Page 13 of Kicking Up Dust

When Bailey comes back later, I’m already on her bed. The way she’s holding Rainy back by the collar as the cattle dog whines to get to me tells me she knew I’d be here.

“You can let her go,” I tell her, taking off my hat and tossing it onto the bed. Rainy usually knocks it off my head when she jumps into my lap anyway. I swear she thinks she’s a chihuahua or something.

It’s hard to be upset when there’s a sixty-pound cattle dog in my lap, waggling her entire ass because just wagging her tail isn’t enough to show how happy she is to see me, apparently. Never mind that she literally just saw me an hour ago at that damned bonfire.

I’m so busy petting her dog and cooing at it that I don’t see Bailey pick up my hat until I’m hearing her snort at whatever it says. I used to take pride in picking out which one I wore for the day, but now it’s more of a grab-and-go situation. I just don’t care anymore.

“These are getting too unhinged, Colt. This one doesn’t even make sense.”

I look up at it. I shaved my bush for this.

“Sure it does.”

Bailey snorts again, but doesn’t argue, tossing the hat onto her dresser and sitting down next to me.

“Rainy, crate,” she tells her dog—who doesn’t listen at first, because she’s almost never in the crate, but when my sister gets a bit sterner, she reluctantly obeys.

I hate that she did that. Without a dog in my lap to distract me, all that’s left is my twin sister and way too much tension in the air.

“What was that out there?”

“Maddox flaunting that he’s banging my ex right in front of me.”

“Your ex?” Bailey makes zero effort to hide how full of shit she thinks I am.

“Yup.”

She’s quiet for a second, but then: “Wasn’t aware we were calling random hookups our exes now.”

I nod. “Yeah, you’ve been out of the game for a while now, so it’s not really surprising you didn’t know. Glad I could bring you up to speed.”

Bailey doesn’t laugh, and she doesn’t shove me or trap me in a headlock. All of those would’ve been much more preferable than her sighing and leaning over to rest her head against my shoulder.

“You haven’t been yourself lately. Not in months. Maybe years. I’m scared you’re going to leave me,” she whispers. “You can’t leave me here by myself, Cole.”

Neither of us has ever brought it up directly before, and it’s still a pretty roundabout way of saying it, but I still know what she means. I pull my arm out from under her to wrap it around her shoulder, tugging her closer and pressing my lips to her hair. “I don’t go anywhere you can’t follow, remember?”

It’s been a rule between us our whole life—whether that meant going across the creek before Bailey knew how to swim or what places I go to when I’m on the circuit. Nowhere she can’t follow.

For the first time in our life, I think I’m lying to her though.

The place I want to go more than anywhere else is the one place in the world I’d never want Bailey following me.

EIGHT

BLAIR

10 Weeks

Baby is the size of a spur rowel

Pregnant.

One stupid word on a blue and white test from a stupid one-night stand with a stupid bull rider in stupid Los Angeles has changed my life irrevocably.

“Blair, it’s been three minutes,” Chelsey reports through the closed bathroom door.

But I’m well aware it’s been three minutes because the pink and white test popped up with two lines pretty much instantaneously, and I’ve been staring at the blue one for the three minutes I thought I’d have to mentally prepare myself for a positive result. The p-word just replaced the loading bar on the screen and pretty much ruined my life.