Page 46 of Rough
“We will, Renee. Promise.” Wilder does his best to cool down our de facto mom, but she’s not having any of it.
“Go eat somethin’. Take a shower ‘cuz ya’ll smell like stale beer and swamp. Then plant your butts at the kitchen table until she shows up. You got thirty minutes.”
With hands on her hips, she watches as we stumble up the steps and hurry into the house. We make quick work of eating the cold breakfast she left on the table, then hurry through our showers.
As I’m walking out of my room, tugging my shirt down, Trina is being backed out of Remy’s room. Remy, who’s got a pissed off scowl, and her with a look of surprise. “You best be hidin’ away right now. My mom is gonna take you out if you show your face downstairs right now.”
“But, Remy. I want—”
“Ready?” I ask, interrupting her. I was fucking serious when I said she needs to be gone. All of this social media shit needs to be only a blip in our past. “Your momma ain’t gonna wait much longer for us. Plus, Country should be here soon.”
“Country?” Trina asks, confused.
Remy offhandedly says, “Bets.”
He doesn’t see the way her lip curls up in disgust, but I sure as hell do. “Why the hell are you meeting with that crazy woman? She’s the reason you’ve been losing sponsors! Did you know that clip is still trending? It’s beendays.”
“Don’t care,” I snap. Turning to head down, I call to him. “Hurry it up and get your ass downstairs.” Before I disappear, I spin around and face the woman who’s been a thorn in my side for over a year. “And don’t say a fuckin’ word about Country. She’s our kind of crazy and we’ll protect her before anyone else.”
With that warning, I take the stairs two at a time and come to a halt when the woman I was just defending looks up from the kitchen table. Her face is unreadable as I find my feet again, moving to the table to sit across from her.
“Country, I—”
“Not a word, Clyde.” Renee stops me from saying everything I want to, but I don’t drag my eyes from where they’re locked with my girl’s so she can read everything I want to say to her.
Wilder is already sitting quietly, looking between the two of us, but apparently, he’s already gotten his scolding from Renee. Remy is fast to follow, hurrying into the kitchen, pausing just the same as I did.
“Bets, you—”
“Remington,” Renee snarls and he snaps his mouth shut just as quickly as I did. “Sit your butt down. Not a sound from any of you until she’s done speakin’. You hear me?”
We all ‘yes, ma’am’ her and then stare at a furious Betsy.Christ, she’s gorgeous in her ire.
Pushing her chair out, she bends down to reach for something on the floor, then straightens, dropping a massive binder on the table with a loud thunk.
“I’m gonna make this quick for you boys, but I need ya’ll to listen to me and listen well.” Lifting her eyes to Remy, she cocksher head at him. “The cost to buy back your farm just went up from five thousand to whatever way you want to pay me back. I’m givin’ you two options and I’d prefer the larger amount, but since I don’t plan on goin’ into business with you now, I ‘spose my breeding program is pointless. I should at least recoup what you’ve all lost me.”
Renee eyes us from where she’s standing behind Betsy, so we keep from arguing.
Snorting in surprise, she continues. “Good boys, listenin’ to your momma to stay quiet. Let me lay out some numbers for you. I took calves in shortly after they left their moms and were auctioned off for local residents. The agreement was that if they were males, I would cover the cost of feed and medical care. Two years they stayed with me. Before I turned ‘em over for butcherin’, I’d collect a semen sample from the bull as payment for their care.”
She runs her eyes over us, then opens her binder, flipping pages until she finds what she’s looking for.
“This is gonna be real borin’ for your itty-bitty brains, but I’ll do my best to explain. Each sample taken provided me with 10-12 straws, or single use samples. I could impregnant aminimumof two females with that, but up to eight. Do you all know how much justonestraw is valued at for quality bull sperm? And yes, you’re gonna hear the word sperm a whole lot over the next ten minutes.”
Waiting us out, I move awkwardly on my chair and look over to Remy and Wilder.
“Oh, that’s right. Renee said ya’ll weren’t supposed to talk while I said what I wanna say. I’ll keep the questions to a minimum, then. Five hundred to one thousand dollars.”
My eyes bug out.Holy fuckin’ shit.
“Yeah. Valuable, right? So, because I’m a real nice girl, I’m gonna go with the five hundred number ‘cuz I’m not an assholelike some of us in this room. One sample, which I had to pay Doc to be here for to do all the additives after it was collected, makin’ it able to be frozen, was worth anywhere from five to six thousand dollars.”
Sitting back in her chair, she crosses her arms. “You wanna know how many samples I had in there? You can answer me.”
“Bets,” Remy says quickly, the first of us to open his mouth. “We didn’t know.”
“I know you didn’t know. That’s why I’m here, you asshole!” I’ve heard her raise her voice at Remy before, but this is different. This has so much hurt and anger behind it, I know it’s going to take a lot of work to make this up to her.
