Page 75 of Sexting the Cowboy
I tip my head toward the ceiling like I’m letting a little warm air off and then shake it once, small, to myself. No. Not yet. I text no words back. I keep my hands on my own problems.
“I don’t know what to do. It’d be great if someone came out of the woodwork and told me. Any takers?”
I wait a moment, but sadly, there are no goblins hiding in the shadows, no demons in the wood grain to sell my soul to for all the answers.
There’s nothing. Just me. And whatever is growing inside of me.
I lock the lab and flick off the lights down the hall one by one. The clinic shrinks back into its outline, the way a house does when the party is over. At the front desk, I pick up the stack of mail and carry it to my office. The door sticks from the heat, so I shoulder it open.
The chair groans when I sit, offended that I made it work after a long vacation. I drop the mail on the corner of the desk, and it fans out like cards. I don’t play.
My phone buzzes one more time and then gives up. The quiet that follows is so huge it makes my ears ring again. It’s not like him to text so much like he’s expecting a quick response—he knows I’m usually busy at the tent. But maybe that’s because he has the day off due to my order, so he’s bored.
Or maybe he went to find me and found Jaden instead, who told him I took the afternoon off for an appointment. That was all I said to Jaden on my way out—I have a doctor’s appointment. When he asked if I was okay, I merely said, “Bad cramps.”
That was all he needed to hear on the matter. “Oof, say no more. My sisters had horrific cramps until they got on birth control or acupuncture. One had a hysterectomy—she couldn’t take it anymore. I don’t blame her. They put me on one of those period simulator devices, and I have no idea how women live. Seriously, I will hold it down here.”
He’s going to make some woman very happy one day.
Brick texts again. A single word this time.
Safe?
I have no idea how to answer him, so I don’t.
22
BRICK
The trailer rocks once,hard enough to rattle the forks in the drawer, and then the door bangs off the latch like somebody means to break the whole rig to make a point. They’re fighting with the door, so I already know who it is before I see him. I can smell the whiskey and the pride.
Reno stomps in with his jaw set and his eyes bright in the wrong way. He doesn’t look at my shoulder, doesn’t ask about my head. He points a finger like a gun and fires. “What the hell, Dad?”
I’m sitting on the banquette with an ice pack that’s half melt, half good intentions. The concussion roar has dropped to a steady hum, but it’s still enough to make the world feel like it’s wrapped in felt. Nausea has come and gone a few times every hour, but I’m hanging in there.
I set the pack down on a towel. “Shut the door.”
He kicks it shut with his heel. It slams and wobbles, and he doesn’t notice. “You and Annie? That’s what we’re doing now? We’re fishing in each other’s past like we’re short on water?”
“You gonna ask me how I am, or you here to practice yelling at your injured old man?”
“I saw you get peeled off the dirt,” he snaps. “You’re fine.”
“Lucky,” I say. “Not fine.”
“Whatever. You deserve worse.”
There’s a lot I could say to that. I pick none of it. I let the quiet sit long enough to see if he wants to fill it with something besides anger. He doesn’t. He steps closer and leans on the table like he means to push it through the wall. “You answer me.”
“I will,” I tell him. “But you want the version that makes you throw punches or the one that makes you think?”
“Don’t be clever.”
“I can’t help that,” I say lightly, because if I let the room tilt his way, we’re both going to fall. “Sit down.”
“I’ll stand,” he says, and he sways a little with the decision.
“You’re drunk.”
