“Hey, it’s not like I want you to get up on the roof.” Cam gave Mitch an arch look and got a middle finger in return.
“I will have you know that I have hired out myself on occasion to put people’s Christmas lights up, and that’s one reason I don’t do very much with ours.”
“Right, but this year you have a crew to do that,” Cam pointed out. “Or at least you’re building one. And I bet the guys could all use extra work.”
“Everybody can use extra work at Christmas. That’s true.” Mitch tilted his head, expression gone serious. “How long are you going to be gone for the NFR?”
“Well, it starts on the fourth and it ends on the thirteenth. Ideally, I’ll be there the whole time. So a week and a half, give or take.” End up in the money in any kind of meaningful way, then he would be able to maybe pare down how much time he spent on the road. Just do some of the bigger stock shows early in the year, a couple of the events like maybe Santa Fe that had good purses. Cam was finding way less appeal in spending most of the year out in the truck, rather than at home.
Now, what the hell he was going to do with himself when he stopped rodeoing? He had no idea because that was what he was good at.
He was not going to panic.
Mitch nodded. “I might see if I can’t bring the girls out for the last weekend. I know we won’t be able to see you riding because we won’t have tickets, but we can at least be there. We can show them Vegas. Maybe.” He stopped, frowned. “Shit. No. They may not want to.”
Cam didn’t expect that to hurt, but it did. “You don’t think so?”
Mitch shrugged, cheeks pink. “Well, I’m sure it has to do with what they’ve got. For example—the Christmas parade in Santa Fe is the first weekend you’re gone. I think they’ve got to start building up to their Christmas parties. But—” Mitch wrinkled his nose. “Rebekka’s birthday is the twelfth. So, unless she decides that she wants to have her birthday in Vegas instead of all of her little girlfriends at the slumber party she’s been planning for a month…”
“Oh shit, you’re right.” Damn it. He’d been planning, and he knew the dates, but somehow those two things seemed so disconnected. There was Rebekka’s birthday, which wassomehow forever away, and then there was the NFR, which he’d be leaving for in a couple of days. He’d lost the thread here. “Is she going to be mad at me for not being here for her birthday?” What he was asking was whether she was going to be hurt.
“She understands needing to work, man. And I think all three of them will be cheering for you. So if—when—you’re riding well and in the money, they’ll be cheering louder than anybody.”
“That’s cool.” He shook his head at himself, grinning a little. “I got all cart before the horse, I think. I forget not everyone lives for the NFR in December.”
“No, no, in this house, we are going to be celebrating our twelve-year-old. God, next year she’s going to be a teenager. Can you believe it?”
“It’s wild. It’s not going to be too much longer before she’s in high school.”
“Oh, would you shut up?” Mitch winked at him, taking the sting out of the words. Mitch sobered, staring over at him. “I’m glad you’re here to be a part of all of it, you know?”
So was Cam. It was nuts. “You know I never meant for any of this to happen.”
Mitch nodded. “You would be surprised at how much of my life is formed pretty much solely on those words alone.” He winked as he said it though, probably because it was true.
Cam got it. As much as he loved Mitch—all of him—none of his life seemed to have been planned.
Not one of the girls, not getting married, certainly not Allison’s death or Cam showing back up. Not a bit of it had been planned.
Cam wasn’t sure Mitch would know quite what to do if he had had a chance to plan something and it had worked out the way he’d meant it to.
“Well, I’m not too much more of a planner, but I’ve always had the illusion that I knew what I was doing.” Cam shrugged.“This thing with you, though? It’s the best kind of happy chaos, baby.”
Mitch chuckled and nodded. “Yeah, it is kind of happy chaos,” he said. “And let’s be honest, I think most country people are like this. We’re at the whims of the weather, bugs, children. Then there’s the government and everything else. We have to be able to wing it a little bit better than some.”
He nodded because it was true. They didn’t have sick days, paid time off. They didn’t work, they didn’t get paid. And it didn’t matter how big they were. Someone could be a damn wealthy cattleman and then hoof-and-mouth disease went through a herd and suddenly they were on the ropes.
“True enough. I never thought I’d come back here and spend so much time, you know?”
Mitch raised an eyebrow. “Do you hate it?”
“No. No, it’s been surprisingly good. It really has. I guess I’m just old enough now and mature enough to realize that I don’t have to run away from my family or my hometown.” And now he had Mitch back in his life. He hadn’t pined for Mitch necessarily for all those years, but he sure had missed the idea of him if not the reality. The reality was they had been high school kids and they hadn’t known each other well enough to plan a future.
“I’m glad you’re here. Did I say that already?” Mitch gave him a wink and he had to laugh.
“I am too, baby. I really am. Now, what do you say we roll ourselves into the bathroom and take a shower? It looks like we’re going to have to get up and decorate the house tomorrow.”
“A shower sounds like an amazing idea.” Mitch waggled his eyebrows at Cam. “Like, areallygood one.”
