Chapter 43
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Morning came gently—the way it always did in this house. The one unboarded window in the bedroom let in just enough light to wake you without assaulting you. I was still pressed against Brody's chest, his arm heavy around me, his breath hot and even against the back of my neck.
I didn't move right away. Just lay there and let myself have it—the warmth, the weight of him, the quiet of a room that smelled like sawdust and sex.
Cat was sitting in the doorway, judging.
"Morning, princess," I murmured.
She blinked. Turned. Left. Her work here was done, apparently.
Brody stirred behind me, his arm tightening on instinct. His lips found my shoulder, then my neck, then the spot behind my ear that made me shiver.
"Mornin'," he rumbled.
"Coffee."
"That ain't the good mornin' I was hopin' for."
"Coffee first. Good morning second."
He groaned but released me, rolling onto his back and scrubbing both hands down his face. I sat up and immediately felt the aftermath of last night in about six different places, a few of which I wasn't going to think too hard about before caffeine.
Worth it.
By the time I made it downstairs, Brody had the coffee going and Cat fed—her Princess bowl licked clean and pushed halfway across the kitchen floor because she ate like she was trying to fight the food.
He handed me a mug without being asked—black, the way I took it—and leaned against the counter across from me.
We drank in silence for a minute. Not the heavy kind. The good kind. The kind where two people didn't need to fill the air with noise to prove they were comfortable in it.
"I gotta get you back to the ranch," he said, glancing at the clock on the microwave. "Rhett's probably already got a list for you."
"Rhett always has a list for me."
"That's 'cause you're the only one he trusts to do it right." Brody took a sip and pointed a finger at me. "Don't tell Slim I said that."
I'd tell Slim immediately.
We loaded into Brody's truck twenty minutes later. The drive to Wild Acre was quiet and easy, windows cracked, the morning air still cool enough to feel good before the August heat set in and turned everything into a slow roast.
Brody drove one-handed, his other resting on my thigh.
His thumb traced lazy circles on the denim above my knee while he hummed something I didn't recognize, and the wisps of his golden brown hair flitted in the wind.
He looked relaxed. Loose. Like last night had wrung out whatever tension he'd been carrying, too.
I was doing better. Genuinely. The noise in my head was quieter than it had been since that white dually pulled up in front of the main house. Brody had done that. He'd dragged me out of my own spiral and back into my body.
Back into this.
Back into us.
But quiet wasn't silent, and the part of me that had spent sixteen years reading rooms and planning exits didn't just shut off because a good man fucked me senseless.
She went on standby. Best I could offer.
We pulled up to Wild Acre and Brody cut the engine. The ranch was already humming. Slim and Tommy had the horses out, and I could see Rhett near the far paddock doing something with fence wire that was probably on my list—the one I shoulda started an hour ago, had I been on time this morning.
Brody came around to open my door because he was physically incapable of not doing it, and I let him because picking that battle every single time was exhausting.
"Hey, Lancaster!" Slim hollered from across the yard, trotting over with Tommy in tow. Both of them were grinning in a way that immediately made me suspicious. "You boys ready to get your asses handed to you on Saturday or what?"
Brody's face split into a smile. "Oh, you mean am I ready to take your money? Absolutely. Rhett and I've been ropin' together since we could walk. You two couldn't catch a fence post with a head start."
"Bullshit," Tommy shot back. "Slim's been heelin' like a damn machine. You're gonna be cryin' into your beer."
"Hundred bucks says otherwise," Brody said, puffing up his chest.
"Make it two hundred." Slim crossed his arms.
Brody hit me with a smirk that was begging for backup. "Viper, tell these boys they're about to lose their beer money."
I didn't answer.
My body had gone rigid from the inside out. Like someone had poured concrete into my veins and it was setting fast.
Saturday.
The rodeo.
Brody was roping in the rodeo.
Of course he is.
Team roping was as natural to these boys as breathing—something they'd done since they were kids, something that was as much a part of summer in Meagher County as the heat and the dust and the gossip from the old biddies. It wasn't a big deal to them.
But the rodeo was where Wyatt would be.
The rodeo was where Denny would be.
And now Brody would be there, too. In the arena. On their turf.
"Calvin?" Brody's smile had faded. He was reading me—those green eyes scanning my face the way they did when he could feel me pulling away. "Hey. What's wrong?"
Slim and Tommy had gone quiet, picking up on the shift.
"Nothing." I forced my shoulders down. Forced my expression into something neutral. "I just didn't know you were in the rodeo."
He blinked. Then understanding hit and his face fell.
"Ah, shit, viper. I wasn't thinkin'." He palmed the back of his neck. "With everything that happened yesterday, it just—we do it every year. It ain't no big thing. Just team ropin'. I'll be in and out." He glanced at Slim and Tommy. "Y'all go on. I'll catch up."
They took the hint, wandering back toward the barn with a few backward glances.
Brody stepped closer, voice low. "Hey. Look at me."
I did. He looked worried. Guilty. Like he'd failed some test he didn't know he was taking.
"You don't gotta come," he said. "Seriously. Hang back here, hang back at the house. Wherever you're comfortable. I'll ride, collect my winnings, and be home before dark. You won't even know I was gone."
That wasn't the problem and we both knew it.
The problem was, I couldn't not go. If Brody was at that rodeo—my Brody, the man Wyatt had looked at yesterday and filed away as a variable to be managed—I couldn't sit in a house six blocks away and wonder what was happening.
Couldn't spend four hours staring at my phone waiting for a text that said everything's fine or, worse, one that didn't come at all.
But saying that meant admitting I was scared, and I didn't do scared.
Not out loud.
"I'm coming," I said.
"Calvin—"
"I said I'm coming." My voice came out harder than I meant it to. I saw the flash of hurt cross his face before he smoothed it over.
"Alright." He held up his hands. "If that's what you want."
It wasn't what I wanted. What I wanted was for Wyatt Cole to spontaneously combust on his way into the Meagher County Fairgrounds. What I wanted was to go back to a couple weeks ago when the biggest problem in my life was which fork to use at a Bozeman restaurant.
What I wanted was to stop feeling like the ground I'd just learned to stand on was already shifting beneath my feet.
"I gotta get to work," I said, and turned toward the barn.
"Calvin."
I stopped. Didn't turn around.
"It's gonna be fine." His voice was steady. Sure. The voice of a man who believed the world was a fundamentally safe place because it had always been safe for him. "I promise."
Something cold settled into my bones. Not doubt—not of him. Never of him. But the feeling you got right before a horse spooked, when the air changed and the animal went tense beneath you and every cell in your body said something's coming even though you couldn't see what it was yet.
"Don't make promises you can't keep, boy scout."
I walked into the barn and didn't look back.