Chapter 14 Bode
Crew sidesteps the bale of hay that I throw to my left and stares at me with offense.
“You’re the one in the way,” I say to him, and he sighs, pulling the ratty old baseball cap off his head, leaning against the wall.
He stands there like I’m supposed to read his mind, and the longer it goes on, the more annoyed I get with him. “What?”
“Nothin’, just for a moment there you kinda looked like Ford,” he huffs.
“You’re being a dick.”
“Walker, if anyone is being a dick these days, it’s you and not just to Maggie.” Crew raises a brow and tilts his head like he does when he’s reprimanding Ash.
“Save it, Crew,” I grumble and move past him to grab another bay of hay.
It’s days like today I hate. These new responsibilities sit on my shoulders like weights that just get heavier and heavier the longer Ford is away, and the longer he’s gone, the more my irritability itches under my skin just waiting for the chance to break out.
Which has been more often than not lately.
I’m not blind to that fact, but it’s easier to let it out than hold it in.
“Normally I would,” Crew says, his boots crunching in the snow and gravel behind me. “But not even Logan wants to be around you right now, and that’s saying a lot coming from the queen of stubborn grumpiness herself.”
“That’s because you’ve softened her up.” I toss him an annoyed glance and toss the next bale into the barn. “Is there a point to this conversation? Or are you just wasting time?”
Crew grins and I have to remind myself that punching him is not the answer. “This ranch runs just fine without Ford on it,” he reminds me. “We don’t need two of you runnin’ around.”
Frustration climbs up my spine with his words. “I’m not trying to be fuckin’ Ford.”
“Could’ve fooled me.” He straightens up and glances out towards the pastures, the treelines barely there from the cold fog and snowfall. “The fences are fixed, Bode. The cameras are up, and so far they haven’t shown anything out of the ordinary.”
Crew turns his gaze back onto me, and I hate it. I hate his logic, that everything is fine because it seems fine. We both know the threat that looms beyond the wired fences, and yet he stands here in front of me, shoulders relaxed and for the first time in a while, jaw loosened.
“There’s still too much to do,” I start and tug my hat off my head, running my hand through my hair and tug at the roots. “With the crew we have–”
“The hands are fine,” he reminds me. “Peter’s roping calves and riding better than he ever has. Maggie…”
My eyes find his as he tests the waters, bringing her up casually.
“Maggie is a fast learner and gets her work done before the sun goes down.” When I don’t say anything, he pushes further. “You got that same look in your eye I had, and ever since you huffed and puffed at her the other da,y she’s been quiet as a church mouse whenever you’re around.”
“What do you mean?” I hadn’t seen a whole lot of Maggie since I told her I didn’t care what she did as long as it wasn’t around me. She held true to that, and so far, I’ve only seen glimpses of her golden hair around the ranch. A ghost made of sunshine lingering just out of sight.
“You know damn well what I mean.” Crew chuckles and shakes his head. “You owe her an apology, Walker.”
Part of me agrees with him, but the other part of me hates that he’s right. Even if my days have been quieter, I still miss the sound of her rambling.
“Good,” he says with another grin. “At least you’re hearing what I’m saying.”
“I hate when you do that,” I grumble.
“Do what?” he asks, innocent as ever.
“Act like you know what I’m thinkin’,” I tuck my hat back onto my head and tug my gloves off.
“You know what I’m thinking?” Crew says.
“Please,” I roll my eyes.
“I think you need a break,” he says. “This ranch nonsense has you in knots and it’s only making everyone's lives harder. You need to go do something that isn’t going to cause trouble or end up with dead bodies we gotta deal with.”
“I can’t ju-”
“Don’t argue with someone twice your size, Walker. It’s bad for your health.” Crew smiles at me.
“What do you propose I do then?”
“There’s that auction, up in Dillon. Why don’t you go for a drive, see what we can do about replenishing this loss without burning another massive hole in our pockets,” Crew suggests.
It’s not a horrible idea, even if I don’t bring anything home.
At least it’ll give me time to clear my head, and we can see what the market is looking like before we make any decisions.
“Fine, I’ll bring Logan,” I say.
“Logan’s busy,” he says with a shrug that gives away the plan he’s following.
“Doing what?” I argue.
“Things,” Crew says back, and it’s clear he hasn’t thought this through. “You aren’t taking my girlfriend on a road trip, Bode.”
“She was my friend before she was your girlfriend.” The argument is turning sour and childish, but Crew smiles, and I know that I’m out of whatever hole I dug myself into.
“Take Maggie, she’s finished her chores, and as much as we all love listening to her singing nursery rhymes to Wanda, she’s driving the grass crazy.” Crew jokes.
“So let her,” I say, “I’m not taking Maggie on a four-hour drive.” I start to walk away from him, but he follows as we break out of the barn into the yard.
“Taking me where?” Maggie’s voice is like sugar, and I hate how it makes the sunshine crawl out from behind the storm clouds that blanket the sky.
“Bode’s taking you to the auction, showing you the ropes,” Crew pats me on the back and gives me a wink. “Lots of cows at the auction to sing at.”
Maggie looks between the two of us, her eyes bright against the reflection of the snow. It’s a second of hesitation before she takes his word and bounds off toward the nearest truck.
The moment the door slams, I turn to Crew and glare at him. “I swear to all that is holy, Crew Cassidy, if there’s a storm that gets me stuck in a motel room with her, you’re the body we’ll be handling.”
For someone who’s been avoiding me the last few days, Maggie has not stopped chattering since she got into the truck.
My head throbs with every new question, each twist on the radio dial as she flips through them until she finds a song she recognizes and then proceeds to talk over it anyway.
I glance over at her as she rambles on about the different cows she hopes to see at the auction.
Her green eyes are focused on the white, blanketed horizon, and I notice her fingers are twisting in her lap, not hard, and her knuckles aren’t white like she’s nervous, but still she stretches them back and forth.
It’s like she needs the noise to feel content, and when she can’t find it, she makes it herself.
“Do you think they’ll have any highlands?” She asks me, turning those pretty green eyes on me, barely catching me staring before I glance back out at the road and tighten my grip on the steering wheel.
“Probably not,” I rasp.
Her shoulders slump as she frowns for a millisecond. “Are you sure? They’re really cute, they might be there,” she convinces herself. “I bet there’ll be one there.”
“Even if there is, we’re not there for highland cattle.” I shift in the seat as she looks over at me again. “They’re costly, and even if the ranch did have enough money to buy one, the market here isn’t lookin’ for lean cattle.” I try to get the answer out before she asks why.
Maggie seems satisfied with that answer, which allows me to relax in the fleeting moment of silence. She sits back into the seat, tucking her chin inside the collar of her jacket, and starts to hum softly. Her fingers tapping along her knee.
“You seem like you’re in a better mood,” she says as her humming dies down.
“I’m not.”
“Well, you haven’t yelled at me yet today, so I’m taking that as a win.” She flashes a smile in my direction that warms my chest.
“Yet,” I say to her, but my voice is light and her smile remains bright.
“Was that a joke?” she asks playfully, pulling off her hat and running her hands through her hair.
Her eyes scan the road ahead of us as she braids it back off her face.
It’s hard not to watch every little move she makes.
She works effortlessly, plaiting each piece into place without caring about what it looks like when she gets to the end and ties it off with the elastic I hadn’t seen hiding around her wrist. Maggie glances back over at me and I realize that between my eyes, flickering from her and the road, I hadn’t answered.
“We still have an hour or so till Dillon,” I say instead of feeding her playfulness that will only get me into trouble. Thankfully, the weather has held out, and so far, it doesn’t look like I’ll be stuck with Maggie Mae in a motel room alone.
“So how many cows are we getting today?”
“Probably not any,” I answer and notice her frown.
“We gotta be smart about getting a new herd.” I don’t offer any more than that because it’s too long a story to explain to the ray of sunlight that there’s a darker side to this ranch, gray and borderline evil that we refuse to talk about outside of Ford, Crew, and me.
Maggie is too pure to be dragged into our darkness.
“Why did you make me load the trailer then?” she asks.
“Because it’s good practice,” I counter and raise a brow at her. “Better to ride back with an empty trailer than buy a lot of cattle we have to drive another eight hours to haul back to Whiskey River.”
“I suppose that makes sense.” She relents only briefly before she looks at me again. “Did you ever do anything in the rodeo?”
“What?” I ask, confused? By the sudden change in subject.
“The rodeo circuit… did you ever ride? Or rope?”
“Why are you asking me?” I shift uncomfortably in the seat and stare at the road ahead of us.
“Dot told me about Levi and your daddy.” Her voice trails off like she knows she’s pushing too far into who I am, who I was before Whiskey River.
I clear my throat and shake my head. “No,” I say gruffly and try to leave it at that, but I can feel the warmth of her stare on the side of my face. “Levi is the… outgoing one out of the two of us. Craves attention and could probably rival your rambling.”
“It’s only rambling to you because you hardly ever speak,” she teases, but her smile fades as she glances out of the window. “Dot said you took care of Levi.”
My grip on the wheel tightens again as she tries to dig deeper. “What else did Dot tell you?”
Maggie meets my gaze for a moment, and I can tell she knows more than she wants to say, something akin to guilt lingers behind her eyes before she looks away. “That’s all.” Her voice is soft, and I almost would have missed it if it weren’t for the fact that her lips move into a soft pout.
“You’re a horrible liar,” I huff out.
“And you have no people skills, Cowboy,” she counters the soft bite in her words, making the corners of my mouth twitch upwards.
“I don’t need people skills to work with cows, Maggie.”
She glances over at me again, more biting words begging to be released from the tip of her tongue, but instead she reaches forward and turns on the radio.
At least the next half hour will be quiet, I try to convince myself.