Page 14 of His Cowboy Heart

It was too loud.

Just too fucking loud.

A ranch high in the mountains in a bumfuck of a town was loud.

I laughed harshly because onlyIcould draw that kind of conclusion.

There was some logic behind it, though. If you were going at it hot and heavy with a guy one second and then he was pushing you away like you were a piece of garbage, living in a big city meant you could easily escape, whether it be in the form of grabbing a cab or just disappearing in the endless crowds of people lining the sidewalks. The familiar sounds of the city would act as white noise so if someone needed it to, it could drown out everything else, including the last words the guy had spoken, no, yelled at you before he’d called foul on the whole thing.

Problem with bumfuck was that there were enough people, specifically cowboys, moving about the ranch that trying to run as fast and far as you could to escape somewhere that you’d be able to lick your wounds was impossible. Between the unfamiliar turf, the strange men calling back to each other in their weird cowboy talk, and the endless sounds of the different farm animals going about their business, there was no white noise to hide behind.

Jules.

Don’t.

In a matter of seconds, Flynn had been whispering the first word—my name—and shouting the second in disgust.

I managed to keep my wits about me as I hurried across the driveway, but when I saw Xavier, Curtis, and Brooks talking at the bottom of the farmhouse’s porch steps, I veered left and kept walking until the sounds started to fade. Growing up in New York had heightened my sense of direction, so I knew that I was far away enough from the main part of the ranch to escape prying eyes but close enough that I wouldn’t get lost.

I followed the sound of trickling water until I found a little creek bed. I was surrounded by a patch of trees, but since I could still hear the faint voices of the men working on the ranch, I didn’t hesitate to find an old log to sit on. I felt hot, cold, and numb all at the same time. I stared at the little stream by my feet but didn’t care how clear it looked or how pretty it was as the water flowed around the bigger rocks and stumbled over the smaller ones.

I should have been crying but I wasn’t. I hurt, but I wasn’t crying. It wasn’t that I wasn’t a crier because I was. I’d cried after the three assholes in that alley had beaten me and called me names. They’d physically hurt me, but the personal degradation had been so much worse. I’d cried the entire drive up the mountain to the ranch where my friend was waiting for me, and I’d cried in his arms when he’d asked me what had happened to me.

Right now, though, I doubted I could cry even if I wanted to. The only other time I could remember this feeling was when…

I shook my head because I couldn’t deal with the past now. I never gave that horrifying time in my life any real estate in my brain. After all, you couldn’t be the life of the party or the queerest of the queers who believed in things like the gay mafia if you were dredging up the horrors of the past.

A light pecking on my pants caught my attention. I looked down to see Lovey picking at the hem of my leggings. I gently petted her on the top of her head since I had no idea where else to touch her or whether chickens even liked to be petted. Now was the time to find out because if she jabbed her beak into my skin, I probably wouldn’t feel it anyway.

The cute little hen looked at me liked she was trying to figure me out and then with one swift move, she flapped her wings and did a little hop that had her landing in my lap. I waited to see what she’d do next, but she merely crouched where she was and began rubbing her beak against my arm like she had an itch she needed to be scratched. I’d never had a cat or dog, but I figured those animals would have cuddled up to their owners in a similar manner. Was it possible the sweet chicken had picked up on my emotions, or lack thereof, and was reacting to that?

I didn’t know or care. I just began stroking her like I’d seen people do with their pets. Strangely enough, the rhythm of running a few fingers lightly along her back was comforting in its own way. Unfortunately, not even the hen’s kindness was enough to pull me from the rabbit hole my mind was falling into.

What had I done to Flynn to warrant such cruel behavior? I wasn’t the one who’d kissed him first. I hadn’t made him press me against the wall and lift me, leaving me no choice but to wrap my legs around his body. I hadn’t been the only participant as our tongues had tangled, and the whimpers coming from deep in my throat hadn’t been self-induced. Hell, I hadn’t even touched him below his neck. Yet the way he’d dropped me and pushed me away would have been the exact behavior from a bi-curious guy who’d suddenly come to the realization that he liked the feel of a man’s lips just as much as or even more than a woman’s.

“I shouldn’t have gone near him,” I muttered to Lovey.

Hell, I never should have gotten it into my head that I could cook a nice breakfast for all the ranch hands instead of just the men living in the main house. I’d never told anyone before, including Brooks, but I liked cooking. I’d only ever really done it for one person, who happened to be myself, but the idea of feeding something delicious to a group of men who apparently just slapped some eggs and bacon in a pan and burned a bag’s worth of bread every morning had been exciting. It’d made me feel useful.

When I’d asked Brooks’s uncle—who’d insisted I call him Uncle Curtis from the moment he’d met me—if I could take a stab at cooking breakfast for everyone, he’d sent me straight to the chicken coop with a big wicker basket. There’d been no instructions beyond that, so it’d been a rough start with trying to maneuver myself around what had turned out to be some very hungry chickens, but a text from Brooks had explained that I needed to feed the little beasts first and had told me where to find the seeds they ate. His text had included an assortment of emojis, including chickens, eggs, laughing smileys, and several of the pile of shit ones.

In truth, I’d kind of forgotten about feeding breakfast to anyone after I’d started interacting with the chickens. They’d probably been a whole lot less fascinated with me than I was with them, but it’d been strangely soothing to interact with them after their feeding frenzy.

Then I’d had my own feeding frenzy with Hot Cowboy, whose real name now took up way too much of my brain.

Flynn.

God, even now I could feel the scrape of his beard along the skin around my mouth. I couldn’t say I’d ever fucked a guy, let alone kissed one, who’d sported more than just some scruff on his jaw. Who would have guessed that the sensation of the little whiskers would make my skin tingle?

I shut down the image of Flynn’s amber eyes glued to mine right before he kissed me.

There was no reason I’d ever need to interact with the asshole ever again. I wasn’t going to offer him any apologies and I wasn’t interested in any explanations, if he deigned to try and give me one. It would be easy to keep away from him. Like most of the cowboys on the ranch, he would spend most of his day working with the cows—no, cattle—so I’d never even have to set eyes upon him again until I left Wyoming for good.

You can get on that plane today, you idiot.

I could. I should. It wasn’t like I couldn’t afford to send for a car and driver or take Brooks’s rental to the airport and pay someone to drive it back to the ranch. Getting back to my life in New York was exactly what I needed to do. I knew who I was there.Othersknew who I was there. It would be easy to find some strong, buff guy with whiskey-colored eyes to fuck me. Since I’d bottomed from the time I’d lost my virginity, I knew a random hookup would be exactly what I needed. The guy would clumsily fuck me in a bathroom stall at some random club and before my dick had gotten hard enough for me to even attempt to jerk myself off, the guy would be slamming me as hard as he could into the wall or whatever I was braced against and shouting in my ear as he filled the condom. I could spend the entire time imagining it was Flynn standing behind me, manhandling me, treating me like I was something to use to get off and then leaving me hanging. No kissing, no soft whispers, no slow, delicious exploration of my body before slowly working his cock into me as we lay face to face, our expressions locked in wonderment at how good it felt as we became one.

So why wasn’t I hightailing it back home and getting the gorgeous asshole out of my mind by having his lookalike fuck me like all the other guys did? One round of disappointing sex with a guy who looked like Flynn would instantly put him out of my mind. So why was I still here?

---