Chapter 14 Heston
HESTON
Ignoring the commotion in the outdoor arena was easy enough this morning.
It’s none of my business where the kid got a jumping dummy or how he chooses to train.
But as I drive by with a load of hay for the third time this afternoon, I’m worried my teeth might fall out if I clamp my jaw any harder to keep my mouth shut.
I step on the brake and throw the truck in park right next to the arena.
Granger lets go of the dummy’s horns and jumps to his feet as I roll the window down.
I’m tempted to shake my head at him and drive on without a word.
But I roll the toothpick in my mouth, lean my left arm on the door, and push back my sunglasses instead.
“You got good health insurance?” I call out.
His mouth hangs open at first. I widen my eyes and jut my chin out like I haven’t got all day to wait for an answer.
“Does anybody?” he asks with a shrug.
“Well, you might want to find some.”
He whips his head toward the jumping dummy, then back to me, confused.
“You’ll catch a horn straight to the gut if you stay too far under him like that,” I explain.
He places a shaky hand over his stomach like he’s already visualizing it. Just because I can’t do much to help him doesn’t mean I shouldn’t save him a trip to the emergency room. Satisfied, I put the truck back in drive.
As I pull away, he holds a hand over the top of his hat and runs down the fence line, shouting, “But what should I do different?”
I’m looking forward through the windshield and already rolling up the window, but I call back to him anyway. “When you drop and put a hip on him, you have to keep your chest up.”
My foot twitches, wanting to ease off the gas so I can go back and say more. But there’s too much important shit to do around here, so I keep on driving. The last thing I have time for is babysitting a teenager with a sloppy steer wrestling stance.
His head catch wasn’t bad, though. If he breathes through the run and keeps his shoulders square . . .
“Fuck,” I mutter.
I half-hoped that he’d be gone when I got back from Christmas at my parents’ place. Turns out, Blythe and Warren’s mom invited him over and stuffed him full of honey ham and enough desserts to put him in a coma. It’s no wonder he didn’t leave after that.
When I woke up and got to work this morning, I almost had a heart attack when he turned the corner in the feed room. He was already up and at it with a list of chores from Gage to finish before he could start practicing.
I shake my head and step out of the truck once I pull up next to the stables. Lucky leaps from the stack of hay and wanders through the open barn doors, nose skimming the ground. She’s probably in search of the mouse in there that she hasn’t been able to trap yet.
Tripp jogs over from the maternity barn as I hop onto the flatbed trailer. Like clockwork, I yank a bale from the stack while he reaches over to pull it down. We’re making quick work of unloading in silence until he pauses, bringing the collar of his shirt up to wipe the sweat from his face.
I stare at him, my hands wrapped around the twine of the next bale. He squints up at me with his hands on his hips.
“Did you see that little blaze-faced calf I penned up this morning?” He asks.
“Yeah. Is it still alive?”
He nods. “We might need to mix up a bottle if she keeps wobbling around instead of nursing, though.”
“Okay.” I shrug. “Mix up a bottle, then.”
“It’d be a good job for the kid. Not too hard to learn.”
I get tired of waiting for him to take it, so I toss the bale over the side of the trailer. It lands at his feet with a thud. Instead of picking it up, he perches his foot on top, leans forward, and crosses his arms over his knee.
“He seems cool,” Tripp adds.
I let out a sigh. “Cut to the chase.”
“I’m just saying.” He leans back and holds his arms out. “Warren hasn’t worked here for over a year, and we’ve been shorthanded the whole time. Seems like a good deal to me. He picks up a little slack here and there, and you give him a few tips. What’s the problem?”
“The problem is I’m not a pro steer wrestler anymore.” I give up on handing him more bales and drop to sit on one instead. “No time, either.”
“All you’ve got is time,” he argues with an eye roll. “I’m probably the last person you should take advice from, but I think helping the kid out is a better outlet than spending all your weekends at Solana Bluffs or moping around the bunkhouse at night thinking about you know who.”
“It’s my time. I’ll do with it what I want.”
“Alright,” he concedes. “Just as long as you don’t start wanting to skip town.”
I turn my head to look at him. He’s the most upbeat guy I know.
Once I warmed up to him when we first started working together, he joked that I was his best friend in the world.
I laughed it off, but deep down, we both seriously believed it.
It’s a balance thing, I think. I know when he needs to chill the fuck out and touch grass, and he knows when I’m being too much of a dick or pulling away from everything just to avoid spontaneously combusting.
For some reason, I never stumbled over my words around him, either. That’s usually a sign that I’m comfortable around someone. I think I knew no matter what I said, he wasn’t going to stop trusting me or having my back, because he was good at seeing the best in people.
As I look at him now, there’s a subtle sadness and a hint of fear in his eyes, like he knows I’m dangerously close to my breaking point. When I finally reach it, I’ll leave, and apart from a few visits from time to time, I probably won't come back.
“Want me to lie and say I think sticking around forever is going to work for me?”
He shrugs and looks down, pretending to inspect the quality of the hay beneath his foot. “Sure, why not? You’re already lying to yourself, just add me into the mix.”
He adds a chuckle because it’s in his nature to keep things light. It makes me feel a stab of guilt, and I pull a chunk of hay from the bale I’m sitting on. It crunches between my fingers.
“Truth is, I’m one screw-up away from getting out of here, man.
That kid shouldn’t learn from me. My rodeo career ended with a year-long circuit ban that I never came back from and court-ordered anger management.
And Hattie’s officially moved on. I’d rather not sit in the front row while she marries some other—,” I shake my head, “whatever, that doesn’t even matter anymore.
It’s done. I just don’t like being around to see it. ”
“It’s done,” he repeats with a questioning undertone.
“Yeah, it’s fucking done. What do you think? I crashed out and went to her house to see it for myself. Big, shiny ring and all.”
Tripp lowers his foot and stands up straight. “What would happen if you, I don’t know, apologized to her or something crazy like that. Sounds wild, I know.”
“I sent her a text on Christmas,” I admit, barely loud enough for him to hear. “I didn’t know it would go through, but it did, and she ignored it. She’s not interested in hearing anything from me. Apology or not.”
“You texted her? On Christmas?” He sounds both shocked and intrigued. “It’s been a week since then, just try again. Better yet, call her this time.”
“It wouldn’t matter. I’d say the wrong thing.”
He shakes his head. “I’ve said shit so stupid that it should have totally destroyed the best thing that ever happened to me, but you know what I learned? You can’t say the wrong thing to the right person.”
Not sure I believe that. But one of us is in a happy relationship with the person they want to be with more than anything in the world, and the other isn’t.
It’s not hard to pick out who’d end up with the winning argument if I told him he was wrong.
I stay silent, spit on the slatted floorboards of the trailer, and cover it with my boot.
“You always avoid shit,” he goes on after sensing I’ve already committed to dropping the topic. “If you didn’t avoid anything for one whole day, I guarantee you’d sleep more than four hours a night.”
“One day,” I scoff.
“Not even one day, actually,” Tripp says with his hands up. “One afternoon. I bet you couldn’t even do it.”
I lay back on the hay and pull my hat over my face while blowing out a breath. I hate it when he makes sense. He’ll ride the high of being able to say “I told you so” for months.
“Forget about Hattie and everything else for now. Start slow and go work with the kid. You know you want to. Stop fighting it, and I’ll never bring it up again. Ever.”
“Lies,” I mumble.
“I swear.”
I lift my hat away from my face, just enough to give him the side eye. He shrugs and lifts the bale from the ground to toss it in the stack we’ve already unloaded. With a grunt, I sit up.
How bad could it be for one afternoon? I’ll stop thinking about Hattie or Solana Bluffs or leaving, and go see what the kid’s got.
I can’t lie and say there wasn’t a bolt of lightning in my chest when I watched him practicing.
A million things came to mind right away, and I itched to walk him through a few of them all morning.
“If I go over there, will you quit lecturing me?”
“Probably not,” he answers.
“Just unload all of this by yourself and then unhook the trailer,” I say, hopping to the ground.
“Go easy on him,” Tripp calls out, trying to hide the satisfaction in his voice.
I don’t agree to that, but I do walk away with a smirk and the first real sting of exhilaration in my veins in years.