Chapter 2 #2
I take a swig of beer, hide the tight twist in my chest at the thought of Adrienne falling all over the player she’s been dating. A fact I like to never acknowledge around her.
“Keegan Fuller?” Dolly pipes up, brows raised. “That ended a while ago. I thought you knew that?”
The words drop like a wrench on concrete. My grip tightens on the beer bottle.
Ended?
My stomach drops, a slow, stunned twist of realization.
I thought she was still with him. That’s the only reason I said yes to the damn Mustang. If she’s single now… Jesus. What the hell did I just sign myself up for?
Ranger catches my eye, that knowing look that says he’s waiting for me to react. I don’t give him the satisfaction. Just grunt, spear another strawberry, and keep eating like my appetite hasn’t already flatlined.
It’s none of my damn business what Adrienne Slade does with her time. Never has been. That’s the line I repeat while Ranger tells a story about how he and Tyler nearly got into a fistfight with a stubborn fence post in their front yard that refused to stay straight.
“Swear to God, the thing had a vendetta,” Ranger says, waving his beer bottle like it’s a weapon. “Tyler’s yanking one way, I’m shoving the other, and Dolly’s on the porch hollering about how we’re both idiots.”
“Because you were,” Dolly cuts in, eyes sparkling. “I told you to soak the ground first. But nooo, you men had to wrestle it like cavemen.”
Ranger grins, unbothered. “Post still went in.”
“Crooked as hell,” she shoots back, laughing. “Don’t worry, I’ll make him redo it tomorrow morning.”
Amethyst pipes up from her booster seat, mouth full of mashed potatoes. “Daddy said bad words.”
That sets Dolly off again, hiding her laugh behind her hand. Ranger just shrugs, “Yeah, I kind of lost it for a little bit, said every damn word in the book while I kicked the shit out of the thing.”
Dolly eventually shifts the conversation toward Amethyst’s antics at preschool, Ranger piles another burger on his plate, and the easy rhythm of their family fills the kitchen.
The kind of thing a man ought to feel lucky to sit in the middle of.
But all I can hear, underneath it, is Dolly’s voice earlier. “That ended a while ago.”
By the time the plates are scraped clean and Dolly is wrapping leftovers I don’t need but she insists I take, my chest feels tight enough to split as my thoughts begin to spiral.
Why didn’t she tell me that things ended between them?
“Now you have lunches for the week,” she says, kissing my cheek as I stand. “Next time, I’ll make pie.”
“Looking forward to it,” I smile, managing a smile.
Ranger claps me on the shoulder on the way out, eyes a little too knowing. “Drive safe, man.”
By the time I head out into the cool night, the stars are spread thick across the ridge. Normally, they settle me. Tonight, they don’t do a damn thing.
Back at the ranch, the quiet presses heavier than usual. The mares shift in their stalls when I step into the barn, ears flicking toward me, their soft whinnies greeting me like always.
Rosa noses at the stall door, impatient for attention, and I can’t help the small smile that tugs at my mouth. “Alright, girl. I hear you. Don’t get pushy.”
She huffs like she understands, stamping once as I slip inside with the brush.
Her coat’s warm under my hand, muscles shifting easily beneath the bristles as I work down her flank.
Slow, steady strokes, the kind my dad drilled into me when I was a kid.
Horses know when you’re rushing, when your mind’s somewhere else.
“You’ve got more sense than most people I know,” I murmur to her, my voice low, the rasp of the brush filling the silence between us. “Don’t look at me like that—you do. Never judged me once, have you?”
Rosa flicks an ear back, leaning into the brush as I work behind her shoulder. I chuckle softly, rubbing at a spot that makes her sigh. “That’s it. You just want the good scratches. Greedy girl.”
Routine. Routine is enough. That’s what I tell myself.
But it’s not anymore. I can’t stop picturing her… Adrienne leaned out of her car window, laughing like she knew exactly how to rattle me. That spark in her eyes when she teased.
I curse under my breath, focus harder on the brush, on the leather tack that needs oiling, on the stall latch I’ve already checked twice.
“See, Rosa? That’s the problem with people, they’re complicated.
Horses—” I run the brush in one last long stroke down her side— “you’re simple.
You just tell a man what you need. No games. ”
She blows out a breath, nuzzling at my shoulder like she agrees. This life, the ranch, the shop, the quiet… it used to be enough.
But a few hours later, when I finally crawl into bed, the silence doesn’t soothe.
It taunts. Every shadow feels like her laugh, every hollow in the dark echoes with that damn spark in her eyes.
And no matter how many times I tell myself it isn’t my business, that she’s not mine and never will be, the truth is, I want her to be, but I’m not confident I’d ever be enough for her.
That’s why I stay on the fringes of her life, dancing in and out when she needs a flirty distraction or a shoulder to cry on. I’m the guy she fucks off with until Mr. Right comes along…I’m more like Mr. Right Now, and I’ve come to accept that I’m okay with that.
I think.