Chapter 17
SEVENTEEN
MADDOX
Kenny’s truck pulls up just as I’m putting Cash back in his stall for the day. I don’t let myself look through the windshield at the passenger seat to see if Austin came back with her.
My sister makes her way into the barn, card in one hand and a brown paper bag from the pretzel place in the other. I tug the wallet out of my jeans and set it on the edge of Cash’s stall, letting her slide the card back into place as I slip the bit from his mouth. Kenny’s being suspiciously quiet.
“Out with it,” I tell her, tossing the bridle over the stall wall and moving on to loosening the cinch on his saddle.
Kenny hums, and it sounds so much like Austin’s hum it irritates me. It has no business being in my sister’s mouth, but her mannerisms always mirror Austin’s after they’ve spent a good bit of time together. “You’d rip my head off if you saw me taking off Chesney’s saddle without haltering him.”
“I’ve got nine years on you. Do as I say, not as I do,” I tell her, and then immediately pause because I know what’s coming next, and I walked right into it.
“You do, don’t you? Nine years on me. Ten years on Austin,” she replies. I don’t meet her eyes, so I don’t have to see the look I know she’s giving me.
“Your point?” I ask, knowing damn well what her point is.
“Just an observation.”
“Well, observe it somewhere else.”
I toss the saddle and pad over the edge of the stall and Kenny sets down the pretzel bag to heft it off, heading to the tack room with it. She’s back a few minutes later, handing me a brush but not saying a word.
“Would you have an issue with it? If I were to—”
“Sleep with my best friend?” she finishes as I run the brush over Cash’s back.
His skin twitches, and I shush him gently.
This brush isn’t his favorite, but I’m not gonna send Kenny back to get the other one when she was just trying to help, especially not when I’m trying to keep this line of conversation going.
“Nah,” she says when she realizes I’m not gonna take the bait of her teasing. “You’re both grown adults. As long as you understand that I'm gonna side with her in the divorce.”
I sniff to buy myself time and fill the silence, ignoring her joke. “What if it was more than that?”
“What, like… dating?”
I shrug. “Is that so hard to believe? That I want to take her out?”
Kenny’s quiet for a bit too long, and when I look up at her, her eyes are too soft.
I hate it. “Maddie…” she sighs. “Don’t tell Austin I’m telling you this, because I don’t think she even realizes I know, but I get the feeling she won’t be in Cedar Creek much longer.
Trying to start something with her—something more than a good time… I don’t think it’s smart, Bubba.”
Her words hit me like I’m being kicked by a horse and I don’t realize I’ve stopped brushing Cash until he blows through his nose in a loud, expectant way. I get back to it. “Got it,” I tell Kenny.
I hate how she’s looking at me, how she’s talking to me. Even if she argues with me most of the time, she’s the sweetest of my sisters, a goddamn bleeding heart of a woman. Her pity makes me feel transparent.
She opens her mouth like she’s got more she wants to say, but I cut her off. “When Tate gets home, can you help make sure she’s ready for tomorrow? It’s her first several-night trip like this and I don’t want her to forget anything. Go ahead and slip her medicine in her bag for her, please.”
Kenny sighs, but nods. She’s good at taking hints, so she doesn’t press. “Sure thing,” she says with a put-on smile, grabbing Cash’s bridle and taking it to the tack room before slipping out of the barn and leaving me to my thoughts.
It’s not like I’d been planning to marry Austin.
I mean, the thought had entered my mind in a roundabout ‘what-if’ sort of way, but not legitimately.
It still fucking sucked to hear that she had one foot out the door while I was stuck in this town for life.
I loved the ranch, and I loved Cedar Creek.
I never truly wanted to leave it, but I wish I had the option.
It wasn’t fair to put that much pressure on Austin’s shoulders, especially when she had no idea I’d put it there or that I was even interested in her beyond sex.
It was also stupid and unrealistic. I’d been lonely so goddamn long that I’d latched on to the first woman who made my dick work for the first time in forever.
Started making all sorts of plans that had no business being made.
By the time I finished brushing Cash, I’d made a few decisions.
For one, I was going to distance myself from Austin and get my wits about me again. I was thirty-two goddamn years old. Panting after a cam girl ten years younger than me was Colt-levels of ridiculous.
Two, as soon as Jameson came home from their trip, I was going to go find a woman who wanted to fuck me and give her one of those bone-tired orgasms Austin spoke so highly of.
Three, I was gonna cancel that goddamn cam girl subscription. All I was doing was wasting my money. I never needed porn before. I don't need it now.
My phone buzzes as I’m walking back to my house.
Tex
Miss me? Gonna be a show tonight.
Attached is a photo of her in one of the lingerie sets I’d just purchased for her. She’s got the tip of the vibrator I usually choose pressed against her bright red lips, but the photo cuts off there, not showing the rest of her face. My RedRanger.
I groan. She’s so goddamn sexy, and she knows it. She uses it so fucking well. In light of Kenny’s advice, I ignore my uncomfortably hard cock and slip the phone back in my pocket.
An hour later, it goes off again.
Tex
You’ve had plenty of time to jack off to my picture and get through your refractory period, so I’m going to start the show now, old man.
A notification telling me she’s going live comes through. I shove my feet back in my boots, grab my keys and my hat, and head to my pickup. At least I know Austin isn’t at the bar, so I can drink without having to face her.
Two hours later, I’m drunker than I’d like to admit and have to call Jamie to come pick me up. I’m slurring out another apology for pulling him out of bed even though he has to be up early when my phone goes off again.
Tex
I make your dick hard and you repay me by ignoring me?
I start to type out a response, but Jameson snatches the phone out of my hand and powers it off. “Fuck you.”
“You’ll thank me in the morning when you realize I didn’t let you tell our little sister’s best friend you’re in love with her, or something else just as stupid.”
“‘M not in love with her.”
“I know that,” he says. “But you had to go to a bar to drown out your sorrows after Kenny spilled the beans that your little firecracker won’t be around much longer, so I figure you’re probably a quarter of the way there and just drunk enough to say something that’d make her run faster.”
The time it takes to make sense of his words makes my head swim in a way that reminds me why I don’t fucking drink like this anymore.
There was a day I could stay out all night, fall into bed at two, and wake up at four for morning chores with nothing more than a slight headache.
Now it feels like recovering from a couple of beers is a week-long affair.
I don’t remember telling him what Kenny told me, but he isn’t wrong. I’m not sure exactly what I’d been planning to say to Austin, but it would probably have been something that would send her running.
Something like, Why the fuck are you leaving the town you’ve lived in your whole life after making me feel hope for something more than monotony for the first time since my dad died?
Or, What can I do to convince you to quit the cam shows and sleep in my bed every night instead?
Maybe even, What happened that made you become so jaded about men, and is it as bad as I’m thinking it is? Is there anything I can do to prove to you I’m worth taking a chance on? Planting roots for?
My sigh is loud in the quiet cab. Deep thoughts for such a shallow mind, Dad would say when one of us would sigh like that and it’d always pull us right out of our heads and make us crack a smile. God, I miss him so much I can’t breathe because of it sometimes.
“‘M not in love with her,” I finally say again. I’m not sure who I’m trying to convince—Jameson or myself—but even just repeating it proves his point.