Page 121 of My Cowboy Freedom
Her words resounded, even even after hanging up. The city was a living monster with a beating heart. Traffic raced every which way through its clogged arteries. I watched, waiting for something to happen.
At the Rocking C, the earth was a gentle giant, sleeping under blankets of fir trees.
I reached up to draw the filmy curtain back over the window. The curtain pull came off unexpectedly. I frowned at my hands, which seemed...
Huge. Capable. At the moment my hands seemed large as manhole covers. My body, in the reflection I could still see through the gap in the curtains, was also big and fit and... capable.
Capable?
At the Rocking C, I was more than capable. I wasvaluable. My God, I couldn’t let them treat me like a defective appliance they had some nostalgic attachment toward.
I’m not the Brave Little Toaster, goddamnit.
I am a precision machine, slight wiring problem be damned.
I grabbed my key card and ran down the hall to Elena’s room. She opened at my knock. Foz sat in a wing chair, watching highlights of a baseball game on the TV. He smiled and I nodded.
My attention was all for her. “I need to go home.”
“I know.” Sadness clouded her gaze. “Your parents told me what they decided. I’m so sorry.”
“No. I mean, yeah. That’s fucked, but I need to gohome. To the Rocking C, first.”
She shook her head. “Rock, we can hardly—”
“We need to go right the fuck now, Elena. There’s no time.” I gripped her by her shoulders, needing her to hear me. To listen, like she always did, with her heart and not just her ears. “If we leave now, I can explain things to Sky. If we leave now, I’ll have a chance to talk to him. To tell him—” My voice broke.
Tell him what?
“I have to go,” I said. “I have no choice. The least I can do is tell him to his face. All I want is a little time to say good-bye.”
I held my breath, watching every emotion play over Elena’s face. Love, regret, sorrow, resignation.
It was Foz who broke the silence. “Let him go, ’Lena. I can take him back with me tonight. Be back before you know it.”
In a move that told me more about them than he probably intended, he tugged her braid, playfully.
She shivered.
Foz’s whispered words were pitched low, meant only for her. “Sounds like a reasonable request for a man in love.”
Was I inlove? Hell if I knew.
Love seemed like a pretty foreign concept right then.
I was willing to settle for a single night as the center of Sky’s attention. I wanted every second of the time we had left.
I couldn’t think past my immediate problem.
“Can I go, Elena?”
“Yes.” She turned away.
How was I going to spend a lifetime with Sky before three in the afternoon?
