9. Arizona
CHAPTER NINE
Arizona
When Emmett invited me back to Dusty Spur Ranch for lunch, I told myself I’d stay for an hour. Maybe two if Sadie talked me into it.
Long enough to drink coffee, work on a song, and let the tiny blonde tornado show me whatever crisis is currently dominating her five-year-old world before heading back into town.
Apparently, I’m terrible at leaving.
By the time I glance up from my notebook, sunlight has shifted across the kitchen floor and the clock on the microwave tells me I’ve somehow lost an entire afternoon.
“That’s not a horse.”
Sadie gasps from across the table like I’ve personally insulted her ancestors. “It is too.”
I lean closer to inspect the masterpiece she’s working on. The purple creature staring back at me has six legs, several tails, and wings large enough to carry off a small village.
I point at the page. “Sweetheart, that’s a dragon.”
“It’s Rover.”
I blink. “Your horse is named Rover?”
The look she gives me could peel paint. “No. Princess is my horse. Rover is my dragon.”
“Right. Obviously.”
“Yep.”
I nod seriously.
That explanation clears up absolutely nothing.
Sadie returns to coloring with the confidence of somebody who knows she’s surrounded by idiots. Across the table, Emmett lets out a laugh before taking another sip of coffee.
I’ve noticed that about him.
The man laughs easily. Not because he’s trying to be charming or because he enjoys being the center of attention.
It just happens. Like smiling at people or holding doors open or remembering the names of every person he meets.
Normally, men like that make me suspicious. Life has taught me that the friendliest people are often hiding the sharpest edges.
But Emmett doesn’t feel fake. He feels comfortable, and that realization is a little unsettling.
Comfort is how people end up putting down roots, and how a temporary stop turns into a reason to stay. Something I’m never looking for.
The song I’m working on still isn’t cooperating, which feels like a much safer problem.
Usually lyrics arrive in pieces. A line here and a chorus there. Sometimes an entire verse crashes into my brain while I’m standing in line for coffee and I have to write it on the nearest available surface before it disappears.
Today, apparently, inspiration has decided to be difficult.
I stare down at my notebook. Half the page is covered in lyrics. The other half is buried beneath aggressive scribbles and arrows pointing in directions that no longer make sense.
The whole thing looks less like songwriting and more like evidence from a criminal investigation. “You always do that?”
I glance up to find Emmett leaning against the counter with a coffee mug in one hand. “Do what?”
He nods toward my notebook. “Look like you’re trying to win a fistfight with a piece of paper.”
I laugh and look back down at the mess. “Unfortunately, yes.”
“I thought songwriters were supposed to be artistic and mysterious.”
“That’s the public image. The reality is mostly caffeine and bad handwriting.”
His smile tugs a laugh out of me. “Seriously, though. How do you even read that?”
“Practice.”
I flip through a few pages and show him a song I finished last year.
The handwriting isn’t any better.
Emmett studies it for a second before shaking his head. “That looks like a doctor wrote it while riding a horse.”
“That’s one of my neater drafts.”
“Now I’m concerned.”
Sadie occasionally announces important updates about her dragon population, while Emmett starts working on lunch. I go back to wrestling with lyrics and mostly losing.
It’s nice.
Nobody expects anything from me here. Nobody’s requesting songs or trying to figure out where I’m headed next. I’m just sitting at a kitchen table while a little girl colors dragons and her dad makes sandwiches.
At some point, I catch myself watching Emmett. He’s standing at the counter slicing tomatoes, listening with surprising seriousness while Sadie explains an elaborate argument between Princess the horse and Rover the dragon.
Most adults would’ve tuned the story out three minutes ago, but Emmett asks follow-up questions.
The man is either an incredible father or completely insane.
Possibly both.
My chest tightens unexpectedly. I don’t want to be caught staring at him, so I dart my eyes around the room.
Everywhere I look, there are pieces of people’s lives tucked into corners. Framed family photos line the hallway. Sadie’s drawings cover half the refrigerator.
Out the kitchen window, I can see old tire swings hanging from a tree and a picnic table that’s probably hosted years of dinners, arguments, birthdays, and celebrations.
My entire life fits inside a truck parked outside.
I’ve always liked that.
Mobility means freedom. Freedom means nobody gets the chance to leave me behind because I’m already halfway to the next town before they can try.
“Where’d you grow up?”
The question pulls me out of my thoughts.
I look across the table at Emmett. Sadie is still busy coloring beside us, tongue poking out in concentration while she carefully adds glitter pen details to Rover the dragon.
“My hometown?” I ask.
Emmett nods. “Or whichever place feels closest.”
I laugh softly. “That answer’s a lot harder than it should be.”
“That’s usually a sign it’s interesting.”
“Or a sign it’s messy.”
He smirks. “I grew up with rodeo people. Messy doesn’t scare me.”
Fair point.
I close my notebook and tuck the pen between the pages.
“My mom was a singer too.”
His eyebrows rise. “Really?”
“Yep. She got successful when I was pretty young. Once that happened, we moved constantly. Tours, temporary houses, hotels, rental properties. If we stayed somewhere longer than a year, it felt permanent.”
“That sounds kind of amazing.”
“It was sometimes.”
He catches the wording. “Sometimes?”
I smile. “Told you it’s a messy question. I mean, I loved seeing new places,” I admit. “New cities, new food, new people. I got to see things most kids never do.”
“But?”
“But eventually every place starts feeling temporary. You stop unpacking all your stuff because you’ll just have to pack it again. You stop getting attached because you’ll be leaving soon anyway.” My fingers wrap around my coffee mug. “After a while, it gets easy.”
“Leaving?”
I nod. “Really easy.”
Emmett studies me for a second before asking, “What about your dad?”
“Never met him. My mom and I were always enough,” I say with a shrug. “At least that’s what she used to tell me.”
“Were you angry about it?”
I think about it before answering. “When I was younger? Sure. I used to imagine all kinds of reasons why he wasn’t around.”
“And now?”
I look out the window toward the pasture. “Now I don’t spend much time thinking about him.”
I don’t even realize how much I’ve shared until I hear myself ask, “What about you? How does a guy like you end up climbing onto horses that are actively trying to launch you into another zip code?”
Sadie giggles.
Emmett groans. “It’s a terrible career choice.”
“Glad we’re on the same page.”
He leans back in his chair, smiling despite himself. “I grew up around it. My dad rode. My granddad rode. Every man in my family rode at some point.”
“So you inherited poor decision making.”
“Apparently.”
Sadie nods seriously without looking up from her picture. “Daddy falls down a lot.”
Emmett closes his eyes.
I burst out laughing. “What about Sadie’s mom?”
The question slips out before I really think about it. The second it does, I wish I’d found a slightly smoother way to ask.
Emmett doesn’t look upset, but I can tell I’ve wandered into a part of his life that isn’t easy to talk about. He glances toward Sadie, who’s still busy adding increasingly questionable details to Rover the dragon, then wraps both hands around his coffee mug.
I start to backpedal. “Sorry. You don’t have to answer that.”
“It’s okay.” He gives me a small smile. “We were young.”
I grin. “How young?”
His expression shifts into the look of a man revisiting mistakes he’d rather not examine too closely. “Young enough that if Sadie ever comes home and tells me she’s making the same decisions we made, I’m boarding up the house and moving to another state.”
I laugh. “That bad?”
“We were the kind of teenagers who thought we had life figured out.”
I wince. “Oh, that’s rough.”
“See? You understand.”
“That’s because I’ve met teenagers.”
He chuckles. “Exactly. We loved each other,” he says, watching his daughter color. “At least I thought we did. Then life happened. We grew up, wanted different things, and stopped looking toward the same future.”
“She left?” I ask gently.
He rubs the back of his neck before nodding. “Eventually.”
I can hear the rest in everything he doesn’t add. In the way his attention keeps drifting back to Sadie. In the careful way he talks about her mother despite whatever happened between them.
The whole conversation makes me understand him a little better.
I’ve noticed from the beginning how closely he watches his daughter. How quickly he responds whenever she needs anything. How naturally every decision he makes seems to circle back to her.
Now I understand why.
Every choice he makes starts with one question: What’s best for Sadie?
Across the table, Sadie suddenly lifts her picture. “Rover has a sword now.”
I lean forward to inspect it. “That feels irresponsible.”
Sadie gasps. “It’s for protection.”
“Protection from what?”
She gives me a look that suggests I’m asking an embarrassingly obvious question. “Bad dragons.”
I nod.
Emmett laughs into his coffee. “You see what I deal with every day?”
“You raised her.”
“I know. That’s the alarming part.”
Sadie beams proudly, clearly deciding that whatever was just said counts as praise.
My song never gets finished.
The afternoon keeps slipping by, and somewhere between the coffee, the music, and listening to Sadie explain why Princess the horse is secretly a wizard, I realize I haven’t looked at the clock in hours.