THIRTEEN
COLT
I follow Blair to the gas station the next morning and fill the tank of her rental car. It’s been a long-ass night and I didn’t sleep a wink, but I’m used to that by now. At least the things keeping me awake this time were exciting rather than depressing.
Doesn’t make it any easier not to, though.
God, is this what Maddox feels like all of the time?
Constantly anxious something bad’s gonna happen?
I’ve spent the past few years chasing the high of adrenaline and now I’m cruising down the interstate in the slow lane and abiding by the speed limit for once.
I feel like a cigarette would make this better, but I’m quitting that shit cold turkey.
It’s a twenty-hour drive to Cedar Creek from Fort Worth, so I have to split it in half by stopping in Nebraska. I’ve made the trip often enough that I have a preferred motel to spend the night in and a diner I like to get my supper from.
Bookstores aren’t really places I tend to frequent though, so it takes a Google search to find the closest one that’s open.
I don’t know exactly what I need, so I just grab a bunch of different titles that sound like they might help, including one that literally includes For Dummies in the title and another claiming it’s a handbook for first-time dads.
I’m both, so I figure they’ll probably be helpful purchases.
I almost call Bailey when I get back to the hotel room, but I think her impending auntie-dom is something best explained in person, so I read pregnancy books until my eyes feel gritty and tired, and then fall asleep.
The next day is filled with anxiety the whole way home. I know I want to tell Maddox first. I need to. He’ll know exactly what to do, I think. He always knows what to do. He’s the oldest, after all.
Plus, I need to make sure there’s space for me and Blair to come live at the ranch.
And that we’d be welcome in the first place.
And that he can employ me. Money isn’t really an issue, thanks to me saving most of my winnings and stuff, but I’d need to contribute to the ranch if I wanted to live there, and I definitely do.
I keep thinking back to the picture in my mind of Blair and me at the bonfire, of our… fuck, our daughter running around chasing fireflies.
I can’t believe I’m going to have a daughter.
By the grace of a god I don’t believe in anymore, I manage to make it onto the ranch and back to Maddie’s cabin without Mama waving me down.
He looks scared as fuck when he opens the door and sees me there, and it takes a second, but it’s like all of the fear and anxiety that’s been on my shoulders is suddenly lifted.
My big brother’s here. The one who fixes everything, who makes everything okay. We might not always see eye to eye— actually, we rarely do—but he’s here and I know he’ll help me.
“I’m gonna be a dad, Maddie,” I tell him, thinking he’ll be stoked.
Here was the thing he wanted all along: something to kick me in the ass and make me grow up.
But the fear doesn’t melt from his face, it only morphs now that it has an actual target.
I grow nervous again. Maybe it’s not okay? “Maddie?”
“Does Mama know?” he asks, clearing his throat.
I smile at the thought of telling her. She’s going to be over the moon.
“No, I’ll tell her next. I just… Can I come home?”
“What?” He seems taken aback by the question, and I swear I can’t make heads or tails of this conversation.
One moment, I’m anxious, the next I’m excited, then anxious again.
I feel like I’m taking my cues from Maddox, which isn’t fair to him in the slightest, but he always has his shit together and I never do, so.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean… Of course you can come home, Colt.
I just don’t understand why you’re asking me. ”
I breathe out a sigh of relief and rake my hand over my face.
“Oh, sorry, I got ahead of myself.” Sometimes I forget not everyone lives in my head and that I have to provide context. We take a seat on the couch. “I meant to ask if I could come home to stay. To work. Permanently.”
“To work? What about the rodeo?”
The rodeo. As cliché as it is, I think I’d call it my first love.
The idea of leaving it, of never getting on the back of a bucking bull again is…
heartbreaking. But no more heartbreaking than the way my excitement for the sport has been slowly dwindling over the last several months or the thought of not being able to run around with my kid because I got hurt.
Honestly, it feels better to leave it on my terms. To leave on a high note.
I loved the rodeo for years, decades even. But that season of my life is over now.
“Figure a kid needs their daddy to have a less risky job, don’t you? ”
Maddox sighs and plops down on the couch next to me, relieved, I think. I don’t look at him, scared to see the I told you so in his eyes, but his hand finds my neck and grips it. I smile, knowing I’m finally doing something that’s making him proud. “Yeah?” he asks.
“Yeah, Maddie.” My voice breaks, which is just as embarrassing as the way my eyes are watering. He hauls me into a hug, and I know it’s more about trying to get me to quit crying than a congratulatory hug. It still only makes me cry harder, which feels like a good old sibling “fuck you.”
“When’s she due?” Maddox asks. “Is she your girl or was it a one-time thing? Where’s she living?”
I flop back against the couch, staring up at the ceiling with a grin that doesn’t seem to fit the atmosphere in my brother’s cabin.
It feels odd here, but I can’t put my finger on why.
Dead, almost. Like there’s something missing.
But it’s the same old cabin it’s always been, so maybe it’s just me that’s changed.
“Middle of November,” I tell him and he breathes in sharply, so I cut my eyes over to him, ready for him to make some smartass remark about why I’m just now telling him.
The fact that Blair had waited so long to tell me, that I’d missed so much of her pregnancy already, stung a bit, but I’d been trying to keep those feelings at bay. Logically, I knew it wasn’t personal.
Maddox puts his hands up, so I move on.
“She’s my girl,” I tell him, though she ain’t. At least, not as far as she’s concerned. Not yet. But she will be. And in the meantime, I don’t need Jamie or any of the ranch hands getting any ideas.
“As far as living, that’s another thing I wanted to talk to you about. I know y’all are just starting guest season, but is there an extra cabin on the property we could have?”
He looks surprised at my audacity, and that’s fair, honestly. I’d avoided this ranch like the plague for the past five years and now I was here asking for free room and board for myself, my girl, and our eventual kid? It’s a big ask, I know .
“I can’t have my kid’s mama living in some city thousands of miles away from me, Maddie,” I’m quick to explain, sitting up. Hell, I’ll beg if I gotta.
He huffs and leans back, tossing an arm over his eyes.
“Guest relations is Jameson’s business, so he’s the one you’ll have to convince. Otherwise, the two of you are gonna have to move into the Big House until the season’s over.”
I grimace. That’s genuinely the worst-case scenario.
Well, no. The worst-case scenario would be Blair and our baby living thousands of miles away, like I’d just said, but this is a close second.
I won’t get a single moment alone with Blair.
Mama and my sisters would be up her ass constantly.
Still, when he looks over at me, I nod reluctantly.
“As far as working on the ranch, of course you’re always welcome, but it’s going to take some shifting around. Bailey’s double-booked with duties, but I don’t think you’d want either of those. Maybe Tate could take on one of those duties and you could take on trail rides?”
Bailey had mentioned something about having more work the last time we’d talked, but I hadn’t thought anything of it.
I’ll take Maddie’s word for it that it’s probably not something I’d want to do though.
Knowing Bailey’s strong suits, it’s probably math-related and I was horrible at math.
And spelling. And generally anything that required me to use my brain for an extended period of time instead of my hands.
Even reading the baby books had been a challenge so far, but I was in that for the long haul.
Regardless. “Maddox, I’ll be a goddamn ranch hand if you need me to be. I don’t care.” Anything that would get him to agree to me coming home and bringing my little family with me.
“Ranch hands start work at five.”
“I know.”
“They do the grunt work.”
“I know.”
My brother flounders, trying to find another excuse.
“I just want to be a good man for my kid and her mama. I’ll do whatever you need me to do if it means I’ve got a job, we’ve got a roof over our heads, and my little girl has a safe place to run around.”
A grin creeps up onto his face slowly. When was the last time Maddox smiled at me? Years, definitely. I hadn’t given him much to smile about recently. Especially not with me coming home and starting fights.
“Little girl, huh?” he asks, and the smile on my face is ten times brighter and ten times bigger than the one on his all of a sudden.
I pull out my wallet and pass him the ultrasound photo Blair let me keep, remembering how she’d sat down on the motel bed next to me and pointed out the baby’s toes and nose.
“Proud of you, brother,” he says after looking at it for a few moments and returning it so he can clap me on the back.
My eyes are wet again instantly. Such a simple sentence, but I didn’t realize just how badly I craved hearing him say it until now.
“Thanks, Maddie.”