Page 26 of Kicking Up Dust

“Jesus Christ, thank god I’m coming home because shit’s changing far too fast for me to keep up with nowadays.”

“You’re coming home?” she verifies, eyes lit up in a way I need them to stay forever, for my own sanity. There are very few things I want more in this world than my twin sister’s happiness, and it was only just recently pushed from the top spot by the baby growing in Blair’s belly.

I grin back at her. “Yeah. I gotta call my manager to see what it’ll take for me to get out of my sponsorships and contracts and shit, but I’m hoping it’ll be fairly easy. Especially when I tell ’em why I’m wanting to retire.”

Her eyes lose focus on me then, looking over my shoulder again and then hardening.

“Chase?” she says, almost sickly sweet. I look over my shoulder to find him halfway through writing his number on a girl’s hand. Fucking douchebag.

He looks up at Bailey with a cocky grin and bright eyes. “Yeah, BJ?”

“I don’t think so.”

His grin only widens as he pulls his hand away from the girl and caps the Sharpie, passing it back to her.

“Sorry, sweetheart. You heard her.” He takes a swig of his beer and turns to face the televisions over the bar while the girl stares at him, mouth just as agape as mine.

“Are you serious?” I ask Bailey, when she turns back to me like she didn’t just take a small interlude to chastise her ex-boyfriend for flirting with another woman.

“Sorry, why are you wanting to retire?”

“Are y’all back together or something?”

Bailey rolls her eyes. “In his dreams. Doesn’t mean I want to watch him flirting with another woman in front of me. Anyway, you were saying? About retiring?”

I sigh as I lean to the side on my barstool and pull out my wallet, coming to the realization I’ll probably never know more than the base facts of the Bailey and Chase clusterfuck. Sometimes, I think it’s probably for the best.

The ultrasound is starting to get bent around the edges. I’ll have to ask Blair for another one. Bailey’s face is already pale again when I go to pass it to her, giving me a pretty good view of what I must’ve looked like when I’d seen it for the first time a few days ago. It’s hard to tell if she’s happy for me or not.

“Bails?”

My voice seems to snap her out of it, her eyes tracing my face so she can gauge her reaction off mine, I’d imagine. I give her a tentative smile. Something strange is going on. When she smiles at me, her eyes don’t quite match the emotion.

She has a ton of questions for me, same as Maddox and Mama, but I can’t stop myself from thinking this might be yet another wedge being driven between us. Bailey has her secrets and I’ve pretended I can’t tell, but I thought she’d be happy I was coming home. Instead, all I see are shadows in her eyes, despite her best efforts.

When I make moves to head home, she stays behind, promising she’ll find a ride.

It’s not very hard to guess where she’ll find one.

FIFTEEN

BLAIR

20 Weeks

Baby is the size of a mason jar

Colt and I had talked on the phone practically every single night since I told him I was pregnant. He was very… attentive. To the point it almost made me feel like I was taking advantage of him.

Stephanie and Chelsey had to remind me no less than a thousand and one times that he was the literal father of my child and attentiveness was a green flag. If nothing else, the constant conversation had made him feel a lot less like a stranger, which I had to assume would be beneficial to coparenting, at the very least.

Still, I’d offhandedly mentioned wanting McDonald’s one night and he’d DoorDashed it to me within thirty minutes. Flowers were delivered weekly and he’d taken extra caution to ensure they were safe for Stephanie’s cats.

In between telling me what he’d learned in the pregnancy books he was reading, he told me about his family’s ranch—his mama, two brothers, three sisters, a thousand cattle, a good number of horses, and a myriad of other animals. I was scared of horses, but when I told him so, he brushed it off.

“Don’t imagine you’ll have any use for a horse for a while anyway. Besides, my little sister can help. She’s like the horse whisperer, I swear.”

Even though I keep trying to assure him he doesn’t need to uproot his entire life for me, he insists, telling me he’s already told his manager he’s retiring and started working with his brothers. The way he talks about Montana, about his family’s ranch, makes it really, really hard not to envision our daughter growing up there, so I eventually cave.