Page 115 of Tapped

He presses his lips to my temple. “Stay with me, just for a while.”

I nod, because staying with him feels like the easiest thing in the world.

If I could stay here forever, I might.

27

ATTACHED

Micah

“Watch out for the hook, Chase. Your mom might be a doctor, but I’m not sure she can stitch you up all the way out here.”

“He’s right, baby. I didn’t have room for my medical kit on the horse. Please don’t stick yourself.”

The kid had never fished before today. I might not be a cowboy by choice, but living almost six years on this earth without throwing a lure is a sin. Especially since his dad had a deep-sea fishing boat.

But I guess that’s what happens when he only used the boat to run drugs for the cartel.

I’ve been home for almost twenty-four hours. I wasn’t shitting Evie last night when I told her it felt different. Time usually drags here, but not this trip. I blinked and lost a day.

Chase looks up at me as I unhook his most recent catch. The boy has a knack for reeling them in one after another. “Why do you always throw the fish back after I catch them?”

I crouch down near the bank to give the fish another chance at life before I stand and wipe my hands on my jeans. “Do you eat fish?”

Chase screws up his face. “Ew, no!”

I reach for his pole to bait his hook for the millionth time today. “That’s why. If you’re going to kill something, you have to eat it. It’s a rule of being a good cowboy.”

He nods, contemplating that notion as he takes the rod to cast it again. He’s shit at it, and I have to watch that he doesn’t hook me in the back of the head. He wants to bait the hook himself, but I’m not about to let Evie’s son draw blood on my watch. I don’t care if she has a doctor bag at her disposal back at the house.

The horses are grazing and drinking from the lake where we left them in the shade.

My dad doesn’t mess around when he’s teaching someone how to be a cowboy.

So far, Chase has groomed a horse, shoveled shit out of the stalls, and rode double with my dad to check on the herd. That was the only time Chase has been out of our sight since he woke up this morning. I didn’t know what Evie would think about that. But she’s so relaxed, she didn’t show a second thought about sending her son off with my dad.

And on a horse, for that matter. No car seat, and the only seat belt was my dad’s arm wrapped around his front.

I barely remember riding with him like that when I was young, but I do remember following behind when he had Hannah in front of him.

Mom and Evie drank coffee on the porch for most of the morning while I chopped firewood. Fall and winter come quicker in Montana, and this is something I can do for them while I’m here.

When Dad and Chase got home, we threw together a lunch and headed to the lake on the other side of the ranch.

“I want to ride my own horse,” Chase demands.

I pick up a flat rock and skip it three times across the water in the opposite direction Chase is throwing his line. “You think you’ve mastered being a cowboy in half a day?”

Evie might look chill as she relaxes on the picnic blanket staring at the late-day sky through the trees, but she lays down the law with her son. “You’re not riding a horse by yourself.”

“Mom, please?” he begs in too many syllables.

Evie pops up on her elbows and glares at Chase. “Since when did I becomeMom?”

“Because I want to ride my own horse and not be treated like a baby.”

“A horse is not an extra marshmallow. No way.” Evie lays back down. “You sound like a teenager. That needs to stop immediately.”

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