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“Where’s Ethan?”
Her brow creased. “I’m not sure,” she said, searching the crowd.
“I don’t think he’d be pleased if he saw us sitting together.”
“Well, that’s his problem, not ours,” she cheekily replied. “I’m tired of tiptoeing around him,” she said, surprising me. “I can be friends with whomever I wish to be friends with.”
At one time, this would have pleased me to no end, but that day of all days, I could not, would not, be her alternate.
“Cricket,” I said, narrowing my brow. “I won’t be your backup.”
“What?”
“I refuse to be a backup,” I told her. “I don’t deserve it, and we both know we could never be just friends.”
She looked wounded but I couldn’t feel sorry for her. She made her choice, and I wasn’t it.
“I-what are you saying, Spencer?”
“I’m saying that I don’t just want to be friendly with you, Cricket. I want all of you. I want to be able to taste your lips whenever I feel like it, feel your skin, wrap my arms around your waist. I want to be with you utterly, and I won’t take anything else but your entirety.”
I turned and walked out the schoolhouse doors, got in my truck and headed back to Bitteroot.
“There,” I told the steering wheel. “I made the declaration. It’s up to her now.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Two months had passed.
It was mid-April, Bridge was huge, but she and Jonah were going strong. It helped to see her so happy when I was suffering so completely. Those words at the schoolhouse were the last I had said to Cricket, and she had yet to respond. I lost hope in getting one after the first week and was living day in and day out in a zombie-like state. The only relief I could get from how badly my heart ached was when Eugie would come stay with me.
He was my new best friend since Jonah and Bridge got together, and he was my little old stone. I noticed Cricket would let him stay with me often and that surprised me. I don’t know why she did it but I didn’t question it. I needed him. Dogs are funny little animals. They’re such a curious thing. They give and give and give and expect nothing in return.
Calving season had come to an end, and the ranch had planted the hayfields in preparation for next winter. Branding season came and went, and we were exceptionally busy for almost two weeks. Apparently, the ranches helped one another out there. Each set of hands would pitch into each ranch’s branding day, and we got all the ranches done in eleven days. I got to know a lot of the locals a little better and came to respect each one tremendously with how generous they all were with their time and opinion.
The people of Montana were some of the hardest working, genuine and charitable people I’d ever met.
Apparently, at the end of every calving season, all the young adults of the nearby ranches got together and camped in the mountains for two days. If you’d have asked me six months prior what I thought of the concept of camping, I’d have told you it was ludicrous. Now? Not so much. In fact, I was really looking forward to the fresh air, the burn in my legs from the hikes and just relaxing.
We left early on a Friday morning.
“Am I riding with you?” Jonah asked as I tossed my pack into the back of my truck.
“Hell yeah, dude. Load it up!”
I picked up his tent and launched it in with my own pack. I got in the driver’s seat and Jonah opened his door.
“Hey, give me a second, I’m gonna say goodbye to Bridget.”
I nodded.
He bounded up the trailer stairs and ducked inside. A minute later, he emerged and got in.
“I wish she was coming,” he said.
“Yeah, pretty sure a heavy-with-child Bridge would annihilate us within the first hour.”
Jonah laughed but he didn’t disagree.
