FOURTEEN
COLT
Mama takes the news about as incredibly as I thought she would.
I should’ve taken her somewhere private to tell her though, because she screams loud enough I’m scared everyone on this ranch is gonna come running to check on her.
Thankfully, no one does. I don’t want anyone else knowing before I can tell Bailey.
There was a time she would’ve been the first to know.
Mama sobs and pinches my cheeks, spending an eternity hugging me and asking a million questions—most of which I don’t have answers to. When I’m finally free from her clutches a few hours later, it’s with the promise I’ll get those answers from Blair soon and report back.
Around five, I knock on the office door and poke my head through to find Bailey looking like she’s about to kill whoever’s on the other end of the phone. She looks surprised to see me, eyes flicking over me the same way Maddox’s always does. They don’t feel as intrusive though.
I flip my finger in a wrap it up motion, and she rolls her eyes.
“Yes, Mr. Wheatley,” she placates the man on the line. “Believe it or not, my family’s been in ranching for a long time. I’m well aware?—”
Whoever the fuck Mr. Wheatley is, he must cut her off, because she hangs up on him. I laugh as she gets out of her chair and comes over to hug me.
“You can’t just hang up on people who piss you off, Bail,” I tease her gently.
Her scent calms me in the same way Mama’s does. One of the best things about coming home will be getting to hang out with my twin sister again without having to rely on pixelated FaceTime calls.
“What’re you doing home? Thought you had a couple more rides in Fort Worth.”
Of course she knows my schedule by heart.
“Wanna get dinner or drinks or something? I’ve got something to tell you.”
My sister immediately pales and I feel terrible, pulling her back into a hug. “It’s good news, Bails.”
“You’re retiring?” she asks, carefully hopeful as she pulls back to look me in the eye again.
I ignore her. “If you’ll get your ass in the truck, we can get out of here and find some place to talk about it.”
“Fine,” she huffs, walking back to her desk and shutting down her computer. “Let’s go to Quitter’s. I’ve gotta check the inventory anyway.”
“Inventory? Why?”
“Haven’t you heard? Maddie owns the place now.”
“Bail, are you planning on actually listening to me at some point tonight or would you rather I stop trying to distract you from staring at Cartwright?”
She glares at me, eyes flicking away from her ex-boyfriend comically fast. I said it loud enough that Chase might’ve been able to hear me, so her irritation is warranted.
I don’t turn around to see if he did or didn’t, though.
I fucking hate the cheater and I always will.
I wish my sister would move on from him.
Sure, the dating pool in Cedar Creek is slim, but I’m sure there are a lot of guys here that are interested in her.
“I was actually listening to you,” she seethes. “I looked over your shoulder for half a second.”
It’d been way more than half a second, but like every other member of my family, I was a bit terrified of Bailey, so I didn’t argue with her.
“Do you want to go somewhere else?” I ask her instead. Usually, she avoids Quitter’s like the plague, specifically so something like this didn’t happen.
“No, it’s fine. We’ve been… semi-civil lately,” she reports.
I reach across the table to feel her forehead, worried she has a fever, but she bats my hand away.
It’s been five years since Bailey and Chase broke up—five years of tiptoeing around saying his name at the house, warning her when he’d be coming over to take care of animals, avoiding Quitter’s…
or anywhere else Chase may be. And suddenly they were… semi-civil?
“Jesus Christ, thank god I’m coming home because shit’s changing far too fast for me to keep up with nowadays.”
“You’re coming home?” she verifies, eyes lit up in a way I need them to stay forever, for my own sanity. There are very few things I want more in this world than my twin sister’s happiness, and it was only just recently pushed from the top spot by the baby growing in Blair’s belly.
I grin back at her. “Yeah. I gotta call my manager to see what it’ll take for me to get out of my sponsorships and contracts and shit, but I’m hoping it’ll be fairly easy. Especially when I tell ’em why I’m wanting to retire.”
Her eyes lose focus on me then, looking over my shoulder again and then hardening .
“Chase?” she says, almost sickly sweet. I look over my shoulder to find him halfway through writing his number on a girl’s hand. Fucking douchebag.
He looks up at Bailey with a cocky grin and bright eyes. “Yeah, BJ?”
“I don’t think so.”
His grin only widens as he pulls his hand away from the girl and caps the Sharpie, passing it back to her.
“Sorry, sweetheart. You heard her.” He takes a swig of his beer and turns to face the televisions over the bar while the girl stares at him, mouth just as agape as mine.
“Are you serious?” I ask Bailey, when she turns back to me like she didn’t just take a small interlude to chastise her ex-boyfriend for flirting with another woman.
“Sorry, why are you wanting to retire?”
“Are y’all back together or something?”
Bailey rolls her eyes. “In his dreams. Doesn’t mean I want to watch him flirting with another woman in front of me. Anyway, you were saying? About retiring?”
I sigh as I lean to the side on my barstool and pull out my wallet, coming to the realization I’ll probably never know more than the base facts of the Bailey and Chase clusterfuck. Sometimes, I think it’s probably for the best.
The ultrasound is starting to get bent around the edges.
I’ll have to ask Blair for another one. Bailey’s face is already pale again when I go to pass it to her, giving me a pretty good view of what I must’ve looked like when I’d seen it for the first time a few days ago.
It’s hard to tell if she’s happy for me or not.
“Bails?”
My voice seems to snap her out of it, her eyes tracing my face so she can gauge her reaction off mine, I’d imagine. I give her a tentative smile. Something strange is going on. When she smiles at me, her eyes don’t quite match the emotion.
She has a ton of questions for me, same as Maddox and Mama, but I can’t stop myself from thinking this might be yet another wedge being driven between us.
Bailey has her secrets and I’ve pretended I can’t tell, but I thought she’d be happy I was coming home.
Instead, all I see are shadows in her eyes, despite her best efforts.
When I make moves to head home, she stays behind, promising she’ll find a ride.
It’s not very hard to guess where she’ll find one.