Page 93 of Sexting the Cowboy
“Whatever you need. But when you want to deal, I’m here for that too.”
“Stop making me cry.” I yank out another tissue.
He grins. “It’s important to feel your feelings?—”
“Feel this!” I fling my snotty tissue at him, but it catches the air and hits the ground.
His grin goes wider. “And it’s important to work on your aim.”
I throw the tissue box at his head, and this time, I don’t miss.
He laughs, and we get back to work. That always helps. The tent finds its rhythm early—heat-sick kids, a bullfighter with a shin scrape he refuses to dignify, a grandmother with sunscreen in her eyes who acts like I did brain surgery when I fix it with saline and gentleness.
By midafternoon, the edges start to fray—the heat, the patience, the belief that people will drink water without being dared, me. We tape more ankles and pop fewer ibuprofen because the supply is low and we’re saving what hurts less. I cave and take a second decaf because I’d rather sip betrayal than nothing.
Jaden knows it’s getting to me when I start straightening the triage forms mid-sentence. “It’s almost over,” he murmurs when we pass in the aisle, one gloved hand brushing the other without meaning to. “Then we go home and sleep for a week.”
“Two days,” I say.
“Three,” he counters, because he knows if the number’s too big, I’ll ruin it by working.
Late afternoon dips its toe into evening, and we start packing what we can—consolidating partial boxes, rubber-banding the pens that migrated into every corner of the earth, collapsing the spare cot we didn’t need enough to pretend we did. I’m elbow-deep in a bin of ACE wraps when the flap lifts and the tent gets smaller.
Brick.
Hat. Shoulders that I pretended not to watch when I was pretending I could be his doctor and not a woman with a heart that restarted when he walked into the room. He looks like he slept and didn’t. I can’t get a read on him, but that’s not my job.
He made sure of that.
“Doc.”
I turn my back on him. It’s petty and adolescent, and the only power I’ve felt in days. “Are you injured?”
“Can we talk?” His voice is careful, like he doesn’t want to spook me.
Too late. “I’m working, and I have nothing else to say to you. If you’re injured, you can stay. If not, get out.”
He’s quiet for a beat that feels like an hour. Behind me, Jaden coughs a politely fake cough.
“Annie,” Brick says. His voice rumbles through my spine.
Jaden clears his throat again. It’s not the polite version. It has unsaid words in it. I turn because I’ve trained myself to respond to that as quickly as possible. I expect a kid with a bloody chin.
I get Brick. On one knee.
It takes my brain a full minute to find the thread of the universe again. He’s not playing. His hand isn’t on his hat like he’s joking about a thing men do when they don’t know what to do with their hands. His face is open and wrecked and hopeful in a way that makes me want to kick him while he’s down.
How dare he look at me like that?
“I was wrong,” he says, voice rough. “I thought I was going to ruin you. I thought I was going to ruin the baby. I’ve been wrong before, but not like this. I got scared, and I told myself it would be better if you didn’t have an old man dragging you down. But that was a mistake. I’m sorry.”
My mouth is open. That’s all I know.
He keeps going, careful and relentless. “I thought I was too old for you. Too old to start over. Too old to make a family on purpose after I’ve been playing at it on autopilot for too long. I’m not. I might be too old for a lot of things, but I’m not too old to tell the truth and live with it, and I want this life with you, Annie.”
I hold the edge of the bin because I don’t trust the ground. I don’t have words for what’s swirling in my head.
Brick’s voice is steady, but there’s so much fear on his face that it breaks my heart. “If you’re willing to give me a second chance, I want to take a second chance at parenthood. At a life. At love. With you.” He pulls something from his pocket. A stem of lavender, woven into a ring. “No proper ring shops at the Old West Fest, but I’ll replace it when you’re ready. Marry me, Annie. I want to tie myself to you forever.”
