Page 171 of We Drank the Dawn

The shower.

And everything after.

The rough wood scuffed the bottom of my feet as I removed my socks and shoes and lifted my crewneck over my head, gently folding all my clothes in a little stack. When I was down to my sports bra and underwear, he held my hand and counted down.

Then we jumped.

FIFTY-EIGHT

Cooper

Aflame suddenly lit the dark as my thumb squeezed down on my lighter.

The end of my cigarette glowed.

Tag would kill me if he knew I was smoking in the barn, but I just needed a few puffs. Just half. Then I’d put it out and be done with it. If I couldn’t have alcohol, women, drugs, my parents, or any real happiness, then I at least deserved some tobacco.

I’d been reading. Well, trying to anyway.

But the laughter filtering into the open hayloft doors…

I was happy for him, I was.

Or at least, that’s what I’d been telling myself. But it was hard to be happy when everyone else constantly got the things I wanted while I was forced to watch and be miserable. Peter and Sarah would be fine—deep down I always knew that would be the case. Always wanted that for Peter.

But I just…didn’t want them to leave.

For a while, I deluded myself into thinking maybe, just maybe, they’d love the ranch so much they would stay. But then Peter told me about the appointment he made for them with the fertility doctors in Denver.

Of course they wouldn’t stay. What a stupid hope.

“Shut up…you stupid son of a bitch.”

The words echoed like someone slammed a gong in my head. My fingers trembled so hard I could scarcely hold my cigarette. The hot end wavered as I lifted it to my face, my throat burning in the comforting way it did—tingling, warming, grounding.

Why did people leaving hurt so bad?

I couldn’t breathe.

I sucked the cigarette faster, trying to quell the rising terror in my stomach, but it grew—stronger, fiercer—until I was gasping, squeezing my cigarette in one hand and a handful of hay in the other.

And even though I felt the straw prickling against my neck and the weight of my book on my chest, I smelled the dank car—the mildew that grew in the carpet because he left his windows open in a rainstorm. The old cigarette ash that spilled on the console. A frayed and faded air freshener that twirled on the rearview mirror.

He gripped the steering wheel so tight it looked like his veins would pop.

His voice rumbled, “It’s time to go, Cooper.”

I whimpered, “I want to stay with you.”

He gave a heavy, disgusted sigh. “I don’t want you to stay with me. Ever thought of that?”

Silence.

“Get out of the car.”

My eyes flicked to my mother’s front door then the Taurus sitting in the driveway. “Please, Daddy, don’t make me go. I don’t want to⁠—”

“I said get out of the car.” He reached over and pounded my release, the belt slapping back into the side of the car.