Page 99 of My Cowboy Freedom
Chapter 24
Rock
The hands didn’t come back until almost two a.m. It sounded like they’d had a helluva time out there, under the stars. I heard Robbie and Jason singing all the way from the barn—“Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy).” The words drifted on the freshening breeze, growing fainter and fainter as they hauled their drunk asses to the bunkhouse.
Sterling and Foz came up the porch steps together. Elena greeted them quietly.
I tried unsuccessfully to hear what they were saying.
Feeling uneasy, I thumbed through my playlist. Sterling wouldn’t settle for simply warning me away from Sky. He’d make sure Sky got the message too, loud and clear:
Stay away from the kid. He’s damaged goods.
The whole welcome party was probably an elaborate rite of passage anyway.
Sky was one of the cowboys now—like his dad—like he always wanted. But the emotional day left a bitter flavor behind. I sat in the old velvet chair by the window in my room, next to a round table with a scarred leather top.
Elena and Sterling’s raised voices made the hair on my arms prickle.
I picked up my guitar and played for a long time. With the window wide open, drunk on starlight, I sang every goddamn love song I knew.
I might’ve been a frog, pining away for the moon in the water, for all the good it was going to do me in this lifetime.
Eventually, I was so drowsy I was strumming only chords. CThrum... FThrum... GThrum... FThrum...
Tap... Tap...
I blinked. Stilled my hands.
Tap... Tap, tap...
I couldn’t see anyone outside the window but the sound came again and that time, it was unmistakably pebbles, skittering against the siding below. I stuck my head out.
A small flame flickered and went out again in the shadows.A lighter? What the—
“C’mon, girl. Let’s go. Shh.” I grabbed my backpack and Maisy’s leash and went down the back stairs so quietly—
Except a man my size with a dog goes nowhere quietly.
“Where are you going at this hour?” Sterling met me at that bottom of the stairs, hands on his hips, expression less than happy.
Lie without lying.“I’m taking Maisy outside.”
His gaze held mine. Lies make me sweat and flush.
“The consequences of disappointing me will be severe.”
Duh. “You mentioned.”
“We’re not finished, Sterling.” Elena came to the office door, eyes red and swollen from crying. Strands of her thick dark hair had pulled from its usual neat braid. I started to go to her, but she shook her head. “Go on, Rocky. We’re fine.”
For a single, shocking second, Chandler’s mask fell. He looked ancient. Doubt, sadness, regret, anger—all those crossed his face. “Oh, Rock.”
Fear made me breathless. “Yessir?”
“Don’t go.” He sighed heavily while massaging his temples again. “Don’t throw away the future you can still have. You could meet a girl someday, and—”
“Oh,stop it.” Elena snapped. “Go, Rock. I can’t protect you from this. Talk to Skyler. Tell him the truth. Tell him your own family is trying to have youlocked upbecause you’re gay, and—”
