Cowboy Up

  His body slackens when the last drop leaves him, giving me just enough of his weight but clearly not all of it since I can still breathe. I wiggle, the wetness on my breasts starting to roll toward my neck, and lift one hand up to swipe at it. I'm not sure what makes me lick my fingers clean, but when the salty taste of him bursts against my tongue, I moan loudly.

  "Fuck." He hisses breathlessly. "Just came harder than I ever fuckin' have and I'm ready to take more from you. You too sore for my cock again?"

  "Hmm?" I moan, still sucking the taste of him off my fingers.

  "Doesn't matter, gonna fuck you again anyway."

  And boy does he. By the time we finally fall asleep, he's taken me once in the shower and again in the bed before pulling me into his arms seconds before I pass out. The last thought that goes through my mind before drifting off is if this was how living wild and free feels, I am never going to stop.

  Never.

  3

  CLAYTON

  "Dirt on My Boots" by Jon Pardi

  The overwhelming heat rushing through my body is enough to make me hate being a rancher during these hot-as-fuck summer months. The oppressing temperature assaults me the second I open my front door, the heat so stifling that it steals your breath straight from your damn lungs. The harder I work, the worse it gets, until I pray to whoever will listen for anything to filter some of these damn rays. Nothing changes the fact that shit needs to get done and I'm the one who needs to do it.

  Trails of sweat drip down my back, slow tracks of fiery wetness that feel like they burn my skin on the way to my belted jeans. I drop the pitchfork I've been using to add straw to the horses' stalls and rip my shirt off, wiping my brow with it before placing my hat back on my soaked head as I toss the garment behind me and continue with my task.

  Fucking Texas summers.

  It feels like hell rises from the ground every day.

  My days are all the same. I wake up, chug coffee, and work outside until well after the sun sets and the rest of the people in Pine Oak have set off for dinner with their families.

  I'm alone, for all intents and purposes, and that feeling is even more pronounced on days when my brothers aren't around to distract me from my loneliness, which happens more frequently now that they're both married and living off the ranch.

  But even if I wanted to find someone like Maverick and Quinn did, there's no place in my life for the responsibility of being the sole provider of someone else's happiness anymore. I'm at the tail end of my thirties, and it's too late for me to worry about finding someone I love.

  No one can hurt me if I don't let them have the power to do it. Which means I'm better off alone.

  "Fuckin' hell, old man, what's crawled up your ass and died?"

  "Got shit to do, Mav," I tell my brother, not stopping in my shoveling.

  "Looks like you need a break from that shit you gotta do, brother."

  "Drew isn't here today. If I don't get this shit done, I'm gonna be workin' all night. Tell me what you need so I can get this done."

  "Leigh wants you to come to dinner tomorrow."

  "Does she, now?"

  "Says she doesn't see you enough, though I'm not sure why she fuckin' cares."

  I bark out a laugh. "Jealous?"

  "Fuck you," he retorts.

  "Just saw her the other day when I stopped in at the PieHole. Why does she really want me to come to dinner?"

  I hear my younger brother mumble something under his breath and smile despite the fact that I'm hot and exhausted, and my mind is in about a million other places. He continues to grumble--something he's always been mighty good at--as I finish placing the last few forkfuls of hay into the stall and turn to him. Even frustrated, I can see the contentment that his life now brings him written all over his face. I'm happy as fuck that he's got that. It hasn't been an easy road for him and his wife, Leighton, but they finally found their way back to each other. Took him almost dying, his rodeo career ending, and our father's death to do it, but it happened regardless, so if anyone deserves the full-to-bursting life he has with Leigh, it's my little brother.

  "You didn't hear it from me, but she and Quinn want to corner you into comin' to their baby shower or some shit like that. Fuck if I know, Clay. I don't even want to be a part of it, but every time Leigh talks about the shower, her face does this thing that makes me want to give her anything in the damn world to keep it lookin' like that, so I'm here to make sure I keep gettin' those stars in her eyes and smiles on her lips. Even if it goes against everything to be beggin' my brother to come to a fuckin' baby shower."

  I laugh, low and deep. "Admit you're just as over the fuckin' moon as she is and I'll be there." I don't need him to, but part of me loves to hear him talk about how thrilled he is that he's going to be a father. Even though I'm only three years older than him, I basically raised him and Quinn when our mama took off. I reckon this is as close to parental pride as I'll ever get, which is why I keep taking that pride whenever opportunities arrive.

  He drops his brooding expression and gives me a smile that's usually only reserved for Leigh. "Shit, Clay. Can't even put it into words, but if that's what it means to feel like my heart is gonna explode daily, then yeah, I'm over the fuckin' moon. Scared outta my skull, too," he admits, his smile dimming a little.

  "Why's that?"

  "Did you know her mama had complications when she had Leigh? That's why they never had any more young'uns. She told me about how her mama almost died during childbirth and all I can think about is what I'll do if I lose Leigh."

  No longer feeling the joy of his happiness, I prop the pitchfork against the stall, walk over to him, and clasp his shoulder in support. "Leighton's strong as hell and doctors are trained a lot better than they were thirty years ago, Mav. Don't let that ruin your excitement. She's gonna be just fine, and in the end you'll have a little piece of the two of you keepin' you up all night."

  "I won't be able to move on if I lose her," he continues, completely ignoring my attempt at lightening the mood and I realize just how much this has been weighing on him.

  "Maverick." I hiss through the thickness in my damn throat and pull my brother into my arms. His own come around me with bruising force.

  "Can't talk to her about this shit, Clay. I don't want her worryin' about it when she should be focusin' on all the happy shit, but it's tearin' me apart just thinkin' about losing her."

  "Fuck, brother."

  Just like when we were younger and he was upset, he drops his forehead against my shoulder, and even though I'm no longer taller than him, he seems to shrink in my hold. It's then that I realize my baby brother--the badass ex-rodeo champion--is crumbling, his silent sobs only evident because of the choppy breaths coming from his lips.

  "I could lose her."

  "You won't."

  "You don't know that," he bellows, ripping free from my arms and throwing his hands in the air. "Every day we get closer to the baby bein' born I feel like I'm losin' her. I can't turn it off."

  Fucking hell.

  I pull my phone out of my back pocket and move my thumb against the screen while he paces and mumbles in front of me, placing the device to my ear a second later.

  "Hey," my sister sings through the phone.

  "Tate around, darlin'?" Maverick stops in his tracks and looks over at me with a blank face. No hint of anger, the fear gripping him too deep for him to be mad that I'm bringing someone else into this and exposing his vulnerable fears to them.

  "Yeah. Everything okay?"

  "All's fine, Quinnie, just thought of somethin' I needed to ask him. Forgot the other day when I ran into him in town."

  "Let me go grab him. We've been workin' on a junker he bought off Craigslist. Can you believe that? Only man in the world who would buy his wife a rust bucket as a gift."

  "Sounds like the perfect gift if that wife is you," I tell her, forcing lightness into my tone while my eyes stay trained on Maverick.

  "It is, isn't it." She sig
hs happily. "Here he is. Love you, big brother!"

  "Love you back, darlin'."

  I wait, hearing what sounds a helluva lot like them making out before he comes on the line.

  "Hey. What's up, Clay?"

  "Need you to come to the ranch, Tate. Keep that stupid smile on your face so Quinn doesn't think somethin' is wrong. Tell her I need help puttin' together a gift for the baby or some shit and come now. Got it?"

  "Need me to bring any tools?" he plays along instantly.

  "See you quick, Tate."

  "Yeah, don't worry, I won't tell Quinn you're puttin' together a gift for her, man."

  I hear Quinn make some girly as fuck noise as I disconnect the call and push the phone back into my pocket.

  "You're gonna sit down and listen to what he has to say, Maverick. Then us three are gonna go inside and have some cold ones before you go home to your wife with a clear conscience. Got it?"

  He grunts, doesn't speak but drops against the wall. He slides until his ass is on the ground and his head is hung low. The whole time my heart breaks knowing he's been carrying this load secretly until it became too much for him to keep buried. Work can wait for another day: right now, my brother needs me, and there's never been and never will be anything I won't do for the people I love.

  I sit against the wall opposite him while we wait. Fifteen minutes later, Tate comes roaring down the driveway in the truck my sister restored for him almost a year ago. I'd sent him a text right after getting off the phone with him to let him know to find us in the old barn that we use for our personal horses. This one, while still nice, isn't top-of-the-line like the one we use to breed, and it lacks the air-conditioning system we put in the breeding stable a few years back. By the time Tate comes running in, I've finally gotten used to sitting in a puddle of my own sweat.

  "Jesus Christ, Clay. Give me a fuckin' heart attack. What's going on?" he breathes, and I finally look away from Maverick. My sister's husband might not have been born and raised in Pine Oak, but all it took was one year back here and he shed every ounce of the city boy he'd become when he lived in Atlanta. Even if he still wears ball caps and not Stetsons, he looks like any other man that grew up here. 'Course, he would when Quinn's got his ass working on trucks, covered in dirt and grease.

  "Maverick," I tell him, looking back at my little brother. He hasn't moved since I called Tate, who conveniently happens to be our town's lady doctor in addition being to our brother-in-law. If anyone knows the facts that can set Maverick's mind at ease, it's Tate. "Mav, want me to tell Tate or do you?"

  He grunts, and I take that as him wanting me to fill Tate in, so I do. Each word that crosses my lips makes Tate look more and more sympathetic. His own wife, our sister, is due only a week after Leigh, so aside from Tate being one hell of a doctor, he can sympathize with Maverick on a level I couldn't begin to imagine.

  "Jesus, man. That's some heavy shit."

  "I'd die without her." Maverick finally looks up, his eyes pleading with the two of us.

  "You wouldn't. Not because you'd move on, but because you'd have a reason to keep goin', but that's not gonna happen." Tate moves over to his side and starts spewing a bunch of medical knowledge that makes my ears bleed, but by the time he's done explaining to Maverick just how safe Leigh is, I finally see the tension leave my little brother's body. "Not only has medicine become more advanced, but we doctors are always thinkin' ten steps ahead, man. I promise you, Leighton and the baby are gonna be fine."

  When the three of us are done talking, there isn't a sober one between us. Quinn came about an hour ago to pick up Tate, and Maverick just drove off with Leighton. Judging by him not being able to keep his hands off her when she showed up, I know I can go to bed tonight not worried about my baby brother.

  The second their taillights disappear and the sounds of the night meet my ears, I feel the loneliness settle around me once again. Then I head back to the barn to finish the work I abandoned earlier this afternoon, but my mind is on my family and the apple pie I have waiting in the fridge, thanks to Leighton.

  If I was a different man, maybe I'd do something about the deadweight of my solitude that's getting heavier and heavier to drag around. But I'm not, so I continue my work in silence before going to bed.

  Alone.

  4

  CAROLINE

  "I Could Use a Love Song" by Maren Morris

  Dusting has become the bane of my existence. However, I do it with a smile because I love every second that I spend inside my bookstore. Even every second I spend outside of it, since my apartment is on top of The Sequel and the scent of books travels up the stairs and into my living space. There's no better smell on this earth than the pages of a book. Not one thing.

  Well, maybe that of a certain dark cowboy . . .

  I smile to myself. The memories of that night still hang with a delicious heaviness in my thoughts, even a month later. I always thought I wouldn't be able to detach the emotion from sex, but when I woke up alone the morning after that glorious night, all I could do was smile and take my well-used body home. I'd needed that night more than I thought. I needed to remember how to feel again without letting someone close. And it's been the memories from our night that have kept the loneliness I was drowning in at bay and a smile on my face. I think, in a way, my dark cowboy made it possible for me to not have any more lingering fear over the fact that my ex had started contacting me again.

  "Thinkin' about that cowboy again?" Lucy sings with a smile, meeting me in the romance section toward the back of the store with her own duster.

  "That obvious, huh?"

  "Only on the days that end with y," she jokes.

  "Yeah, yeah."

  "You know, all you have to do is ask Luke. I bet he'd give you the stranger's name and you could enjoy another night of having your world rocked."

  I laugh. "It was special, Luce, but I don't want to ruin what I got from him by tryin' to make it somethin' it isn't."

  "And how do you know it couldn't be more?"

  "How do you know it could?"

  "Oooh, feisty."

  The bell chimes, letting us know there's a customer, and Lucy takes off with a little skip, the smile still on her face. That girl is perpetually happy, and it doesn't take much to make her maniacally happy. She's been riding the same high as me for the past month, although she's been riding it for an entirely different reason. My best friend is just happy that I'm happy. For her, it's as simple as that. She's seen too many times when I wasn't close to that, been there for me since I met her at eighteen, and I know she'll be there for me until I die.

  I hear her greet our newest customer and I continue dusting, moving through the romance books slowly as I study the spines. Romance is my favorite genre, the hopeless romantic in me still there despite everything my love life has been through, and I can't help it when my thoughts drift back to him. Our night together was the stuff fantasies are built from. There wasn't a single second of our coupling that gave me a hint to who he was. Even in the shower, we washed each other in darkness. He took me against the bathroom counter in darkness. We fumbled back to the bed in darkness. Even if a part of me wishes I knew who he was, I wasn't kidding when I told Lucy that I didn't want to cheapen the memory of our time together if he turns out to be less than the perfect man that I've created in my mind. It has nothing to do with what he might look like, but I'm afraid that if I were to find him and we had another chance at coming together, it'd never live up to the magic of that night.

  So I'm almost completely content with never knowing.

  Almost.

  "Did you move the pregnancy books?" Lucy asks, popping her head around the shelf I was working on tidying up.

  "Oh, sorry. I forgot to tell you. They're toward the front now, over by the self-help books. I didn't think it was right to have them all the way in the back and on the bottom shelf. Makin' it a little easier for the mamas-to-be and all, keepin' them up front."

  "Gotcha!" she says, smil
e in place and pep in her damn step.

  I shake my head and smirk.

  "Holy shit! Leigh, it is her!"

  I feel my jaw drop and quickly turn with a squeak. No way. I haven't heard that voice or that name in years.

  "Quinn!" I exclaim, placing my duster on the shelf and rushing forward to pull her into a hug about the same time I notice her round belly. "Oh my goodness, congratulations, Quinn!"

  She pulls away, smiling and rubbing her swollen and very pregnant belly. "Thank you. I can't believe it's you. I thought I recognized your voice."

  "Caroline?!" I hear behind Quinn, and then Leighton James is pulling me into her arms, hugging me just as tight as I am her.

  "Holy crap! You too!" I laugh, looking from belly to belly, my laughter growing. "I shouldn't be surprised you two would be pregnant together. There wasn't a thing y'all did without the other growin' up! How close are your due dates?"

  They both beam, then, simultaneously, exclaim, "A week!"

  "Of course it is," I say, laughing even harder at the fact that the two childhood best friends, both born within the same week, are pregnant with their babies due a week apart. "It sure is good to see you two."

  "Have you been livin' in Wire Creek long?" Quinn asks, still stroking her belly. "I thought I heard you were in Houston. Or was it Dallas?" She looks at Leigh in question before focusing back on me.

  I shake my head. "Austin, actually. I lived there after college but moved to Wire Creek a few years ago."

  "Never thought I'd see the day. You hightailed it outta here so quick I think you still had your cap and gown on from graduation." Leighton laughs.

  She isn't wrong: I took it off on the road out of town and tossed it out the window. "What can I say? I was young and foolish."

  "Who was it you were datin' back then?"