Page 15 of Buck Wild Orc Cowboy
For this, I did owe him. Not in coin or trade. I owed him for seeing something steady in me. For not asking what we'd been through before deciding we belonged.
My throat burned. I forced a blink to clear the sting in my eyes and rubbed my hand down my face before I spouted thank you too many times to count.
I sniffed, aiming to lighten the mood before it dragged me down to the floor. “Well, if your sorhoxes wake me up at night, I’m naming one of those younglings Stanley.”
Sel released a slow, tusky smile. “Stanley?”
“Seems like the troublemaker type.”
His low laugh rang out. “I’ve got one like that already, so Stanley he is.” The sound of his laugh hit low and sweet. I'd forgotten how good it felt to make someone happy, just by being me.
Max chuckled along with him.
And for the first time in a long while, I felt like I'd finally come home.
Chapter 5
Sel
After she left the bakery with her son to collect their things, everything went too quiet. I wiped down the already-clean counters. Rearranged the flour bins. Lined up the measuring cups by height. It helped for a little while. Then I reached for a spoon with no real purpose and stood there holding it, staring at the wall like it might give me answers.
I shouldn’t be feeling like this. They were coming to stay for a short time. A boy and his mother who needed more space than they’d find in an anonymous hotel room. This wasn't a big thing. Orcs believed in protecting the vulnerable. It was survival. I was doing what anyone would.
If she chose to stay beyond the one-month trial period, I'd help her find permanent housing in the town nearby. Transportation. That sort of thing. Then she'd be a regular old employee, and Max… I'd only see him here and there. He'd make friends and have other things to do that were more important to him than looking up at me with admiration or working with my youngling sorhoxes.
I wasn’t excited that she and Max were staying at my place. That would be wrong.
But then her laugh echoed in my mind, that gentle one when I’d shown her how to bang the mixer a second time.
She’d be under my roof soon. That should not have sent a thump through my ribs, but it did. I squeezed the spoon tighter.
We weren’t sharing a room, only briefly sharing the rest of the house. I'd stay in the barn. She’d have the main bedroom, the living room, the kitchen as her own most of the time. The arrangement was practical.
Still, my brain kept offering up images I had no right dreaming about. Holly brushing her hair in the bathroom, the door open and me standing in the hallway, watching. Max setting his book down on the coffee table before coming to the kitchen for dinner where the three of us would sit, talk, and laugh while savoring a well-cooked meal. Holly humming again as she made dinner or breakfast in my kitchen alongside me, her smile soft at the corners.
I told myself this was about Max. I remembered what it felt like to be small and afraid and left with few choices. Helping him mattered. That was all. Holly was…well, his mother. My employee. A sort of friend. Nothing more than that.
But her eyes had been scared, too. They'd suffered hardship, pain, and it showed in their tight postures, the ways their eyes darted to every exit as if they were pacing out the steps to escape. When we'd stepped out into the alley, Holly had scanned the street, her shoulders tense, like she expected someone to attack from the shadows. The fear on her face stuck to my thoughts and made me want to build walls and throw up shields for her. For both of them.
That wasn’t just about an employee, someone to fill a job. It was about her smile. Her laugh. Her quiet strength. The solemn way Max spoke of the story he was reading. The way he stared through the picture window on the front of my bakery with longing.
I returned the spoon to where it belonged and leaned against the sink on stiff arms. Breathed. Counted to ten. Twenty. One hundred. Closed my eyes.
She was not mine.
And I’d promised myself I’d never want again, because wanting broke things.
The last time I'd wanted something this much, I’d stood by her funeral pyre with tears streaming down my face.
They came back lessthan an hour later, like she’d promised.
I stood from where I’d taken a spot on the back steps and waved to my right. “Let’s go this way. Cut around the main road to the animal barn.”
Max nodded and tightened his grip on his too-small bag hanging from his shoulder. Holly carried her own. Being reminded of how little they had knocked the wind out of me.
“Did you ship the rest of your things?” I asked, hoping that was so.
She shook her head, her lips tightening. “This is all we have. We had to…leave Boston fast.”
