Chapter 14 #2
“I do. We were scratching an itch. Rebels without a cause getting off on breaking rules. It was fun while it lasted, but it was never going to last.”
She walks back toward the crowd, toward her father and his protective detail. I watch her go, keeping my expression neutral because showing emotion is not something I do, and I’m not gonna start now.
The ride back is tense. Jesse keeps trying to get closer to Callie’s group, Boone keeps making increasingly inappropriate jokes to lighten the mood, and I keep thinking about what she said.
Were we just scratching an itch? Was the drama more important than the connection?
Was there even a connection to begin with?
At the staging area, while everyone’s loading horses and pretending they didn’t just witness a day of Thompson-McCoy awkwardness, Jesse makes one last attempt.
He corners Callie at her trailer while she’s loading her mare.
Boone and I hang back but stay close enough to hear, because we’re supportive that way. Not to mention nosy.
“One date,” Jesse says without preamble. “One public date. Dinner at the steakhouse. No sneaking around. Let everyone see. If it sucks, we’re done.”
“Jesse—”
“We’ll handle your dad. Mine too. Whatever needs handling, we’ll handle it.”
“You can’t handle thirty years of grudges,” she says.
“Watch us,” Boone adds, joining them. “We’re excellent handlers. We handle things professionally.”
“That’s not even a word.”
“Could be.”
Callie almost smiles, then catches herself. She pulls something from her pocket, a folded piece of paper, aged and soft.
“This was my mom’s,” she says, pressing it into Jesse’s hand. “Her apple pie recipe. The real one, not the church version everyone has.”
Jesse unfolds it carefully. “Brown butter?”
“And cardamom. Just a pinch.” She’s looking at the paper, not at us. “She used to say the secret ingredient was not holding grudges while you baked. That anger curdled the filling.”
“Callie—”
“I can’t keep doing this. I won’t be the reason our families escalate. I won’t be the town entertainment. I won’t pretend that great sex is enough to build something on.”
Boone tries one more time. “What about Rita? Joint custody? We’ll take weekends?”
Nobody laughs. The joke falls flat because we know what’s happening.
“Keep the recipe,” Callie tells Jesse. “Maybe someday things will be different. Maybe in ten years we can laugh about this over coffee. That time we thought sex could overcome sociology.”
She turns to leave, then looks back. “You’re good guys. You really are. But good guys with the wrong last name are still wrong.”
Callie climbs into her father’s truck without even a glance back. Mr. Thompson says something that makes her nod, but she’s staring straight ahead with the determination of someone who’s made a decision and is going to stick with it. Regardless of cost.
They drive away, leaving dust and finality and three McCoys standing around with our dicks in our hands, figuratively speaking.
“We should go after her,” Jesse says, because Jesse’s never met a lost cause he didn’t want to pursue.
“No,” I tell him. “We respect her choice.”
“Her choice is ill-advised.”
“Still hers to make.”
Jesse yanks off his hat and throws it at our trailer. It bounces off and lands in horse manure, which feels appropriate. “This sucks.”
“Yeah.”
“We’re just giving up? After everything?”
“What everything?” I ask, Callie’s words echoing. “The sneaking around? The hiding? The constant drama? The death threats from our fathers?”
“The connection,” Jesse insists. “The way she laughs. The way she fits with us.”
“The way she fits with us in bed,” Boone corrects quietly. “We never really tried to fit anywhere else.”
That shuts Jesse up because it’s true. We were so focused on the physical, on the thrill of the forbidden, that we never built anything solid. No foundation beyond attraction and defiance.
We load our horses in silence while the crowd continues celebrating around us. Normal people with normal relationships that don’t require security details and social media warfare.
“This is bullshit,” Boone announces as we drive away.
“Yep.”
“Worse than that bull that stepped on my nuts.”
“Oh yeah. That was bad.”
The drive home is twenty minutes of Jesse aggressively changing radio stations, Boone with his hand on his balls, and me trying not to think about how empty the ranch is going to feel without Callie sneaking around.
At home, we tend to the horses on autopilot. The routine is just what we need—unsaddle, brush, water, feed. Simple tasks with clear outcomes. No complications, no mixed signals, no choosing between family and desire.
“I’m getting drunk,” Jesse announces when we’re done.
“It’s four in the afternoon.”
“And?”
Fair point.
We end up on the porch with whiskey that costs too much to waste on feelings but perfect for it anyway, and watching the sunset.
“We should have seen this coming,” Boone says after his third drink.
“We did,” I tell him. “We just thought we could dick our way through it.”
“Usually works.”
“Not with Thompsons apparently.”
Jesse pulls out the recipe Callie gave him, smoothing it against his thigh. “I think this is really her mom’s handwriting.”
“How would you know?”
“Same as the fair entry forms from years back. She won with this pie, I remember.”
We sit with that for a moment, with Callie giving us something as a goodbye gift. Not a fuck you, not a dramatic exit, just a piece of her history and a suggestion to let go of ours.
“Think she was right?” Boone asks. “That it was just sex?”
“No,” Jesse says immediately.
“Yes,” I say at the same time.
We look at each other.
“Maybe,” Boone concludes. “Maybe it was just sex that could have been more if we’d had time.”
“Or if our families weren’t a total mess,” Jesse adds.
“Or if the whole town wasn’t watching,” I contribute.
“Or if Madison wasn’t a psycho with a social media addiction.”
“Or if we knew how to have a conversation that didn’t end with someone’s pants off.”
We drink to that truth, because it’s easier than admitting we had a chance at something and fumbled it.
“What do we do now?” Boone asks.
“Move on,” I say. “Find nice girls who are not named Thompson and do not have fathers called Hank.”
“Right,” Jesse says, not sounding convinced.
“Yeah,” Boone adds, sounding less convinced.
The stars come out later, bright and clear and indifferent to three cowboys drinking whiskey and nursing wounded pride.
Somewhere across town, Callie’s probably having dinner with her father, acting unbothered. Playing the part of the dutiful daughter who didn’t spend three weeks getting thoroughly fucked by McCoy boys in various locations.
“We still have her goat’s collar,” Boone mentions randomly.
“We’ll mail it back.”
“That’s passive aggressive.”
“It’s practical.”
“It’s depressing.”
We drink more. The whiskey burns less with each swallow, or maybe everything’s just numb now.
“She was right though,” I finally say. “We never really talked. Never built anything real.”
“We built something,” Jesse argues.
“We built an elaborate booty call arrangement,” I correct. “That’s not the same as a relationship.”
“It could have been.”
“Could have, would have, should have,” Boone mutters. “The Thompson-McCoy story in six words.”
We sit in silence after that, three brothers who learned the hard way that great sex doesn’t overcome bad blood, that chemistry doesn’t equal compatibility, and that sometimes the smart choice and the right choice are the same thing, even when they don’t feel that way.
Rita’s collar sits on the porch rail where Boone left it. Tomorrow we’ll mail it back. Or drop it off. Or keep it as a reminder that for a few weeks.
But tomorrow we’ll get up, run the ranch, and pretend we’re not checking our phones for texts that won’t come. We’ll move on because that’s what you do when someone makes it clear you’re not worth the trouble.
Even if they’re wrong.
Even if we’re wrong.
Even if being wrong separately feels worse than being wrong together.
The bottle’s empty. The night’s dark. And somewhere, Callie Thompson’s getting on with her life without us.