Chapter 21
21
Whit Bowman
Age Eighteen
H is hand swallows mine as he holds on to it, his other palm sprawled across my lower back as our bodies sway together in the moonlit barn. Crickets chirp in the distance, the smell of hay filling my senses, but it’s mixed with the rich, spicy scent of the man in front of me. The man holding me to his chest as the music plays softly around us.
My heart is a steady thrum in my chest, my cheeks warm and most definitely rosy, but the panic I felt a mere ten minutes ago has long since subsided, replaced only with a sense of calm and peace that seems to blanket me whenever Conrad is around. But this—us touching in any way—is new. It’s something I’ve dreamed about for going on three years now, but it’s never happened. It’s never even come close to happening…until tonight.
Like most nights lately, I lie in the bed upstairs, unable to go to sleep. Unable to quiet my mind. Racing thoughts make my chest ache. A caved-in sensation that I don’t know how to stop. My heart races a mile a minute, my arms tingle, and my head feels dizzy. I’ve never experienced a heart attack, but that feeling is the closest thing I can imagine. It feels like I can’t catch my breath. Like if I don’t get up and walk around, my heart will stop beating altogether. It’s crippling and terrifying.
That’s how I found myself on the lower level of the barn at nearly midnight, legs pacing the entire length, my chest heaving with shallow breaths, and my cheeks wet with the moisture leaking from my eyes. Tears I didn’t even realize were falling until Conrad walked by, a startled look on his face when he spotted me.
“What are you doing down here this late?” he asked as he closed the distance, causing my steps to falter. I gulped in air, none of it ever enough. I couldn’t calm down, and it was frustrating. He’s wearing his nice jeans with his clean cowboy boots—not the ones he wears when we work every morning—and my favorite cowboy hat on his head. He must’ve just gotten home. Maybe he was out with somebody…romantically. I’ve never seen him with anybody, but I would imagine he does date. How could a handsome, good man like Conrad not date? I’d imagine men and women alike flock toward a man like him.
“Couldn’t sleep,” was my pathetic response. I could see it on his face that he didn’t buy it. “Sorry to bother you. I’m fine, really.”
Except I wasn’t fine. I wasn’t even close to fine. And it was in that moment that my knees felt like they were going to buckle, and what little oxygen I was dragging in felt like it was sucker punched out of me. Folding in half at my waist, my hands went to my knees as the tears fell in earnest.
I couldn’t breathe. Black spots clouded my vision, and I thought this was it…this was the moment it all ended for me. But somehow, Conrad knew exactly what to do. Before I knew it, one of his large, strong hands was rubbing soothingly along my back, his deep, gruff voice telling me it was going to be alright, to take in a deep breath through my nose.
And before I knew it, I was collapsing into his arms, melting into his touch, as our bodies somehow began to sway. At some point, without my realization, Conrad had turned the stereo on, the melody of a song drifting through the speakers as we continued to move together.
I didn’t understand it, but I refused to overthink it, because it was the first thing that had my mind quieting. The first thing that had my heart slowing down.
That’s where we are now, minutes later, still embraced as I allow Conrad to guide me around this barn. I can’t help but wonder if this will change everything. Or if the morning sun will touch the horizon, tonight being long forgotten. By him, at least. I could never forget about this. This moment is cataloged in my mind forever. The way I can hear—and feel—his steady heartbeat through his chest. The way his rough hand feels wrapped around mine. The way his legs carry us around the empty and dark barn, only the moon and stars as our witness. The way my chest aches with a need to get closer, and the way that confuses my mind, because typically I try to avoid physical contact as much as possible.
But with him, it’s different. Everything about Conrad is different. He makes my pulse race and my palms sweat, but not in an anxious way. In a he-soothes-my-soul type of way. I feel comfortable talking around him, never do I feel like he’s judging me, and when I want to be quiet—simply exist near him with no words between us—he lets me do just that. The silence is never awkward, and I never feel this absurd need to fill it with anything. I can just be with him, and it’s never been like that before with anybody else.
But he’s my boss’s son.
And significantly older than me.
I’m eighteen and he’s thirty-three. I’ve known of him and his family my entire life. You don’t grow up in the small, charming town of Copper Lake, Wyoming, and not know the Strauss family. But it wasn’t until I started working at Grazing Acres, his family’s ranch, when I was fifteen that I really got to know him. Quiet and broody, he’s a man of few words. He’s handsome and rugged; everything I’m not. Where I’m small in stature, he’s larger than life.
Conrad Strauss is all man. Hardworking, weathered hands, skin golden tan from days spent under the sun, and muscles built not from a gym but from hours upon hours of manual labor. I’ve been crushing on a man who would never even look twice at me in that light since I was fifteen years old. Six months ago, I turned eighteen, and a foolish part of my mind thought maybe he’d finally see me as more than his parents’ ranch hand. Maybe he’d see me for me—not that I really have all that much to offer in the romantic department—but a man like him would never take a man like me seriously.
Or so I thought.
Tonight has changed all of that. It may be naive of me, and I very well may be reading more into it than I should, but for the first time since I started working here, I think Conrad may actually see me. It’s the thought I desperately hold on to as You Make It Look So Easy by Eric Church replays for the third time tonight.
His presence calms me. It quiets my mind.
For once, I’m not obsessing over college in the fall, or worried about my mother’s drinking and what it’s doing to my father. For the first time in who knows how long, I’m not stressed about making ends meet, or the weight of following in my dad’s footsteps. In my granddad’s footsteps.
For once, I can breathe.
I feel safe in his arms. Protected. Like the weight of the world isn’t resting on my shoulders, even if it’s only for tonight. It’s a dangerous feeling, though, because Conrad isn’t somebody I could ever call my own. He’s not somebody I can have.
To him, I’m probably just a child.
Even if he’s holding on to me like I’m everything he’s ever dreamed about.
Even if he is everything I’ve ever dreamed about.
Just for tonight, I allow myself to revel in the feeling of being wrapped up in his arms. Just for tonight, I allow myself to dream of what it would be like to have him like this every night. What it would be like to be loved by Conrad Strauss.
What it would be like to tell him how utterly in love with him I am.
I give in to the fantasy because that’s all it is.