TWENTY-FOUR
BLAIR
The breakfast table is awkward the next morning when I take a seat. Colt has already eaten and gone, usually up just as the sun rises, if not sooner. Only his mama and sisters are at the breakfast table.
“Good morning,” I greet, waddling into the kitchen.
I’m not anywhere near pregnant enough to be waddling, but my knees and hips are so freaking stiff and painful first thing in the morning.
I’ve been meaning to ask June about it, but it’s never seemed like a good time to bother her. She always seems so busy.
“Morning!” Tate says with an overly large grin.
Bailey snorts as she takes a sip of coffee. I hope she’s laughing at Tate, not at me, but it’s hard to tell with her. I swear she hates me, but Colt promises she doesn’t.
“I bet it is a good morning,” Kenny quips.
“Kendall Cheyenne!” June scolds, turning from the counter with her hands on her hips. Her cheeks are pink.
I feel like I’m left out of some joke, but also somehow the center of it.
“What am I missing?”
“Nothing, dear. What would you like for breakfast?” June asks .
It’s ridiculous that her dismissal irritates me. I barely know these people. What if I’m just missing something strictly because I don’t know them well enough to know some sort of inside joke they’re sharing? What if today’s some sort of special day I don’t know about?
But all of the secrecy and giggles are making me feel like I felt after my foster brother ruined my reputation in front of the whole school, and pregnancy hormones are making it worse.
Tate laughs again a few minutes later when I moan around a forkful of scrambled eggs, and it has me ready to scream.
“What?” I seethe, trying my best to remain calm. I don’t want to tick off Colt’s family. I have a feeling it wouldn’t end well for me.
“Nothing, dear,” June says again. “Tate, go to work.”
“Can someone please tell me what’s going on?” I ask a bit louder than necessary.
“Ope, gotta go.” Kenny jumps up and abandons ship.
Finally, Bailey takes pity on me, though I think I should’ve just let June brush everything under the rug.
“We heard you last night.”
“What?” I ask about two seconds before it dawns on me what she means. “Oh my god.”
“Bailey, I told you all not to bring it up!”
“Mama, she was about to burn the house down with her glare, thinking we’re making fun of her or something. I wouldn’t want a bunch of busybodies giggling about me either if I was her.”
“Oh my god,” I whimper again, hiding my face in my folded arms on the table.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, dear. We weren’t laughing at you ,” June insists, coming over to rub my upper back. “Pregnancy hormones are crazy. I’ve got six kids, I would know.”
“I am so sorry,” I tell her, pulling my head up and turning toward her. “I had no idea. I tried to be quiet.”
Bailey snorts behind me .
“If you were sleeping with anyone but my twin brother, I’d have to commend you for finding a guy that made you moan that loud even though you were ‘trying to be quiet.’”
“Okay, that’s enough of that. Bailey, off to work with you. Blair, honey, there’s nothing to be ashamed of. Finish your breakfast and then we’re going to go find that son of mine and steal his wallet for the day.”
“Steal his wallet?” I ask, slightly concerned by the idea of a heist.
But she just hums. “If you’re up for making the drive again, we’re going to head back into Billings. Get you a massage and a pregnancy pillow at the very least.”
“Oh, no, it’s completely fine,” I try to argue, but she shoots me a look that tells me to hush and eat my breakfast.
“If my son was here late enough every morning to see the way you waddle and wince down those stairs, he would’ve already thrown his wallet at me and begged me to fix it.
He’ll be happy as a clam to finally have a reason to spoil you, don’t you worry,” she says, starting on the dishes. I try to eat quicker so I can help.
“You think so?” I ask, to keep the conversation flowing. “He has been really kind throughout this whole thing.” Kind is an understatement, but saying “attentive” after she heard just how attentive her son could be seemed like the wrong call.
June snorts. “You should’ve seen him when he came home to get things settled in those weeks before you got here.
I felt like I needed to put him back on his old backpack leash from when he was a toddler.
He almost bought everything for your future nursery until I reminded him you’d probably want a say in what everything looked like. ”
Shit, I haven’t even thought of a nursery.
Or much of anything except the here and now.
I was anxious over just about everything in my life, but this pregnancy seemed to be different somehow.
Women had given birth for hundreds of thousands of years.
We were designed to do it. I was probably the least anxious I’d ever been in my entire life.
Colt was usually the anxious one when it came to all of this, like June had implied.
I finish my breakfast and help out at the sink, despite June’s best efforts to nag me into sitting down.
June calls Maddox to ask where he’s got Colt working as we climb into her truck—instead of calling Colt directly, which I don’t really understand, but I suppose Maddox is the boss of the ranch.
“Hello?” he answers gruffly, the call broadcast over the truck’s Bluetooth. The sound of some sort of machine or motor hums in the background on his end.
“Hey, sweetheart. Where do you have Colton today?”
“He’s here with me. Everything alright? His girl okay?” Maddox asks, and my stomach flips at the fact that’s his first concern… though he could stand to learn my name, I think.
“Blair’s completely fine. Where is ‘here,’ son?”
“East pasture.”
“You’re not doing pest control or anything like that, are you?”
“Nah, hay baling. If you’re coming out, she’ll be fine. There’s no shade though.”
“We won’t be staying long,” she tells him. “See you in a minute.”
Colt is getting out of a tractor when we get there and lord have mercy, is he sweaty and filthy. I have to remind myself that his mother is sitting beside me and that this newfound desire for sweaty men is gross.
Granted, it’s not just sweaty men. Maddox, Tyler, Jamie, and the rest of the ranch hands are also very sweaty and filthy, but my vagina pays them no mind whatsoever.
“Everything okay?” he’s asking immediately, pulling open the passenger door before June even puts the truck in park.
There’s neat lines of dead grass everywhere, Maddox in a gigantic machine that seems to be eating it, Jamie on a four-wheeler behind him, and a big trailer off to the side with gigantic rolls of hay on it.
“Everything’s fine,” I promise him with a small smile, turning his hat around on his head so I can read it, and then urgently turning it back around before his mother can.
I look better bent over
He’s grinning so hard his dimples are popping, stepping up on the running board to lean into the cab and kiss my forehead.
“You’re so pretty.”
“Isn’t she?” June agrees, which has me blushing. I’m not used to such undivided attention. “We need your wallet.”
Colt doesn’t ask a single question. He just pulls it from his back pocket, opens it up to take a twenty out and hands me the wallet, pocketing the twenty for himself.
“Fending for ourselves for lunch?” he asks June.
“Yep. Or Maddox can let go of someone to make lunch for everyone. If it’s one of the hands, they have to make it in the bunkhouse with their messy selves. Or Tate. I don’t want her in my kitchen either, she’s liable to burn the place down, God love her.”
Colt grins again. “I’ll see if we can get Bailey to go. She’s the best cook after you.”
“You need the best cook to make you sandwiches?” I ask him with a raised brow.
“Nah, but at least she’ll wash her hands first. Where are y’all headed?”
“Billings. Gonna book Blair a pregnancy massage and get her a special pillow to sleep with.”
She doesn’t mention that I’ve been having issues with my joints, which I appreciate. Colt would likely insist on dropping everything and taking me to the doctor if he knew, even though it’s a very classic side effect of him knocking me up.
“Get a bunch of those cinnamon things while you’re there. Some to bring home, too,” he tells me with a nudge. I had them yesterday when I went to the mall and mentioned last night how good they were.
“I don’t need a bunch of sweets.”
“Colt!” Jamie yells, causing him to look up. The bales are piling up.
“Gotta get back to work, but I’ll see you later. Have fun. Mama?—”
“I’ll make sure we get some, son. If she doesn’t eat them, I’m sure someone will.”
“Thank you. Bye, pretty girl,” he says, kissing my forehead again. “Please drive safely, Mama.”
June just rolls her eyes as Colt closes the door and runs back over to the tractor he’d been getting out of when we arrived. She pulls away, getting back on the dirt path that runs through the ranch.
“Just for his lack of confidence in me, he’s paying for my massage too.”