Page 59 of The Love Lie
And that was it. They’ve been out here together for three days, and his father hasn’t asked a single word about the show. No one has except Wesley, his best friend and the son of his father’s foreman. They grew up together, as close as brothers. On more than one occasion he wished they were brothers, if it meant Boone could have been his father too. The first time he roped a calf, the foreman was the one to offer a proud slap onthe back. His own father just told him,Again. That damn word. Again. Again. Even the thought of it makes Cooper writhe.
“Still moping?”
He doesn’t shift his hat from where it covers his face. “Shut up, Wes.”
“You gotta find this girl, Coop.”
“I’m trying.”
“I want to thank her.”
“For making me a miserable son of a bitch?”
“Nah.”
Cooper’s hat is toed off by a familiar boot. He squints against the dying sun and looks up at the shit-eating grin beaming down at him. Wes’s brown hair is a sweaty mop on his head, his tan cheeks are caked in dirt, and he smells to high hell after twelve hours on horseback, yet his brown eyes twinkle.
Bastard.
Wes chuckles softly and lands beside him on the grass with athud. “For finally giving me a chance to get laid.”
“Yeah?” Cooper snorts and eases to a seated position as he slides his hat back into place. “How’s that?”
“With you taken—”
Heat spikes down his sternum. “I’m not taken.”
Wes shoots him a knowing grin.
“It’s not like that,” he explains with a scowl. Wes’s grin deepens. “It’s not. We just have unfinished business.”
“Unfinished business like getting hitched and having kids?”
Cooper elbows him in the gut. Wes anticipates the move and partially blocks the blow with his arm. His laughter half shifts to a groan.
“I’m just saying—”
“Well, don’t.”
“You’ve got that look, Coop.”
“What look?”
“That look Beau Hardey had before he got down on one knee at graduation. The one Caleb Saunders had that night we all snuck down to the lake. Three months later, he and Haddie eloped. Six months after that he was a dad, if you catch my drift. It’s the look of a man with a noose around his neck, but he likes it so much he tightens the rope all by his goddamn self. I never thought I’d see that look on your face, Coop, but it’s there, plain as day, whether you want it to be or not.”
Cooper lifts his hat to scrub a hand through his hair before settling it back into place. “She lives in New York.”
“That’s not a denial.”
“It’s a dead end.”
“Maybe.”
Wes lets the word hang there. The confirmation stings, a brand digging slowly into Cooper’s skin, marking him.
“Or maybe,” his friend continues, “she just needs someone to show her a better way.”
Wes turns to where the sun sinks below the horizon, casting a golden hue across the plains. Clouds catch the glow, wispy edges burning like flames in the sky. Grasses rustle and sway in the wind. Crickets chirp. Cattle moo. In the soft indigo overhead, stars already sparkle. It’s breathtaking. Even having grown up here, Cooper feels a hitch in his pulse. Yet his gaze shifts to somewhere over the edge of the rolling hills, not quite on the land, not quite on the sky, in that almost imperceptible in-between where the view stretches into forever, and he wonders, the way he always has, what else is out there waiting for him.
