Page 78 of Sexting the Cowboy
She picks at a nick in the table with her thumbnail. “And maybe you are a little old for her,” she says, straight like a needle. “But that doesn’t really matter, does it? It’s not like it’s anything more than a fling, right?”
The word lands like a bucker who wants to see if I can still ride. I take a beat. My head hums. My shoulder argues. The part of me that wants the thing I’ve been pretending I don’t want stands up in a dark room and looks left and right for an exit I can live with.
“Right,” I say finally. “Just a fling.”
“So Reno will get over it, and next month when we’re in Kansas City, this will all be in the past.” She shrugs. “So, who cares, right?”
“Yeah. Good point.” But I care. I care too much.
If I tried to make something real out of Annie and me, Reno would be crushed—whether or not he has the right to be. And Annie…Annie’s smarter than me. She’s busy and brave and being pulled in ten directions by bills and people and duty. She’s probably in this because she’s tired of saying no to things that make her smile.
A fling.
She didn’t ask for forever. She didn’t ask for anything past the tent, the trailer, the kind of door that doesn’t lock right until you remember the trick. It’s not real to her. Why would it be?
I’m never real to the women I hook up with. Just the cowboy who’s floating through town until I’m onto the next one. I’m the memory they use to get off when they’re married and their husband is boring in bed.
I used to like that about my life. Now, it stings.
But that’s my problem. Not Annie’s. I’ll be the one left heartbroken. That’s on me. I’ve built an entire career on the long fall and the quick recovery. I can do it again.
Enjoy the fling. Move on. Put Annie behind me when we leave town. Be a man about it. Make up with Reno. Pay attention in Kansas City. Smile at the right cameras. Keep my hands off my own phone.
I just don’t know how to do that.
Blaze flips the keys once and pockets them. “You want me to go babysit the bush line to make sure he doesn’t find the decoys?”
“Decoys?”
“I threw my keys in there.”
“My brilliant girl,” I mutter with too much pride. “You already did more than enough. Text me if he shows signs of turning the evening into a tragedy.”
She grins, leans forward, kisses the air near my temple like she’s not sure where contact would hurt, and slips back out into the light.
I sit slowly, like I’m trying not to wake the number of years I’ve been dragging around, and I look at my hands. To do this—this pretending it’s a fling—I’m going to have to pull a piece out of myself and murder it.
I can. I’ve done harder things. I’ve watched men I love bleed and made jokes so they’d stop being scared long enough to let me carry them to the gate. I’ve watched a woman I love die and somehow kept my kids fed and their laughter alive even when I was dead on the inside.
I can do this. We’re a fling. Nothing more.
I pick up my phone and stare at a blank text screen. The words that want to go there are the wrong ones. I put it down again.
I’ll take the twenty-four hours she asked for, and I won’t ride. I’ll check on my son without making it worse. Hopefully. I’ll let Blaze be smarter than me in all the ways a person can be. I’ll let Cash make the joke that keeps our dinner from ending in a plate thrown at a wall. I’ll let Levi tape my elbow for me like I forgot how to do it. I’ll walk past the medic tent without going in, and I’ll try not to read anything into the way the flap moves when the breeze wants to talk.
And when we leave town, I’ll bury that part of me that she brought to life.
23
ANNIE
I have to tell him.
I rehearse the conversation in my head until the words feel like pebbles I’ve been rolling in my mouth all morning—rounded, harmless, and still impossible to swallow.
There’s a voice inside me that says wait, make a plan, line up the contingencies, be the doctor and not the woman. But another voice, smaller and steadier, says tell the truth while you still recognize it. He’s a good man. He’s raised kids. He has held babies that were his and stayed. This isn’t outside his wheelhouse.
The thought is equal parts comfort and terror. Do I want him to stick around for this? For us?
