Chapter Forty-One
After tossing and turning almost all night, praying I wouldn’t wake Colton, I spent almost the entire drive to Sioux Falls asleep.
We had given our goodbyes to Alan, Dean, and Jimmy at five, before they headed out for a mere four-and-a-half-hour drive back to Guthrie. Colton and I climbed in the backseat, and I was out.
I slept for eight hours.
Which meant we still had another ten hours of driving when I woke up.
The Nash family was obviously used to these kinds of drives, all doing their own activity–Dennis listening to a book, Jo crocheting something, and Colton listening and watching the scenery fly by.
I was lucky to have some work from other projects that my team had emailed for me to finalize. I think I would’ve bailed and hitchhiked to the nearest airport if I didn’t.
It was a long, long, boring drive.
We pulled into Sioux Falls, South Dakota, around midnight, and even though I had spent the last eighteen hours sitting, I was exhausted.
Luckily, Colton’s event didn’t require its own horses, so we sent them back with the boys. Which meant we didn’t have to unload horses, find a pasture, and keep them watered and fed for the rest of the trip.
On the other hand, it meant they took the other trailer, and that Joe, Dennis, Colton, and I all had to share one. I had no idea if they knew we had been sleeping in the same bed the past few weeks, but with only one master room and one pullout bed, it was inevitable.
Not that I would ever complain about his body next to mine.
Usually, he slept in a spread starfish position on his belly, but that night in Sioux Falls, he tucked himself right behind me and kept himself as close as he could to me, holding me all night.
He was competing in the ride of his life tomorrow; he was scared, and I was terrified.