Page 7 of Road to a Cowboy

But Austin had uttered the truth like a gauntlet thrown between them.

It stung more than Cal would’ve thought possible. Not the words. They were just that—words.

It was what they meant that made it feel like spikes were embedded in his ribs.

Passing a hand through his hair and messing up the styled strands, Austin groaned. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be a dick. I just wish you’d protect yourself.”

“I can handle my mom.”

Austin straightened, a gleam entering his eyes, signaling nothing good. “I’ll come with you.”

“Where?”

“To deliver her groceries.”

“Fuck no. I still have scars from the last time you two were in the same room together.”

Austin wasn’t listening. He rubbed his hands together, a mean tilt to his smile that shouldn’t have been as sexy as it was, then picked up the rest of his burrito. “What time are we going over?”

Cal sighed and accepted the inevitable.

* * *

Barbara Anderson was poison. Austin would fight anyone who tried to tell him otherwise.

Including her son.

“Do you think she’ll be wearing her witch hat?”

“Stop,” Cal said, but he was laughing.

That was good, the laughter. Austin side-eyed him as he drove them to Cal’s mom’s house, her groceries bagged in the back seat. Cal gazed out the window, cowboy hat shading his eyes, his posture holding a hint of tension, no doubt owing to their destination.

Austin hadn’t meant to hurt Cal earlier, but Barbara Anderson truly wasn’t a mother. That wasn’t new information and Austin had figured he wasn’t telling Cal anything he didn’t already know.

But he’d seen the words hit like barbs. Seen Cal flinch, as though each barb had embedded itself individually into his skin.

Austin never wanted to hurt him—ever. He wanted to be Cal’s safe space. His place to land not only when things got tough, but when they were at their best too.

Barbara lived in the same house Cal had grown up in, only a couple of blocks away from where Austin had grown up. Austin had never spent much time there. Barbara had been as welcoming as a January cold front, so video game nights and homework dates and Saturday afternoons getting into trouble had always happened at Austin’s, where his mom would have cookies waiting and his dad would help them build snow forts in the winter.

In fact, every moment Cal wasn’t earning his goddamn keep—as if a kid needed to earn their position in the household, Jesus—he’d been at Austin’s.

Except for that year he’d lived with his dad in Idaho. They’d exchanged emails and phone calls over that year, and with each one, Cal had gotten more and more sullen. Quieter and quieter, until Austin had done most of the talking, telling jokes just to make his friend laugh.

When he’d moved back to Windsor and into the spare room at Austin’s for their senior year of high school, he’d been at his lowest.

And every time he visited his mom, he walked out with that same bleak look in his eyes that had followed him through childhood.

Austin hated it. Wished he could shield him from it.

Problem was, Cal didn’t want to be shielded, so there was nothing Austin could do except support him as best he could.

The grass in Barbara’s front yard was overgrown, which meant Cal would be back at some point in the next few days to mow it. The house was a single story with weathered greenish/taupe-ish siding and an attached garage. It had been built in the 1950s, and the interior had been renovated sometime when Cal was little. Austin parked in the driveway, waited for Cal to grab the groceries from the back, and followed him to the front door.

“Mom,” Cal called, stepping into the house. “I’ve got your things.”

She emerged from the back, where the home’s two bedrooms were, wearing a gauzy open-fronted cardigan-type thing over leggings and a T-shirt. “I told you to be here by noon.”

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