Page 51 of Swift and Saddled

And I didn’t hate it.

I didn’t know what this thing with him was, but I loved the way it felt. For the first time in my life, I think I had a big ol’ crush. It was new and exciting, but it also felt stable and natural—like it was the start of something that would last.

That’s what I was thinking about when he came up to me—without Waylon, I noticed—at the end of our workday and asked, “Can I take you out?” My head snapped up from my phone, where I was posting some updates on the vaulted ceiling and bathrooms on my stories. Wes was wearing what I’d started to refer to in my head as his uniform—whiteT-shirt and blue jeans. These blue jeans looked like they were on their last legs, but he made them look perfect—like that Bruce Springsteen album cover.

“Take me out? Isn’t it a faux pas to ask someone for permission to kill them?”

Wes’s cheeks turned crimson, and all the butterflies in my stomach erupted from their cocoons. “Probably,” he said. “But I don’t want to kill you. I want to take you out like on a date.”

“Oh,” I said, surprised. “Um…” I wanted to say yes, but I didn’t know what that would mean for whatever this thing was. What if we went on a date and everything changed? What if he spent enough time with me that he actually started to dislike me like everyone else?

Like my ex-husband.

He liked me until he didn’t.

And for some reason, I had a feeling that if Wes decided he didn’t like me, it would hurt a lot worse than Chance deciding he didn’t like me—even though his decision ended with his leaving for work and never coming back, and my getting divorce papers in the mail.

Thinking about Chance and my marriage was still an unwelcome thing. Not because of him, necessarily, or the fact that I had been married, but because I wasn’t proud of the person I was during that time. It took about a month after we got married for me to realize all of the small things he was doing that were ways of controlling me.

Even though it was a bad situation, I wouldn’t undo it. But I wish I could go back and tell myself not to fight so hard to stifle myself and push myself into a box that I would never fitinto. I cut off so many pieces of myself trying to fit into his box, and I was just starting to get all of them back.

“You can think about it,” Wes said after I was quiet for too long.

“No,” I said, and I watched his face fall. “I mean, yes to the date and no, I don’t have to think about it.” Wes wasn’t Chance, and I wasn’t the same Ada that I was a few years ago.

His face brightened again—like the sun coming out from behind the clouds. “Saturday?”

“Saturday,” I responded. I said it quietly—like a wish. Wes’s dimples appeared as he smiled at me, and I had the urge to plant one on him. Right here in the middle of the job site. I knew if I did it, he would start blushing.

Blushing Wes was my favorite Wes.

“Ada.” Evan’s voice drew a cloud across the sun that was Weston Ryder. He was walking toward us, looking worried.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“There’s a storm warning,” he said. “Everyone just got an alert on their phone. It’s supposed to hit within the next hour. They’re saying to get to a spot where you can shelter in place.”

I looked down at my phone and saw the same notification. I must’ve been distracted by Wes’s dimples when it came through.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s make sure that anything that needs to be is tarped over, and then we’ll send everyone home.”

Both Wes and Evan sprang into action, working at lightning speed to secure the house. Wes even had the crew cover the windows in case the wind got bad. We hadn’treplaced those yet—they were supposed to get replaced tomorrow—so the chances that a storm could knock them out was higher than it would be with new windows. And I had plans for the old windows, and to make those plans happen, I needed them to be intact.

In less than twenty minutes, the crew was heading home for the day, and the sky was already darkening. A lot.

“Do you want to stay here?” Wes asked Evan, who was the last one in the house with us. “You’re welcome at the Big House. It looks like it’s getting bad out there fast.”

Evan shook his head. “I’ve become really partial to my little inn room. I’ll be okay. Thank you, though.”

I leaned in to give him a hug—something I didn’t do very often, which Evan noticed, because it took him a second to awkwardly hug me back. “Text me when you get there, okay?”

“I will,” Evan said. “Be safe, you two.” Evan untangled himself from my arms and shook Weston’s hand before heading out the door.

“Is it okay if I drive us back today?” Wes asked. I’d been driving us back to the Big House a few times a week, still learning how to drive stick. I was getting better, but I didn’t have the confidence to drive in a storm, that was for sure, so I nodded, grateful he’d offered. “Are you ready to go?”

I looked around the house, making sure everything looked okay and that I wasn’t missing anything. Not that I really knew that much about prepping for a storm. I was just guessing, so I was glad Wes was here. “Yeah, let’s go,” I said.

Wes opened the brand-new front door—I was pretty sure it would hold—and guided me out with a hand at my backbefore locking the door behind us. He grabbed my hand, intertwining our fingers, and I let him.

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