20. Dallas
CHAPTER TWENTY
Dallas
Buckhorn Feed I’m convinced he made a deal with the devil to stay exactly this age forever.
“Morning, Virgil,” I say, setting Mom’s list down. “Or afternoon. Whatever we’re calling this.”
He squints at the clock on the wall. “Eleven forty-three. Practically midnight, far as the stock’s concerned.” He peers at the list, tongue pushing his cheek out while he reads. “You McCoys goin’ through this stuff faster than usual. What’re you feeding out there, dinosaurs?”
“Growing daughters,” I say. “Close enough.”
Virgil snorts. “Charge double then.”
His granddaughter, Penny, who runs half this place on customer service alone and the other half through sheer force of personality, pops her head around a stack of dog food bags. Her dark braid swings behind her as she checks something off on a clipboard.
“You tell your mama her mineral tubs will be here Friday,” she calls. “And tell Nash if he steals the caramel apple suckers out of my jar again, I’m calling the sheriff.”
“I’ll tell him,” I promise.
“Tell him like you mean it,” Penny adds, narrowing her eyes.
“I’ll try,” I say.
Virgil starts pulling the order. Grain, salt blocks, a couple bags of chicken feed Mom added because the hens are her latest project, and I fall into the familiar rhythm.
Haul a fifty-pound sack up onto my shoulder, carry it out to the truck, come back for the next.
The rough burlap bites through my glove, and my muscles burn in a good way.
I enjoy work that feels like this. Push, lift, done. No room for thinking.
By the time I come back in for the last bag of grain, Virgil’s added a sack of dog food I didn’t ask for to the pile.
I raise a brow. “We don’t have a dog food order.”
“That old hound of yours is lookin’ skinny,” he says. “Consider it a ‘thanks for all the business’ discount.”
“You mean a ‘you never pay full price anyway, and I’ve given up arguing’ discount?” Penny says dryly.
Virgil waves her off. “Customer loyalty, Pen. Learn about it in… whatever fancy business school you went to.”
“I went to junior college in Austin,” she says. “But thank you.”
I huff out a laugh.
The bell above the door jingles.
Virgil mutters, “Ooh, look who it is,” and I automatically look, ready to see Nash swagger in with some smart remark about saving me from hard labor.
It’s not Nash.
It’s Faith.
And beside her, her younger sister, Charlotte, vibrating with energy.
For a half second, I forget how to breathe.
Faith is wrapped in a soft-looking gray coat that skims mid-thigh, her curls pulled up into a messy bun with a few strands falling around her face.
Her cheeks are pink from the cold, her locket glints at her throat, and there’s a dusting of flour on the sleeve of her coat as if she rushed out of the house without brushing it off.
Beautiful.
Too beautiful.
My heart hits hard once, a clean punch under my ribs, then doesn’t quite settle into a normal rhythm again.
I haven’t seen her since New Year’s Eve.
Since the barn dance.
Since I had my hands on her hips and my mouth on her throat, and absolutely no business doing any of it.
The space was supposed to help. Give both of us some breathing room. Let whatever that was cool off and settle into something manageable.
Spoiler: it hasn’t.
“Dallas!” Charlotte cracks through the air loud as a firework. She waves both arms above her head, nearly whacking Penny’s clipboard. “Oh, hey!”
Faith closes her eyes for a fraction of a second, just long enough for me to see she didn’t plan for this either. Her mouth tightens, bracing for impact.
Great. Perfect. Exactly what I needed.
Charlotte barrels straight at me as a one-woman parade.
“Do you even remember me?” she demands without taking a breath. “You look the same, but also older, but also better somehow? Not that you didn’t look good before. I mean, as a teenager, you were like… never mind, ignore me, hi!”
I fight back a laugh. “Hi, Charlotte. Yeah, I remember you.”
She beams. “Oh, you’re so tall, I forgot how tall you are.”
“Gravity’s been cruel to me,” I deadpan.
Behind her, Faith coughs. The corner of my mouth twitches before I can stop it.
Charlotte keeps going. “We’re running errands. Mom needed salt for the walkway because apparently ice wants to murder her, and Faith needed…” she pauses, then throws a dramatic glance at her sister, “air.”
Faith swats her lightly with the back of her glove. “Ignore her.”
“I try.”
Faith looks at me then.
Really looks.
Her eyes meet mine, and that’s it. Every muscle in my body goes tight. There’s a thousand unsaid things in that look: questions, nerves, embarrassment, the echo of that night, of her mouth under mine, of the way we didn’t stop…
I swallow hard.
“Hey,” she says quietly.
“Hey,” I manage.
It comes out lower than I meant, rough around the edges. She hears it. I can tell by the way her fingers curl into the strap of her purse, knuckles whitening.
Charlotte, completely oblivious, clasps her hands in front of her chest as if she’s watching a soap opera.
“Oh! And guess what?” she says. “I’m staying in town for a little while.”
“Yeah?” I ask, mostly because it buys me a second to get my pulse under control.
“Yup! For the event at the rodeo grounds next weekend. So exciting. Me and Faith haven’t been for years.”
She smirks.
Oh. She knows.
I avoid Faith’s eyes because if I look again, I’m not sure what mine are going to give away.
“Well,” I say, “sounds like Buckhorn’ll be lively.”
“Oh, totally,” Charlotte says, bouncing again. The pom pom on her hat flops with every movement. “And we’ll see you there, right? Faith said you always go. You help, don’t you? With the pens and the chute and the… all the cowboy stuff.”
I flick a glance at Faith.
Her face flushes, and her lips part. She wants to interrupt, but can’t figure out how without making a bigger deal.
I’m screwed.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’ll be there.”
Charlotte claps once, delighted. “Perfect! Then you can—”
“Charlotte,” Faith cuts in, grabbing her arm. “We really need to, uh, let Dallas get back to work. Mom’s waiting on that salt, remember?”
Charlotte stops, then leans in conspiratorially.
“She’s stress baking again,” she whispers. “You should see the kitchen. It’s sugar cookie apocalypse.”
Faith groans softly. “Char.”
“What? It’s delicious.”
Penny, who has absolutely not moved away from the end of the aisle and is absolutely not pretending to be straightening bags of dog food while she eavesdrops, pushes her glasses up her nose and smiles.
“Salt’s on aisle three, ladies,” she says. “Tell Caroline I said to watch her step on that porch, but her cookies are welcome to fall off a truck in my direction anytime.”
“I will,” Faith says with a small smile. “Thank you, Penny.”
Her voice makes my heart skip a beat. It’s still soft, still polite, but there’s more in it now. More weight. More… tired, if I’m honest. Every syllable has to pass through the last few weeks before it makes it out of her mouth.
“We should let you…” she gestures vaguely at the grain on my shoulder, “do your thing.”
She tucks a loose curl behind her ear, eyes flicking briefly to my mouth before she looks away. A spark across raw nerves.
“See you around,” she says, and turns with Charlotte toward aisle three.
“Bye, Dallas!” Charlotte sing-songs, wiggling her fingers as she goes. Then, over her shoulder: “Don’t be a stranger!”
Faith elbows her again, but she’s laughing now. The sound snags in my chest.
They disappear down the aisle, voices dropping as they consult bags of ice melt as if it’s a serious scientific choice.
Virgil steps up beside me, arms folded, watching them go.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he says. “Little Faith Ross is back in town.”
“Not so little,” Penny says under her breath, still observing with undisguised interest. “She grew right up, huh?”
I resist the urge to glare. “Watch it.”
She lifts both hands, grinning. “What? I meant height-wise.”
Virgil cuts a look at me. “You look like you just stepped on a rake.”
“That obvious?” I grunt.
“Your ears are redder’n your face,” he says. “Only time I’ve seen that look is when a man’s either seen Jesus or trouble. And I don’t think that girl’s the Lord.”
Penny snorts. “Depends who you ask.”
“Mind your business,” I mutter.
“This is my business,” she says cheerfully. “You McCoy boys provide me with at least seventy percent of my entertainment, November through March. Gossip is the only thing that keeps us from freezing to death.”
“Penny,” Virgil warns, though he’s fighting a smile.
“What?” She shrugs. “I’m just saying, Faith looked like she’d seen a ghost, too. A handsome, six-foot-three, annoyingly noble ghost.”
“Five,” I correct automatically.
She arches a brow. “You measure yourself lately?”
I glare at both of them in turn. “You want me to finish loading this truck or not?”
“Go on,” Virgil says, still chuckling. “Before Penny gets herself fired.”
“You’d die without me,” she shoots back.
He doesn’t disagree.