Page 3 of Road to a Cowboy

There’d always be an ache in his chest where her loss would sit like a hole carved out with a rusty spoon. But he’d done grief therapy and had had tons of support from friends and family. He could talk about her now without feeling like the ground was going to swallow him whole. He could remember the first time he’d seen her across the room of his English 101 class his freshman year of college—blond hair spilling out the back of a baseball cap, mud-caked purple Vans on her feet, and a smile that rivaled the sun—without getting a lump in his throat. She’d seemed down to earth and fun, a theory that had proven right when Austin had sat next to her during their next class and introduced himself, forming the basis of a friendship that would eventually turn to more.

He’d been in love with Cal for most of his life.

He’d been in love with Lindsay for a handful of years, but it had been no less intense. Just different.

Cal was steadiness and familiarity. He was the Rocky Mountains in the flesh.

Lindsay had been light and humor. She’d been a ray of sunshine highlighting a spud in the ground.

And as a young adult who’d been too afraid to rock the boat by telling his best friend how he felt about him, Austin had convinced himself that there would never be anything between himself and Cal other than friendship—especially since Cal had never shown a lick of romantic interest in him.

And there never would’ve been anything between them had Lindsay lived. Austin had been as happy with her as he could ever imagine being.

But life had an end date. He’d learned that the hard way. Risks not taken were opportunities missed.

Was he still afraid of rocking the boat?

Sure.

But he liked to think he and Cal were more mature at thirty-three than they’d been in their late teens, when awkwardness and hurt feelings might’ve derailed their friendship. Now, if things didn’t work out, they wouldn’t let it come between them.

Austin needed Cal in his life too much for that.

In the weeks before Lindsay died, she and Austin had talked often about what Austin’s life would be like without her. She’d encouraged him to move on and find happiness again, a concept that he’d scoffed at then and that he’d scoffed at for several years after she’d passed.

Austin wasn’t sure what had changed in him over the past few months, but he was finally in a place where he could envision living the rest of his life with someone who wasn’t his wife. And of course that someone was Cal. It could never have been anyone else.

Austin just had to figure out if Cal was open to the possibility of them dating, a conversation he hoped to have with Cal very soon.

“I spoke with her family earlier,” Austin said, storing his gear in his back seat.

Cal held out the tripods. “How are they doing?”

“They’re not bad, considering. They were going to hold a five-year memorial. A celebration of life type thing. But they decided to take the money they would’ve spent on that and donate it to Lindsay’s favorite horse rescue instead. Lindsay would’ve liked that better, anyway.”

Austin slammed the car door closed, the sound echoing in the silence of the landscape. He rounded the car and found Cal opening up the trunk, two beers held in one big hand that he must’ve plucked out of the cooler in the footwell of Austin’s passenger seat. Austin unfolded the blanket he kept in the trunk for just such an occasion and spread it out—because after a day of ranching, Cal was always filthy as fuck. Austin wasn’t a stickler for cleanliness by any means, but Cal sometimes had wet patches on his jeans that weren’t water, and it was gross as hell.

A minute later, they sat side by side in the back of Austin’s SUV with the door open and the dome light turned off to deter mosquitoes, their feet sticking out the back, eating Twizzlers from the bag Cal pulled from somewhere. Cal clinked his beer against Austin’s. “To Lindsay.”

“To Lindsay,” Austin repeated softly, his chest tightening.

“Want to talk about her?”

Shifting closer so that his left shoulder and arm rested against Cal’s right, Austin said, “No. But thanks. I talked to Lindsay’s family today, my family, Las and Marco and several other friends who called. I’m talked out.”

He could practically feel Cal’s disbelief. “You’re talked out?” Cal chuckled, and the sight of one of his rare smiles hit Austin right in the gut. “That’s rich.”

“Shut it.”

“Remember that time you told our eighth-grade class about how you overheard your parents taking a bath together?”

“The topic I pulled out of the hat for my improv speech was Things that scare you.”

“You didn’t have to bring your parents into it.”

“I got an A.”

“Could’ve just talked about your fear of cicadas.”

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