then overnight you weren't together. Jenny and I didn't understand how that happened."

Bixby opened his mouth to explain, but he didn't really have one.

Hank's smile made him feel marginally better. "I'm guessing you don't have a reason either."

Bixby shook his head. "To be honest, I think I might have had a mental break from reality back then. It's the only way I can explain why I'd do something as stupid as divorce Janice. I mean, we fought-"

Hank had almost choked on his soda. "Who doesn't? There were times that Jenny and I felt like we were practicing for a new Olympic sport, but eventually we realized that how we fought, the way we slugged it out verbally when things got tough wasn't exactly the healthiest way to resolve things."

"On the other end of it," Bixby shrugged, "I think Janice and I might swallow our own feelings. I know when we lived in the same house and worked together during the day it was almost sanity-stealing for us to resolve things by a tacit agreement not to talk about it ever again."

That's where they'd ended the conversation because, as they explained it, two strapping men talking about their feelings was a little odd, even for them.

But because they'd stopped talking about it then, Bixby kind of blamed both of them for why he'd been ruminated over the conversation the week before.

Now, standing in Janice's side of the backyard, wearing the pair of jeans that he only put on when it was time to do the deep cleaning on the butcher shop and a long sleeve, neon yellow, t-shirt like they used on construction sites, looking better than he felt as their earlier conversation came back to him.

He'd never really talked to Janice about the stress he was feeling.

He certainly didn't tell her about the doubts that he'd had.

Her back door opened, and he turned his head and nailed his thumb with the hammer.

The curse that reached his ears wasn't even his own.

"What have you done?"

He dropped the hammer and turned his back to the door, looking down at his thumb.

There wasn't any blood, which was good.

Janice was not a person who dealt with blood, probably why she was not a fan of the butcher side of the market.

If he was bleeding, he wasn't going to let her see it.

"Bixby?" He felt her hands grab his arm and damn it, his muscles tensed and he growled at himself.

It felt like he'd just flexed for her. Not intentionally, but there were a lot of things that his body did around Janice that he didn't plan to do.

Instinct some might say.

Shamelessness was his own thought.

He'd always leaned into her admiration. If she looked at him like she liked what she saw he'd always preened a little.

Ah, nature.

"Let me see."

He didn't.

He felt like he'd already made a fool of himself because he'd turned to look at her like he was one of Pavlov's dogs and she was the bell.

"Don't make me twist your arm." Her voice had gone from shock to concern and now there was a not-so-thinly-veiled threat.

Like she was more than willing to hurt him to see how badly he was hurt.

And that made him smile.

Yeah, he was a little crazy in the head.

"Let. Me. See."

Hank's voice reached his ears. "You better let her see it or she might knock you over the head to get her way."

Bixby turned his head in time to see Janice nail Hank with a glare.

"Don't make me call Jenny."

Hank held up his hands in surrender. "Hey! I was helping you!"

Janice smiled and Bixby smiled in response.

"I know, but I'm pretty sure Jenny would be here in a heartbeat to see the chicks again."

Hank dropped one hand to his side, his hammer held lightly in it, but his other hand lifted to rub at the back of his neck.

His friend's cheeks reddened. "She's already hinting that she wants me to build a second coop. One at our house."

Janice nodded knowingly. "She's going to see you as even more of a hero."

Bixby heard her words, and his brain started to slowly work them over, but then Janice turned her head and her gaze met his.

"Now," she nodded. "are you going to let me see your hand?"

He didn't fight her any longer.

He loosened the tension in his arm, and she smiled as she looked at his hand.

Damn. She was still heartachingly beautiful.

He watched her as she turned his hand one way and then another, looking carefully over his thumb.

"Well?" Hank called out. "Is it going to fall off?"

Janice lifted her head and turned to look at Hank.

"I've got some wood glue. We can put it back on!" He started laughing. His shoulders shook and he almost dropped his hammer. "I've got an industrial staple gun. We can use that if you think it'll hold better."

Janice rolled her eyes.

Okay, he didn't 'see' it because she was looking at Hank, but he swore he could feel like, like the Force.

"Hank?"

Bixby's shoulders straightened in reaction to the sound of Janice's voice. It had that 'disappointed mom' sound to it and was likely to make any self-respecting man straighten his posture if he was within earshot of the sound.

"Yes?"

Hank was not immune to the sound. In fact, he looked a little nervous.

"Are you done mocking Bixby?"

Bixby felt his chest puff out a little in reaction.

She lifted his hand between them before she turned to look at him.

It was probably just the fact that he was hurting.

Or maybe it was all the physical exertion from building the coop.

But as he stood there, his hand in hers, Bixby almost had a rather embarrassing physical reaction to her touch.

She looked up into his eyes and he straightened, leaning back. "Do you think you broke it?"

When he didn't answer, she asked him another question.

"Do you want me to take you to the Emergency Room?"

His eyes widened at that. "Uh... no?"

"No?" She shook her head and sighed. "Urgent Care?"

He opened his mouth to answer and instead of continuing, she let go of his hand.

"Is this one of those manly things? You're going to wait until your thumb is three times its size before you do something to take care of yourself?"

Honestly, he would have answered her a moment later if he could have found his voice, but...

He'd suddenly gone a little stupid.

For his ex-wife.

"I think I just need a little time. I'm..." he looked up and around, hoping to find a worthwhile excuse. "I think I need to go back," the words were unsettling to him, "to my half of the house."

The word 'half' stuck in his head like a bad note played on a piano.

A tinny twang of sound that no one could misunderstand for music.

It felt like their easy life apart from each other was just that, separate and easy.

But, the feelings that were stirring up inside of him that made easy feel... counterfeit.

Wrong.

Before he could think too much about it, he stepped back and she let go of his hand. "I'll be back in a few minutes."

He walked away and considered trying to make it over the fence between their properties, but really, that was crazytalk.

Or crazy thoughts as it was.

He could only imagine how idiotic he'd look when he tried to scale the fence and end up pitching himself ass over teakettle onto the other side.

Yeah, he wasn't elderly by any means, but that didn't mean he had the skill to scale the wall or jump on a pommel horse like they did in the Olympics.

Even at his best, he'd never been able to leap over anything.

Hurdles at high school only made sure he'd broken his nose.

So, with as much male swagger as he could manage after he'd all but smashed his thumb into oblivion, he walked away.

JANICE

Janice moved over to the coop that was in progress and inspected it for the first time since it started looking like more than a Lincoln Logs set she'd played with as a child.

"This is looking a lot bigger than I thought it would be."

Hank looked confused and stepped over to her to look at from her perspective.

He folded his arms across his chest and shrugged. "You have six chickens, right?"

She shrugged as well. "Sure. Six, but this looks like a coop for sixty."

"Well," he frowned, "they need room to grow!"