Page 2 of Shep
Literally. I wasn’t really a Wilder. Well, I was, legally. Out of the nine kids, I was the adopted one. After seven kids, Ma was told she couldn’t have any more, so they adopted me. A few months after the papers were signed, surprise, surprise, Ma actually could have another kid. She popped out Zeb.
I didn’t think about it all that much. We were a huge-ass family and it wasn’t like we talked about the fact that I didn’t have Wilder genes over dinner. Wenevertalked about it because it didn’t matter.
But lately… this year? I felt more different than ever. Trig was a retired rodeo champ and had a shit ton of money. A wife and a baby coming in hell, a few weeks. Cam was a vet and ran his own practice. He hadn’t married Taylor yet, but it was gonna happen. She already lived with him. Bray and Katie ran their own ranch boarding horses and running a busy farrier shop. Plus a baby on the way. Colt was the town sheriff. If anyone had his shit together, it was him. He had tokeep the whole fucking town in line. He was married to Molly, a fucking ER Chief, who was amazing on her own, and yup, having a baby. Hayes was a lawyer and didn’t take shit from anyone. Lainey was married to Beau and the two of them were enjoying the ranch life and also competing at rodeos around the West. At least Beau was, since Lainey was also knocked up.
Baby, baby, baby.
Then there was Zeb, who at twenty, wasn’t just famous for being a college football quarterback, he’d found the love of his life at the school library. He’d fallen for his damned tutor. The fucker.
Then there was me. Single. A mechanic. Towing people’s problems. The only other holdouts were Buck and Hayes.
Would I ever feel like I had my shit in order? Would I ever feel like I was making my mark on the world?
Hell, would I ever want to fuck more than my hand anytime soon?
2
FRANKIE
“You wantme to go with you, where?” I asked, staring wide eyed at my friends. Well, they weren’t really friends. Neighbors. Jasmine and Marie were inseparable besties who’d known me since I moved into the trailer park with my brother in middle school.
I stood at the top of the rickety steps of my minuscule porch. When they’d knocked unexpectedly, I’d been pulling my laundry together to take to the shared laundry facility behind the mailboxes, not sure when I’d be able to do wash again. My hair was up in a sloppy bun and I wore navy sweatpants and a hoodie with a smear of grease on the chest. Not many of myclothes avoided the stains that went along with mechanic’s school.
Tonight, I had no intention of coming across anyone but Mr. Butler, who always did his laundry on Saturday nights. He was eighty-two and I shoveled his stoop when it snowed.
For late November, Jasmine and Marie were in short dresses with miles of bare legs. Heels that were dangerous to ankles with the compacted snow. The only block from the cold weather were their heavy coats, but they were unzipped.
I was cold looking at them.
“Out. To meet men,” Jasmine said, smoothing down her sleek, dark hair. She must’ve flatironed it.
“You know I can’t get into any of the bars around here. I don’t have a fake ID like you.”
Marie shook her head. Where Jasmine was dark, she was fair, her blue eyes popped with some kind of smoky makeup.
“Not a bar. A house,” Marie said.
“Mansion,” Jasmine corrected.
Marie nodded. “Yes, a mansion.”
“Is it a party or something?” I wondered.
They looked at each other and giggled. “Something,” Marie answered.
Back in the day–God, high school seemed so longago–they’d had a gaggle of friends. I wouldn’t say they’d been the popular kids, because like me, their families didn’t have tons of money. No one in this little pocket community halfway between Barnes and Devil’s Ditch did. The duo made up for it with boldness and sass. They could talk to boys. They used to talk their way out of late homework assignments. None of us went to college. It wasn’t an option for any of us. Always together, they went and became nail technicians, working at side-by-side stations at a salon in Barnes. They always had gorgeous manis and pedis. Perfect makeup. Styled hair. They always looked cute.
Then there was me.
The tomboy.
In eleventh grade, I took an auto repair class because the other elective options had been pottery and public speaking, both of which had sounded awful. I took to the mechanic’s class like Jasmine and Marie took to gel tip nails.
I’d been the only girl in the program–maybe Jasmine and Marie had missed out–but it hadn’t stopped me. We started with how to change the oil and went from there. I knew almost right away what I wanted to do after I graduated. Fortunately, there’d been grant money for the local tech school and to pay the bills, I’d been able to work the front desk full-timeat a chain hotel out by the highway, taking shifts in the evenings after my classes.
Unfortunately, small town Montana didn’t have tons of auto shops, which meant not many jobs. Not manyopenjobs.
Moving to a bigger town wasn’t an option right now. My brother, Marcus, had been splitting the bills, but I hadn’t seen or heard from him in three weeks. He hadn’t even left me a note, not that he’d been reliable to begin with, but he’d always covered his half of the rent. Now, I barely scraped enough money together forallof this month’s rent, heat, food, and other essentials on my own, even in a dump like this one. He hadn’t been the one to do any kind of upkeep or maintenance. There was no way I had the funds to relocate somewhere with more opportunity. Apartments wanted a security deposit, plus first and last month’s rent. That was a shit ton of money I didn’t have.
