“I’d love to hit you with a hammer,” I mutter, but a smirk sneaks across my face anyway.
For a second, it’s easy to pretend things are normal. Easy to pretend I’m not hanging on by threads while he sings his heart out beside me.
The second we rolled out of town, regret settled deep in my chest. Saying yes to this farm job felt stupid the moment the tires hit gravel. Drew pitched the idea at the diner two days ago, halfway through dipping his fries into a mountain of ketchup beside his greasy cheeseburger.
“It’ll help you get outside. Use your hands. Clear your head,” he said with a mouth full of food.
Yeah, right. He just wants a wingman for whatever girls show up to volunteer.
The truck vibrates under us, each jolt shooting straight into my shoulder. The ache starts up again, sharp and familiar, like a hot nail driven into the joint and left there to simmer. I grit my teeth and shift. Nothing eases it. Nothing ever does.
The doctor’s voice drags through my head, cold as a tile floor.
“I’m sorry, son. If you injure it again, you might lose function in that arm altogether.”
He didn’t need to finish. I saw the rest in his eyes.
You’re done.
One bad hit and my entire life collapsed.
No more football. No scholarship. No future that means anything. No escape from this town that suffocates me.
Every drill, every practice, every promise—all built on an arm that finally gave out.
Dad acts like I got injured on purpose just to piss him off. Like it was my choice to quit.
Mom’s silence slices deeper still. She has yet to even meet my eyes. To even look at her son. The failure.
The truck hums along the endless rows of corn. Each stalk looks the same, stretching forever. No bends. No turnoffs. No choices.
The view feels like a mirror. One long road I never picked, running straight into nowhere, and no way to turn off it.
“Hey,” Drew says, snapping me back. “You’re not crying over your arm again, are you?”
“Nope.” Total lie, and he knows it. His grin says so.
“You’ll be fine, man. Fresh air. Manual labor. Hot chicks in denim shorts. Doctor’s orders.”
A laugh slips out before I can stop it. “Pretty sure that’s not what the doctor said.”
“Then you need a new doctor.”
He launches right back into singing, somehow even worse than before. I shake my head, but a smile pushes through anyway. Classic Drew. A walking disaster who stayed in Blandville after graduation, working shifts at his family’s farm, never looking past the edges of town.
But he’s also the one who texts me at midnight to check on me. The one who never misses a chance to make me laugh. The one who blocked linebackers twice his size just to keep me safe in peewee football.
He’s dense. He’s loud. He cares.
And right now, he’s the only thing keeping me from sinking straight into the dark.
Still, none of this gets better until I figure out what the hell comes next.
The truck slams over a pothole, jarring my whole body. I grab the handle with my good arm and mutter a curse under my breath.
Up ahead, a faded sign leans crooked at the edge of the gravel road:
FARMER FRED’S FANTASTIC FARM