Page 23 of Small Town Hero
H e didn’t quite know what to make of Birdie after that whole long day of work. She wasn’t quite the same as he had imagined her to be.
But then, he could honestly admit that he hadn’t imagined her to be anything like a real person.
She was an emblem, because his dad had always said that her family was a bushel of bad apples.
But she wasn’t . . . She wasn’t bad. She was scrappy.
She was strange. Sad, even, in some ways.
He felt bad for her. That was what surprised him most. He hadn’t expected to ever feel a lick of pity for Birdie Lennox.
And here he was, about to grill her some steak.
He brought a plateful of steaks outside, and put them on his hot, flattop grill. Birdie had gone back to the apartment to take a shower, and it was his first break from her all day.
He would’ve thought it would be a good thing to get away from her. But he sort of missed the chatter.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a conversation like that with someone. He tossed the first steak on the grill, and it sizzled. No. He’d never had such an intense conversation with anyone. Ever. His dad just didn’t talk, and . . . he couldn’t even really remember his mom’s voice anymore.
He could still remember some of his sister’s baby talk.
He didn’t like to, though. It made his heart feel as if it was too large for his chest. He would never characterize himself as lonely.
He had this place. He had business contacts—he made conversation frequently with the farrier who did shoes for his horses, with the guys who delivered hay and feed.
But being with Birdie for part of the day made him feel .
. . something different. It made him feel like maybe there was something he was missing. He couldn’t quite put a finger on it.
“Lord Almighty.” He turned and saw Birdie jogging toward him. Her copper hair was in a ponytail, swinging behind her, and she was wearing a light blue T-shirt, and a pair of short pink shorts. She looked . . . carefree in a way he couldn’t say he’d seen her before.
“Evening,” he said.
“No way. Steak.”
“Yes. I have a cattle ranch.”
“That is way above my pay grade. Not that I’m complaining.”
“Can you get yourself into the house and grab the corn on the cob that’s sitting on the counter?”
She looked a little bit surprised but didn’t admit it. Instead, she wordlessly went up the stairs and into the house, returning a few moments later with a tray laden with corn on the cob.
“Give it here,” he said.
Her ponytail was swinging wildly as she hop-stepped over to him.
He took out his tongs and put the corn on the griddle, right on top of some melted butter, and he could practically see hearts in Birdie’s eyes.
“This is a treat,” she said.
“Well, you deserve it after putting in a full day’s work like that.”
“I’m not afraid of hard work, you know.”
“I’ve gathered that.”
“It’s just, nobody trusts my dad, and they shouldn’t. They also don’t trust me. And I guess they shouldn’t.”
She frowned.
“Well, it’s not too late for you to try to actually get to know some people in town and make sure they know who you really are.”
“I don’t want do that. I want to leave. What’s the point of being named after a bird if you can’t use your wings to fly?”
For some reason, the idea of Birdie Lennox not being around anymore made him unaccountably sad. It shouldn’t. He had decided she was a menace long ago. He had decided she was a nonsensical, useless termagant, in fact. There was really no reason to be sad thinking about a world she wasn’t in.
“I’ve never even thought about leaving,” he said.
“Why not?”
The answer sat heavy in the center of his chest, and he almost didn’t want to say it. But he didn’t see the point of lying, either. He had already told Birdie some things that he had never told anybody else. So why not tell her this too?
“My whole family is buried here. I can’t really imagine leaving.”
A little crease appeared between her fine, rust-colored brows. “Oh. I never thought of that. That’s . . . that’s really sad.”
“It is,” he said, his voice gruff. “I just can’t imagine leaving them. I’m the only one left. If I don’t bring them flowers and all of that . . . there’s nobody else to do it.”
And the truth of the matter was, once he was laid to rest beside his family, there would be no one left.
But he had never thought about having kids, having a wife.
He had seen what the loss had done to his dad.
And he didn’t think he could do what his father had done. Shove it all down, swallow down the pain with whiskey at night.
No. He didn’t think . . .
It just wasn’t in him. So he wouldn’t do it.
But that made for an awfully lonely picture.
But maybe that was how it should be. His mother gone way before her time, his sister gone before she could ever become the person she was supposed to be.
It was that ecosystem again. Maybe he and his dad had never gotten the nutrients they needed after that.
Maybe they were just destined to die off.
“What?” Birdie asked, breaking into his thoughts.
“Just thinking. So, you’re going to leave?”
“Yep. I was going to Texas. I had a ride over there, though I guess I have to text him and let him know I can’t make it. Unless I decide to steal your horse in the middle of the night.”
He looked at her, and he honestly couldn’t tell if she was kidding or not. “Are you for real?”
“No. I’m not going to take your horse. I . . . listen, you’re not so bad.”
“I’m not so bad?”
“Yeah. I always thought that you believed you were better than everybody else. I thought you were holier than thou, you know? And you kind of are. But the thing is, you mean it. You aren’t just acting that way because you want to prove you’re better than somebody else.
You might actually be better than other people.
At least, nobody’s ever been better to me. ”
He was lanced with guilt. Because he didn’t think he had been all that nice to her, actually. He had essentially taken her captive. He had practically put her in prison above his barn.
She just thought he was being nice because he’d given her coffee and eggs. But that was such a low bar. She should expect better than that. She should get better than that.
“Birdie, the way I see it, you can’t help the family you were born into. And sure, you’ve gotten up to your fair share of shenanigans . . .”
“Is this where you tell me it’s not fair for me to be punished for the sins of my father?
Because the truth is, I’ve committed a lot of my own.
I’m not eighteen; I’m twenty-eight. A lot of my reputation is earned.
And I can deal with that. It’s why I want to leave, actually.
Because it’s not just that people in town don’t like me, or think I’m a menace, though that is true.
It’s that if I don’t change my surroundings, I’m never going to change.
It’s not that I’m trying to cut corners.
It’s not that I want to take the easy way.
But I feel like I don’t have anything here.
I’m just rolling a boulder up the hill, endlessly.
And I’m never going to make it to the top.
Just going to roll down and have to start all over again.
And you know, there’s a point where you begin to feel tired.
” She let out a sigh, and her slim shoulders shifted.
“That’s when you start debating whether or not you can afford morality.
You have lots of horses, I don’t have any.
I couldn’t see another way to get to Texas.
And so taking yours started to seem right in my head. It started to make sense.”
“Do you want to go to Texas?”
Suddenly, he wanted to offer to send her there.
She shook her head slowly. “I think . . . if it’s all right with you, I think I’ll keep this job. I don’t know what kind of man I’m going to find in Texas. And I don’t know what my ride is going to ask for along the way. But I already know that you’re not . . .”
His chest burned. The idea that men had done that to her, made her feel she had to give them a part of herself in exchange for basic needs, it killed him.
“I wouldn’t do that,” he said.
She looked up at him, and she smiled. The sun hit her just so, highlighting the very faint freckles sprinkled over the bridge of her nose.
She was very pretty, was Birdie. But no matter how pretty he thought she was, he wasn’t going to take advantage of her the way those other guys had done. Not ever.
The very idea enraged him.
His dad had said one time that the world could take everything from you—but it couldn’t take away your morals. Sometimes just being good and decent was all you had left.
He was going to be good and decent.
It didn’t matter how pretty she was. Hell, treating a woman like that had nothing to do with how pretty she was. Nothing to do with what she was wearing. It had everything to do with a man feeling so small that he wanted to feel powerful by proving that he could get something through manipulation.
Gunnar wanted nothing to do with that behavior.
“You got a safe place here, I promise you that. For as long as you want it.”
“Even if it’s longer than the two months?”
“Even if it’s longer. I want to help you get on your feet.”
“That’s . . . that’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. Honestly.”
He took all the food off the grill and put it onto a big tray. Then he gestured for her to follow him to a picnic table down in front of his porch.
He set the food in the center of the table, then went back inside for a couple of plates, and two bottles of beer.
He brought it all out and set it in front of her. Birdie dug into the food before he even sat down.
She was half feral. And though he had always known that, he didn’t think he had ever really known it. He had sort of had this vague thought about bad seeds. His dad had put that thought in his head. Because his dad’s version of right and wrong was so rigid.