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Fuck him.

It’s the first night of the first real thing I’ve ever done towards my dreams. And I’m eating dinner alone, my truck wheel held together by a stranger's kindness, and the man who was supposed to be my safety net is MIA.

I drop into my camp chair, the plastic frame groaning under my weight, balancing the bowl in my lap as I watch the last sliver of light disappear from the horizon.

Chapter six

Chace

When I pull into the Billings fairgrounds Sunday night, it's close to midnight, and most of the circuit grounds have already gone quiet. My headlights sweep along a row of trailers, catching the shine of aluminum and the occasional reflective strip.

The engine noise feels obscene against how still everything else is. A few rigs still have their awning lights on, throwing yellow light across the dirt, but most are dark, curtains pulled, with generators humming low.

I kill my headlights and coast the last stretch on parking lights alone, not wanting to be the asshole who lights up somebody's camper at midnight.

I find Addie's setup without much trouble. Her truck, camper and all, is tucked into the last spot on the row. Whether she deliberately claimed the corner or simply ended up there by chance is impossible to know. With Addie, both are equally likely. What's not up for debate is the parking job. It's at a ridiculous angle.

Note to self: I park the rig from here on out. She'll no doubt fight me on it, and it'll be cute as hell watching her get all pissy.

I need to talk to her about the camper situation tomorrow. My plan is to move it onto my truck before we leave — hers is held together with bondo and prayers. Mine is the obvious choice. It’s new, the last thing I bought with my rodeo earnings. She's going to hate it. She's going to dig her heels in and list seventeen reasons why her truck is perfectly fine, and I'm going to have to stand there and let her finish before pointing out that the tailgate is held on with a bungee cord.

But one problem at a time.

I squeeze into the space beside her and kill the engine, stepping out of the truck.

She’s outside sitting in a canvas camp chair. Her laptop is open on her knees, the screen throwing pale light across her face in the dark and highlighting the delicate curve of her jaw. Still up at midnight, still working, because, of course she is.

Her dark hair hangs loose over one shoulder while she's curled up in the chair with her bare feet tucked beneath her. She's wearing tight sleep shorts and some worn T-shirt with the neck cut out, exposing the smooth curve of her shoulder. For one stupid second, I imagine dragging my mouth from that shoulder to her collarbone. My gaze slips lower before I can stop it, catching on the length of her bare legs. Moonlight spills across one thigh, and I nearly trip over my own feet before common sense catches up, reminding me exactly who she is.

Jesus Christ.

I drag a hand down my face and keep walking. This is going to be a long eight weeks if I cannot get myself under control.

It's not like I haven't noticed before. I'm not blind. The problem is that somewhere in the last few years Addie Dawson stopped looking like Eli's annoying little sister and started looking like —

Nope.

Dead end. I know exactly where that road goes, and there's nothing at the end of it except Eli burying me somewhere in a Montana field and nobody finding me until spring.

"'Bout time you showed up." She doesn't look up from the screen. "Get too busy at a bar somewhere along the way?"

I knew she'd be pissed. I was supposed to be here Saturday. Instead, I was sitting in a facility family room in a plastic chair watching a nurse try to orient my Nana back to the present while she kept asking after my mother, who died of an overdose when I was seven. She was getting more distressed every time nobody confirmed my mother was coming. It took three hours for her to settle. Three hours of me sitting there saying she's not coming tonight, Nana. It's okay, I'm here, on a loop, while she looked at me like I was a stranger who'd wandered into her room.

At one point, she grabbed my wrist hard enough to leave a mark, asking me who I was. Like I was the intruder and she needed to know if she should be afraid of me. I told her my name three times before something in her face loosened, just a little, and she patted my hand like she was the one comforting me.

"You've got his eyes," she'd said.

My blood ran cold. She must have been talking about my father. I'd spent my whole life knowing almost nothing about the man. No stories. No photographs on the wall. No one saying, You laugh like him or You've got his smile. Just... nothing. So hearing it now, from her of all people, knocked the wind out of me.

I didn't correct her. Didn't tell her the eyes she was looking into belonged to a man who'd disappeared before I was even born. And I didn't press her further, despite desperately wanting to know more. It didn't sit right to push her.

Then I still had Eli’s colt to deliver, which ended up taking longer than expected because of a washed-out road that had me detouring two hours out of my way. At that point, I’d had enough and camped out alone for a few days to get my head on straight.

I found a spot above a creek with no cell service, so nobody could reach me. I didn't do much. Didn't even fish or read. Mostly I sat beside a fire I didn't need, trying to make sense of the words I'd never expected to hear. You've got his eyes. Somehow those four words had cracked something open in me. I stayed there until the knowledge of having my father's eyes stopped feeling like a hollow pit in my chest and more like something I could live with.

Even a fun-loving guy like me can only take so much. I needed to be fresh and myself for this trip, so if that meant pitching a tent alone in the mountains for a couple of days, so be it. Let her think I was irresponsible; she already expects it.

I claim a patch of dirt beside her chair and give her the grin. The one that's either getting me out of trouble... or landing me in twice as much. "Well, look at that." I hook my thumbs in my pockets. "You survived three whole days without me."