Chapter 39
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Brody and I took our time heading back to Larkspur Sunday morning.
We slept in, fucked some more, grabbed brunch, and then Brody finally dropped me off back at my truck.
I followed him the whole way back to town.
Every five minutes along the way, he lifted his hand off the wheel to wave at me through his rear windshield.
The first time, I waved back. The following eight, I shook my head and rolled my eyes.
We slowed to a crawl as we entered downtown, passing by The Bar first, then the diner, the hardware store, the vet, and the general store before we ended up out front of The Blue Pony Saloon. Brody pulled off to the side, motioning me up alongside him.
His window was rolled down, so I rolled my passenger window down to match. "Need somethin' boy scout?"
He smiled, but there was some shyness to it. Man had fucked my tits last night and come on my face, but whatever he was 'bout to say had him all tied up.
"I need to shower and change," he started. We both did. Hadn't really planned on spending the night away from home, so neither of us had spare clothes. Fortunately, the hotel had some spare toothbrushes. "But, uh… would you, uh… wanna—"
"Spit it out."
He pulled his shoulders back and his following words spilled out in an anxious rush. "Come to my mama's for dinner tonight?"
I paused, waiting for the flight instinct to kick in. But it didn't come. Instead, I smiled. Small, but real.
"Yeah," I said. "I'd like that."
The look on Brody's face—relief and joy and somethin' almost boyish—made my chest do that traitorous squeeze it'd been doin' a lot lately. Like my ribcage was slowly shrinkin' and no longer able to accommodate whatever was growin' inside it.
"Pick you up at five?"
"I can drive myself."
"Didn't say you couldn't. Said I'd pick you up."
I narrowed my eyes. He grinned. The standoff lasted about four seconds.
"Fine. Five."
He tipped an invisible hat my way and pulled off toward his apartment. I sat in my truck for a minute longer than necessary, watching his taillights disappear around the corner.
Dinner with his mom.
Like a girlfriend.
Because I was his girlfriend.
Still felt a little like wearing someone else's shoes.
But here I was, not running. Sitting still and not hating it. Maybe even liking it a little.
Or a lot.
At 4:58, I heard the crunch of tires on gravel and grabbed my jacket off the hook by the back door. Cat watched me from the kitchen floor as though I planned on abandoning her for life and she would not be forgetting about it anytime soon.
"I fed you. Twice." I pointed a finger at her. "And you got treats."
She blinked.
"You're fine."
Another blink, slower this time, designed to inflict maximum guilt.
I closed the door behind me just as Brody was coming up the walkway. He'd cleaned up—dark jeans without a single smear of grease, a white button-down with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, cowboy hat sittin' just right. He'd even trimmed the golden scruff along his jaw.
Sexy as hell.
He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw me and just… looked his fill. That long, unhurried look that made me feel like I was the only thing worth seein' in a whole big sky's worth of mountains.
"You look beautiful," he said.
"I look the same as I always look."
"Exactly."
I shoved past him toward the truck, but not before I caught the corner of his grin.
I'd swapped out the usual chew-you-up-and-spit-you-out red lipstick for a tinted lip balm and gone easy on the eyes—just mascara, no war paint.
Clean black V-neck and my one pair of jeans that didn't have dirt or hay ground into the knees.
No Docs tonight; I'd dug out a pair of black ankle boots from the bottom of my duffel that hadn't seen daylight since Austin.
Softer than usual. On purpose.
Not for him, exactly. But for this. For the fact that I was meeting his mother as his girlfriend, and I wanted her to see someone worth keepin' around.
Because I liked her son. Because I wanted to stay.
Because, for the first time in my adult life, I gave a damn about what somebody's mama thought of me.
But I wasn't about to say any of that out loud.
"Let's go before I change my mind," I said and headed for the truck.
The drive took all of five minutes. The white house with the red shutters came into view at the end of a long dirt drive, and something about seein' it—small and sturdy and well-loved, set back from the road with a wide front porch and a garden that was tryin' real hard despite the summer heat—made my heart clench.
This was where Brody grew up. Where his mama read him bedtime stories and packed his lunches and probably put bandaids on his knees a thousand times. Where she still lived, in a house with a ghost she loved too much to leave.
Brody squeezed my knee once before putting the truck in park.
"She's gonna love you."
"She's gonna interrogate me."
"Probably, but she'll do it in a lovin' way."
"There's no loving way to be interrogated, Brody."
He came around and opened my door before I could do it myself, which I was still getting used to. The screen door swung open before we'd made it halfway up the porch steps, and there she was.
Colleen Lancaster was a small woman with a big presence. Gray-blond hair pulled back, same green eyes as both her boys, wearin' an apron over a floral blouse that said Head Chef. She had the look of a woman who'd buried the love of her life and decided, every single morning, to get up anyway.
I recognized that look. Saw a version of it in the mirror more often than I'd like.
"Well, get on up here," she said, hands planted on her hips. "Let me look at you without a hot dog in your mouth."
I barked out a laugh. Friday night's party was a blur of tequila and ketchup and Brody's arm around me. The brief introduction to his mama had been somewhere in the middle of all that—nothin' that would've made a lasting impression beyond my son's new girlfriend is hammered.
Great first impression, Calvin. Real classy.
I climbed the last two steps and stopped in front of her. She was maybe five-three, which meant she had to tilt her head back a bit to take me in. She did it without a shred of self-consciousness, studying me head to toe—not unkindly, just thorough.
Then she pulled me into a hug so fierce it damn near cracked a rib.
She smelled like flour and lavender and the warmth of a kitchen that had been feeding people for decades.
I hugged her back. Couldn't help it.
When she released me, she held me at arm's length and gave a sharp nod, like she'd made a decision about something in that exact moment. "Alright. Come in, come in."
The inside of the house was exactly what I'd expected and nothin' like anywhere I'd ever lived.
Family photos lined the hallway. Brody and Luke as kids, gap-toothed and sunburned.
A wedding photo that made my chest ache: a young, beautiful Colleen beaming up at a man who looked at her the way Brody looked at me.
School portraits, rodeo ribbons tacked to a corkboard, a framed drawing in crayon that said Happy Mother's Day with an upside down and backwards lowercase E.
I slowed in front of one photo near the kitchen doorway.
Two boys—couldn't have been more than eight and nine—sitting on a fence rail, arms around each other, squinting into the sun.
Brody's grin was enormous, taking up half his face.
Luke's was smaller, almost reluctant, but there.
Behind them, a man in a Stetson had one hand on each of their shoulders, looking at the camera like he couldn't believe his luck.
"That was the summer Brody convinced Luke they could ride a pig," Colleen said from behind me. I hadn't heard her come up. "Hospital visit. Four stitches. Luke's idea of revenge was to tell everyone at school that Brody cried."
"Did he?"
"Like a baby." She patted my arm. "Don't tell him I told you."
"Wouldn't dream of it." I absolutely would be using this information at the earliest opportunity.
The kitchen was small and warm and smelled like roast beef and something sweet baking in the oven.
Colleen had set the table for four with nice plates and cloth napkins that weren't as fancy as the Bozeman ones but were pressed and clean.
And there was a vase of wildflowers sitting in the center that looked freshly picked.
"Is Luke comin'?" Brody asked, clearly noticing the same thing.
"He said he'd try." She sounded concerned, the way mothers did—a guess, really, because what would I know about all that. "Sit, sit. It's almost ready."
Brody pulled out my chair. I sat. He dropped into the seat beside me and immediately reached under the table to rest his hand on my thigh, warm and steady and grounding in a way I was trying not to need.
Colleen bustled between the stove and the table, declining all offers of help with a firm, "You're a guest in my house, Calvin Jennings, and guests sit." So I sat, watching this woman move through her kitchen with the ease of someone who'd done it ten thousand times.
This was what it looked like. A kitchen that someone cooked in because they wanted to feed the people they loved. A table set with care. Flowers picked because somebody thought they'd be nice to look at.
A life well lived.
My daddy's trailer had a hot plate and a mini fridge. We ate off paper plates when we ate at all.
I pressed my thumb into the cloth napkin in my lap and smoothed it flat.
"Now," Colleen said, setting a plate of roast beef in front of me that coulda fed three of me, "Brody tells me you've been workin' over at Wild Acre."
"Yes, ma'am."
"And how's Rhett treatin' you? That boy works too hard and forgets other people need things, like water and lunch breaks."
I laughed. "He's a good boss. Mostly stays out of my way, which is how I like it."
"Smart man." She sat across from me and fixed me with those green eyes—Brody's eyes, but sharper, seasoned by decades. "And you're from Oregon originally?"