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“You guys seem close.”
“Yeah, we kind of are.” I didn’t realize until I said it that I treasured the fact that we were still close. My relationship with them was one of the few things I could thank Barns for. “Nowadays, Aggie doesn’t make working cattle an event like we do, but she always got pushed out of a lot of the family work. None of us felt like we had time to watch her, but she’s as much of a cowboy as the rest of us.”
When I called myself a cowboy, her eyes dipped down to my chest and the dusty shirt I was still wearing, then to where my cowboy boots disappeared under the dash. I’d shower when I returned to the house. This trip was about showing her something she hadn’t gotten to see before.
Sparks kindled under my skin. I was going to be a Fourth of July sparkler with an erection if she looked at me like that again. I started the pickup and punched the truck into gear. The sun was almost all the way down, and the sky above us was darkening to a midnight blue.
“Aggie has her new horse rescue anyway,” I said to distract both of us from wondering how we were going to split into our separate rooms without it being weird when we arrived at the house. “So, she couldn’t come down, and we were all together for her wedding earlier this month.” I sped down the road, leaving a cloud of dust in my wake.
“I didn’t realize she and Ansen were newlyweds, but it’s cool you all still talk and meet up. Like a built-in friend group.” There was a wistful quality to what she said. “I think Mom would’ve had more kids if she...” She stared out the windshield at the flurry of bugs zooming through the headlights. “If she found a decent guy to settle down with. My dad definitely wasn’t one.”
She shifted in her seat, and I thought she’d leave it at that. She’d opened up about her dickwad of an ex, but she was quiet on the subject of her parents.
“He was an addict,” she finally said. “Might still be, I don’t know. He didn’t want a family and ditched Mom as soon as she found out she was pregnant.”
“I’m sorry.”
I caught her shrug out of the corner of my eye.
“She never remarried?”
“She never married, period.” Her sigh was barely audible. “But she wanted to be in love so bad. Thought she needed a guy to be happy, but she found all the wrong men.”
“That sucks.”
“It does, and I always wished for siblings. It’s been fun watching you with your brothers. Maybe Grayson and Ivy will be close like that when they get older.” She peered out the passenger window. “Oh, wow. I can already see the stars, and it’s not completely dark.”
“By the time we reach the south pasture, the sun will be all the way down, and you’ll get a better view of the Milky Way.”
The soft caress of her attention landed on me. “Like...the whole thing?”
“As much as will fit into the sky.” I had cursed my brothers for putting me in this position, alone with Tova, when we weren’t ready, but I was grateful I could show her this. Give her more memories that didn’t involve a workaholic dad who couldn’t quit thinking about her.
“Cookouts and stargazing,” she murmured.
“Not exactly what you do in the city?”
She chuckled. “Cookouts, maybe. Although I’ve never been to one, and the only stars I see are when I’m going home after a show in the middle of the night. Movie stars who are usually drunk or high and pretend to not want to be noticed.”
“You’ll find a few of those stars in Montana too. They like to buy land here.” The silence between us was easy, but a focused tension rode through the air. Did she feel it too? Just in case, I didn’t want her to think the sleepover meant I expected to start where we left off. That night caught us both by surprise, and after our talk, I didn’t want to backtrack on any progress we’d made. I didn’t have her for long. “About tonight, please don’t think the sleepover means we have to do anything we’re not comfortable with.”
“I know,” she said quietly. “I appreciate it, and I know what situation this puts you in.”
The house. The big empty house that no longer felt like a home but had too many memories to ignore.
I stopped at the gate and hopped out. The pickup’s headlights lit several feet past the gate. Once the gate was open and I drove in, I got back out to close it. Once I was back behind the wheel, Tova fully turned her body to stare out the passenger window.
“It’s so dark,” she said, her voice full of awe. “It’s like it goes on forever.”
I parked at the top of a rolling hill. I knew my family land by heart, and at the bottom was a stock pond. Killing the engine, I said, “I have a blanket in the back. Let me spread it out in the bed. With all the lights off, maybe we won’t get eaten alive by mosquitos.”
She laughed. “I guess there’s always something waiting to draw blood in the dark no matter where you are.”
“It’s the size that matters.” I died inside at my joke, but she kept laughing as she got out.
I dug the blanket out from a compartment in the back seat where I stuffed some winter supplies. Giving it a good couple of snaps in the air, I walked to the back of the pickup.
“I’m afraid to wander too far from the vehicle,” she murmured.
