Chapter 31
SHELBY
Jake came in first place.
Despite my wearing his lucky hat, he rode the full eight seconds before sliding off the bronc and waving at the crowd with all the style and finesse of his high school years.
His cheer section was full of people who loved him and wore their voices out shouting and whistling.
But none were louder than Sophie and me.
He waved to the crowd and found us watching him as we waved excitedly toward him. Jake pointed right at us. Then he blew two kisses in our direction.
Easton and his cousins left not long after that.
He and Dusty got second place for calf roping. The boys whooped and hollered and played up the crowd after tying their calf. Just like they used to. The excitement radiated off of Jake, even from where I was sitting.
A moment later, I felt a warm body move to sit beside me. I didn’t have to look at Tessa’s face to feel her beaming toward me. When I finally braved a glance, she only nudged my arm.
“I knew you’d be good for him.”
Delight at her words filtered through my body, but I did my best to hold it in, not because I didn’t want it to be true, but because it still felt risky to hope for things only suggested—not yet said.
I spent the entire rodeo dodging questions and pointed looks from Tessa and Kelsey. If by dodging questions meant my face was as red as a tomato and I couldn’t stop smiling, then I nailed it.
When Jake finally made his way to where Sophie and I stood outside the arena with our friends, he hugged us all briefly. Sophie jumped into his arms, but before we could say much, we had another visitor in our midst.
True to his word, Cole Evans had declined to ride.
It was a big loss for the community. Those who didn’t know him as Jake’s delinquent father knew him only as a rodeo star.
It would have definitely drawn a bigger crowd.
But Cole was there to watch his son ride, like he should have done all those years ago.
Nothing about this eased the past. But there was a genuine excitement brimming from Cole and an awareness that had never been there before.
It might not have changed the past, but it did help pave the way toward a possible future between the two men.
Jake might not be ready to admit that, but there was a begrudging hope in his eyes as his dad shook his hand and told him he was proud of him.
And then Jake turned to me.
I racked my brain for something to tease him about.
But I was too proud of him. Too excited to see the wild spark back in his eyes.
Too thrilled by the cowboy hat on my head that could mean nothing or everything.
But none of it mattered, because when he looked at me, taking me in from his hat to the way the dress hugged all my curves, all jokes fled.
His fingers gripped the fabric at my waist, and he pulled me in for another hug.
Sophie chattered endlessly in the backseat as we drove home in Jake’s old pickup.
I was grateful for her distraction. I sat closer to Jake than the door.
The heated tension rumbling between us was palpable.
Tangible. My hands were in constant motion—in my lap and in my hair, scratching itches that weren’t there.
My feet bounced and stirred with so much energy coursing through me that had nowhere to go.
There was so much to say, but we had the cutest little chaperone delighting us both while keeping us from talking.
Sophie spoke of how Uncle Cade had picked her up and let her pet all the horses at the rodeo. How they really needed to get a dog. And how she thought the bulls looked much scarier than the horses her daddy rode.
Other than his hat on my head, Jake hadn’t said a word about Easton.
He hadn’t pulled me that last two feet closer or moved to put an arm around me.
He hadn’t knelt down and declared his undying love and devotion, which was fair.
I guess. We had an audience. And now everything seemed so normal again. Like nothing had happened.
But I was completely changed.
My body hummed with an energy I couldn’t tamp down. I didn’t want to tamp it down. A wall between us had crumbled.
So I sat with all those feelings trapped inside of me and stared out the window, watching my hometown go by in a blur.
The hardware store. Chad’s restaurant. The post office.
My dad’s car shop. So many memories wrapped up in this town.
Most of them with Jake. And now, tonight, I had one more to add.
The night I fell in love with Jake Evans.
I was in love with him.
I knew it with every fiber of my soul.
But was he in love with me? Could he ever be?
He was such a mystery. A closed door. Even for me, it was hard to read him. One moment, he was just my friend and teaching me how to kiss. The next, he was plopping his cowboy hat on my head in a moment of…jealousy? Like he was claiming something.
Like I was something he claimed.
Which fed into my tumultuous cloud of thoughts on the drive home.
That wasn’t entirely true. I did think of other things.
There was the way his strong and steady hands turned the wheel.
Or that time he had to shift the truck, and his hand brushed against my knee and sent a bolt of fire down my leg.
The way his cowboy hat still sat on my head.
It was too big, but I liked how it hid part of my face from view.
There were too many emotions at home there.
He was shielded from my view as well. I didn’t see him take me in; I felt it. Him. On my skin, everywhere.
It was also the way I realized how at home I felt in Jake’s truck. I had sat in his truck my entire life. The way I could do it forever. The way I completely adored his daughter.
It was also the way I wondered if I’d be moving to Boise with a broken heart.
And then, an email arrived, lighting up my phone.
I’d been obsessively checking it lately, so I’d turned on all notifications.
It was too late for it to be a work email, but while Jake was talking with Sophie, I clicked.
I was wrong. It was from Heather at Wild Horizon.
Five seconds later, my hand covered my mouth as I read the words.
Ms. Tucker,
I’m happy to write that our team loved your pictures and were all impressed by your interview. We would love to offer you the position as a photographer for our Western Montana and Idaho division. Congratulations! I will call you tomorrow morning with more details.
I sat there, frozen. Initial excitement washed over me, only to be drowned out by the fact that I no longer wanted to move.
So much had changed since I’d begun working at the ranch.
I’d become greedy. I’d discovered an abundance of things I now wanted in my life that had nothing to do with photography.
On one hand, I was proud that my work improving my craft all summer had paid off in this way.
On the other, much more important, hand, I was wearing Jake’s hat, and one of his pinky fingers from his hand currently resting on the stick shift was lightly touching my leg. Jake was touching my leg.
Emotions were a confusing business.
We pulled in front of our cabins, and Jake turned off the truck. He and Sophie slid out while I sat there for a moment longer in a daze. Jake noticed and came around to my side and opened my door.
We stared at each other, me sitting in his truck, him holding his daughter and my door—both of us waiting. Something unfinished between us. His eyes swept over me in a way that had me shivering in the warm night air that smelled like rain.
He held out a hand, which I took and jumped to the ground. The move brought our bodies closer. Only inches between us. His dark eyes were hooded and lit only from the glow of my soft porch light.
“I got the job,” I blurted softly, unable to keep this to myself.
Jake, who had been about to close the truck door behind me, stilled, pausing to look at me. “What?”
“I got the job. In Boise,” I added, in case he needed a reminder.
A lot of emotions crossed his face just then, and for a moment, some of them gave me hope, but it was the final one that delivered the most powerful blow.
A proud smile settled across his face as he pulled me in for a side hug, with Sophie still in his other arm. “That’s awesome, Shelb. You deserve it. Must have been all those indecent pictures of me that did it.”
I couldn’t even smile; my heart was a riot of fire and confusion. I stepped backward, out of his arms.
“Daddy, I’m thirsty!” Sophie said, breaking into the moment.
Jake stepped back, allowing me to pass by him, and closed the truck door.
I needed space. I needed to think. If I was going to cry, I would do it in the privacy of my cabin. My feet moved me in a crushing daze toward my front door, taking me away from them both when Jake called out, “Hey, Tuck?”
I paused. When he didn’t say anything else, I turned to face him, being careful to hide any trace of emotion from my face. “Yeah?”
He was watching me through narrowed eyes. “I think I do need that haircut.”
My brow furrowed. “Now?”
“Yeah.”
I motioned to the darkened sky, the stars hidden by clouds. “It’s probably going to rain.”
“Then I won’t have to shower after.”
There was something in his voice. Something in his eyes that sparked a tiny flame of hope inside of me. A hope my heart desperately needed to take a chance on.
I shrugged and checked my wrist, which did not, in fact, hold any sort of watch. “It’s kind of late, but I could probably squeeze you in.”
My whole body seemed to sigh at the smile that lit his face. The normalcy of our teasing brought an air of calm to my frayed heart.
“Let me get Sophie to bed real quick,” he mumbled, walking backward toward his doorway with a now squirming four-year-old. “Let’s do it outside, but if I walk away with a bowl cut, I get to cut your hair afterward.”
“Like I would ever let you that close to me with scissors.”