Tough Shit
COLT
“Dad, is that God?”
I chuckle. My son has a tendency to get existential on the ride to school. Quite the one-eighty from the whiny mess he was twenty minutes ago at home. “God is everywhere, buddy.”
“Did he paint the sky blue? Like with a big paintbrush?”
“Maybe.”
Dean is quiet for a minute. “Mommy’s up there with him. I know it, because her favorite color was blue.”
An arrow through the heart. Damn.
I often wish my grief were as straightforward as my son’s. He loves Abby with his whole heart.
Me? I’ll always protect her memory for Dean’s sake, but my memory of her is a more complicated thing. I fell hard for Abby in high school. But by the time she got her diagnosis ten years later, we’d become little more than roommates.
“It was.” I clear my throat. “And she’s definitely up there with him.”
He waves. “Hey, Mom. Miss ya.”
I run a hand over my face and clear my throat again.
I wish my son had a mother. I wish that every damn day. Well, not a mother but his mother. No one’s ever gonna replace Abby for him. Obviously I have no desire to replace her at all. Not because I haven’t moved on from her, but because I refuse to be hurt like that again.
I hated how life seemed to spin totally out of control in such a short amount of time. The helplessness I felt then was terrifying. It haunts me to this day.
My parents helped me through it, my mom especially. She and I are close, and it makes me feel…not great when I contemplate Dean missing out on that kind of loving presence in his life. My dad was great, but sometimes…I mean, sometimes you just want your mom.
I can be that for him. Dad and Mom.
Haven’t they done all those studies about kids needing just one secure attachment in their lives? I can be that for Dean. I’m not sure how much he remembers of Abby, but he does remember enough to miss her.
I still bend over backward to make sure he has all the love he needs.
Case in point: We don’t drive through the carpool line at school. Instead, I park and walk Dean to the front door. Mrs. Gonzalez, the principal, is there chatting with students before they head inside the building.
“Good morning.” I raise a hand.
She smiles at me. “Mornin’, fellas. How we doin’ today?”
“All right for a—wait, Dad, what day is it again?”
Laughing, I help Dean loop the straps of his backpack over his little shoulders. My throat tightens. I don’t know why I still get emotional at drop-off sometimes two months into the school year. Guess it’s hard to believe my sweet boy is growing up this fast.
“Wednesday.” My voice sounds a little gruffer than it should.
Dean smiles. “All right for a Wednesday, Mrs. Gonzalez.” He looks up at me. “I’m fine, Dad. You can go now.”
I laugh again, leaning in to press a noisy kiss to his cheek.
“Da-ad.” He lifts his shoulder to wipe his cheek. “That’s gross.”
“Love you, buddy. Have a great day.”
“You too!” he says without looking back.
Tucking my hands into my front pockets, I watch him shake the principal’s hand. Good eye contact. Well done, bud.
Sometimes I think I’m fucking up this whole parenting thing. Other times, I feel like I’m doing all right.
Not gonna lie, though, I feel significantly less stressed driving back to the ranch alone. Windows all the way down. Lumineers turned all the way up.
I can finally hear myself think. Of course, I think about the day’s to-do list.
Work is work. I love it one day, hate it the next. But the legacy I’m building by showing up every day?
That I’ll always be proud of.
That I can always rely on. Life on the ranch is about survival. That will never change.
There’s comfort in that kind of continuity.
There’s been so much change—so much upheaval—in my personal life that the ranch’s unchanging rhythms have become a bit of a lifeline.
Sure, we’ll put up a new building here and there, but the core of our business has remained the same since I was a kid.
Dad’s poured his heart and soul into producing quality animals with impeccable bloodlines, and it shows.
It’s nice always knowing what to expect. Children need that kind of stability, and honestly, so do I.
I park my truck outside the single-level limestone house where I grew up, just like I always do.
I go inside and kiss my mama, just like I always do.
And like I always do, I put on my hat and head to the ranch’s offices, which are housed in a new building that’s a stone’s throw from Mom and Dad’s house.
But as I’m wiping my boots on the mat outside the front door, my blood goes cold at the unfamiliar voice I hear inside.
It’s clear. Full-throated.
Sexy.
Whoever it belongs to speaks authoritatively, passionately, without pause. I find myself leaning in to be able to hear her better.
“Y’all’s property is an absolute stunner,” she’s saying.
“I think I drove up the main road at two miles an hour just so I could take it all in. I’m admittedly not an outdoorsy person, but y’all just might convert me.
There’s so much inspiration out here. I already have pages of notes and ideas I jotted down. ”
Five heartbeats in, and I’m part of her rapt audience. There’s an earnestness to her enthusiasm that makes me want to believe her.
And that pisses me off. I learned the hard way that people will lie to your face. The more earnest someone is, the more likely they are to be full of shit.
I hear Dad chuckle. “You sound surprised.”
“To be honest? I am surprised, but in the best way. I’ve never been on a ranch before. I know, I know, that makes me a terrible Texan. But now that I’m here, I’m kicking myself for not giving ranch life a chance.”
It’s no big deal to have a visitor on the ranch. People come and go all the time. Maybe it’s a friend of Billie’s? She’s been hanging with some new girlfriends recently. Maybe she added another chick to the mix, one I don’t know.
Maybe it’s a new friend I can make. It’s been so long since I had sex, I’m worried I’ve forgotten how.
Then again, having sex with someone means you trust them to some extent. And I know better than to trust Susie fucking Sunshine here.
Especially when I hear her say the words honored to be considered and majorly exciting shake-up.
Last time I experienced a shake-up, it wasn’t exciting at all.
It destroyed my life.
I open the door and step inside.
My blood burns as my eyes sweep up the length of a long pair of legs, a tight ass, and a head full of chin-length, wavy dark hair.
She—this girl who’s already got me feeling some kind of way—turns her head. Our gazes meet.
More like collide, her big green eyes latching on to mine like she owns them.
Ballsy.
Alarm bells go off inside my head. The woman—girl—definitely doesn’t look like she belongs on a ranch with her glossed-up lips and perfect, milky-white skin.
How old is she? Her clear, confident way of speaking made me think she was older. Maybe thirty or so. But she looks much younger than that.
Why do those jeans gotta hug her curves like it’s a crime to leave an inch of her body to the imagination?
And is she wearing clogs with sky-high heels? Heels have no place on a ranch. They do make her legs look a mile long, though.
Only when Dad speaks up am I aware that anyone else is in the room. “Surprise!”
“Surprise?” I don’t love being the guy who grunts. But grunting gets the point across. It also keeps the wrong people away.
Sometimes it keeps the right people away too. But worth it to stay safe.
Billie, my sister, beams at me. She’s still wearing a brace on her elbow after breaking it during her first barrel race earlier this month. “You’re gonna hate this.”
She’s been awful chipper lately compared to the slump she’s been in over the past year. Gonna have to investigate that whenever I get a spare second, which is never.
“Aw, don’t tell him that,” Dad says to Billie before looking at me. “I’ve been thinking about making some changes for a while, and, well”—he raises his brows as he blows out a breath—“I was finally able to snag the kind of talent we need to do just that.”
I stare at Dad, my stomach spasming. “Changes? What changes? As your foreman”—and your oldest son—“I feel like I should’ve known about this.”
Dad was foreman of Wallace Ranch for the entirety of my childhood, working under his dad. When my grandfather retired, Dad became principal and owner of the ranch, which entails a lot more office work. He passed on the title of foreman—essentially the ranch’s top supervisor—to me.
Now I oversee all operations, making sure things run smoothly across the board.
I do a little bit of everything: One day, I’m on-site with our contractor going through the final punch list for the arena.
The next, I’m turning out a barnful of our famous quarter horses to pasture alongside my brothers.
I fix engines, hire new employees, oversee branding and calving seasons for our cattle operation, and manage relationships with feed vendors, horse traders, neighbors, and more.
Dad has the grace to blush a little. “I don’t mean to ambush you, son. But I knew you wouldn’t be crazy about the idea. You’re—”
“A bit of a curmudgeon?” Billie’s smile turns sly.
I spear her with a glare. “I prefer ‘keeper of the traditions that, er, keep everyone alive,’ thank you very much.”
Billie rolls her eyes. “How eloquent of you.”
“Billie—”
“All right, all right, you two.” Dad holds out his hands. “Lemme introduce Lainey and Colt before y’all scare her off. Lainey, this is my son Colt. He’s our foreman.”
“Director of operations, basically,” Billie explains.
“And, Colt, this is Lainey Brown.” Dad gestures to the woman I can’t stop glowering at. “Our new branding and marketing expert.”
What the actual fuck?
Is this really happening right now? Did Dad blindside me by bringing in a marketing expert to shake things up without saying a damn word about it to me? An “expert” who knows nothing about ranches?
Why didn’t he say anything to me? Makes me think he doesn’t trust me.
That hurts. A lot. Everyone in my family knows how important loyalty is to me.
A brick settles in my stomach. Stability is good. Change is bad. We’ve had a record year on the ranch by every metric: revenues, profits, employee retention. You don’t fix what’s not broken.
The only kind of expertise we need around here is the kind that keeps the ranch’s operations up and running. A.k.a. my kind.
The. Fucking. End.
The girl turns to face me and holds out her hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Colt.” Her words drip with a Texas accent that’s worlds more refined than ours.
I glance up from her hand and find myself saying, “Colton.”
“Pardon?”
Taking her hand, I ignore the hot awareness gathering inside my skin at the feel of her small, soft palm pressed against mine and say, “Name’s Colton.”
“Who the hell has ever called you that?” Billie asks with a laugh.
I ignore her too and drop Lainey’s hand. “Lainey, awful kind of you to come all this way—”
“It’s just a three-hour drive. I’m from Fort Worth.”
“And I’m sure they’ll love having you back there. I’ll walk you to your car.”
Those green eyes narrow, flashing with something hot and real that’s gone so quickly I almost think I imagined it.
Until I see her nostrils flare.
Just once. Just for a split second.
Anger.
I’d know, because I feel it too. All the time. Every damn day.
She smiles, a small, vicious thing that lets me know she’s just as pissed as I am.
“You are the tough one.”
Her voice. My God. It’s all wrong. Throaty and velvety and damn it, why is my dick perking up?
She’s full of shit. Has to be. Only the fire in her eyes feels very, very real.
“As nails,” I manage.
Her smile broadens, showing me a flash of white, even teeth. “Just so happens I’m good with a hammer.”
Billie bursts out laughing. Dad just smiles and shakes his head.
But me? I’m burning.
I’m going full scorched earth. Because Lainey Brown’s got a mouth on her. Because hiring a “branding expert” is a waste of precious time and money. Because familiar hells are preferable to unknown heavens or whatever it is that my therapist keeps saying.
“Too bad we’re just about to wrap up construction, then.” I open the door. “You park out front?”