Page 8 of Craving Her Cowboy
They worked in a pattern. She measured and marked, he cut and hefted, then they both wrestled the boards into place and hammered them true. The tempo was fast and ugly, but it got things done. Sweat ran down his face in sheets; his shirt was glued to his skin, the fabric turning nearly black at the pits and back.
Every time he looked up, Asha was ahead of him. Lining up the next mark, shifting the chalk box, bracing a board with her boot. She never waited for him to catch up. He hated that. He also respected the hell out of it.
The silence was almost peaceful, except when a hammer missed or a board splintered and forced out a curse. She had asoldier’s vocabulary, creative and mean. He would have laughed if he wasn’t so pissed at himself for falling behind.
He started tracking her little tells. How she wiped sweat from her brow with the inside of her wrist so it wouldn’t mix with the dust. How she rotated the pencil in her hand before every line. The way she narrowed her eyes at him if she caught him staring.
She caught him doing that more than once.
By midafternoon, the joists were set, and they started laying plywood sheets for the floor. He’d underestimated how heavy slats would feel after hours in the sun. Every time he bent, his spine shot fire into his hips. Still, he wouldn’t slow down, not with her working at that clip ahead of him.
They had the first run half-laid when they both reached for the next sheet at the same time. Fingers brushed, then locked. He pulled away first, but the contact lingered, like static or the memory of a bad idea.
“You got the other end?” she asked, deadpan.
“Yeah,” he said, and they hefted the board into place, boots scuffing against the edge as they slid it home.
Next sheet, same dance. They both went for it, but this time he slowed, letting her take the lead. He followed, hands just behind hers on the smooth edge. When she suddenly turned, their faces almost touched. Her breath wafted over his cheek, and for half a second neither of them moved.
Then she blinked and stepped back. “You ever build with someone before?”
Gavin grunted. “Not like this.”
She snorted, not quite a laugh. “What? Someone who actually knows what they’re doing?”
He tried to find an insult in there but let it go. “With no one talking.”
She shrugged, bent to grab the next sheet. The muscles in her forearm flexed, and he saw the bruises from a week’s worth of working with horses that didn’t want to break already blooming on her skin. She was tougher than she looked. Which was saying something. He fought the urge to take over and tell her to rest. He knew, without even asking, that she would be pissed to high heaven if the words even left his mouth.
They kept working, wordless, all focus and friction. The sun kept traveling across the sky heating their skin. Once, she swiped at a cut on her palm, then wrapped it with electrical tape from her bag. He caught the glimmer of blood before it disappeared. She didn’t ask for help. He didn’t offer it. And he sure as shit wasn’t going to admit that he wanted to hold her hand to try and help her. That was just plain crazy talk.
Around four, the air got thick and syrupy. Heat radiated off the boards like an engine block. They had the platform half-sheathed and stood at either end of the structure, both breathing hard. Sweat ran into Gavin’s eyes, stinging. He wiped his face with his forearm, catching her watching from across the gap. She didn’t look away, and neither did he.
The job should’ve taken twice as long. With her, they burned through it. Even with the silence, or maybe because of it.
When the day’s last sheet dropped into place, they both leaned against the frame and leaned back so that the cover shielded their faces from the sun as they both stared out over the pasture. The cattle were distant dots, the wind barely moving. His arms felt like rubber.
Asha was the first to break. “Good work.”
He nodded, tried to say “You too,” but it came out a grunt.
She gathered her gear, flicking dust off her jeans. “See you in the morning?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll be here.”
She walked away, back straight even after a day bent over the job, and her hat tilted back. He watched her go, then looked down at his hands. They were shaking.
He’d gone into the day expecting another fight, maybe a total shitshow. Instead, he found a rhythm with someone who could match him, step for step, without making it feel like competition or compromise. Just… work. It was almost enough to make him feel human again.
After dinner, he came back to his cabin to shower, rest, and not think about anything. It was too early to fall asleep, so he sat on his porch and tried his best not to check his work email. He had people who were paid a shit-ton of money who could run things without checking in with him every thirty minutes.
As he sat and watched the sunset and moonrise, he ran through the framing steps, the cut list, tomorrow’s tasks. Then, uninvited, the memory of the note came into his mind:Breathe. One count at a time.
Finally lying down in his bed, he still found it hard to sleep. He drifted in and out, every time he closed his eyes, he would be hit with the kind of dreams he usually drank away with a nice bottle of scotch. He was back in the Humvee, mud up to the fenders, gunfire in the distance and a radio screaming in his ear. He was shouting for someone to get down, get out, move, but the voices all blended into one—his, and his father’s, and a woman’s voice he didn’t recognize until it said, “Breathe. Just one count at a time,” and even in his dreams, he realized it was Asha’s voice. Flat. Calm. Cutting through the panic.
He jerked awake, heart pounding, mouth dry.
He sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed, and pressed his palms to his eyes. The world came into focus slowly. He laughed, low and bitter, and tried to figure out when he’d started needing someone else to keep him from losing his shit.He didn’t come up with an answer and wasn’t sure if he would accept the truth even if it were staring him in the face.
