“Hey, Jesse,” he said. “You sound… older.”
“Iamolder.”
A soft huff of a laugh. “Yeah. Yeah, you are.” He cleared his throat. “Um… can I come visit?” My chest tightened. “It’s just me and my trailer.”
“How many horses?”
“None,” he said, too quickly. “Just my shit. It’s not a permanent thing or anything. I’ll work while I’m there.”
“Sure, you can visit,” I said because anything else felt impossible. But what about Abel? What if he and Hoyt came face-to-face and Hoyt ran again? “Are you… You gotta know that Abel is still around.”
There was a pause, then, careful. “Yeah, saw on the website,” he murmured.
Fuck, I really needed to update that sooner rather than later. Or maybe Lucas could do it; he was a hell of a lot more technical than I was, and waiting for a social media marketing person could take forever.
“I can sleep in the trailer to avoid him,” Hoyt continued. “I just… it’s just for a few months that maybe I thought we could talk and shit, while I mend up from an accident.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah, I will be. Look, that’s not the reason… it was, but mostly, Jesse, I wanna see you, and I dunno, make things right, I guess.”
“Okay, yeah, come home,” I said. Firmer.
The silence after that felt like standing at the edge of a grave. All the things neither of us knew how to say piled up between us.
“Well,” I said finally. “See you soon.”
“Yeah. Thanks, Jesse.” His voice softened, cracked just enough to hurt.
When the line went dead, I stayed there with the receiver in my hand long after the dial tone kicked in. My chest ached. My eyes burned.
Hoyt was cominghereto Snow Creek.
My big brother was coming home.
I needed to clear a bedroom. Move bedding in.
Lucas wandered in, searching for coffee.
“My brother is coming to stay.”
He blinked at me, then threw me his cute-as-fuck smile. “Awesome.”
“He’ll need somewhere to sleep.”
Something like excitement lit his eyes. “How about the spare room? The one with the iron frame bed?”
“He said he’d stay in his trailer.”
“And you think that’s okay, Jesse Knox? Nope, we need to go mattress shopping, and we need to gonow.”
“No, I?—”
He yanked me in for a kiss. “Shut up, Cowboy, let’s do this thing. You think your brother is a fan of green? I’m thinking green would be a good color.”
“I don’t imagine he’d care.”
“He’ll love it by the time it’s finished.”
