Page 25 of Kicking Up Dust

“Little girl, huh?” he asks, and the smile on my face is ten times brighter and ten times bigger than the one on his all of a sudden. I pull out my wallet and pass him the ultrasound photo Blair let me keep, remembering how she’d sat down on the motel bed next to me and pointed out the baby’s toes and nose.

“Proud of you, brother,” he says after looking at it for a few moments and returning it so he can clap me on the back.

My eyes are wet again instantly. Such a simple sentence, but I didn’t realize just how badly I craved hearing him say it until now.

“Thanks, Maddie.”

FOURTEEN

COLT

Mama takes the news about as incredibly as I thought she would. I should’ve taken her somewhere private to tell her though, because she screams loud enough I’m scared everyone on this ranch is gonna come running to check on her. Thankfully, no one does. I don’t want anyone else knowing before I can tell Bailey. There was a time she would’ve been the first to know.

Mama sobs and pinches my cheeks, spending an eternity hugging me and asking a million questions—most of which I don’t have answers to. When I’m finally free from her clutches a few hours later, it’s with the promise I’ll get those answers from Blair soon and report back.

Around five, I knock on the office door and poke my head through to find Bailey looking like she’s about to kill whoever’s on the other end of the phone. She looks surprised to see me, eyes flicking over me the same way Maddox’s always does. They don’t feel as intrusive though.

I flip my finger in a wrap it up motion, and she rolls her eyes.

“Yes, Mr. Wheatley,” she placates the man on the line. “Believe it or not, my family’s been in ranching for a long time. I’m well aware⁠—”

Whoever the fuck Mr. Wheatley is, he must cut her off, because she hangs up on him. I laugh as she gets out of her chair and comes over to hug me.

“You can’t just hang up on people who piss you off, Bail,” I tease her gently.

Her scent calms me in the same way Mama’s does. One of the best things about coming home will be getting to hang out with my twin sister again without having to rely on pixelated FaceTime calls.

“What’re you doing home? Thought you had a couple more rides in Fort Worth.”

Of course she knows my schedule by heart.

“Wanna get dinner or drinks or something? I’ve got something to tell you.”

My sister immediately pales and I feel terrible, pulling her back into a hug. “It’s good news, Bails.”

“You’re retiring?” she asks, carefully hopeful as she pulls back to look me in the eye again.

I ignore her. “If you’ll get your ass in the truck, we can get out of here and find some place to talk about it.”

“Fine,” she huffs, walking back to her desk and shutting down her computer. “Let’s go to Quitter’s. I’ve gotta check the inventory anyway.”

“Inventory? Why?”

“Haven’t you heard? Maddie owns the place now.”

“Bail, are you planning on actually listening to me at some point tonight or would you rather I stop trying to distract you from staring at Cartwright?”

She glares at me, eyes flicking away from her ex-boyfriend comically fast. I said it loud enough that Chase might’ve been able to hear me, so her irritation is warranted. I don’t turn around to see if he did or didn’t, though. I fucking hate the cheater and I always will. I wish my sister would move on from him. Sure, the dating pool in Cedar Creek is slim, but I’m sure there are a lot of guys here that are interested in her.

“I was actually listening to you,” she seethes. “I looked over your shoulder for half a second.”

It’d been way more than half a second, but like every other member of my family, I was a bit terrified of Bailey, so I didn’t argue with her.

“Do you want to go somewhere else?” I ask her instead. Usually, she avoids Quitter’s like the plague, specifically so something like this didn’t happen.

“No, it’s fine. We’ve been… semi-civil lately,” she reports.

I reach across the table to feel her forehead, worried she has a fever, but she bats my hand away. It’s been five years since Bailey and Chase broke up—five years of tiptoeing around saying his name at the house, warning her when he’d be coming over to take care of animals, avoiding Quitter’s… or anywhere else Chase may be. And suddenly they were… semi-civil?