“You’re telling me.” With a sigh, I look around at the kitchen of my childhood, vividly remembering the countless arguments my parents and I had about Alex. When it comes to him,sleazeis one of the kinder insults to be hurled within these walls. “But also, he has a point. He’s a roofer—summer is their busiest season.”
“Bullshit.You gotta stop letting him walk into your life whenever he wants.”
“I know.I know….But he’s the father of my only child. At one point, I loved him. It’s not that simple.”
Blair’s wistful gaze meets mine; our small frowns mirror each other. “Trust me, I know how you feel. But holding on to the past isn’t healthy, especially when he’s not on the same page.”
I down the rest of the wine and eagerly reach for the bottle. When Blair moved home to take care of Mom a few months back, she reconnected with her high school boyfriend, and now she’s apparently an expert on relationships.
“Easy for you to say when the love of your life magically turned everything around to win you back. You’re all glowy and shit now.”
“After more than a decade apart,” she says. “Give Alex an opportunity to miss you.”
With a swallow, I shrug. Wine goes down real easy when I’m talking about my ex. “But that also means keeping him from Jonas.”
“Is he seeing him now?”
“Well, no, but—”
The sliding glass door cuts my sentence short, and Dadappears with a proud gleam in his eye and a plate heaped with steaming burgers.
“Great,” Blair mutters into her glass. “Looks like we’re getting leftover burgers for the next three days.”
After topping up my glass—thank God I live within walking distance of my parents’ house—I follow the rest of my family to sit around the table. Slipping into an empty chair, I watch Jonas squirt ketchup over his cheeseburger with a concerning amount of tension and angst carved into his expression. He looks more like a hardened fifty-year-old going through a nasty divorce than a ten-year-old starting summer break. I remember the softness of his smile and the way he’d stare up at me as a toddler, arms outstretched as he waited to be picked up. It was easier then; he ate up every lie about where his dad was and didn’t question my decisions. He didn’t deserve those lies, but he also doesn’t deserve the truth.
No kid should have to face the reality that their dad doesn’t want them.
Colt
“She’s the real boss. I just work here.” I nod toward Betty and watch as she keeps a wide berth around the outside of the herd, staring them down with intense eyes and a wide-open, panting mouth.
The five-year-old blue heeler is the love of my life, and sometimes also the bane of my existence. But despite the number of shoes and phone cords she destroyed as a puppy, and the number of times the guys in my bunkhouse at Wells Ranch have threatened to shoot her, she’s proven herself as a fantastic working dog. And an even better best friend.
Aside from my mom, Betty’s the only girl I need.
“She’s gonna put you out of a job,” the ranch foreman, Red, says into the wide mouth of his metal water bottle. Following a long swig, he clunks the bottle back into his saddlebag and tips his chin toward the cattle we’ve been sorting for the last hour. “Might want to start eating kibble to convince Austin to keep you employed. He breaks down the math of how much more it costs to feed and house you, I bet he kicks you out and keeps the dog.”
“Betty is a high-class lady. Kibble isn’t enough for her.” I lean forward in my saddle, adjusting the way my straw hat sitsto cut the glare of mid-morning sun. “The puppuccinos add up fast.”
Red raises an eyebrow and stares at me, saying everything and nothing.
“She likes a special little treat after a long, hard day, so she gets a puppuccino—a little whipped cream swirled in a coffee cup with a bone-shaped biscuit on top.”
Without a word, he nudges the side of his mare to walk away.
Betty bounds ahead, nipping at the back leg of a stray heifer to encourage it toward the rest of the herd, and glances over her shoulder as if expecting instruction from me. We both know she doesn’t need it. We’ve practiced the basic commands, but between natural instinct and years of experience, we rarely use them.
Under the summer skies, on a ranch so sprawling I’ll likely never step foot on every piece of it, I lick my dry lips and watch other guys move Austin’s preselected cattle into a pen. My calluses catch on the looped rope in my hand, while I stare down a particularly ornery pair of steers holding firm ground as Betty barks and nips at their noses. Before I can get to them, Betty forces them through the gate and comes happily trotting back.
“You could at least pretend I’m in charge,” I call to her.
With the clang of the closing gate, Betty flops onto a shady patch of grass underneath the cattle-hauling trailer. Backdropped by a clear blue sky, the ground radiates visible heat waves—this time of year, we won’t start loading until sundown. Then the semi truck will haul the cattle the next province over in the cool cloak of night.
Right when other ranch hands start making plans for a quick dip in the shallow, man-made wading pool by the river, my phone chimes with a ringtone belonging to one of my bosses. Wells Ranch is run by three brothers, plus Red, and somehow I’ve gotta answer to all of them. In the few yearsI’ve been here, I’ve worked my way up the food chain. I like to think the only reason they haven’t given me an official title is because they don’t needfivebosses. Honestly, four feels like too many most days.
Shifting in my saddle, I tug my phone from the leather holster on my belt. The middle-aged-dad-style phone holder looks dumb as hell, but after breaking three phones while trying to chase after cattle with it in my pocket, I needed a solution.
Denny:Need you to go pick something up for me.
