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“Shut up!” he shouted.

“I almost feel sorry for you, Ethan.”

“Shut up!” he shouted again, incensed.

“Fine, I won’t say another word,” I told him and hung up. “Because I don’t need to,” I revealed to the empty line.

I laid the phone above our heads and blew out the candle.

At three in the morning, we were startled awake by Eugie barking.

“What is it, boy?” I asked him before realizing he was barking at a loose shutter flapping in the wind.

We both laid back down. “Eugie, hush,” a raspy-voiced Cricket ordered him and he quieted down.

I began to stretch when I felt that Cricket’s body was on mine. Her leg was hooked around mine, her head resting on my chest, her hand around my waist.

“I’m sorry,” she said. I couldn’t see her face flame red, but the heat on my chest told me all I wanted to know.

She scrambled to her side of the pallet. I stood up and stretched once more.

“I’m gonna check the roads.”

The snow had ceased to a light dusting and the plow trucks had already gone through the town, which meant they’d done the same thing for the highways. As I studied the winter wonderland before me, I debated whether I should tell Cricket we could leave.

Sleeping next to her, even if was for a few hours, was so incredible it made my heart pound just thinking about it. I didn’t know how I’d gotten as far as I had since meeting her. I went from wanting to know what her body felt like to sleeping next to that body but only being able to think about how I was dying to know what her heart felt like.

An intense, burning pounding hit me in the chest and my hand shot to my heart and stayed there. I waited for the sensation to subside but it didn’t. At first it hurt, but then it scorched me so sweetly I begged for God never to take it away. It blistered my soul, imprinted in my skin, and seared my lips.

It was the exact moment I fell in love with Cricket Hunt. The point in time I knew my life would never be the same again. My hand shot out and rested flatly against the cold window and the ice melted beneath it.

But the next moment I acknowledged I could do nothing about it, and the pain was so intense I felt like punching that window through. Because I couldn’t claim her lips whenever I felt like it, I couldn’t change the oil in her truck for her, I couldn’t leave a note on her mirror for her whenever I felt like it, or find pieces of scrap metal on the side of the road and instinctually pick them up for her. I couldn’t help her catch Eugie for his bath, touch her hip because I just felt like it, or drive her into Kalispell. I couldn’t do those things because she wasn’t mine to do those things for, and that was pure agony for me.

“Cricket,” I said, walking back to the stage with purpose.

She sat up, devastating me, and my hand clenched at my chest.

“Uh-huh?” she asked.

“Um, the roads are clear. We can leave if you want.”

“Oh,” she said, pushing the blanket down her legs, “that’s great.”

I nodded but I didn’t agree.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The auction that night was to happen as scheduled. The entire ranch went into a frenzy in attempt to get as much done as possible so just a few hands could stay behind and watch things.

Although I was exhausted, I headed back to the trailer to shower and found Bridge curled up on the banquette.

“What’s up, dude?”

She sat up. “Jonah,” she said and started crying.

“Shit,” I said, sitting next to her.

“No,” she laughed, still crying. “It’s these damn hormones. He told me something today and I just ran off.”