Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
RYE
Aubrey had inspired me.
The way she let me take her last night, and how she’d taken me too. Like sagebrush, once her protecting walls had begun to tumble away, I didn’t think anything could hold the woman back.
She’d pushed me down on her couch and sucked my cock so thoroughly, I’d practically passed out. Her living room curtains stayed open. She said she didn’t care if anyone saw us, that it would help our dating ruse if anyone got nosy, but I thought maybe it had more to do with her wanting to live free. To see and finally be seen.
I saw her. She was on full display for me, and I couldn’t tear my eyes away.
And it wasn’t a goddamn ruse. I hadn’t been secretive with my feelings for her, but maybe in further attempts to protect her heart, calling it fake was what she needed, even between the two of us.
Or maybe I was completely delusional, and this thing between us would fizzle out and fade away once we both got what we wanted from the deal.
The problem was, I wanted a fuck of a lot more than what she’d agreed to.
I wanted forever.
I’d left her house, after one last go with my mouth between her legs and her fingernails digging into my scalp, and we talked as I drove home. I made it almost all the way back to the ranch, but then turned around and drove back to Bax’s place after Aubrey started falling asleep on me.
It was my birthday and a Sunday. My parents would head to church, but I never went. There was too much to do usually, and it hadn’t ever been something I made time for.
For me, religion was in the mountains and the trees, the dirt beneath my feet and the air above me. I communed with my higher power all the time. Sitting in some too-hot, dusty church in a shirt and tie that made me feel like I was suffocating didn’t make God love me any more or any less than anybody else.
And as always, Presley was at the ranch. Since he stayed in our bunkhouse and managed the seasonal cowboys, he started work early every day to beat the heat of the sun, sometimes before I’d even climbed out of bed, so that meant I could be late to work today, but I shot him a text to let him know.
I knew Bax would be up early, too, so when I knocked on his front door and asked him to show me the land he wanted to sell, he stepped into his boots, grabbed his coffee, and I followed him out there in my truck.
Maybe he could tell I had some contemplating to do, and his mama wasn’t so forgiving if he missed church, so he left me there alone, sitting on my open tailgate, watching the sunrise and dreaming of something I’d been too chicken shit to even think about before.
Going it on my own.
That was the real inspiration Aubrey had filled me with. She’d been at one of the hardest points in her life when she opened her bookshop, but it had been her dream for forever.
She took the leap and did it, even though she had no way to know if her business would soar or fail. And when times were hard, she doubled down. She immersed herself in furthering her education so her store would have its best shot. She told me she’d taken free online classes and had attended lectures given by business gurus when they were close and she could afford the travel. Maybe things hadn’t been so easy for her lately, but I knew she’d make her comeback.
I was impressed by her. And in awe of her.
Daybreak came as I sat on Bax’s land with my boots dangling above rich farm soil, thinking about Aubrey and what an apt nickname Spitfire was for her.
Western Wyoming slipped off her starlit nightdress, letting me see her sweet underbelly. New morning light washed itself over her mountain peaks in oranges, pinks, and purples while I really thought about what it would be like to have my own ranch. My own cattle. My own business.
I knew it would be hard. I’d excel at some things and struggle with others, but I was willing to go through it because I wanted it bad .
And it wasn’t because I needed to one-up my dad, or ’cause I was sore at him for not wanting to hand over the thing he’d spent his whole life building.
Yeah, sure, that hurt a little, mainly because I’d spent most of my life expecting him to pass down the reins of G&S. But now I thought I could understand it, because if somebody had asked me to give up the land I was currently deciding to buy, I’d put up a fight too. Especially if I’d spent forty years cultivating it, farming it, and making it mine.
I looked back over my shoulder, toward the only home I’d ever known, fifty miles in the distance. I’d build my house there, in the southeast corner of my property, with the back porch facing my past, and I’d put big, sweeping windows in the front room so we could look toward the future and see the Tetons when we sat in there, drinking our morning coffee, or when we sat on the front p?—
I laughed out loud, probably scaring the crows, when I realized I’d been picturing Aubrey living in my nonexistent house with me, relaxing after a long day with our feet up, rocking on a porch swing together, holding each other and watching the sun set.
Fuck, I was tired.
I couldn’t remember dragging ass this bad in a long time, but spending the night fucking my Spitfire six ways from Sunday was worth the fatigue.
When I finally got back to the ranch, I scrambled up six eggs and armed myself with about a gallon more coffee.
I sucked it down as I made my rounds, sent the cowboys out on twenty different tasks, and then I went in the barn to check on my injured heifer. Her ankle looked like it had a cow-colored pool floatie around it, so I called the vet and then finished up some chores while I waited for him to make the drive. His office was in Wisper, so travel time took him the same hour it took me.
Soon, when I bought Bax’s land and started my own ranch, I’d be much closer. That was a bonus I hadn’t thought of. When you lived out in the middle of nowhere, vets charged extra to cover their fuel, time, and the wear and tear on their vehicles. At least, our vets did. I understood, but man, it’d be nice to pay normal prices. Not that I was the one forking out the cash yet, but still.
When he finally showed up, Dr. van der Wouden X-rayed Miss Thang’s ankle and declared it a sprain. I’d figured that but wanted to be sure. And then in his weird accent while he lasered the swollen joint, he tried talking me into buying my own. It’d save him trips like this, when he couldn’t really do much for the animal. He wasn’t wrong. I doubted my dad would buy one though.
It occurred to me then that I would. When I was the guy calling the shots, I’d buy my own damn laser and plant whatever crops I wanted to. I could raise cattle the way I saw fit.
But what would that mean for my parents?
I needed to think on it a bit more before I made my announcement, but Bax and his family were ready to sell to me, and now, my own ranch had replaced the vision I’d had in my head for thirty years. My own business I could run however I wanted to.
Regenerative agriculture.
That’s where it’s at, and you know it. Do it.
Do it.
Just fuckin’ do it!
“What’s goin’ on with you?” Presley asked as we watched the doc’s tires kick up dust down my dad’s long drive on his way back to town.
He clapped me on the shoulder and handed me a grape-flavored soda pop. Presley brought one for me every year on my birthday because, twenty years ago, the day we’d met, he’d had one in his cooler in the bed of his busted-up old Ford on his first day at G&S. He was ten years older than me, and since neither of my brothers had ever had interest in cattle, I’d looked up to him.
Back then, I was a scrawny fifteen-year-old, lamenting the lack of celebration for my birthday because there were no less than twenty cows in different stages of labor that day, and every available pair of hands had been tending to them instead of carving up a cake for me. It seemed every birthday went that way since it came at the tail end of birthing season every year. Presley felt bad for me, so he gave me his grape soda and a tradition was born.
Luckily, this year all the calves and their mamas had decided to give me a break, and we had enough ranch hands now that, if one did decide to share my birthday, I’d still get to eat my cake.
“Thanks,” I said, popping the top with my thumb and taking a drink, but it burned my throat on its way down. “This shit gets sweeter every year.”
“Naw, man, you’re just gettin’ older, and you can’t handle the sugar you used to.”
Smirking, I wiggled my eyebrows. “I ate sugar all night long last night.”
“Oh really?” His eyebrows pitched up in surprise. “Who’s the unlucky woman?”
“You don’t know her. She lives in Wisper.”
“I go to town just like everybody else up in this place.”
“I don’t kiss and tell. Or eat and tell.” I smirked at him, and he shook his head, but then I realized I could come clean with Presley. He was one of my best friends. “Her name’s Aubrey.”
“So, she’s what’s up?” he asked again.
“Yeah, she’s part of it. Listen, I wanna talk to you about somethin’.”
“Shoot.”
“What would you say if I told you I’d like to buy my own ranch and start up the alternative agriculture program I keep dronin’ on about?”
“I’d say you’d lost your mind.”
“Call me crazy then. I’m doin’ it.”
“You invited a guest?’ Mama asked when I told her Aubrey would be arriving soon. “Ryder, that’s rude. You should’ve asked me first.”
“I invited Aubrey, my girlfriend . I thought that’s what you wanted. Besides, it’s my birthday, but I apologize for the late notice.”
“Don’t backtalk your mama,” my dad said, like I was nine years old, as he snagged a beer from the cooler he kept set atop the kitchen counter.
No matter how many wine and beer fridges he could afford, that beat-up plastic beer trap drove my mama nuts every day of her life. The bags of ice he bought every week and kept in the deep freezer in the garage to fill the cooler didn’t make her much happier, but Dad said the beer tasted better from a cooler.
“Well,” she said, sliding the roast back into the oven after she tested the temp with a meat thermometer. “That’s fine, I s’pose, but Marta’s already gone home, and I’m not prepared for guests. I didn’t set the table or even sweep the floors. What will she think?”
“She’ll think you’ve been busy, just like she has, and she’ll be gracious and thankful that you made dinner, just like I am.”
Mama grumbled something, but then we heard a knock on my parents’ front door, and now I felt like a nine-year-old on Christmas, my pretty present waiting for me to grab her and hug her so hard she’d break, but then I’d just fix her right back up and do it all over again.
I had plans to break her and build her back up all night long.