Page 40 of Midnight Surrounds Us

The lights dimmed in the theatre and the previews started up on the screen.

“Yeah,” I whispered, leaning back in my chair and closer to her so she could hear me. “You know Bax Lee?”

“Abey’s brother?”

I nodded. “He’s a friend, and when I called him on my way to pick you up, he mentioned puttin’ up a big parcel of his land for sale. It’s good farmland. Until last year, they raised sheep on it. It’d be a hell of a lot smaller than my dad’s outfit, but I think that might be ideal for a start-up while I work out the kinks. I’ve got the money for the land, with enough left over for labor and stock.”

“So,” she whispered back, inching closer to me too, “what’s stoppin’ you?”

Good question.

The previews seemed to last forever, but I didn’t mind ’cause I spent most of them leaned back, watching Aubrey experience them. Her eyes would get big during action scenes, her mouth forming a delicate ‘o,’ and she’d flash a little secret smile at the romantic scenes. When the “shut the hell up and turn off yourdamn phones” announcement came on, she turned to look at me.

“What?” she whispered.

Shaking my head slowly, I tried not to let it show on my face just how much her smile made me feel full inside and how much I adored her. I set the popcorn on the seat next to me and reached for her hand. When she placed it in mine without argument, I held on tight, and we settled back and waited for Thor and his friends to entertain us.

And I did, in fact, steal a kiss, but I waited till her favorite superhero was up on the big screen flexing his biceps, driving home the fact that whoever that movie star was, he could be her dream, but in real life, I was the guy who could make her blush and swoon and come alive.

“That was so good!”Aubrey practically skipped to my truck after the movie.

It wasn’t Thor’s movie, technically, but his friend’s, another dude in too-tight pants and ridiculously unmanageable hair, but she didn’t care. Thor made a couple cameos and that was enough for Aubrey. She liked to laugh, and those superheroes with their raunchy back-and-forth and their constant pop culture references had her snickering the whole two hours.

“Glad you liked it,” I said.

“Thank you for takin’ me.”

I still held her hand, and in my other I carried the half-empty popcorn bucket ’cause it was a metal superhero edition, and she thought her boys might like to have it. Thinking back to when I was twenty-three, I couldn’t seem to remember wanting shit like that, but she knew her boys. And if they didn’t use it forpopcorn, they could always use it to hold cold beers or Doritos or something.

“You wanna drive over to Town Square and walk around a bit?”

She bit her bottom lip. “Would you mind walkin’ around downtown Wisper instead?”

“Sure, Spitfire. Whatever you want.”

I was right. She hated crowds, and it was late enough in the season that the tourists would’ve already started pouring into Jackson Hole. I didn’t blame her one bit for wanting to avoid the throngs of people you had to actively work to dodge on the sidewalks around Town Square or all the people out in front of their stores trying to convince you to come in and buy shit.

If you wanted peace, Wisper was the place to go.

In my opinion, the laid-back easiness of Wisper was its number one selling point. Sure, they got their share of tourists, too, but way less. If you didn’t run into at least one person you knew on the street every day in Wisper, you’d think you were in a twilight zone. Even me, and I’d never even lived in town.

She smiled up at me. “Thanks.”

The drive back was relaxed. She held my hand for most of it, humming along to popular country songs on the radio, while I stroked her wrist with the pad of my thumb.

“So what are your boys up to lately?” I asked, releasing her hand and turning the song down a notch.

“Um. They…” Suddenly, she groaned, and her head fell back against her headrest. “I have no idea. They deliver pizzas up in Bozeman. Benji failed most of his classes. You know, that’s what happens when you don’t actuallygoto class. God, it took so much energy to get them to agree to go in the first place. And then instead of tryin’ again, Benji dropped out. Then Micah followed. His grades weren’t nearly as bad, but he has to doeverything Benji does. They have that weird twin mind-meld thing.”

I laughed.

“Yeah, well, their school was paid for by their dad’s military benefits, so they’re really lucky they didn’t have to take out loans. Anyway, I don’t know what they wanna do now. They’re still livin’ right off campus in an apartment, partyin’ it up and actin’ like they don’t have a care in the world.”

Sounded to me like they both needed a kick in the ass, and maybe a summer out at the ranch with my old man as their boss. He’d cure them of their carefree twenties real fast.

“What were they studyin’ before they dropped out?”

“Actually, agriculture.”

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