Chapter 24
Loved By a Cowboy
Cash
When I hear Callie’s little car on the gravel outside the farmhouse, I stop my mindless pacing. The dogs have been circling me all day, trying to figure out why I insist on wearing a line in the rug. Shit, do I run outside or wait for her to knock?
Why, at thirty-four years old, have I decided to become an inexperienced teenager who has no clue what to do, I have no idea.
I’ll just go out on the porch and greet her.
Yeah, that seems natural. Moving toward the door, the motion is interrupted by her tentative knock, the dogs’ raucous barking following.
I throw the door open to find her standing there, bag in one hand, coffee in the other.
I take her in, from thick blonde french braids, one on each shoulder, to the gold chain around her neck that makes me flush with pleasure, the oversized flannel unbuttoned with a tank top underneath, and a pair of tight, worn jeans.
On her feet are a pair of cute, but not super practical, boots.
“Hey, Cowboy.” She smirks at my perusal of her as she sweeps me from hatted head to sock covered feet.
“Hey, Hurricane.” I pull her to me, her arms out to protect her breakfast and press my lips to hers.
I lick her bottom lip before sucking it between my teeth and biting it.
Leaning back, I see her pupils dilated, and a flush across her chest. “Come on, let’s eat, so we can ride.
I mean, unless you wanted to consider my other offer? ”
“Shameless.” She shakes her head as she kicks off her boots, handing me the coffees so she can put them on the shoe rack next to mine.
Is it weird I made sure there was a spot for them, purely for the satisfaction of seeing them lined up next to mine?
I decide it’s not. She beelines directly for the table in the kitchen, putting the bag down before coming back and sitting on the floor, crossed-legged, so the dogs get a chance to jump all over her and get their love out before we eat.
I watch as Snapper circles her, debating on jumping on her back, and Tank lays down and puts his grey grizzled face in her lap, giving her hands a few licks.
“Alright, Snapper. Settle down, silly.” She laughs at him as he bounces, grabbing his snout and kissing him.
It’s on the tip of my tongue to confess I love her.
She’s so comfortable here—happy even. She fits into this place like I built it for her.
Standing, she wipes her butt off and goes into the kitchen to wash her hands before sitting.
She looks up at me, still standing, holding the coffee cups, a glazed smile on my face. “Cash, you want to sit? Or maybe bring some plates or something?” She laughs at me just standing there.
“Shit. Sorry, baby.” I move to do the tasks I had neglected while I watched her starry-eyed, finally sitting next to her.
Watching her bounce along, seated on my mama’s old grey mare, Violet, I smile.
She was so excited to see the horses—I introduced her to everyone.
Daisy, of course, remembered her and searched her for the peppermints I slipped in her pockets as we walked out of the house.
Violet smelled, decided she would do, and accepted a long rub down her nose.
When she got to Lola, she just leaned on the gate and watched the white horse reverently, some unidentifiable emotion on her face. Almost sorrowful.
“She’s a sweet girl.” I click my tongue, and she moves toward me, extending her head, looking for a treat. I pull an apple from my pocket, which causes Callie to laugh.
“Where are you keeping all this fruit?”
“This is Duke’s girl. She’s a great rider, but he was just here riding her, so I’m going to have you ride Violet today.
She belongs to Ma but since she’s not here to ride her, I rotate, to make sure everyone gets time.
” A thump against a stall at the back causes Callie’s head to raise and she looks concerned.
“That’s just Charger. My dad’s nasty old stallion.
I’m the only one who can ride him except Dad.
Come down, I’ll show you but don’t touch, he’s nippy.
” I tickle her side as I tell her, pulling a giggle from her.
After a visit with the ornery Charger, I show her how to saddle the horses, how to connect the straps.
She marvels at all the saddles hanging up.
My dad’s black one is custom fitted to Charger, the pink and white one with ‘Violet’ written in script on the side, and the soft red leather of Duke’s.
She runs her fingers over the branding of his name on the side.
Once we are all saddled, we set off, snacks and water slung across Daisy’s back behind me.
“So, Callie, you decided to stay for a while. What are your thoughts on Inspiration?”
“Would you call me cheesy if I said it feels like a Hallmark movie setting? Like it can’t possibly be a real place full of real people?”
“No, I feel that way sometimes. When I’m gone at the rodeos, I want to return to my little peaceful existence at home, where everyone is in everyone’s business and I belong.
But when I’m here for too long, I start to get restless, like it’s too quiet, too simple.
You know?” Suddenly, my little piece of paradise feels wilder and more unpredictable, and I know it’s because Hurricane Callie blew in with a snowstorm.
“Yeah, I think I do.” She sighs and looks out over the expanse of Montana wild spread out before us. “I think, when I imagine what home feels like, this is what it looks like. Open, welcoming, hopeful. There is life here, and peace. Yeah, I know what you mean, Cash.”
My heart beats almost painfully in my chest, at her words. At her confessing her love for my place in the world, and even though she doesn’t say it, I can almost hear the love she has for us too.
As our mounts walk side-by-side, swiping the occasional long piece of grass as we explore, Callie opens up. I stay quiet, giving her the space she needs to tell me whatever she wants. I listen intently, wanting to absorb everything I can about this woman.
She tells me long stories about skipping high school classes to put her bikini on and go to the beach with her friends, dates with her high school boyfriend to a restaurant that only sells barbecued pulled pork, and preparing for hurricanes in the fall as they surge up the coast from the warm Caribbean.
Experiences I’ve never had here in Montana.
In exchange, I tell her about throwing parties out in the fields, a ring of pickup trucks giving us the light and music we need for our bonfires.
Camping trips out into the wilderness where we attempt to avoid animals that might eat us while secretly hoping to return with a cool story.
Summers spent hunting waterfalls and taking dates to Colter Falls, thinking it’s so clever.
And winters tobogganing and warming ourselves by roaring fires.
We find common ground in laughter and memories.
“So, Ashley Colter, rodeo king, why have you not ever found yourself a rodeo queen?” I watch her from the side, looking at her profile as she looks ahead before looking over at me and flashing a smirk.
“Honestly?” Here goes nothing. “When I started riding, I was a senior in high school, freshly seventeen, and I got popular, fast. You can’t be a professional rider until you’re eighteen.
They wanted me on the circuit, out winning.
Sponsors wanted me, but women did too. I wasn’t even hardly old enough to be looking at some of these women.
I think there may have even been a countdown to my birthday, at some point.
” By both rodeo organizers and women. “I was having the time of my life. Once I graduated and turned eighteen, I joined professional organizations and started touring. There were parties, and women available all the time. The better I got, the better it got.” I reflect on those years in my twenties when I was with a different woman every night some weeks.
Sometimes they were in their twenties and sometimes they were old enough to be my mother.
“I learned a lot of new skills, quickly.” I give her a side-eye and she laughs.
“Yeah, I think I came face-to-face with one or two, last week.”
“You definitely came. And…my face was there.”
She giggles, almost embarrassingly, but with giddiness under it.
“Anyway, this went on for my twenties and women threw themselves at me, but it was all superficial. They weren’t actually interested in Cash, just in Ashley, and the thrill of the bull rider.
By the time I got to my thirties, a lot of the thrill of the women and such had worn off, and I just wanted to be at home on the ranch.
And by then, the hometown prospects had been snatched up by men who didn’t spend their twenties bed hopping.
” I shrug. “No one has really ever interested me before now,” I confess.
The words hang heavy in the air, the implication clear.
“What about you? I don’t need quite as involved a retelling of your love life, but you know, has there been anyone serious?
” I ask her, wanting to know more about her before she turned up here.
I watch her mood instantly shift, the air around us seeming to alter in a way I don’t know how to explain—or even understand. “What is it?”
“There was someone serious. Something very serious.”
I immediately feel nauseous. This is the dark cloud that always seems to linger just outside of grasp when it comes to Callie.
The thing she has kept close to her chest, letting the pain radiate out every once in a while, but never fully revealing.
I prepare myself. I know this is going to be heavy.
For the next fifteen minutes, as we navigate the fields and pastures, Callie tells me about Roger.
About how in love they were, and how he love-bombed the shit out of her before turning on her the minute she said, ‘I do.’ She gives me a story that makes me want to stop and throw up in the bushes, before ending it with a lost baby and a trip across the country.
Landing her here, where I have tried to convince her to love me, not knowing she’s trying to heal her own heart.
Her need to explore, and expand her wings, be on her own, and casually date makes a lot more sense. The feelings of inadequacy that seem to mirror my own are a lot clearer now, too. I can’t rush her or possess her. She needs to come to me, when she’s ready.
Pulling Daisy to a stop next to a creek, I dismount and drag Callie down from Violet.
Patting both horses on their rumps, they wander over and drink.
Grabbing the pack I have on the back of Daisy, I open it up and pull out a blanket, neither of us saying a word.
Spreading it out, I set out some waters and snacks, sitting down and patting the spot beside me.
We sit quietly for a few minutes, just the soft sounds of horses and the rushing of the creek offering the music of nature, of my home.
“Say something,” she begs of me.
I want to say the right thing. I want to soothe the rough edges left by someone else. I also, kind of, want to kill a man I’ve never met and wouldn’t recognize on the street.
“Would it be too much if I tell you I would like to maim, possibly kill, Roger?” This elicits a laugh that lightens the mood slightly.
“No, I get it. I feel that way sometimes. And other times, I’m just grateful I’m sitting here, with you. But I’m also terrified. I thought, well, I believed, he was good.”
“Callie, before this goes any further, I need you to know. I couldn’t ever do anything to hurt you, you are safe with me.
Duke lived through a life with a man like Roger and I saw what it did to him.
I couldn’t ever. Even if this doesn’t work out, you will always be safe with me.
” I wrap my arm around her shoulder, and she lays her head against me.
I kiss the top of it, and we sit silently for a while, just listening to the symphony of the ranch.