Page 43 of Sexting the Cowboy
“Yeah?” Reno lifts his cup. “You writing a book?”
“Maybe I’ll make a vlog,” she teases. “Lesson one—stop drinking your feelings.”
Levi shoots her a look. “Blaze.”
“What?” She stabs a fry in the ranch and waves it at Reno like a wand that she dares him to grab. “I’m being supportive.”
Cash clears his throat. “Let it rest.”
Reno smiles at Blaze—his old smile, the one that won ribbons and hearts—and it doesn’t touch his eyes. “I’m resting fine.”
He isn’t. He’s vibrating in place. I watch the line of his mouth and the way his hand tightens on the cup. I know that hold. It’s the one men use when pride’s the only thing they have left.
“Food’s good,” I say into the silence, because sometimes nothing saves a night like changing the subject. “Blaze, you did right by the tip.”
“I always do,” she says, softer, and for a moment she looks ten again. Then she pulls the boss face back on and points at Levi’s plate. “You took all the pickles. That’s a hate crime.”
“Pickles are for winners,” he says, unruffled, and slides two back onto her plate without losing eye contact. They bicker about condiments long enough to smooth the edges off the mood.
Reno watches the window and says, to no one, “She wouldn’t even look at me. Like I’m a stranger.”
Levi’s jaw flexes. “Maybe give her space.”
“I gave hermonths,” Reno says, heat under the words.
I open my mouth and close it again. Nothing I can say will improve this.
Blaze sighs and pushes her plate away. “Maybe she’s just done, Ren. That happens. People get to say no.”
He snorts, ugly. “You think I don’t know what no sounds like?”
“Not lately,” she shoots back, then softens as soon as it lands. “I’m not trying to fight with you.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
Cash leans forward on his knees, palms up. “We’re eating. Let’s just…be civil for a minute.”
Reno knocks his cup back and pours more. I want to put my hand over the bottle, but I don’t. He’s a grown man. He made it to this dinner on his own two feet. Every time I reached too hard in the last few years, he broke the hand I offered just to prove he could.
“Ford wants us clean,” I say, aiming at easy ground that’s really a warning. “Says the ‘family values’ thing tests well. He’s not wrong. Makes sponsors comfy. Means money. So watch it with the drinking in public, at least. Keep it tight.”
Reno shrugs. “Ford can sell jeans with our name without putting a halo on my head.”
“Maybe,” I say, calm and even, “but let him do his job without you making it harder. We all eat off the same plate.”
He takes his time with the next sip, then nods like he’s humoring a stranger. “I hear you.”
I don’t know if he does. I don’t press. A man who’s decided not to listen will take your words and turn them into nails.
Blaze changes tack. “Levi, show Dad the video from warm-ups,” she says, grabbing the remote to turn the TV on quietly, just motion and color. “Cash got that slick dismount today.”
Cash blushes but hands over his phone. The replay shows Cash loose and light, the kind of move that looks easy but it’s all work. Levi narrates like an announcer until Reno smiles for real, the first one in a long time. For a few minutes, we’re just Wyatts—noise, elbows, making fun of Levi’s hair.
Then the quiet creeps back in like a tide. The bottle lowers an inch with each lap. Reno’s laugh gets thinner, his sentences shorter, posture looser. The drunker he is, the less he’s himself. I miss who he was before the accident. I wonder if he does too.
I should feel guilty about Annie. I try the thought on again like a suit I know doesn’t fit. It won’t button.
I care about my son, and I care about the way she made last night feel like somebody turned the dimmer up in a room I forgot had light. Those two truths don’t cancel each other out. They just sit uncomfortably close.
