Page 44 of Jocelyn
“You heard me. I’m dropping out and enlisting in the Marines.”
No. He was supposed to earn his degree in software engineering, get a steady job behind a desk that paid him more than a living wage, marry, and live happily and with as little struggle possible ever after.
His hold on me gentled. “I appreciate all you’ve done, paying for school and everything, but working with computers was never my dream. It was always only your vision for my life.”
“But it’s…safe.”
“There’s more to life than a false sense of security, Jo Jo.”
My neck snapped back. “What do you mean false?”
“I mean…” He turned his head and stared out the window. After a few seconds, he looked back at me. “You can get all your ducks in a row, but that isn’t going to keep Elmer Fudd from taking shots at them.”
“What?” Same question, but this time it floated out of my mouth on a ripple of laughter.
He smirked. “All I’m saying is that you can order your life in a certain way, but you can’t stop bad things from happening or hardships from knocking on your door.”
“I know that.”
He tapped my temple. “Here maybe. But you’ve always traveled the road of least resistance instead of the one that would bring you the most joy.”
“You don’t know that.” I sniffed.
He laughed. “Jo Jo, you hate math and yet work with budgets all day.”
Dang it if I didn’t have a comeback for that.
“I love you and your neurotic drive for security, but I’m going to make my own way from here on out, okay?”
When had my baby brother grown up and gotten so mature? “Okay.”
“And I hope you consider veering off that comfortable but insanely boring path you’ve blazed for yourself.” He tweaked my nose. “No risk, no reward, right?”
My purse felt heavy on my shoulder, my cell with its unanswered text from Malachi flashing in my mind like a caution road sign. Pulse accelerating, I considered what type of risk the cowboy posed in my life.
And what kind of reward…
20
Malachi
The tractor engine rumbled under me as I drove toward the storage canopy that housed large round bales of hay. Two prongs protruded from the front of the tractor, and I lined those up with the center mass of the hay rings, poking the rolled flakes and lifting the thousand-pound bale. Then I backed out and steered the tractor toward the cattle in the stockyard. What grass there was in the enclosed area had long been trampled and eaten down. Until the cattle could be released back onto the expanse of the property to graze, they’d feed off the hay and some grains.
I maneuvered the tractor until the bale hovered over the feeder to keep the cattle from trampling and wasting the feed. The engine idled as I jumped down and snapped open a pocketknife, cutting into the nylon strings that wrapped around the bale to bind it together. If one of the cows ate the string, they could get very sick. I wound the string then deposited the length into my pocket, jumped back into the tractor, and lowered the bale into the feeder, backing up to slide the prongs out of the bale’s belly.
Cows bellowed as they ambled over and grabbed mouthfuls of food, jaws working in their lazy up-down circular motion.
Vibration shot across my chest, different from the rumbling beneath my seat. I palmed my shirt pocket and felt my phone. My mind jumped to the possibility that Jocelyn had responded to my text. She and her mother had encompassed my thoughts, and I prayed they were both all right. An irresponsible desire to remove the device and check to see who had contacted me made my fingertips tingle, but I kept my hands on the tractor’s controls and drove it across the cattle guard and back to the bay.
A twist of the key and the engine died. My insides continued to quake—the aftermath of sitting atop a shuddering machine, although nerves might have had something to do with the slight tremor as well.
I unlocked the screen and tapped the text icon.
Jocelyn:
Okay is such a relative term.
She didn’t have a heart attack,
