8. Chapter 8
Cash
Iwake up at five. Not because Lola wakes me. She’s still sleeping, her stuffed horse tucked under her chin, her boots on the floor beside the crib.
I wake up because I’m done waiting.
I shower. I dress. I make coffee. I drink it standing at the kitchen window looking at the valley while the sun comes up over the mountains and the ranch turns gold in the early light.
Cassie was right. She was right about all of it. About the hiding. About the fear. About the difference between being reckless and being brave.
She went first. She pressed send on the festival email while I sat in a chair making excuses. She chose the scary thing and then looked at me and said “your turn.”
It is my turn.
Lola wakes up at six thirty. I feed her breakfast. She eats yogurt and talks to her stuffed horse about the day’s agenda, which involves Birdie, crayons, and a detailed complaint about the texture of toast.
At seven fifteen, I put Lola in the truck and drive to the main house.
Raiford is on his porch. Coffee. Hat. The morning light behind him. He watches me get out of the truck and does not look surprised to see me.
“That offer still good?” I ask.
“Yep.”
“I’ll take it.”
Raiford sips his coffee. He doesn’t smile. Raiford doesn’t smile at obvious things. But something in his shoulders relaxes. He’s been holding a door open and wondering when his cousin would finally walk through it.
“Livestock operations,” he says. “Full authority. The youth program is yours to build when you’re ready.”
“I can do it.”
“I know you can.”
We stand on his porch. Two Wylde men looking at sixteen thousand acres in the morning light. He extends his hand. I shake it. His grip is firm and final.
“Stop acting like you’re visiting,” he says.
“Yeah.” I look at the barn. The cabins. The valley. The mountains. “I think I’m done visiting.”
“About time.”
I ask about Lola before he can go inside.
“Actually,” I say. “I have a favor to ask.”
Elise appears in the doorway. She’s been listening. I know because Elise is always listening.
“Lola can stay the night,” she says. Before I ask. “Go.”
“Go where?”
“Cash.” She gives me the look. “We all know where.”
I kiss Lola goodbye. She barely notices because Elise has promised pancakes for her second breakfast.
I get in my truck. I pull out my phone.
Me: Elise stole Lola for the day, so you’re off this afternoon. Meet me tonight. The Burning Tree. 7 o’clock.
Three dots. Then:
Cassie: Hello to you too.
Me: My bad. Hello. Meet me at The Burning Tree tonight at 7.
Me again: Please.
Cassie: The Burning Tree?
Me: The one on Main.
Cassie: I know where it is. Why?
Me: Because I’m asking.
Cassie: That’s not an answer.
Me: It’s the only one I’ve got. Seven o’clock.
Cassie: Fine. I’ll be there.
I spend the day working. Hard. I move the west herd to a new grazing section.
I fix a busted gate hinge. I help Beckett replace a rotted fence post by the creek.
Physical work. The kind that empties your head and fills your hands and reminds you that your body is good for more than eight seconds on the back of a bull.
Beckett and I work in near-silence, which is how Beckett prefers it and how I’ve learned to operate around him. At one point he looks at me across the post we’re setting and says, “Raiford told me.”
“About the job?”
“Yeah.”
He tamps the dirt around the post. “Good.”
Apparently that’s that.
I go back to the cabin at four. I shower. I shave. I put on a clean pair of jeans and a dark button-down that I haven’t worn since I don’t know when. I look at myself in the bathroom mirror and I see a man who made a decision this morning and hasn’t regretted it for one second.
The drive to town takes twenty minutes. I park on Main Street and walk to The Burning Tree.
The Burning Tree is the kind of place every small town needs.
Dark wood, good whiskey, a jukebox that leans country, and enough locals to make it feel like a living room.
It’s been here longer than most of the buildings on Main Street.
Every series of stories this town tells passes through these doors eventually.
I’m here on time. Because Cassie Benton arrives five minutes early for everything, and I want her sitting at the bar when I walk in.
She’s sitting at the bar when I walk in.
She’s wearing a green dress I’ve never seen. Her hair is down. She’s got a drink in front of her and she’s looking at her phone and she’s the prettiest thing in the room by a margin that isn’t close.
She’s also talking to a man.
He’s leaning on the bar beside her. Mid-thirties. Polo shirt. The kind of confidence that comes from never being told no at a bar. He’s saying something and she’s doing the polite smile that means she’s not interested but is too well-mannered to say so.
I cross the room.
The man sees me coming. He straightens up. I’m taller than him. Broader. And I’m walking toward him with the kind of focus that doesn’t leave room for misinterpretation.
“Hey, buddy,” the man says. Holding up a hand to stop me. “I’m talking to her. I got here first.”
“She’s taken.”
Two words. I don’t raise my voice. I don’t puff up. I just say it the way you say a fact. The sky is blue. Water is wet. She’s taken.
Cassie looks at me. Her eyes go wide. Then the corner of her mouth curves.
“Sorry, man,” the guy says. He takes his drink and disappears.
I slide onto the stool beside her.
“She’s taken?” Cassie says. One eyebrow up.
“You are.”
“Since when?”
“Since a two-year-old in a yogurt-stained sundress knocked you off your feet in a gravel driveway.”
She stares at me. The eyebrow comes down. Something softer replaces it.
“You clean up well,” she says. Looking at the button-down.
“I own one nice shirt. You’re looking at it.”
“I’m honored.”
The bartender steps in front of me and does a double take.
“Wait,” he says. Squinting. He’s maybe fifty, weathered, the kind of bartender who’s seen everything. “Are you Cash Wylde?”
“Depends on who’s asking.”
“You rode Sidewinder at the National Finals. I watched that ride on TV.” He’s grinning now. “Seven seconds. You almost had him.”
“Almost doesn’t pay.”
“No, but it makes for a hell of a story.” He taps the bar. “This round’s on me. Anyone who climbed on Sidewinder and lived to tell the tale deserves a free drink.” He slides a whiskey in front of me.
“Thank you,” I say. I take the whiskey.
Cassie studies me for a second. “People know you,” she says. Quiet.
“People know what I did.”
“Is that different?”
We take our drinks to a booth in the back. The noise of the bar wraps around us. A jukebox playing something slow. Laughter from a group near the door.
“Sidewinder,” she says. “That’s the bull. The one that ended it.”
“That’s the one.”
“Tell me.”
I’ve told her pieces. But I haven’t told her all of it.
“National Finals,” I say. “Third round. Biggest arena I’d ever been in. Sold out. I drew Sidewinder and I was grinning in the chute because that’s who I was. The guy who wanted the hardest ride.”
She’s watching me with those steady brown eyes. Not pitying. Just present.
“Seven seconds. One short. He spun left and I went right and my foot caught in the rope. He dragged me. The bullfighters were fast but he was faster. Two thousand pounds stepped on my left leg.”
I take a drink. “I heard it break. In the arena, with fifteen thousand people watching, I heard the sound my leg made. And I knew. Before the ambulance. Before the X-ray. Before anyone told me. I knew it was over.”
Cassie reaches across the table and takes my hand. She doesn’t squeeze it. She just holds it. Palm to palm.
“Six surgeries,” I say. “Months and months of rehab. And at the end, a doctor who told me I could walk, I could ride for pleasure, but competitive bull riding was finished.”
“What did you do?”
“I drank too much for four months. Then I drifted. Ranch to ranch. Job to job. Trying to figure out what I was if I wasn’t the guy in the arena.”
“And?”
“And I never figured it out. I just kept moving. Until Lola. Until here.” I look at her hand in mine. “Until you.”
“Cash.”
“I took the job.”
She goes still. “What?”
“This morning. I went to Raiford. I told him I’ll take it. Livestock operations. The whole thing. And I’m going to build a youth program.”
Her hand tightens on mine. “You took the job.”
“I did.” I hold her gaze. “I kept thinking I needed to figure out who I was before I could ask you to stay. Like I had to earn the right to want things. To want the ranch. The job. Lola growing up in one place. You.”
“And?”
“Turns out that’s not how it works. You don’t figure out who you are by thinking about it. You decide who you want to be and then you get up and be him.”
“Who do you want to be?”
“Lola’s dad. A rancher. The guy who builds a youth program that teaches kids to hold on and not fall.” I hold her gaze. “And yours. I want to be yours.”
Her eyes fill. She blinks.
“That’s a lot of wanting,” she says. Her voice is not steady.
“I’m making up for lost time.”
“Cash.”
“I love you, Cassie.”
The words come out clean.
“I love your brain and your backbone and your colored pencils sorted by undertone. I love that you love my daughter. I love that you pressed send on that email because I called you out. I love that you don’t fix me. You just show me what you see and dare me to look.”
She’s crying now. Quiet tears. The kind that come when something you wanted arrives and you weren’t sure it would.
“I love you too,” she says. “You impossible, charming, sock-losing cowboy. I love you too.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. “I was not going to cry in The Burning Tree.”
“Too late.”
“I want to go home,” she says.
“Your place?”
“Your place. The cabin. Where Lola’s crib is and the sock is on the lamp.”
“There’s no sock on the lamp anymore.”
“Yes there is.”
“Probably.”
We drive to the ranch. The cabin is quiet. No Lola. No stuffed horse on the couch. No monitor crackling. Just the two of us in a space that’s been slowly becoming something more than a guest cabin.