Seeing the world with fresh eyes is life altering. Watching sunrises in the hills, curling up by a fire pit as the sun sets at the end of a long day, cooking with my new—and first—bestie Sienna, all of it seems crisper, clearer, and calmer than anything has before.
The kitchen smells like mix of expensive vanilla and maple syrup—a scent I am also growing addicted to. Sienna glances across the island as she sts down a fresh tray of her maple cookies, and I pretend to be drooling. They are good, but when she sets them beside my much darker batch, I just laugh.
“It’s unavoidable, Sienna,” I laugh, reaching over to snatch a cookie up from both trays. Squinting at her perfect brown treat compared to mine, I huff out a sigh. “I am a calamity in the kitchen, ye bonny lass,” I try out one of the stupid names we’ve taken to calling each other. “This is all user error,” I admit with a shrug.
“We will get it right, toots. We won’t let you takethatbatch to Brooks,” she teases, brushing a stray hair back with her forearm. She leaves a white streak of flour right across her forehead.
“Oh, chicken nugget, you’ve got a little something…” I point to my own forehead.
She rubs it but only succeeds in making it worse. She looks like she’s wearing war paint. “Better?”
She is adorable so I just nod and give a thumbs up. “Perfect. You look like a professional. Sterling would approve.”
Sienna spins back to swat me with a towel. “Stop teasing me about him,” she chastises, her cute southern twang making mesmile. “He might hear you.” She flushes not from the heat of the kitchen but the mention of our boss, Sterling. Our very hot, very sweet, very enamored boss who she definitely bakes her ass off for.
“Girl, I hope he does. Let the fool get a clue. You and Kenna,” I mention her two-year-old daughter, “are the best things to happen to that cowboy,” I declare, raising my voice in hopes hedoeshear my unsolicited opinion.
“Since we’re talking aboutcowboys...have you...said anything new to yours as of late?”
Heat rushes to my cheeks, and it has nothing to do with the hot cookie I just shoved in my mouth. “Weevenotsaid anything,” I mutter between delicious bites of maple sweetness.
“Uh....want to try that again, twinkle tits?”
Swallowing, I laugh before I take a long drink of sweet tea. “We’ve not...we’ve notsaidanything about it since...”
“Since he claimed you as his bride before all the people who matter in his life. Right, right. I recall the moment well.
I nearly choke on the tea. “He didn'tclaimme. He just... expressed his long-term goals. Very loudly. In front of the entire ranch. With the kind of confidence that is impossible to contest.”
We share a sigh at the romance of the moment my sweet, surly Brooks put on for the entire ranch. It’s been less than a week and those words he said that day, the pretty ones he said about wanting to make me his wife and give me his name, have volleyed in my head ever since.
“Would you even try to contest him honey buns?”
“Not even a little bit, puddin’ pop,” I shoot back with a finger gun and a click of my tongue.
Sienna laughs, a bright, honest sound that fills the kitchen. “Blake, those words, that moment, it will happen for you when you need it to. He will wait forever to hear them because that man is down bad for you.”
“Well, I am still bringing him your sweets instead of mine, to make sure hestaysdown bad,” I tease, popping another of her cookies in my mouth.
Just as we pull the last batch from the oven—tossing my burnt ones directly into the trash—the house seems to shudder. I nearly drop the good cookies when Sterling’s voice booms through the halls, rattling the windows. Panic floods Sienna’s face. We bolt from the kitchen and round the corner, colliding head-on with him in the foyer.
“What is going on?”
“Tell me we’re not about to have another public speech. Not sure I can handle...what? What is it, Sterling?”
His eyes lock onto mine, and the floor feels like it’s falling away. I know instantly—this is about Brooks. I can feel it in a way that defies logic, a hollow ache deep in my marrow. It’s an ache tried to bury in the bottom of a bottle since I lost my Uncle Jed.
“It... it’s Brooks...he was...I don’t...fuck, he was riding Stormchaser, I have no idea what went wrong. He’s...Gunner is taking him to county.”
My knees give out, but Sterling is faster. He catches me, Sienna right behind him. I can’t seem to draw in enough air. The sweet maple on my tongue turns to ash—to dirt and salt—as tears flood my eyes before I can stop them. Before I can even find out how bad it is, I'm already breaking.
Because I know it is bad, I see it in his eyes.
“Let’s go. We need to get there, honey,” Sienna takes control of the situation, pushing both of us towards the door. “Caleb! Come to the house, look after Kenna for me, sweetheart. Your keys, honey,” Sienna speaks soft, low, to Sterling, seeing he is just as shaken as I am.
Somehow, she steers the two of us to his truck and gets us to the small county hospital. If someone asked me later, I could not answer how we got down the halls, to the tiny emergency room. Ihave no memory of the nurses trying to keep us out or the fit that Sienna threw to get them out of our way.
All I know is that I am in a hospital room that is too bright. Too loud. It smells too clean. I am hit with a craving for the scent of leather and bourbon. I am so cold I am shuddering, teeth chattering, as we stand feet away from a broken body. They said it is Brooks, but it is not. There is no way that frail thing in the bed with the tubes and blood and twisted wires is my Brooks.
