Page 19 of Down in Flames

“Like something one of your bulls chewed up and spit out,” he admitted, wandering over to the window and pulling back the curtain. In the thin autumn daylight, the town looked tired and dirty. Nothing like Sweetwater. The frame of the motionless Ferris wheel jutted up over the rooftops like the broken spine of a sea creature, rusted and tawdry. Taking a deep breath, he reluctantly asked, “Where are you?”

“Passing Diamond Lake now. Reception is getting spotty.”

“Oh.”

“It’s not what you’re thinking.”

“Yeah? What am I thinking?” West asked faintly. He wasn’t being a smartass. His mind had gone blank. With just a few words, Michael had yanked his plug right out of the wall, just like he’d done to his cell phone.

“You think I freaked and ran off in the middle of the night.” Amusement flickered through Michael’s voice, thicker than the static. “You don’t think a little thing like a kiss is enough to scare me, do you?”

“Two kisses.”

“Yeah, but only one of ‘em counted.” Michael’s voice dropped, the deep burr of it rasping across West’s nerve endings. He cranked his head to the side, fighting the shiver that ran up his spine. “I can’t get it out of my head. The way you tasted. The little sound you made in the back of your throat, the one that made it sound like you wanted to crawl inside me if you could. Have you been thinking about it?”

“I just woke up,” West said weakly, leaning one hand against the wall to support himself when his knees threatened to fold.

“You’re a real romantic, Owens,” Michael drawled.

“I’ve never had a reason to be.”

“Never, huh?” Michael didn’t sound surprised, but the hint of sympathy in his voice made West want to crawl under the carpet and die. “That’s a long time.”

He took a deep breath. “Why did you leave?”

A burst of static made the wait interminable, and he braced himself for the worst.

“Celia called early this morning. Our entire irrigation system is down. The pump station sprang a leak, but the pipes are buried, so I’ve got to rent an excavator just to dig it up before the entire south pasture floods.”

“Oh, shit. Is there any water running?”

“Nope, and we’ve been replanting the fields all week. Those seeds need water, or we won’t have anything for forage next spring. I’ve got to take care of it, but I wanted you to get as much rest as you could before you head home. The room is paid for another day if you need it.”

A pang of anxiety shot through him, and even though Michael was already a hundred miles away, he shuffled over to his open duffle bag and began pulling out a fresh change of clothes.

“Gus knows a few people,” he said, tucking the phone between his ear and shoulder and shaking out a dusty pair of jeans with his good arm. “I’ll see if anyone has some heavy equipment they can loan you. Did you use my discount for the seed?”

“I’ve got it covered, West.” Michael sounded amused. “It’s not your job to solve everyone else’s problems.”

He scoffed, trying to pull his jeans on without moving his bad shoulder and getting caught in the cuffs. “I can’t even solve my own damn problems,” he grunted, falling on the creaky mattress in a tangle of denim.

“That’s what this bronc-busting thing is all about, isn’t it? Climbing out of that bubble your folks have kept you in all these years. Taking charge of your own life, and to hell with what anybody else has to say about it?”

“Something like that.”

“Yeah. I figured. That’s why I’m not going to tell you to quit…even though what you’re doing scares me to fucking death.”

“What happened to Mary was a fluke, Michael. A one-in-a-million lightning strike. You know that. It didn’t stop you from letting Abby get on a horse, did it?”

“I’m not going to hold my little girl back just because I’m afraid,” Michael acknowledged. “But she isn’t out there taking stupid risks.”

“It’s not really that dangerous,” West protested, and maybe that would have been true if he were a different man. A man without a cardiologist on speed dial.

“It’s not really that safe either,” Michael said pointedly. “It’s like throwing yourself under a speeding train just to prove how tough you are, but there ain’t nobody you need to prove that to except yourself. Trust me on that, kid.”

“I get that. I do. That’s why nobody ever needs to know.”

Michael’s voice was grim, and the crack in it had nothing to do with static. “I don’t want to lose anybody else I care about, West.”

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