10. Facing the Past Together
Facing the Past Together
Colt
By Friday’s Cowboy Night, I couldn’t look at a closet or cramped space without losing my mind, thinking of Ivy’s body with mine.
Since the motel, I was useless. Hay bales I’d stacked came out crooked.
The fence wire I’d strung went slack. I’d poured Eldon’s coffee into a bowl instead of a mug, and he’d stared at me like I’d lost the ability to function as a human being, which was a fair assessment.
I stayed by Ivy’s side at the Sapphire all night playing my part as loyal fake boyfriend, fighting off an erection that wouldn’t calm down.
Ivy acted like she hadn’t a clue the effect our arrangement had on me.
With every kiss and touch we acted out for others to see, I longed for even more in private.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Knox asked Sunday, as we shifted the horses around between the paddocks and the pastures. With Dusty giving Silver clearance, we were trying him out in the paddock beside Tank, letting them get close and sniff each other, and testing things.
“Nothing is wrong,” I clipped.
“Okay. So you’re aware of working with your zipper down this morning?”
I glanced sharply at my fly. It wasn’t undone.
“Made you look,” he guffawed.
I blew out a frustrated breath.
“So the town gossip is true? You and Ivy? Good for you. At least that’s one Wylde sister who can admit when she’s smitten.”
I couldn’t miss his sarcastic tone. Here was a man who knew exactly what nothing looked like when it was shaped like a Wylde woman.
He’d all but admitted to me how much he yearned for Daisy Friday night—given how disappointed he was when she was noticeably absent again from the Sapphire.
He left early and had been in a mood all weekend.
I had my own problems, so I couldn’t dwell on his.
My body had memorized every detail of Ivy in that dark closet, and was playing them on a loop that I could not shut off.
Fuck… when she came apart, soaking my hand, my arms held her through it.
I’d stood there in the dark with my cock screaming at me and my teeth clenched so hard my jaw ached for an hour after.
If there were a next time, there’d be no holding back. The restraint had cost me. And I’m talking more than aching balls—a piece of the wall came down between temporary and something more.
Silver snorted, trotting up five feet away from Tank and the fence between them.
I monitored them and tried to remember the plan.
Holly Creek. Christmas. Leave Montana. Go home.
Be the son my mother needed and the man my father’s memory deserved.
Be a part of my sisters’ lives and get to know my nieces and nephews.
There was only one problem with that plan; it didn’t include the way Ivy tasted in the dark. And that I couldn’t stop thinking about it meant the plan could fall apart.
“Fuck, watch out!” Knox warned me, pulling me out of my thoughts, and then pushing me away. It all happened so fast. Tank reached over the fence to bite Silver, who reared up on his hind legs to warn the black horse off. Knox couldn’t quite get out of the way of his front hoof fast enough.
“Shit! Knox!” I hit my knees at his side when he fell to the ground. Tank ran off, leaving Silver skittish beside us. I texted quickly to Dusty and Ash.
By the time Knox came to on the ground a few minutes later, we were all staring at him.
He forced himself to sit up. “Christ, you guys have never seen a man out cold before?”
“You two need to keep your shit together around the horses,” Ash barked.
“Me? Tell that to Colt. He has a case of the Wyldes,” Knox chortled.
“Okay, give me space, guys.” Dusty ran him through concussion protocol, ultimately deeming it a mild one and to take it easy the rest of the day.
Fortunately, it was Sunday, which meant the chores were basic and we had “church” tonight.
The hilltop was golden in the late light. Despite the concussion, Knox demanded to do his usual turn at the grill, flipping burgers with one hand and a beer in the other, which probably didn’t mix well with the pain meds Dusty gave him.
His words turned into a lazy drawl... his dark eyes followed Daisy from the second she arrived with the season’s last apple pies, their edges golden and crimped. She’d somehow avoided Knox in his state. Probably a good thing. He reached for another beer.
“Should you be drinking that much tonight?” I asked.
“Probably not.” He shot me a look to butt out, and under his breath I heard him mumble about being injured and how nice it’d be if a woman tended to him for once.
Yeah, I’d be sure to get him back to the bunkhouse early tonight so he could sleep it off.
About the time I loaded a plate and sat down to eat, Ivy’s old truck finally crested the hill, parking beside Daisy’s rig.
She climbed out in tight jeans and a rust-colored flannel shirt tied at her waist. Her blonde hair swung in a ponytail; the sight of her hit me in the chest the way a punch does when you don’t see it coming.
She scanned the hilltop and found me, and for one beat our eyes locked, the air between us dense and complicated.
Then she looked away. Greeted Ro and Willow.
Hugged Sage, who’d come up from The Copper Cup with a bag of leftover pastries, compliments of Harper and Sheriff Patrick.
Laughed at something Poppy said. She moved through the group the way she always did, warm and magnetic, while keeping a measured distance between us that was worse than avoidance because it was deliberate.
I understood it. We’d drawn a new line in that closet, and neither of us knew how to uncross it, so we were doing what two people do when they were friends and things turned awkward. Carry on despite it.
“Colt.” Ash dropped onto the bench beside me with a plate piled high.
His dark eyes read my face the way he read horses, quick and accurate.
He didn’t comment on whatever he saw. “Need you to take the horse trailer out to Hollis Ranch tomorrow morning. Ron called this afternoon. They’re selling off the ranch and asked if we’d take on their workhorses.
Three of them. Good stock, just need a home. ”
The Hollis place. The name hit me like a fist to the sternum. I set my fork down because I wasn’t sure I could hold it steady.
“Selling the whole ranch?” I kept my voice level.
“Sounds like it. Ron’s been struggling for a while. Didn’t go into details, but the man sounded tired. Take Knox if you need a hand with the loading.”
“I’ll handle it.”
Ash studied me for a second longer than comfortable, then nodded and went back to his plate.
He didn’t ask why I’d clenched my jaw or why my hands had gone to fists on my knees.
Ash made an excellent ranch manager, a military man like us who understood that some things lived under the surface and came up in their own time.
After I finished eating, I took a walk out on a slight ridge of the hill, the one with a perfect sunset view.
I stared at the valley below and let the truth settle over me like a cold sheet, thinking about the Hollis family.
Ron and Dana Hollis, the parents. Tanner Hollis, the youngest, I’d watched Seth shove against a wall in an alley.
And Private First Class Caleb Hollis, who’d been standing six feet from me on the deck of a destroyer when a cable snapped and took him out of the world, leaving me there with his blood on my shirt.
At long last, I was going to face what I came to Montana to face. I was going to the home of the friend I’d failed to save, and I was going to look his parents in the eye, and I had no idea how to do that without breaking.
Footsteps crunched on the leaves and brush behind me. “I heard Ash talking about the Hollis Ranch,” Ivy called, coming to my side.
“Yeah.” I patted the ground beside me, and she joined me there.
“I want to come with you.” Her voice was practical. Her shoulder brushed mine and jolted my body with electricity. “After what Tanner told us in the alley, and what I saw in the motel room. The Hollis property was circled on one of Seth’s maps.”
I should have said no and told her it was a ranch errand, that I’d handle it, that she didn’t need to come. But the word that came out of my mouth was, “Fine.”
Her gaze locked onto the side of my face, searching. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Colt.” Of course she couldn’t just let me wallow. “Talk to me. Above all else, we’re friends. I know you well enough by now to know when something is wrong. You bristle at the name Hollis. Tell me why.”
I’d brushed off everything since the Navy, with deflection and distance and the quiet assurance that I was fine, that the thing that happened on the ship was dealt with and processed and behind me.
But Ivy had been in a closet with me a few days ago.
She’d trembled against my chest and let me hold her through a very intimate moment.
In the alley last week, she’d told me about the worst parts of her past. She’d handed me pieces of herself that she’d never given anyone, and the least I could do was give a part of myself back.
“In the Navy,” I started, my voice hoarse and strange to my own ears. “I lost a good friend. His name was—Caleb Hollis.”
She gasped, her hand landing on my bicep. “Oh God. Colt.”
“Yeah. The older brother to Tanner, the kid Seth had pinned against the wall in that alley.” I swallowed hard, staring at her hands.
The words were coming now whether I wanted them to, pulled out by the woman by my side.
“After being discharged from the Navy, I hiked the Pacific Trail and tried to walk the grief out of my body, and when that didn’t work, I looked up where he was from.
Silver County. Forest Grove. I found this ranch program for veterans, and I thought if I came here and worked the land he’d grown up on, breathed the air he’d grown up breathing, maybe I’d understand why he was gone—and I was still here. ”
“You came to Montana for him.”
“I came to Montana to figure out how to face his family. I’ve been here a year, and I haven’t done it yet.
” My hands were shaking. I pressed them flat against my thighs and willed them to stop.
“We were on a destroyer in the Pacific. Two days before the accident, I flagged a fraying cable during a routine inspection. The Chief Petty Officer looked it over and told me it was within acceptable limits. He had more experience on a ship, so I said, ‘Yes, Petty Officer,’ and moved on. Two days later, Caleb was standing six feet from me when that cable snapped.”
She squeezed my arm. I noticed her face, her concern, wet eyes too.
“One second he was there, telling me about his family ranch back home, and the next he was—” I stopped. The scene replaying in my head. I could never describe the sound of the cable snapping. “The investigation cleared me. Cleared the chief, too.”
I shook my head. Her other hand caressed soothingly down my back. Between my shoulder blades, flat and warm through my shirt, the pressure of it unraveled what I’d been holding in.
“Why didn’t I go over the chief’s head when he did nothing about the cable?
I deferred to authority because that’s what you do in the military, and Caleb died because I followed the chain of command instead of my gut.
If the cable had only swung five feet in my direction, I’d have traded places with him. Gladly.”
My jaw clenched, eyes burned. I hadn’t cried since the memorial service. The effort of not crying was its own brand of madness.
“And tomorrow, I’m driving a horse trailer to his parents’ ranch. What am I supposed to say to them?”
Ivy pulled me by the shoulders to face her. In the dim light under the pines, her blue eyes were bright with tears that she wasn’t trying to hide. “You tell them the truth. That’s all you can do.”
“What if they hate me for not doing enough to prevent the accident?” The question came out raw. Unguarded.
“Then you’ll survive that too. But I don’t think they will.
You should share some nice stories about him, too, like laughs you shared, things that will fill them in on his life in the Navy that they never got to see.
” She squeezed my hands. Her tears spilled over, two quiet tracks down her cheeks that caught the last light. “Thank you for sharing this with me.”
I reached up and cupped her face and wiped her tears away. “There isn’t anyone else I’d rather share it with.” Then I covered her lips with mine, the soft kisses not out of desperation to feel her come undone with me again, but out of a need for comfort—and connection.
“There’s no one around to see us kissing,” she breathed when she pulled back.
“I don’t care.” And I continued, taking pleasure in the simplicity of it—just us, her mouth on mine at sunset. Kissing because I was alive, and I could, when an old friend couldn’t.
We didn’t speak for a while, but embraced and held each other close, watching the last rays of the sun disappear behind the mountains.
“Please let me be there for you, Colt,” she whispered. “You’ve been there for me lately more than anyone has in a long time. You said we’d do things together. Let me do this with you.”
I regarded her face in the near-dark, this woman who was temporary yet maybe something I can’t walk away from.
“Okay,” I said, and kissed her forehead. For once, I let someone hold the weight of the world with me.