Page 55 of Boston
Cash ignored him. “I’ll find a way through the crippling loneliness and the bitter thoughts that everyone in the family is off living their best life—except those of us who have been forgotten.”
“You arenotforgotten,” Daddy growled. “Stop saying that.”
Cash probably wasn’t, but he’d gone down the rabbit hole and he couldn’t get back up right now. “I’m just gonna go,” he said. “Take the steak to Jem. He likes medium-rare.”
“Cash,” Daddy said as he turned around.
He walked away.
“Cash,” Daddy called again.
The loud music and chatter in the restaurant drowned out his father’s call, if he’d even made a third one. Cash felt like a raging bull as he charged through the restaurant and out the door. The summer heat and sunlight assaulted him, but he went toward his truck.
“Cash,” a woman called, and he turned with his hand on the door handle. Gina ran toward him with a white Styrofoam container in her hand.
Pure humiliation combined with the dangerous storm inside him, and Cash didn’t know if he should get in his car and drive away or wait for the pretty woman to catch up to him.
“I saw you standing at the end of the table,” she said. “Looked like you were gonna leave, so I boxed up your dinner.” She reached the tailgate and extended it toward him, somehow feeling that she shouldn’t come too close.
Cash knew how to flip switches inside himself, because he had to do it all the time for public relations in the rodeo. He did so now, painting a smile over his face. “Well, thank you, Miss Gina,” he said as he swaggered to the end to the back of the truck. He took the container from her and gazed down at her. “What time do you get off?”
Cash had never had a problem getting a girlfriend, especially since joining the rodeo.
“I’m the early shift tonight,” she said, reaching up to tuck her hair behind her ear. “Nine-thirty.”
Cash nodded and crowded in closer. “Maybe I’ll come over.”
Gina grinned at him and nodded. “You remember where I live?”
“It’s that place up on the bluff, right?” he asked.
“Yep.” She popped the P and reached out and ran one blood red fingernail up the front of his jacket. “I probably won’t be there till ten.”
Cash nodded, and Gina giggled, turned on her heel and hurried back to the restaurant.
Cash watched her go, and at the door, she turned and waved her fingers at him before ducking inside. His father had not followed him, and that surprised Cash as much as it ignited a new round of anger to flare through his chest.
No, he didn’t really know what to do with his life. But what he had said to his father was true—he only had himself to rely on to figure it out.
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
Maverick Young slid open the back door of his house and went out onto the deck. “Just Jem and Blaze,” he said to his wife still in the house. They’d just gotten home from church a few minutes ago, where he’d informed her that his brothers were coming over. He should have known to specify which ones, because Mav hadeightbrothers, and hosting all of them on a Sabbath afternoon required a lot more than a half-hour’s notice.
“Is this one of your cowboy-dad-therapy sessions?” Dani asked.
Mav chuckled to himself as he lifted the lid on the outdoor locker and pulled out the hammocks he kept there. “Yeah, let’s call it that.”
Sometimes he needed the therapy, but usually Mav acted as a sounding board for his brothers as they went through hard things with their wives and kids. Some of them had ex troubles as well, and Mav was exceedingly blessed in that regard.
Still, things with Beth and Boston could always be better, and he worried about he and Dani’s two oldest kids the most.
With his thoughts on his children, he set about hanging the hammocks in the trees in the backyard in anticipation of hisbrothers’ arrival. He’d just finished with the third one when Lars yelled from the back deck, “Daddy, Uncle Jem is here.”
“Well, send him on out, buddy,” Mav called, and wherever Jem was, Blaze was never too far behind. They both came through the back door and only Jem ruffled Lars’ hair and grinned at him.
Blaze looked like he’d been dunked in tar and rolled in the worst thunderstorm Wyoming had seen in decades. The bad energy flowed off of him, and he reminded Mav of the man he’d been in the rodeo—reckless, dangerous, angry.
