10. ashton
ten
ashton
. . .
Girl Next Door - Robyn Ottolini
Growing up on a working ranch, I perfected the art of the super-quick shower when I was twelve. I had no choice. If I wanted to stay in bed until the very last minute, but be up in time for school or ranch chores, getting ready fast became a matter of necessity. It was survival.
I promised Brooks I’d be over in twenty minutes, and I’m rethinking that now as the hot water pelts down on my skin.
My muscles ache from a day of breaking one of our newest horses—and being bucked off him several times—and the mud in my hair is proving especially difficult.
But after the third round of lathering and rinsing, I finally feel like clean is within reach.
Reluctantly, I switch off the spray and step out, wrapping myself in an enormous towel fresh from the heated rack.
My studio loft in New York is painfully basic, but this cabin on my family’s ranch—this is where my luxury lives.
I moved out here into the cabin when I was nineteen.
It’s one of the two cabins Grandaddy Smith earmarked for me and Everett when we were little.
They’re set a little further from the action than The Village, which is where a lot of the ranch hands live.
They’re a little bigger, too. Perfect to live close to the main house, but have our own space, and maybe a family someday.
That’s what Grandaddy Smith always said.
Mom, Dad, and Grandaddy Smith helped me do it up, with plenty of assistance from Ev and the boys.
It’s got a big, open kitchen with a breakfast nook in a southeast-facing window—perfect for all the morning sun.
Plenty of plush rugs in every room make the oak wood floors warm and homey.
My bathroom has a decent-sized tub as well as a shower big enough for three people, with twin rainfall shower heads mounted on the ceiling, and a regular, moveable shower head for maximum spray.
It’s got three bedrooms, just like Everett’s cabin.
But where he built a back porch and focused on creating an outdoor living space, I extended my kitchen a little and added bifolding doors onto a small deck, just big enough for a bistro table with a pair of chairs, and baskets of fresh herbs and flowers hanging from the rail.
By the time I’ve dressed in a pair of black leggings and an oversized, off-the-shoulder sweater, it’s been seventeen minutes.
It takes about eight minutes to walk from my cabin to Brooks’s, so I’m definitely not going to make it on time.
I push my feet into my favorite boots. I got them when I was about fifteen, and the leather is beautifully soft and cracked.
Some girls love sneakers for comfort, but because they’ve been resoled a time or two and the leather regularly conditioned, these boots still feel like heaven for my feet, even after eight years of constant wear on the ranch and in the city.
I grab my phone and rush out the door. Heedless of Brooks’s chiding earlier, I don’t bother to lock it.
Remembering to lock every door is something I absolutely don’t miss about living in a city.
By the time I hammer my fist against his door, I can already smell the food cooking from inside his cabin.
I have to tamp down my inner brat when he pulls the door open in those gray sweats.
Surely, he must know the effect they have on women.
This might be small-town Texas, but I know for a fact that he has Instagram.
The sweats are sitting low on his hips, hugging his strong thighs, and leaving very little to the imagination.
It’s not like I’ve never seen Brooks Hart in sweats before—hell, we grew up together.
We’ve run naked through backyard sprinklers together.
But something about the way this particular shade of gray hides absolutely nothing about what he’s packing beneath them has me feeing justified for calling his name when I came a few nights ago.
And it has my mouth watering for something that definitely isn’t pizza.
“Twenty minutes, huh, devil?” The way he grins at me is downright dangerous. I swear he never used to be quite so handsome; the crinkle at the corners of his eyes never used to have butterflies storming like this.
“You try shampooing dried mud out of your hair.”
“Still not glitter, huh?”
“Shut up.”
I push my way inside and let the familiar scent of melted cheese and ham with sweet pineapple wash over me like a blanket. The tang of the buffalo sauce over chicken wings blends perfectly. I take a moment to look around.
Brooks’s cabin has a large, open-plan living room and kitchen, and from where I stand, I can see out of the windows on both the front and rear aspects.
It’s airy and homey at the same time, decorated with plenty of dark, earthy brown and olive-green tones, and pops of color from rich, burnt orange accents.
It looks a lot more like a grown man’s home than the frat house it resembled when he first moved in—and even when I left town.
“Like what you’ve done with the place,” I muse.
My eyes hang for a moment on the trio of guitars in the corner.
I remember the days when he’d carry one in a case on his back, strumming it whenever he had a spare moment.
Then I notice the painting on the wall by the front door.
The one I bypassed when I walked in. “Is that Tansy?”
“Sure is,” Brooks says with a small shrug. Pride fills his smile. “Ev painted it. Got a couple prints done, pretty sure your mom has a matching one in her office.”
Damn. I always knew my big brother liked to dabble in drawing and painting, and that he’s partial to a little origami, but I had no idea his talent runs so deep.
“It’s gorgeous.” I move closer, running a finger over the edge of the sapele frame.
The rich brown wood looks perfect in Brooks’s home, but it’s the painting inside the frame that has my attention.
Tansy was Grandaddy Smith’s horse. Everett and I—and probably Brooks too—learned to ride on her back.
She was always the sweetest, most gentle mare, with a beautiful buckskin coat and deep, amber eyes.
I always swore she could see into my soul with those eyes.
I’ve only ever felt so connected to a horse one other time in my life, and that was the day I met Mayo as a yearling, and begged Grandaddy Smith to let me bring him home to the ranch.
“She was a beautiful girl.”
“She sure was. Miss her every day,” I sigh.
“Ain’t nothin’ like your first horse,” Brooks agrees. “Though, I’d be hard-pushed to find a better girl than Periwinkle.”
“She still ridin’ you hard and puttin’ you out wet, Hart?”
“Oh, yeah.” Brooks chuckles. He’s in the kitchen now, enormous hands stuffed into even bigger heatproof mitts as he opens the oven. For a brief moment, he disappears in the steam. “Perry girl keeps me on my toes.”
I remember the day Ms. Angie rescued Perry.
She was one of three horses left tied up at the roadside.
Ms. Angie called her husband, Mick, who immediately drove out with a two-horse trailer.
Jody followed to pick up the third horse.
Left me mucking out stables alone, but once I saw those sweet babies, I forgave him.
Those horses had so much wild in them, it took a lot of work to break them.
All three were rail-thin and weak, fearful of humans and each other. But we never gave up on them.
Brooks did most of the work with Perry, but Ev, Jody, and I helped—along with the rest of the crews on both ranches.
That’s something we work on regularly with the Fishers.
The day we finally broke Periwinkle is still one of my proudest moments on the ranch.
The two boys, Goody and Clipper, still live with the Fishers, but Grandaddy Smith bought Periwinkle from them after we broke her.
She and Brooks fell in love with each other, and she’s been one of our best ranch horses ever since.
“As she should. You been takin’ good care of Mayo for me while I’ve been gone, right?”
“’Course,” he says. The metal tray he’s holding clangs against the cooling rack as he places it clumsily, hands still inside oven mitts. “Me and Ev take him for a good ride a couple times a week. He’s out in the paddock with Grover most days. Might have a dumb name but he’s a good boy.”
“You take that back,” I demand. “He’s the best boy. And his name is not dumb. It’s perfect.”
“You named your horse Mayo-neighs, Ashton.”
“And? It’s perfect.”
Brooks rolls his eyes as he transfers the wings to a plate.
I smile when I see he’s using one of those serving platters with a built-in bowl—ostensibly for dip, and designed to be used with veggies or chips—but using it for the chicken bones is a genius move.
I grab the pizza slicer and get to work, barely restraining the moan that threatens to escape when I see how perfectly melted and stretchy the cheese is.
“So,” Brooks starts. He follows me to the sofa, setting the plate of wings down before sitting at one end and reaching for the remote. “Gonna tell me how you ended up covered in cowgirl glitter? Didn’t see you out on the ranch much today.”
“Tryin’a break Jagger.” I run a hand through my hair. It’s fine and shorter than it’s been for a little while—feathery ends hanging a little past my shoulders—and still a little damp from my shower. “Jackass had me eatin’ mud one too many times today. He can be someone else’s problem tomorrow.”
Brooks sighs and something flashes in his gray eyes.
I don’t know what it is, but he swallows a mouthful of pizza and returns the remnants of the slice to the plate balances on his thighs before he speaks.
The whole room stills uncomfortably in the brief silence, and tension sits heavy between us.
It’s so thick I could probably slice it if I wanted to.
“Shouldn’t be working with him alone. Promise me you won’t, Ash,” he says lowly. “He’s barely greenbroke. You coulda got hurt.”
“I know what I’m doing, Brooks,” I insist stubbornly. I reach for a chicken wing. My fingers are just about to close around a particularly saucy one when his large hand closes around my wrist instead. The air around us crackles like that moment of stillness before a storm.
“Promise me, Ashton.” The playful twinkle in his eyes is long gone, replaced with something serious. I get the feeling it won’t come back until I acquiesce. And something tells me he needs me to agree.
“Fine. I won’t work with him alone.”
“Thank you.” He releases my wrist and I grab for the chicken wing, snatching it from beneath Brooks’s fingertips.
“I’m a big girl, you know.”
“I know,” he says. He chooses another wing and closes his lips around it.
“Been workin’ with horses since I was small enough to walk under ‘em.”
“Know that, too.”
“Broke Perry, didn’t I?”
“Didn’t work with her alone.”
“That you know of.”
The sound that tears from his throat is dangerously close to a growl, and his eyes flash again. He levels me with a glare that is equal parts terrifying and strangely arousing, and I vow to never tell him about the days I spent alone in the paddock with Perry.
Or any of our other horses, for that matter.
It strikes me as he presses play on the movie that although I’m an adult—we both are—he doesn’t necessarily see me as an adult.
As an equal. He still sees the little girl with a messy braid, the one who used to run after her brother and his friends.
Or run rings around them, more accurately.
They never could keep up with me; even Jody, with his nimble feet, and Brooks, with his long legs.
And sometimes, as nice as it is to be recognized for the adult I’ve grown into, it’s nice to have someone look out for me.
To have someone say make sure you drink enough water and don’t forget your vitamins, to hear text me when you get home safe.
Because those words don’t mean “you’re not capable,” they mean “I care and I want you to be safe.”
But for reasons I can’t explain, hearing that same sentiment from Brooks stings. It bites at my skin, leaving an uncomfortable itch, and a dull ache in the pit of my stomach. I don’t want him to see me as a little girl.
Discomfort settles in my stomach, somewhere between the pizza and the chicken.
Every time I glance over at Brooks, he seems to be looking at me, too.
And when our eyes lock for a fraction of a second at a time, I see myself calling his name as I come.
And I feel those enormous, calloused hands heavy on my skin.
Feel the warmth of his breath as he speaks lowly into my ear.
And I can’t relax, even though he’s just Brooks.
As a child, my brother and his best friends were my best friends, too.
And as an adult, none of that has changed.
Brooks has seen me in every stage of life, and like the sun and the moon, he’s constant.
I can go anywhere in the world, and I know he’ll always be there.
And okay, sure, in spite of swearing off men at the tender age of twelve, I’ve always had a little bit of a crush on him. But I’m starting to realize that the way I want him to look at me is something that should be entirely forbidden.