Page 84 of Sexting the Cowboy
I tip my head against the cushion and stare at the ceiling where she’s used command hooks to string more fairy lights than are legal in some states. “Reno always said his father turned into a man whore after Vicki died. I Googled him. Six years after she passed, he started showing up in photographs with a lot of women. Bars, charity galas, some weird rodeo after-parties. I told myself it was a public persona. Or grief. Or both.”
She raises an eyebrow. “All of the above can be true. And also, a man can be both the person he was and the person he is with you.”
“Then who is he?” I ask, and immediately want to snatch the question out of the air. The quiet that follows feels like a cliff. “I thought I had a pretty good idea, but now…”
“Sweetie,” she says after a minute, and that word from her mouth is a benediction and an indictment. “Are you in love with him?”
“I don’t know,” I say, and it comes out as a sniffle and a whisper. “I don’t know.”
She exhales, deep and theatrical, then softer. “That’s a yes.”
“It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t want me. He doesn’t wantus.” The last word feels foreign and dangerous on my tongue, like I’ve summoned something I can’t control.
She sits there and doesn’t try to argue me out of it. “What he wants today might not be what he wants tomorrow. That doesn’t fix what it felt like to hear it. It doesn’t fix anything. But it makes room for not making yourself a villain because he’s trying to be a martyr.”
I snort. “He’s not a martyr. He thinks he’s doing the right thing.”
“Maybe,” she says. “Or maybe he’s just terrified he’ll hurt you worse by staying. No one is only one story.”
“I don’t know how I fell for him.”
“The same way anyone falls,” she says simply. “Ass backwards.”
I huff a laugh. It’s more breath than sound. “Helpful.”
“You’re welcome.” She pulls her legs up and sits cross-legged, knee bumping mine. “Look. Some of this we can’t fix tonight. Hell, some of this we can’t fix at all. But we can make a plan so your brain has a bone to chew on instead of your heart.”
“Money,” I say, because it’s both boring and urgent. “The clinic.”
“We’ll get the grant applications out of the drafts folder and into the world,” she says, immediately in list-mode. “I’ll help you with that. I’ve got a friend at the festival board who owes me a favor—we’ll put on a ‘community care’ booth on a slow weekday, and you can hand out blood pressure checks and flyers. We’ll put a donation jar with a QR code that people won’t be too lazy to use. We’ll swallow our pride and call the hospital foundation and ask about bridge funds?—”
“You mean the hospital I left in the dust?”
“That one exactly. We’ll sell lemonade in January if we have to. We will make it work, Annie.”
I take it in, the way she hands me a series of next steps like she’s carelessly tossing random thoughts into the ether, as if she’s not saving me. “And the tiny human I may or may not be able to afford to bring into a safe world?”
She doesn’t flinch. “We’ll price out realities. We’ll research state programs. We’ll call your OB tomorrow, or I’ll call for you if you want me to be the person who listens to hold music. We’ll sit on my kitchen floor and cry if we have to, and then get off the floor again.”
I nod, because life is a series of floors, and getting up again is the only part anyone ever applauds.
She watches my face for a beat, then softens again in a way that makes the stupid lights overhead look like they’re part of the scene and not a joke. “We will get through this,” she says, firm enough to be a stake in dirt. “This and all the other bumps in the road.”
I tip my mug to my lips and drink tea that’s gone cold. It chills that fire that was burning for Brick. Whatever I feel for him—feltfor him—that’s over now. I have to think of myself and my kid. That’s all that matters.
That’s all that can ever matter.
26
BRICK
Ford’s grinhas too many teeth when he knocks and doesn’t wait for me to answer.
“Opportunity,” he says, already halfway in my trailer like the word is a badge that gets him through any door. He’s charged up, eyes bright the way they get when he’s holding a number in his head big enough to drown arguments.
“I’m concussed,” I say, because that was the last truth I said out loud, and it’s still true. “Twenty-four hours, Doc said. I mean to listen.”
He steeples his fingers like a preacher about to sell grace. “It’s not a standard draw. It’s a showcase. Sponsors, cameras, side pot. Winner-take-all purse is obscene.”
