Chapter 48
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
"Stop staring."
"Stop lookin' so skittish."
I cut a glare at Sassy that begged her—after three damn hours sitting here doing nothing—to get the fuck outta my house.
Brody's house.
Never was mine. Never would be.
"Fine, I'm going," she said, standing from one of the four stools sitting at the now-complete kitchen island. Thing felt big enough for a baseball team.
Or a family.
"But I swear on Colleen's apple pie, if you so much as drive out of Meagher County, I will hunt you down."
"Thought you wanted me to go to the hospital."
"I don't want you to go to the hospital. Brody wants you to go to the hospital. Remember him? The dumbass who fell off his horse then you cried all over?"
He didn't just fall off his horse.
And I didn't need a reminder.
Truth was, Brody Lancaster was better off without me.
Better off with someone like Sassy.
Maybe not her, specifically, on account of her and Rhett still dancin' circles around each other.
But someone like her.
Someone happy and uncomplicated.
Someone who didn't have an ex-something willing to spook a horse in a chute box to get at the man she loved.
Fuck, but I loved him.
Never really knew what that felt like, but that had to be it.
Had to be the reason I'd hurdled a fence, sprinted, sobbed into his shirt when I thought the very worst had happened.
But when he opened those grassy-green eyes and started talkin' nonsense?
Reality slammed right back into me. It was my fault he was lyin' there, broken and concussed.
Because of me.
And there was no way on God's green earth I'd be the cause of his hurt ever again.
"I'm not going anywhere, Sass."
Guess I did tell lies, after all.
I ushered her toward the door, but before I could close it behind her, she turned and tossed her arms around my neck. "Everything will be okay, Calvin." I patted her back with one hand while the other hung limply at my side. "And if it's not, we'll fuck up some bull riders until it is, you got me?"
She pulled back, crossing her arms and staring at me.
"Whatever you say, Tink."
I forced a smile while she assessed me for way too long to be comfortable before she broke the silence.
"You did it."
"Did what?"
"Grew on me"—she smirked—"like mold."
I stood in the middle of the bedroom and looked at the duffel on the bed.
I looked at the duffel for a long time.
Then I started packing.
Muscle memory had me movin' before my brain caught up.
Top drawer first—socks, panties, countless sports bras, and the sole cute bra I owned.
Middle drawer—t-shirts and a couple hoodies.
Bottom drawer—jeans, rolled not folded, the way I'd done it since I was eighteen and sleeping in my truck.
Bathroom next. Toothbrush. Toothpaste. Deodorant.
The face wash Sassy convinced me to order because my skin would thank me one day.
My first ever online delivery.
Brody's flannel I always threw on after our more naked activities was hanging on the back of the bathroom door. I didn't touch it.
Told myself it was because it was his, which was true.
Told myself that was the whole reason, which wasn't.
Cat padded in from the hallway and sat down in the doorway. Looked at the bag. Looked at me. Looked at the bag.
I turned my back on her and crouched in front of the closet, pulling out the boots I'd been kicking off into the bottom of it for the last couple months.
The ankle boots I'd worn to Colleen's. Nike sneakers Brody bought me—so we could match.
And the cowboy boots Sassy had loaned me in week two—real ones, broken in, the leather soft at the ankle from years of her wearin' them before me.
I'd never given them back.
I'd meant to.
Hadn't.
I paired them up with automatic fingers and tried not to think about how there were more pairs of shoes in this closet than I'd owned since I was twelve.
Cat meowed once.
Short.
Pointed.
I didn't turn around.
I heard her get up. Heard the soft pad of her paws on the old floorboards, the little skip she did when she was movin' fast. She wound around my ankles once, twice—that silk-warm circle that had undone me in a kitchen in the dark not that long ago. Pressed her little head against my shin.
I stared at the closet wall.
She head-butted me again. Harder. Like she was tryna get my attention through a door she didn't know was locked.
I swallowed past the knot in my throat.
Crouch. Come on. Just crouch down and pick her up.
I couldn't.
I grabbed all three pairs of shoes at once and stood instead.
Stepped over her.
Went back to the duffel and threw 'em in.
Behind me, Cat sat down exactly where I'd been. Waiting. Quiet the way animals got quiet when they'd figured out somethin' you hadn't said out loud.
I finished packing.
I sat down on the edge of the bed.
And I stared at the wall some more.
The wall didn't have anything to say about none of it either.
It was just a wall—half-primed, the patch where Brody had fixed the drywall still a slightly different shade than the rest. I'd watched him do that patch.
Watched him sand it with his tongue caught between his teeth and his baseball hat turned backwards—the way that made every girl in town turn their head his way.
Still, I sat there.
Cat walked over and sat at my feet. Looked up at me. Then—slow, careful, like she was approachin' a wild horse—she put one gentle paw on my boot.
Just the one.
I looked down at her.
She blinked.
Slow.
The cat version of I love you. Brody had told me that once, back when I still pretended I didn't care.
I couldn't return it.
I couldn't crouch down and pick her up and press my face into her warm body and let her purr do the thing it did that made the inside of my chest feel less like a clenched fist.
I couldn't even reach down and scratch behind her ears.
I just looked at her.
And she looked at me.
And after a long moment, she took her paw off my boot, turned around, and walked out of the room.
That was the part that almost broke me.
Not Wyatt's voice in my head sayin' words I'd been tryin' to outrun for sixteen years. Not Brody's face in the arena dirt. Not Sassy's hug at the door.
A small black cat takin' her paw off my boot because I couldn't give her anything back.
Brody would.
That was the thing.
That was the whole math of it.
Brody would pick her up. Brody would scratch behind her ears and let her make biscuits on his stomach and talk to her like she was a person, which she half believed she was anyway.
He'd feed her the good wet food and let her sleep on his pillow and love her the way he loved every damn thing that crossed his path.
Easy.
Whole.
Without conditions.
He could do that. I couldn't. Not now. Maybe never.
She'd be better off.
He'd be better off.
And that was a thing I could do for both of them, even if it was the only thing I had left to give.
I stood up.
Grabbed the duffel.
At the bottom of the stairs, I took one last look at the kitchen with its finished island and imagined all the future mornings we'd never have sitting there together.
I turned toward the back door, opened it, and walked out.
The gravel drive stretched out in front of me. My truck sat thirty feet away, parked crooked the way I always parked it, one tire half on the grass. The early August evening light was slanting long across the yard, turnin' the hood of my truck gold.
Made it to the truck while coaching myself through the burn behind my eyes.
Told myself it was the sun.
Got the driver's door open. Stood there with one hand on the frame and the other gripping the duffel strap, and I just… breathed.
Gravel crunched under tires a few feet away.
I squeezed my eyes shut quick. When I opened them, Colleen's truck was comin' up the driveway hot in my periphery, gravel spitting out from under the wheels.
Rhett was at the wheel, and he pulled in hard and more crooked than I had, blocking me in.
He cut the engine before the thing had fully stopped rockin' on its shocks.
A door opened. Then another.
Boots on gravel.
"Hey, wake up, bud. We're here. Let's get you out."
Rhett's voice, pitched low. A pause. A shuffle.
I kept my eyes on the seat of my truck. On the cracked leather at the top of the steering wheel. On the little scorch mark above the radio from the previous owner.
Boots again. Two sets now.
One set kept walking. The other stopped somewhere off to my right.
The slower one kept coming. Uneven. Favoring one side.
Then he was there—in the edge of my vision, close enough to touch if I reached for him.
Still in the clothes he'd been thrown from his horse in, dust ground into the denim at the knee.
His hand came up and gripped the bed of my truck, and I felt the whole truck settle a half-inch under the weight he was putting on it.
Didn't come any closer.
Didn't say my name.
Didn't reach out.
Didn't do the thing I'd been bracing for—the scramble, the please, the looking at me like I was breakin' his heart.
He just stood there.
Quiet.
Steady.
The same steady he'd been when I told him about my mama.
When I told him about Wyatt in the shower.
When he looked at me from the arena dirt after his eyes first reopened.
The same steady he was every damn time he looked at me, like I was a thing he'd decided on a long time ago and had no plans to revisit.
My hand stayed on the door frame.
"When shit gets hard, I'm the first to crack a joke," he finally said. "To laugh."
His voice was rough. Tired. A voice with a fresh concussion in it.
"Because showin' your hand means somebody gets to look at it."
He paused and swallowed.
"Figured out somethin' the last few weeks, though. Hidin' behind a grin works fine when a person just needs easy. But you don't need easy, Calvin. You need somebody who won't flinch. And I've spent my whole goddamn life practicin' not flinchin'—just never knew that was the part worth showin'."
I caught the shift and the wince in my periphery. His eyes didn't leave me, even if mine weren't on him.
"So I ain't laughin' now. I'm fuckin' scared. Scared you're gonna drive on outta here and never look back. But if you gotta go, go. I ain't gonna try and make that choice for you."
My lips parted on a deep inhale.
"But you oughta know." From the edge of my vision, I saw him step forward once. Then stop. "I want you here, with me. Every damn day. 'Cause I love the hell outta you."
The duffel hit the gravel.
I didn't decide to drop it.
My shoulder just… relaxed.
Like a weight I hadn't realized I'd been carrying for decades simply vanished.
Because the last person who loved me died.
And Brody Lancaster was still standing.