Page 117 of Braving the Storm
“You ghosting me, wild one?” Beau’s voice rumbles down the line.
Running my free hand through my hair, I blow out a breath. “Nah, sorry, just had a rough patch.”
Beau knows my shit. He knows exactly what it’s like when I get low.
Hell, I’ve seen him at his worst after a bad loss in the arena, too.
“Thought as much.”
“Things are going ok at the ranch, though. Nothing you need to worry your pretty little head about.”
He chuckles, and in the background, I hear cars going past. “I saw the photos you texted. Looks awesome, man.” The line jostles a bit, and the sound of a truck door shutting drowns out the noise of suburbia I know he’s itching to leave behind.
Silence stretches out.
I lean forward on the wooden chair, elbows on my thighs, staring at my boots. My brain is awash with memories of sitting right here, of seeingheronly a few feet across this table.
“Gonna tell me, or do I gotta get on my knees and treat you real sweet to get your secrets?”
That brings a ghost of a smile to my face.
“You’d fall in love with me too quick.” I scrub my hand over my mouth. “Wouldn’t want to go breaking your heart, boy.”
Beau takes his time. Fucking forever it feels like, to get it out.
“That what all this is about?” He muses. “Something crawled inside your chest and jumpstarted that lump of coal to life?”
“Fuck you very much.”
I hear him blow out a whistle to himself. “She got a name?”
“None of your business.”
“Oh, so you’re in deep-deep, huh?”
Being around Beau, living a breathing rodeo in each other’s back pockets for enough years that we did, I know the exact expression on his face right now. Smug fucker.
“Shitttt.” He sounds far too pleased with himself. This man has been waiting for goddamn years, threatening me that one day it’ll happen, that I’d finally know what it’s like to be left feeling this hollow and broken.
“She got you real good, then?”
I mull over things, not exactly knowing how to explain anything, or if I even want to.
“You ever thought you had it all, then woke up, and it was like the dream version of your life vanished?”
Beau shifts, and the speaker rustles as he readjusts himself.
“Can’t say I’ve been lucky enough to know how that feels.”
Poor bastard is married, and yet, I can hear everything in the way he says those words with such finality. Weighed down by years of being stuck in something that looked perfect on the outside, but had a decaying core right from day one.
“She must have been something.” He adds.
“You have no idea.”
“Did you fuck it up?”
“Hey. Low fucking blow, Heartford.”
