Colt
Betty bounds ahead of the cowboys on horseback, racing to be the first through the final gate.
She’s eager to get home after days in the mountains bringing the herd back from the millions of acres of grazing land they’ve free-ranged on all summer.
I don’t know if I can say the same, even with the wind and the rain that have been pelting us all day.
It’s been two weeks since I left Whit sitting on her laundry room floor with dried rivers of salt on her reddened cheeks.
Weekdays drag. I like to make it worse for myself by driving by her house after grabbing a coffee at Anette’s, or by lying in bed at night reading our text history and debating whether sending a good night, beautiful would be an overstep.
Each passing hour is a countdown to the moment I drop Jonas off after his Saturdays on the ranch.
I walk him to the door, although I don’t need to, because I’m jonesing for a glimpse of her face to get me through the next insufferable week.
We make small talk for a minute or two, stepping back to a time when I was nothing more than the idiot who wore dorky T-shirts and gave her kid a ride home when Denny was busy.
It’s perfectly friendly. And perfectly devastating.
When we set out on horseback a couple days ago, I thought an epiphany would wash over me in the mountains. But I’m no closer to having clarity on what the hell I should do than I was two weeks ago.
I was so sure of what I wanted. So confident Whit was the endgame for me. So determined to make it work, I barely heard what she was telling me on the floor of her laundry room. And I limped away like a wounded dog not because it’s what I wanted to do, but because I didn’t know what else to say.
Though my confidence in our future was rocked that night, it wasn’t until my mom’s words burrowed into my brain that my thoughts became laced with doubt.
The last thing I ever want to do is disappoint her, and with how often she’s mentioned her future grandbabies, tried to set me up with single women, elbowed me whenever we see a cute baby out in public, I can’t help but feel like choosing Whit will be devastating for my mom.
Do I even want kids?
I mean…I think so. I’ve always assumed it was going to happen one day because isn’t that the way life goes? You meet someone, you fall in love, you get married, you have kids—maybe not always in that exact order.
But also…what if I don’t want them? Then I’m losing out on the woman of my dreams, and I devastate my mom regardless. That’s an outcome I can’t live with.
Betty’s shrill bark jars my nervous system, bringing me whizzing back into the present, where it’s a damn good thing my horse and dog pay better attention to what we’re supposed to be doing than I ever do.
Hell, sometimes we’re sorting cattle, and I don’t even know what we’re sorting them for.
And in this present moment, Denny’s riding over toward me with an uncharacteristic stern expression and his hat pulled low to cut the wind across his face.
“What’s got you so mopey?” he asks.
“Me?” I jab a finger to my chest. It’s soaked, probably clear through to the bone. Not that I can tell anyway. My entire body is numb. Has been since I last felt the warmth of her skin on mine.
“Yeah, you’ve been weird all day.”
“You want kids?” I blurt out.
“With you?” He raises an eyebrow, shifting in his saddle with the sound of wet denim against soaked leather, laughing under his breath. “No thanks, man. With Blair? It’s whatever she wants, honestly.”
“So you don’t care either way?”
“It’s always been more about the girl than anything else. I fucked up my priorities years ago—was confused about what I wanted in life. That’s how I lost her. And trust me when I say I spent a decade regretting every second of that. I should’ve picked the girl.”
Finally approaching the barn, I lift myself out of the saddle, cringing as cold rainwater runs down my spine and settles in the crack of my ass. Sometimes I think this cowboy shit is for the birds.
Fidgeting with my shivering grip on the reins, I lead my mare out of the pouring rain and into the barn. It’s all clanging tack and bullets of rain cracking on a tin roof, and the smell of hay and wet horses, and my eyes are heavy from exhaustion.
“When did you realize you fucked up?” I finally get the nerve to ask.
He snickers, lifting the saddle off his horse’s back and tucking it under his arm. “When I started asking myself if maybe I fucked up. Why? Did you fuck it up with Whit already?”
A defensive warmth sparks in my chest, and I bark, “No.”
“Oh, you really fucked up.”
After hauling the saddle off my soaking wet horse, I follow Denny to the tack room. The heavy rain dampens the sound of wet jeans swishing together and heavy boots clomping down the alley.
“Can’t two buddies have a casual conversation about having kids?”
Shaking his head, Denny says, “I fucking guess so. I think you should be talking to Whit instead of me, though.”
In theory, sure. But I can’t talk to Whit until I have my head on straight.
Denny humors me by continuing. “Does this have something to do with Jonas?”
“Well…” I debate how deep I should get into this with him, and decide to simply say, “Sort of.”
“For what it’s worth, Blair thinks you’ve been a good influence on him.”
“Nah. He was a great kid long before I came along.”
Denny stretches out his shoulder—slinging an arm across his chest with a small groan.
“You think you might want to be his stepdad someday?”
“Without a doubt.”
I can answer that question with more confidence and speed than if somebody were to ask how to spell my last name. I love that kid.
I’m not trying to be something Jonas doesn’t want me to be.
Not trying to take the place of a man who never bothered to step up.
But I’m there when he needs someone he can open up to, and I’m there when he needs someone to kick his ass at video games.
I know what sparks the fire in those vibrant green eyes he gets from his mom, and how to draw out the softest laugh from the little boy he tries so hard to shove aside.
In my heart—title or no title—he’s already mine. Much in the same way Whit is.
Giving me a friendly punch to the shoulder, Denny makes his way to the door. “Looks like you already got yourself a kid.”
An indescribable sensation swells in my chest. A full breath. My first in weeks.
Fifteen minutes later, I’m turning out my horse for the night. The gate slams shut, vibrating up through my arm and rattling tears loose from my eyelashes.
Sticky wind blows up the fence line, finding gaps in my soggy clothes and chilling my already frozen bones. And I blink up at the star-filled sky, immediately searching for Cygnus lying low on the horizon, wiping the rogue tears with the back of my hand.
With more stars in more galaxies than we can comprehend, the reminder that I’m nothing but a crappy speck of dust with equally insignificant heartache is reassuring, somehow.
Pulling my wet coat tighter around myself, I shuffle against the wind.
Once she realizes I’m heading to the bunkhouse, Betty darts from her sheltered bed in the barn, and her fluffy butt is wiggling through the dog door before I reach for the handle.
It’s hot dogs for dinner here, apparently.
The potent smell wafts through the air, and I pull a face while simultaneously reaching for a hot dog bun, because what the hell else am I going to eat tonight?
Mom always says hot dogs are made of lips and assholes—from what type of animal, I don’t know. And boiled rather than grilled? Felony.
If I have to eat a hot dog, I’d rather be sitting around a table with Jonas and Whit, talking about our days.
Maybe we’d finish dinner early enough I could kick Jonas’s ass at a racing video game while Whit’s toes knead my thigh.
And I’d touch her—everywhere, often. We’d exchange flirty looks all night, and when Jonas went to bed, all bets would be off.
For that, I’d raw-dog a hot dog.