CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Haden
I pull my hat off and rest it on my knee as I sit down on a bale of hay.
The cold blowing in from outside bites my ears but I’m sweaty after feeding all the horses with Dusty.
February in Kentucky is either one of two things: warm and fairly mild, or downright cold and frigid.
This year, it appears we’re getting some payback for the last two mild winters.
Dusty comes back from washing his hands and takes a seat beside me, pulling out his phone as he starts munching on a sandwich.
“Holy hell,” he mutters. I barely give him a glance, knowing he’s probably watching some stupid dogs-who-skateboard video.
“You see this?” he asks, turning his phone to me. I look down and try to register what I’m watching. A concert in a farmer’s field.
The video is shot on someone’s phone, fairly close to the stage, and I can only see the top of a woman’s cowboy hat through the crowd.
But I know by the music that it’s Cassie singing.
I scooch a little closer so I can see Dusty’s phone more clearly.
As pissed as I am with her, I’ve been following her career ever since she left.
I told myself it was only to monitor that she wasn’t making any more music about me.
One of her most recent songs, “Your Truck,” was written about the night we spent together.
And it got under my skin. Because what she’s singing about is a lie.
“Yep, she’s really good, ain’t she?” I ask, turning my head away.
Dusty has no idea what happened between us that night and I don’t really want to finish off my day thinking about her.
I’ve already found it hard enough over the last five months to forget her.
Seemed the moment I knew who she was, she was everywhere.
“No. Wait for it,” Dusty says, pushing the phone back toward me.
I take a bite of my own food and watch as Luke Bridges comes out onto the stage, which causes the crowd to explode.
I look at Dusty and try to figure out why the hell I’m watching this.
My question is answered the moment the crowd in front of the person with the phone rushes forward and a large portion from behind them follows.
My stomach drops as people scream, and the recording ends as the phone is dropped, becomes muffled and then cuts off.
I swallow the bite I’m chewing and look at Dusty in horror.
“This was last night. Your princess was onstage when it happened,” he says, nodding toward me. She’s not my anything.
“She alright?”
“Yeah.” Dusty puts his phone in his pocket. “Everything I’ve read says she’s fine. She and Luke were pulled offstage before anyone could get to them. But there’s a bunch of people hurt and they’re saying one woman might not make it.”
“Fuck,” I say, taking my last bite.
“Yeah, they really have to start making sure …” Dusty starts going on about concerts using unsecured rails and farming the set-ups out to the cheapest local bidder, while I imagine what that must have been like for Cassie.
Would she have been scared? Was she hurt?
I take a big drink from my water bottle and try to push the racing thoughts from my mind.
Get it together man, it was one night. I return my focus to what needs to be done on the ranch.
But as the day goes on, everything that could possibly go wrong does.
One of our older horses has lost a shoe in the field and it takes myself, Dusty and Colin over an hour to find it.
And when Colin calls to say he’s found it, it turns out it’s completely bent out of shape.
Then I find mouse shit in some of our grain, which means we have to throw almost a whole bin out.
No idea how the little fuckers got in there.
I’m late to leave for Penny’s because I need some time on the trail, just me and Odin and the frigid pasture to recenter my head. It’s one thing to push Cassie from my mind when no one else talks about her. But when someone else talks about her it reminds me she’s real, and that is harder to shake.
And as I get into my truck, dog-tired and heading to Penny’s, the sky looks like it’s about to unload a pile of snow on us.
Wade’s dad, Wyatt, always said a man can tell exactly how his future will go by the weather in the field.
If that’s true, then this afternoon almost feels like an omen, one that tells me a storm is coming.