Page 75 of A Cowboy in the Streets

The sweet, hopeful smile she flashed me over her shoulder told me this dinner with us meant as much to her as it did to me. She was nervous. And it hit me then.

That old clichéd fantasy was fucking dumb. Coming home from a long day of work to a woman with dinner waiting for me. I’d had that before, actually. Emily had been a great cook, and she’d enjoyed it. More often than not, she’d had food ready to eat when I walked in the door.

Back then, Emily and I had rented a little ramshackle house in town. I’d leave for Lodestar before dawn and return home just before sundown. I’d had big plans to build an addition on one of the Lodestar cabins so we could move in after the baby was born, but that never happened. Most evenings, we’d plop down on the couch to watch dinner in front of the TV, balancing our plates on our knees, and stay there until it was time for bed.

And I had been grateful. Grateful to be living the exact life I had pictured for myself. It was a rare day I didn’t think to myself, I have everything I always wanted. Maybe I told myself that to convince myself it was true. To stop myself from looking below the surface of that fantasy and discovering that underneath it all, I had nothing.

Because even back then, when I’d thought I had everything? It had never felt like this. Not even a little bit.

This wasn’t my cabin. I had never spent a night here. My favorite beer wouldn’t be stocked in James’s fridge for me. Hell, I didn’t even have a toothbrush here. But somehow, it felt like coming home.

I suspected it had nothing at all to do with the hot pizza ready to eat after a long day of work and everything to do with the woman who had popped it into the oven. It had to do with the way her smile lit up the dark places inside me. I wouldn’t care if she never cooked anything ever again, so long as she kept looking at me like that. Like she saw me, all the way down to my soul, and she liked what she saw.

“Grab the salad dressing from the fridge, will you?” James asked over her shoulder as she brought the salad bowl to the table.

“Sure.”

I located a bottle of ranch and a bottle of Italian on the fridge door, and then my gaze snagged on the other items. I closed the fridge with a smile.

My favorite beer was here, after all.

When I volunteered to clean up after dinner, James and Ben headed to the barn to bed down the horses. I took my time washing the dishes, wanting to give them a moment together, aware that James and me being together necessarily shifted something in their relationship as well. Twenty minutes later, I followed them out.

I found them in the pasture behind the barn, bringing in the horses for the night. They had paused, lead ropes in hand, to take in the sunset over the paddock. James stood at the fence, one pink-booted foot on the lowest rung, her back to me. Ben mimicked her position, which made me smile. They were almost the same height.

My boy, my woman, my ranch. All lined up against the pretty backdrop like a postcard. Colorado was really showing off tonight, painting the sky with deep plums, pinks, and golds. My throat clogged with some emotion I was too scared to look directly at, but it felt suspiciously like happiness. Happiness and gratitude.

I came closer, my footsteps muffled by the whinnies of horses, but stopped when Ben turned and said, “Do you like watermelon, James?”

“Sure,” she said. “Watermelon is great. Do you like watermelon?”

“I think so. It’s been a while since I’ve had it. Grandma used to make us watermelon salad every summer. She said it was dad’s favorite. I’m growing some in her old garden now. They’re almost big enough to eat.”

I sucked in a breath at the memory of my mom. How had I forgotten that?

James shifted so she was fully facing Ben, her knee pointed at him, her elbow leaning on the top rung. “You want to make fruit salad?”

“Maybe.” He paused. “Do you know who Kurt Vonnegut is?”

“He’s a writer, I think?”

“Yeah. I haven’t read any of his books. He was our fifth-grade graduation speaker. I mean, not really. He was the graduation speaker at another school, and they played the video for us at ours. Anyway, he said it often feels like everything sucks, but when things don’t suck, we should remember to look around and say, if this isn’t nice, what is?”

“I like that,” James said, her voice so soft that I had to strain to hear it.

“I think Dad is grouchy because he misses Grandma. He doesn’t have anyone to make him watermelon salad anymore. I bet he’d think it was nice to have some watermelon. Don’t you?”

The quiet stretched long enough for me to wonder if James had answered too softly for me to hear. Her face when she looked at him…warm as a hug, that look. And then she finally spoke.

“I can’t think of anything in this world nicer than having watermelon with you, Ben, and I bet your dad feels the same way.”

Something sweet and achy bloomed in my chest. Fuck it all, I did miss my mom. It was something I had never let myself sit with because what grown man had time for that? My dad had fallen apart. The ranch had damn near crumbled after him. Grief had been shoved into a deep, dark recess of my heart so I could focus on the work that needed to be done.

My boy had seen all that. He had seen me struggling when I barely understood what I was struggling with. He was a good kid. Compassionate. I didn’t hate that he cared so much, even if I wished death hadn’t touched his life so much, so young. I didn’t hate that he had grown watermelon in his grandma’s garden for me. He was special, that kid.

His bond with James…that was special, too. He had turned to her, and she had known exactly what to say. She wasn’t his babysitter or his nanny. She wasn’t his mom. But somehow, she had become a person he needed.

And just like with his mom, I was in a position where I could ruin everything for him without even knowing I was doing it. Emily’s journals probably had something to say about that. But the thought of reading them, of seeing all the ways I had failed her and therefore Ben laid bare, made me physically nauseous. I couldn’t face it. Still, after all these years, I couldn’t face it.

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