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“Do you?” I asked, becoming aware that he truly didn’t. “I don’t think that you do. I don’t mean that you can’t trust her, but I think you’re frightened she’ll discover what you’ve known all along.”
“Shut up!” he shouted.
“I almost feel sorry for you, Ethan.”
“Shut up!” he shouted again, incensed.
“Fine, I won’t say another word,” I told him and hung up. “Because I don’t need to,” I revealed to the empty line.
I laid the phone above our heads and blew out the candle.
At three in the morning, we were startled awake by Eugie barking.
“What is it, boy?” I asked him before realizing he was barking at a loose shutter flapping in the wind.
We both laid back down. “Eugie, hush,” a raspy-voiced Cricket ordered him and he quieted down.
I began to stretch when I felt that Cricket’s body was on mine. Her leg was hooked around mine, her head resting on my chest, her hand around my waist.
“I’m sorry,” she said. I couldn’t see her face flame red, but the heat on my chest told me all I wanted to know.
She scrambled to her side of the pallet. I stood up and stretched once more.
“I’m gonna check the roads.”
The snow had ceased to a light dusting and the plow trucks had already gone through the town, which meant they’d done the same thing for the highways. As I studied the winter wonderland before me, I debated whether I should tell Cricket we could leave.
Sleeping next to her, even if was for a few hours, was so incredible it made my heart pound just thinking about it. I didn’t know how I’d gotten as far as I had since meeting her. I went from wanting to know what her body felt like to sleeping next to that body but only being able to think about how I was dying to know what her heart felt like.
An intense, burning pounding hit me in the chest and my hand shot to my heart and stayed there. I waited for the sensation to subside but it didn’t. At first it hurt, but then it scorched me so sweetly I begged for God never to take it away. It blistered my soul, imprinted in my skin, and seared my lips.
It was the exact moment I fell in love with Cricket Hunt. The point in time I knew my life would never be the same again. My hand shot out and rested flatly against the cold window and the ice melted beneath it.
But the next moment I acknowledged I could do nothing about it, and the pain was so intense I felt like punching that window through. Because I couldn’t claim her lips whenever I felt like it, I couldn’t change the oil in her truck for her, I couldn’t leave a note on her mirror for her whenever I felt like it, or find pieces of scrap metal on the side of the road and instinctually pick them up for her. I couldn’t help her catch Eugie for his bath, touch her hip because I just felt like it, or drive her into Kalispell. I couldn’t do those things because she wasn’t mine to do those things for, and that was pure agony for me.
“Cricket,” I said, walking back to the stage with purpose.
She sat up, devastating me, and my hand clenched at my chest.
“Uh-huh?” she asked.
“Um, the roads are clear. We can leave if you want.”
“Oh,” she said, pushing the blanket down her legs, “that’s great.”
I nodded but I didn’t agree.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The auction that night was to happen as scheduled. The entire ranch went into a frenzy in attempt to get as much done as possible so just a few hands could stay behind and watch things.
Although I was exhausted, I headed back to the trailer to shower and found Bridge curled up on the banquette.
“What’s up, dude?”
She sat up. “Jonah,” she said and started crying.
“Shit,” I said, sitting next to her.
