He grimaced. “This brand changed their packaging last summer, and these are the old bags.”
“Really?” I walked over and searched for the date stamp. Something I’d’ve done if I hadn’t been such a mess everywhere else. “Dammit. That’s what I get for ordering online.”
“Oh, this is totally my fault. They’re wild animals, but I turned ’em into a bunch of picky eaters.”
He started telling me about a place in downtown Wimberley that had fresher options, but my mind had already wandered back to Sky. I snarled at the useless bags of feed, shaking my head.
“Kit?” he asked, and I’d bet it hadn’t been the first time he’d said my name.
“I fucked up, Rowd. But I’m gonna make it right. I promise you, I will.”
As we exited the shed, we could see Stevie and Lane rounding up a Sika while Reed was directing Todd through the gate.
“Look, man,” Rowdy said, his demeanor shifting, like maybe he was willing to have pity on me. “All that sugar baby stuff . . .”
He let his words trail off and it just about killed me.
“All that sugar baby stuff,what?” I asked, the anxiety ratcheting up.
“It’s not bad,” he said, trying, I supposed, to reassure me. After a moment, he continued, “Look, Skylar never hated being a sugar baby, but he might not admit how he was terrible at it.”
Unlikely.
“What do you mean, terrible? I spent some personal time with the man, if you know what I mean, and nothing he did was bad. At all.”
Rowdy tilted his head at me, giving me theyou must be so fucking dumblook. “Not that, Kit. He was terrible at the detachment part. Couldn’t keep things at surface level. Had a real bad habit of falling in love with them.”
We returned to the fence and one of the antelope nibbled on my hand, almost distracting me from the bomb Rowdy just threw into the mix. “He fell in love with them?”
“Yeah. A lot. In fact, the only guy he didn’t fall in love with was some fuck buddy situation from Seguin. That guy’s married now, but they’re still friends, I think.”
I ran into an old friend from Seguin.
My stomach cramped. Was that the same guy Sky met up with in Gruene? While my mind was spinning on that little nugget, Rowdy pointed his finger in my face.
“See there? That look? That jealous look right there? Do you have any idea what that means?”
“If I did, then we wouldn’t be in this mess, would we?”
“God, for such a smart man, you are dumb as a box of rocks.”
Yeah, no shit.
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“How’s about I share an observation with you?”
“Alright.”
Rowdy’s cheeks went a little pink. “First off, I promise I wasn’t ogling you two. But . . .” He stopped, as if looking forthe right words. “When I walked in on y’all, do you know what I saw?”
“I dunno, me living out my worst nightmare?”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “There is no way in the world that being with Sky was a nightmare.”
“No, that wasn’t the nightmare,” I was quick to clarify. “Having you walk in on us before I knew what any of this meant? I’ll be fucking traumatized for life.”
“Fair,” he said, chuckling at my expense. “But do you know what I saw?”
