Chapter 17
CASSIDY
Shawn’s equipment at the butcher shop made it a cinch to transfer the dozen carcasses from the truck into the shop. Briar’s help had not been needed—nor was Doc’s, and he’d taken that time to set up for the first necropsies instead. While we were there, the only moment I saw Briar move was to slide from the driver’s seat to the passenger side in my truck, which was where she now sat, as stiff as a board and not speaking as I drove us toward the rodeo.
Her fingers twisted the ends of her hair that pooled in her lap. I knew she noticed my staring, I knew I should’ve stopped, but I couldn’t help my constant glances at her. There was no hat on her head, and she wasn’t wearing her usual oversized T-shirt that hid her figure away. No, she had on a ruffled, polka-dotted blouse a shade of blue so deep it brought out the intense gray moonlight that were her irises.
She pulled her plump, bottom lip between her teeth, and the lashes that were normally almost non-existent were coated in a very thin layer of mascara. My heart fluttered like a bird just taking flight in spring. She was beautiful when dressed down in her typical men’s jeans and no make-up flare, but this… This was something different.
But there was a heavy storm cloud hanging over her, one that I wanted to get rid of for her. I wanted to fight off any battle that she faced for her, so she never had to taste the fate of death’s hands ever again.
“Do I have a stain somewhere or something?” she suddenly asked, finally speaking. I leaned against the windowsill, keeping one hand on the steering column.
“No,” I answered, shaking my head.
“Then why do you keep staring at me?” She raised a brow, finally halting her fidgeting, and shifted her gaze briefly toward me. I couldn’t stop the smile that cracked on my lips and quickly looked out the front windshield as shadows of trees passed us. The yellow of my headlights blended with the sun settling at the top of the Rockies, ready to disappear for the evening.
“It’s nothin’,” I muttered.
She crossed her arms, slender and delicate, driving my mind mad with the desire to dance my fingers across the skin they knew was so soft. “That look means something and I can’t figure it out,” she hissed in response.
I clenched my jaw, sliding my teeth over each other. Her boundaries, Cassidy, I reminded myself. This was not the time to tell her the exact desires that were running through my mind. Telling her how badly I wanted her to scoot over to the middle and let me put my hand on her thigh or sling an arm around her shoulders was not appropriate. I doubt she even realized that my intentions for tonight had been more than to distract her.
Being seen with her, showing her off, taking her on a date was at the forefront of my mind, and I wasn’t sure if I should voice it or not.
“Cassidy Duke, answer me, because I’m stressed enough about everything else,” she quickly added as a frown tightened her typically soft features.
“The whole purpose of tonight is to make sure you forget about that,” I answered, purposefully avoiding what she was seeking.
Her shoulders sagged, crushed by my response, and shame swam in my stomach. She leaned toward the side window, her gaze sliding across the scenery as we turned from the desolate backroads and cruised toward the fairgrounds bustling bright in the distance.
“Your truck drives really nice,” she muttered.
I exhaled slowly, hoping this meant she wasn’t going to be too mad at me all night. “Thanks, Goldie, but don’t think I’m letting you do that again.” I winked. She rolled her eyes, but her lips twitched upwards.
“Why not? I didn’t get a scratch on your new chrome paint job, just like you asked.” She raised a brow.
“True.” I slowed the truck, pulling behind a line of vehicles crawling forward.
“Wow, I didn’t expect it to be this busy!” she exclaimed, sitting a little higher upright in my single cab F-100.
“Brookeside and Riverford take turns hosting the rodeo. Tonight, it’s Brookeside, but most families come from both towns.” We inched forward as another vehicle turned into the dirt parking lot circling half of the fairground. Stadium seats rose high in the middle, surrounding the arena where the hum of voices and the drum of music bounced lightly into the night air.
“Small towns, not much else to do, huh?” she mindlessly answered, her voice a little lighter than it had been.
“Bonfires, blowing things up, mudding, trail rides, skinny dippin’, making—”
“I got it, dummy,” she cut me off and rolled her eyes.
“I’m just sayin’, people underestimate the amount of mischief you can cause in a small town.” Turning my signal on, I steered the truck from the road, and we bumped over mud and patchy field grass around to the back of the fairgrounds. Anytime I came to rodeos with my buddies, this was the way we’d go since the back parking lot wasn’t as well known and more frequented by competitors.
“You would know that,” she muttered.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked as I guided the truck behind the few other vehicles doing the same thing as us.
“Just that I figured you’d be involved in stuff like that.”
I sighed, my belly swirling with guilt and shame. She wasn’t wrong, but that wasn’t something I was super proud of being known for. “That was a long time ago,” I grumbled.
A tight smile lifted on Briar’s face. “You say that like I wasn’t involved in some mischief growing up.” Her eyes suddenly crinkled in delight.
“You? The girl whose first kiss happened a week ago, wasn’t a good teenager?” I asked, and she leaned back giggling.
“I wasn’t going skinny dipping if that’s what you were hoping for,” she flirted, and I exaggerated my frown.
“Darn it.” I winked. “So, what was your small-town mischief making of choice?”
“Blowing things up. Dad had a lot of junk he’d randomly find. I’d take it with my friends out on the weekends, and we’d light them up. I nearly burnt down my dad’s tractor once, though.” She grimaced as a laugh left my belly.
“I accidentally burnt down two of our barns as a teenager during a bonfire I wasn’t exactly supposed to be having on the ranch,” I shared, and her mouth fell open.
“No,” she sarcastically said, feigning shock.
“Ha. Ha. Ha.” I smirked in her direction and rolled my window down as we pulled up to the gate. And my stomach hit the floor of the truck. “Crap,” I hissed under my breath.
“Is something wrong?” Briar asked as the woman taking payment for parking swayed up to my window.
“Well, I’ll be,” she exclaimed, slipping some sleek auburn hair behind her ear. “If it ain’t Cassidy Duke. Nobody said you were coming today. Joe and Kurt are already here with a couple of girls, and I think Wyatt’s family parked up front.”
“Hey, Laura Marie,” I answered and slipped a hand into my back pocket.
“What was that? No flash of the famous seductive Cassidy Duke smile?” She crossed her arms on the windowsill of the truck, placing her chin against them, and batted her long lashes. “What’s it been, four years, sugar? I’m back from the city and that’s all you have to say.”
“Five bucks?” I asked.
She pursed her lips. “You’re not even going to ask me how it was? I know you spent time away from Riverford, but I also know it wasn’t in a big city.”
“I don’t like cities, you know that,” I grumbled and opened my wallet.
“Of course I know that, sugar.” She giggled, plastering a too flirty smile on her face. “Anyway, Joe’s running in the rodeo tonight. All of us are meetin’ up for some drinkin’ and dancin’ before things get going. You’re joining, right? Kurt told me that you’ve gone out with the boys since I’ve been gone but not had a single date. Now that I’m back, we could pick up where we left off?”
Pulling out some cash, I offered her a five-dollar bill. “Laura, there’s—”
“No way,” she cut me off as her mud-brown eyes drifted from my gaze over to Briar. And a devilish smile that made my bones crawl spread across her lips. “Are you with her?” I glanced at the already overwhelmed girl in my passenger seat. Her expression was unreadable and there were two options here. One would shut Laura down, which had been what I was trying to do before she cut me off. The second would keep me on the same path of letting Briar have the reins in whatever was to come from this.
The latter option would’ve been the right choice. But my heart was struggling enough backing off in my pursuit of the woman I absolutely wanted, and it gave out in that moment.
“Yes, I asked her on a date.” I nodded at Briar who remained completely still in her seat. “Now, are you going to take the money and let us go through? There’s a line waiting now,” I politely finished.
She yanked the bill from my hands. “It’s not like you to ask someone on a pity date,” Laura hissed at Briar. The beautiful blonde in my passenger seat visibly flinched, her first movement since this conversation began. Laura stuffed the cash in the zippered money bag she was holding.
“This ain’t—”
“Whatever,” she cut me off and stepped back from the window. She waved us forward, and I put the truck into drive. The tires crunched over the gravel as we weaved through the makeshift parking lot and found a stall.
Where we sat still and silent.
Briar hadn’t moved.
I wasn’t sure what to say, either, because I’d stepped over a boundary claiming this to be a date without explicitly asking Briar if that was okay, yet I wanted to explain to her that she didn’t have to worry about her or any of the other girls that would inevitably show up.
My past was catching up, just as I knew it would. And I prayed that Weston’s once wise words would reign true in this instance. “There’s nothing going on between—”
“It’s fine,” Briar sharply said, cutting me off.
What was up with all these women not letting me talk?
“No, it’s not. Look, you’re right. I wasn’t exactly the pickiest guy when it came to women and dates before. Remember how I told you one of my past dates actually tried to kill our cattle in order to get me to fall in love with her? She shot Tenley and everything.” I paused and pulled my hat off my head. Running my fingers through my hair, I closed my eyes. “But I need you to trust me when I say I’m not that guy anymore. Please.”
Cracking my eyelids open, I glanced her way. She didn’t look at me. She did nothing but stare out the front of the windshield, watching as a few people parked and began wandering toward the stadium on our left.
“Would you want to go meet some of my friends?” I hesitantly asked, trying to fill the awkward silence. “Joe and Kurt, Wyatt, the guys are pretty good dudes.” I’d over-explained after stepping across the boundary she’d laid down to keep me at arm’s length. Sometimes, I hated how extreme I could be, how easily I dove into something that I loved and cared about even if I kept most of that bottled up.
“Is this…” she began, her voice quiet. She remained staring forward as I clenched my hat tight between my fingers. “Is this a date?” Her voice cracked on the last word.
I knew it. “Look, Laura Marie would’ve given you a hard time and continued to try and flirt with me if I didn’t say that,” I tried to explain away. She suddenly whipped her head toward me, her eyes blazing with anger.
“That wasn’t an answer. Now, is this a date or not?” she snarled. But as she blinked rapidly, a tear slipped down her cheek. I was so confused by what she was feeling.
Was she mad? Was she upset? Was she scared? Was she jealous?
Had I also overstepped an entirely new boundary that I was unaware of? More than just the one she’d so confusingly set on the ride home from the cattle drive?
“Are you… mad at me?” I cautiously asked, and she slammed the back of her hand against her cheek, wiping the tear away.
“I didn’t want this kind of distraction, Cassidy,” she stated quite harshly. “I wanted to go out and get so lost in whatever was going on that I forgot about everything that bothered me. Which includes whatever I’m feeling about you!”
I was even more confused. That wasn’t exactly an answer to my question, though I hadn’t answered hers. I shut Laura Marie down. Wasn’t that the best choice in that scenario, even if I’d stated that it was a date without talking to Briar first? You know what, screw that. Screw letting her have the reins. All that had done was turn into five days of us not talking, and I didn’t want that.
I wanted her. Plain and simple.
“Yes,” I blurted out and shoved the hat back on my head.
She blinked rapidly, all frustration on her face washed clean with confusion. “Y…yes? She stammered.
“Yes, this is a date.” I turned the engine off and tugged the key out. Her eyes widened in shock. “Now, we are going to go out there, and you’re gonna meet some of my friends. You’re gonna drink however little or much you want while I’ll stay sober. We’re gonna dance, watch a bit of the rodeo, eat some greasy burgers and fries, and eventually, I’ll help you stumble back to the truck, and then I’ll drive us home. Then you can go back to avoiding me, and this time I’ll ignore that because I hate it.”
Spinning around, I threw open my door, jumped down, and slammed it closed. Once I made it to her side of the truck, I ripped it open in a fury, then reached out a hand and simply waited. Her eyes were nearly bugging out of her head as she slowly, oh so slowly turned to look at me.
“I get what I want, Goldie. You’re going to be no exception, no matter how long I have to wait,” I finished. There it was. My feelings out there, putting everything, absolutely everything out in the open. It had been before, but now she couldn’t deny it.
Never before had this much anxiety swum in my stomach, weighing heavy after telling a girl something like that. I also wasn’t normally the one doing the chasing, or the pursuing or waiting. This was all new and I doubted I was handling things right.
Especially as time dragged on and she still hadn’t moved. My hand still waited for hers, empty and cold as the orange sunset disappeared over the ridge. Cheering sounded from the bleachers, and the announcer’s voice filled the fairgrounds, signaling the start of the rodeo.
“Okay,” Briar finally whispered.
I blinked, surprised by the acknowledgment.
“Just for tonight,” she quickly added, louder and firmer than her ‘okay.’ But it was enough for me. A grin spread across my face, and she shook her head, finally placing her palm in mine. It was calloused and rough, not like the dainty girls who had always tried to keep up with this life I lived but couldn’t. No, it was evidence to the life I knew she lived.
She’d fit in just fine with my life. She was already fitting in just fine. “Come on, let’s go meet my friends,” I said.
Briar slid down from the cab of the truck, and my breath caught in my throat as her hair draped across her figure, flowing like a river of honey to the back of her knees. Mindlessly, my feet took me a step closer to her body as the door shut behind her, so quietly, I barely heard it. All I could focus on was the woman who stood before me, wanting so desperately to run my fingers through her hair—to get them tangled within her tresses.
“Woah,” I gushed, unable to stop myself from reaching out and brushing my palm down a few strands.
I barely noticed her cheeks turn red, but this time, there was no hat on her head to hide her reaction. Her fingers slid between mine, bashfully pulling my touch away from her hair, and she turned away from the truck. “Come on. The sooner we meet them, the sooner I get some dancing in,” she sweetly said and gently tugged at my hand.
Even if it was only for tonight, this woman was going to be wooed to the best of my abilities.
Mmmmm… I was one lucky man.