19. Thea
thea
Smirking at the grumpy man sitting at my bar, I refill his water. “Team roping can’t be that bad, can it?”
“I’m not one for competition,” he replies, rubbing his hair out of his eyes. I rush down to the other end of the bar, delivering a drink and checking on some other customers while I’m down there.
Logan showed up right at four o’clock between rushes, and I both hate and love the way my heart leaped in my chest at the sight of him. I wasn’t supposed to be excited to see him. I wasn’t supposed to feel this way about him after only a few weeks of…dating, if you want to call it that.
His excuse has been that Luella had rehearsals, and he was waiting for her to be done before he headed home with her.
It was good, as far as excuses went.
“Now, that I don’t fully believe. How could you have gone from being raised with three other boys to a man who doesn’t like competition? I’ve seen you on dart league night.” I raise a brow at him, teasing.
I pause for a moment when I realize I haven’t teased someone in a good, long while.
“That’s just a game, though. It’s not serious, it doesn’t result in earning a living or having to worry about anyone else.”
I raise a brow. “So, you truly find your joy in just training the horses to ride?”
He nods, his eyes locked on mine. “I really do. I love getting a young horse and teaching it how to trust me, how to understand that I’m not out to hurt it.
Then I get to see it go on and do even better things, and I get to see the progression of where they start to where they end up.
” He pauses for a moment and shrugs thoughtfully.
“Well, sometimes. A lot of horses I’ve worked with have gone off to live their lives far away. ”
Studying him for a moment, I realize that what he’s saying could probably match up pretty well with how his relationship with his brothers is.
“So, you’re not interested?”
He sighs and looks to the ceiling as if some answer was going to magically appear out of nowhere. “No.” I nod my head, but he continues. “But I’m going to anyway. Stetson already signed us up for the Acton Rodeo.”
I lift a brow. “Wow, already? Isn’t the first one this weekend?”
This town was such a far cry from living in the city. During the warmer months, the fairgrounds put on rodeos every month. I have no idea what kind of qualification you had to have to compete in them, but people went crazy for them, and they were some of my best weekends of the year .
People pre-gamed at the rodeos, and then by the time they were here, they were a little looser with their wallets.
“Yup.” Logan sighs and leans back. “Which means I have about four days to see if I can rope under pressure.”
“You can’t rope?” I tease, letting myself be, well, myself for one vulnerable moment.
“Oh, I can rope,” he teases back, resting his elbows on the bar and leaning over far enough that our noses are almost touching. “As a matter of fact, I’m damn good with ropes.”
I feel the heat rush over my skin. No doubt if the bar lighting was any different, he’d be able to tell that I was red as a tomato right now.
Clearing my throat, I glance to the side, making sure my customers are taken care of before returning my attention to Logan again.
“Well, hopefully good enough that you can rope a cow, right?” I lift a teasing brow.
“Oh, it’s gonna be like that, huh?” he returns, his bright white teeth showing with his smile. “You busy this weekend?”
I pause at the change in subject. “Uh, working as usual.” My days off were totally messed up now that I took Sunday off to be with him.
“Can you spare me a couple hours on Saturday?”
I let a small grin cross my lips. “You need moral support for your first rodeo?”
He scoffs. “It’s not my first. But what kind of girlfriend would you be if you didn’t come support your cowboy?”
“Girlfriend?” I ask, shock clearly evident in my tone.
He reaches into his pocket, still half-leaning on the bar, and checks his phone. “Shoot, gotta go.”
Then he leans across, kisses me quickly but efficiently, his hand finding purchase on the back of my neck briefly before he lets go, and then he’s gone.
“Oh boy.” I turn my head to where Annmarie is suddenly leaning against the bar. “You are in big, big trouble, sister.”
It was Saturday afternoon, and I was at a rodeo. That’s something I never thought I would say.
Growing up, I was more of a city kid. We lived just outside the city in the suburbs, but if my parents could have had it their way, we would have been in a penthouse.
Probably some ostentatious sky-rise that would have cost a fortune per month to live in.
It was why, when the time came, I decided that living in a big city wasn’t something I wanted to do. Ophelia didn’t feel that way, which was why it was great that her dreams aligned with where she wanted to live.
Tori wanted to live anywhere not near me, so it didn’t matter to her where I ended up.
And Annmarie and June were happy to be settled in this small town, at least for now. Though I did wonder if someday their plans might change, if the small-town life would grow boring for them.
I walk through the fairgrounds, noting there’s one concession stand open with a line five deep, and there’s someone with a huge smoker grill off to the side making something mouthwateringly good.
I skipped lunch, working through a few things I needed to do just so I could be here to watch the man I was falling for rope a cow.
This…this was my life now.
I hear whistling and turn my head sharply to the right, and there, leaning against a fence, is Logan.
He’s got on his straw hat, a striped long-sleeve button-down shirt, jeans, brown boots, and a smile that promises trouble.
And for whatever reason, my brain points out that it’s very pleased that smile is pointed at me and no one else.
“Well, well, if it isn’t Dorothy Weaver,” he comments when I’m close enough.
I fight the blush that always seems to come up whenever he directs his comments at me and give him a sarcastic look. “You asked me to come.”
He tilts his head, that stupid five o’clock shadow framing his stupidly perfect teeth.
It’s so not fair. “Technically, I asked my girlfriend to come.” He pauses, and I tuck my thumbs into my front pockets, comfortably waiting out whatever ornery thing this boy is about to say.
“So, that’s you admitting to me that you’re my girlfriend. ”
I let out a little laugh and look back at him. “I think it’s interesting how you can take a very complicated situation.” I give him another look so he’ll know what I mean. “And make it sound very, very simple.”
Finally, he pushes off the fence and closes the gap between us. He’s still not touching me, and I berate myself for begging in my mind for his strong hands to latch onto me in any way they can.
“See, that’s where you and I see differently.” His face is so close to me now that I can see every gold fleck in his eyes, his hat is basically shading us both, and his breath is fresh with the smell of mint gum and?—
Damn. I was in big trouble .
“You see this whole thing as some big inconvenience. You think because you needed a tiny bit of help.” I open my mouth to protest his downplay of our situation, but he continues. “That you’re inconveniencing me, that you’re putting me out and making me do something I don’t want to do.”
“Logan,” I say with a hushed voice, glancing around for anyone who may be watching this whole thing go down. Then again, it was Acton. Someone was always watching. “What you’ve done for me is a big deal.”
“Thea.” His voice is low, and his hands have found their way onto my hips. “You opened a door for me that I’ve been dying to walk through.”
There’s a moment of silence where I take in his words. It isn’t like I didn’t know that he’d thought about asking me out before, he’s made that perfectly clear. But the longer I stare at him, the more I see how honest he’s being.
“Now,” he starts before I find any kind of words in my brain that are useful. “Why don’t you find a little trust in me, and I’ll find a spot for you to watch me kick ass?”
I can’t help the little smirk that finds its way onto my lips, and like always, instead of talking about it, I focus on the second part of what he said. “Oh, kick ass, huh? Feeling confident this afternoon?”
He winks. “Always.”
He takes my hand in his, wrapping his rough fingers around my softer ones, and I follow him as he leads me into the stands.
I realize that I missed out on a kiss from him, and for some reason that bothers me. Instead of enjoying that moment with him, I let my insecurities get the better of me.
Instead of giving him a moment of peace, I let him deal with my burdens .
I vow to myself right then and there that I’ll look at the positive side of this from here on out. I didn’t have to worry. I could trust Logan. There wasn’t a soul who’d met him who would ever tell me differently, so why was I, in the simplest of terms, self-sabotaging what we could have?
“Alright, you can see best right about here,” he says, pointing to the bleachers.
They were maybe half full of friends and family of the participants.
Cheers would ring out every few minutes as horses and riders rode through the arena.
I have no idea what they were doing, but it was fun, nonetheless.
“Okay, well, good luck then.”
“I should be going in the next twenty minutes or so.”
I glance at him and see him already watching me with a smile on his face. “Oh.” I glance around me again, my brows furrowing. “Where’s Lue?”
He gives me a faux-exhausted look, and I smile. “She’s at rehearsal.”
“Again?” Seems their rehearsals were dang near every day now.
“Yup, they’re pretty serious about it. School lets out on Tuesday, which I think will be good for her to have a little extra time to relax when she’s just got rehearsal to worry about.”
“Well, what does she do while you’re working?”
He shrugs his shoulders with a grin. “What we all did growing up. She works on the ranch.”
I scoff and look at him. “You make the poor little girl work on the ranch?”
“It builds character,” he counters, chucking my chin with his finger. “Plus, she loves following Dani around and watching her work.”
I hum and nod my head, envious of the way this whole family grew up. I can only picture how that must have been, but growing up in the city, we didn’t have opportunities like that.
“All right, I gotta go, or Stetson will panic.”
I smile and nod, and he turns to go, but before he can, I grab his hand and tug. “Oh wait,” I say, and he turns back, eyes confused. I waste no time in leaning forward and pressing my lips to his, holding his shoulder with one hand.
His hand not in mine reaches up and holds the back of my head, taking the kiss deeper for a few seconds before we part. Logan’s eyes smile at me first.
“Good luck,” I repeat, settling my feet back down and backing away.
“Oh, I don’t need it now.”
He winks again and wanders down off the bleachers. I sit on the edge of my seat, and my hair falls to hide my face from anyone who may have been watching.
Thankfully, I don’t know anyone here by name. I recognize a few from when they’ve come into the bar, but I keep my eyes from wandering long enough to start any kind of conversation.
I hate that about myself, too.
I used to be so much more outgoing. I used to become friends with everyone, used to love to gossip and chat and check in with people.
Now, I have ten-foot walls around myself, hoping no one would climb them.
I have to work on that. I want to work on getting back to my old self.
I also have a feeling that Logan could help me.
Waiting for a few minutes longer, I glance to the right, where there are several men and women in cowboy hats waiting their turns for this event. A few people go before Logan, and I get the gist pretty fast.
A person opens a chute that lets the cow run into the arena, two people on horseback chase the cow from either side of the chute. One person ropes the cow’s head, then the other ropes a back foot. Then they back their horses up until the ropes are taut and release the cow.
I don’t understand the point, but I get how it works.
So, when Logan comes up with his brother, and they settle themselves by the chute, I know what to watch for.
Logan nods to the girl in the chute, and she releases the cow. They both immediately start running their horses behind it.
I fold my hands in my lap as Logan swings his rope overhead and throws it at the cow, wrapping it swiftly around the cow’s head and pulling. Stetson aims for the back leg and throws his own rope, barely getting it around the foot, and they pull, finishing their run rather quickly.
I think.
Applauding with the rest of the crowd, I smile when Logan trots by on his horse, tipping his hat to me.
Yeah, I’m in big, big trouble.