They took the hint, wandering back toward the barn with a few backward glances.
Brody stepped closer, voice low. "Hey. Look at me."
I did. He looked worried. Guilty. Like he'd failed some test he didn't know he was taking.
"You don't gotta come," he said. "Seriously. Hang back here, hang back at the house. Wherever you're comfortable. I'll ride, collect my winnings, and be home before dark. You won't even know I was gone."
That wasn't the problem and we both knew it. The problem was, I couldn'tnotgo. If Brody was at that rodeo—my Brody, the man Wyatt had looked at yesterday and filed away as a variable to be managed—I couldn't sit in a house six blocks away and wonder what was happening. Couldn't spend four hours staring at my phone waiting for a text that saideverything's fineor, worse, one that didn't come at all.
But saying that meant admitting I was scared, and I didn't do scared.
Not out loud.
"I'm coming," I said.
"Calvin—"
"I said I'm coming." My voice came out harder than I meant it to. I saw the flash of hurt cross his face before he smoothed it over.
"Alright." He held up his hands. "If that's what you want."
It wasn't what I wanted. What I wanted was for Wyatt Cole to spontaneously combust on his way into the Meagher County Fairgrounds. What I wanted was to go back to a couple weeks ago when the biggest problem in my life was which fork to use at a Bozeman restaurant.
What I wanted was to stop feeling like the ground I'd just learned to stand on was already shifting beneath my feet.
"I gotta get to work," I said, and turned toward the barn.
"Calvin."
I stopped. Didn't turn around.
"It's gonna be fine." His voice was steady. Sure. The voice of a man who believed the world was a fundamentally safe place because it had always been safe for him. "I promise."
Something cold settled into my bones. Not doubt—not of him. Never of him. But the feeling you got right before a horse spooked, when the air changed and the animal went tense beneath you and every cell in your body saidsomething's comingeven though you couldn't see what it was yet.
"Don't make promises you can't keep, boy scout."
I walked into the barn and didn't look back.
CHAPTERFORTY-FOUR
My phone buzzedas I was pullin' out of the Birmingham driveway.
CALVIN
Be home late. Don't wait up.
I read it at the stop sign at the end of their gravel road. Read it again. Dropped the phone in the cup holder and sighed through my nose.
Three days of these texts.
Long day.
Back late.
Don't wait up.
I turned onto 89 and pointed the truck toward Larkspur with the windows down and the evenin' slantin' gold across the hills. Gas gauge was pushin' a quarter tank. Figured I'd fill up before I went home. Figured I'd take the long way. Figured I'd find somethin' to do that wasn't sittin' in an empty kitchen waitin' on a woman who wasn't comin'.
