CHAPTER 6
Colt
◆
The pink star sticker had stuck itself to Colt's thumb before seven in the morning, tacky at one corner and already dusted with flour from Beau's toast.
He noticed it when he crouched on the rug in her room with the red boots in his hand.
The boots were small, scuffed at the toes, stitched with cream flowers Harlow had chosen back when Beau was too little to care about anything except the sound they made on a wood floor.
They had been Harlow's favorite pair for her.
This morning, Beau sat cross-legged under Harlow's star quilt and looked at those boots like they had done something wrong.
"Boots," Colt said, gentle as he knew how. "Then preschool."
Beau shook her head hard enough to loosen one side of her hair. "No."
"They fit yesterday."
"Yesterday was different."
That was a hard argument to beat at five years old.
He set the boots between them. "Tell me."
Her fingers worked one quilt corner until the star there folded over. "Mama liked those best."
The room changed around the words. Morning light stayed on the dresser. A cow bawled from the lot. Somewhere down the hall, the coffee maker clicked off, ordinary as a man clearing his throat. Colt held still because quick movement could turn a crack into a break.
"She did," he said.
Beau's lower lip pushed out. "If I wear them, they get more old."
So stubbornness had nothing to do with it. Preservation. Grief trying to keep leather from creasing because it could not keep anything else from changing.
Colt eased back onto his heels. "Boots get old when they do their job."
"I don't want them to."
"I know."
"Can they stay little?"
He looked at the boots, then at Beau's bare feet tucked under the quilt.
She was outgrowing everything by inches and questions.
He could mend fence, doctor a calf, pull a truck out of mud with the right chain and enough patience.
He could not make his daughter small enough to fit safely inside the past.
"No, baby," he said. "They can't. But we can take care of them. The red ones can rest today, and you can wear your brown boots."
Beau sniffed. "The muddy ones?"
"I'll knock the mud off."
"All the mud?"
"Most of Texas."
Her mouth twitched. It was not a smile yet, but it leaned that way.
He took the brown boots to the porch and beat them together over the steps until dry dirt sifted through the boards.
The air smelled of cedar dust, warm cattle, and the dry mineral lick from the lots.
Heat already pressed against the morning.
A hay delivery was due at eight, the water gap still needed checking, and the battery in his truck had turned over before dawn with a slow, ugly drag.
Inside, Beau had put on her yellow shirt backward and her skirt with the pockets turned sideways. He fixed the shirt because the tag bothered her, left the skirt because preschool could survive pockets with opinions, and packed her lunch while she ate toast by tearing it into fence-post pieces.
"Sticker," she said.
"Hair first."
"Sticker is for brave."
"Hair can be brave too."
She allowed him to brush through the tangles. Harlow had been better at this. She had made braids look like a song with a pattern. Colt's fingers were better with rope and wire, things that held because they had to. He managed two uneven pigtails and tried not to wince when Beau patted them.
"They are cousins," she said, "not twins."
"Cousins count."
"Teacher knows twins."
"Tell her I did rancher hair."
That got a real laugh, small and bright.
At the kitchen table, Beau pressed another pink star beside the first one on his thumb. The adhesive pulled at the callus there, soft and stubborn.
"For brown boots," she said. "Don't squish it."
"I'll do my best."
He got her buckled in at seven forty-four. Late, but not ruined. The truck coughed before it caught. Colt kept his hand on the key a beat longer, listening to the starter scrape under the engine noise.
Battery, he thought. Another bill.
Another bill meant shifting money he had already shifted twice.
Hay, diesel, preschool, pump parts, feed.
In the barn office, Bennet Orvell's unopened envelope sat under the ranch ledger, its corner visible every time Colt pretended not to see it.
Whatever his father had left tangled in legal paper could wait.
He had a child to get to school and a ranch to keep honest.
The preschool drop-off lane moved in slow jerks beside a low fence. Colt kept the truck idling because shutting it off felt like tempting the day. Beau hummed in the back seat, one brown boot tapping the floor mat.
"Pickup is me," he said. "After rest time. I'll be right here."
"With snack?"
"With snack."
"If the cows break something?"
"They can wait."
She considered him in the rearview mirror. "Cows don't wait good."
"Today they will."
When he helped her down, she looked at the brown boots and then at him. "Mama won't be sad?"
The question went through him clean.
"No," he said. "Your mama wanted your feet warm and safe. The brown boots are doing good work."
"Red boots wait at home?"
"On the rug."
Beau hugged his neck for one quick second before marching toward the door. The teacher waved her in. Colt stayed by the curb until Beau disappeared inside, paper lunch sack swinging at her side.
The sticker on his thumb stuck to the steering wheel when he climbed back in.
"Great," he muttered, peeling it loose.
The truck started, but barely. His phone buzzed before he left the lane.
Tuck's message was short. Hay truck called. Ten minutes out. You close?
Colt called him. "I'm leaving preschool."
"So no."
"I'll be there."
"Gate chain's twisted at the north lot."
"Fix the chain. If hay shows before me, count bales and keep him out of the feed room."
"Truck still starting ugly?"
Colt looked at the dash. "It started."
"That ain't an answer."
"It's the one you're getting."
Tuck made a sound that passed for laughter and hung up.
Colt should have gone straight to the barn.
Instead, with his own clock already bleeding, he cut toward Sudie's place to grab the coil of rope he'd left on the fence after patching a sagging section two days earlier.
He needed it to tie back the loose barn door before the hay arrived.
It was the sort of small efficiency that felt smart until it turned around and bit.
Sudie's cottage sat back from the road, porch shaded and paint weathered thin.
Wren's car was in the drive with the trunk open and one tire sitting low.
She stood beside it with cheap ribbon looped over her wrist and a cardboard box braced against her hip, frowning at a receipt like the numbers had insulted her.
Colt's guard came up before he could stop it.
Yesterday was still too close. The chapel. His voice naming the old leaving wound. Her face going pale with something he had not wanted to recognize. Saying the truth had not cleaned it out of him. It had left the bruise in plain sight.
Wren looked up as he rolled in.
"If you're here to inspect wedding supplies," she said, lifting the ribbon, "I should warn you this came from the economy shelf."
The old rhythm stepped close, easy and dangerous.
"Looks like ribbon that's seen hardship."
"It has character."
"It has surrender along the edges."
"That's called design."
He almost smiled. Then he killed the engine, reached for the rope on the fence post, and realized his mistake the second he turned the key again.
Click.
Nothing else.
The silence under the hood was complete.
Wren leaned toward the open driver-side window. "That sounded expensive."
"It sounded temporary."
"That sounded like lying."
"Dashboard started it."
Her gaze dropped to his thumb. "You have stars."
"Reward system."
"For what?"
"Surviving breakfast."
The humor in her face softened. He could have let it. He did not trust himself with softness from Wren before eight in the morning, not with his truck dead and Beau's grief still sitting under his ribs.
"Boot trouble," he said. "Handled."
Wren nodded once and did not push. "Do you want a jump?"
He looked at her car. "From that?"
"Careful. She hears disrespect and responds with drama."
"She's got enough battery?"
"More than yours."
There it was again, the old spark over broken machinery and bad timing. Colt wanted to resent how natural it felt. Resenting it would have been safer.
"Cables are behind the seat," he said.
"Good. I have optimism and a vague memory of clamp colors."
"Vague memory can get a person shocked."
"Then supervise, ranch man."
He called Tuck while he pulled the cables out. "Battery died at Sudie's. If the hay gets there, you meet it."
"Told you."
"Useful as ever."
"You want charm with that hay bill?"
"You don't own any."
"Neither do you."
The line clicked dead.
Wren had already eased her car closer. When she opened the hood, the prop rod slipped, and Colt caught it before it dropped. His arm brushed hers. Warm skin, a hint of paper dust and sun-warmed ribbon, nothing he had any business noticing.
He stepped back and pointed. "Red to positive on yours. Red to positive on mine. Black to yours, black to ground on mine."
"That was almost a full sentence."
"Don't get used to it."
"I never did."
The words landed too near the wound. Wren's face changed first. Colt busied himself with the clamps, but the pink sticker adhesive snagged against the rubber grip, pulling and releasing with each movement. One star folded over at the point, collecting black dust.
Wren started her car. It rattled hard enough to make the ribbon on her wrist tremble.
"Musical," Colt said.
"Underappreciated."
"Begging for mercy."
"Your truck fainted in a grandmother's driveway."
The laugh got out before he could stop it. One rough breath, surprised from his own chest. Wren looked at him, and the years folded wrong for a moment. They were by a fence line again, younger and sure the world would give them time to speak plainly.
Colt turned away first.