Page 43 of Risking it for the Cowboy

She pulled out her car keys and handed them over. “Feel free to text whenever.”

His fingers closed on hers, his eyes fixating on her shirt. “Careful what you wish for.” He winked. “Might get you into trouble.”

*

She climbed in his truck, Artex perched in the middle and the box on the floorboard, to see that Daisy had torn open said Reese’s Pieces, her fingers sticky. “Does he have a napkin?” She helped herself to his glove box—

“No, Daisy, we can’t go through his stuff! Put your belt on.” What if there were condoms in there?

Or a firearm?

“Wow,” Daisy said, holding up a photobooth strip. “They’re like the one you have.”

Her heart stopped just as she was about to shift into drive. Daisy had rummaged in her things, too? It was the only way she’d know about that photo.

“Daisy, you shouldn’t go through my things, either.”

“But you guys look like you love each other.”

Spoken so innocently … Charlie spared a look at the photos of that magical night.

Her laughing.

Him grinning as he kissed her jaw so that divot popped, so boyish and carefree.

Her head dropped back, her arms slung around his neck like they fit together.

But his hand … it cupped her neck. Gentle, as if he worried he’d break something. Just like it had tonight, in the midst of that whole crowd.

And Sharpied along the edge, it said, Fowler Girl. She smiled at the misspelling and slipped it back into the glovebox, as Daisy went through an old CD case—the truck had a CD player installed, replacing what had likely been a plain AM-FM radio, but no USB hookup.

“What are these?” Daisy held one up.

“Compact discs. Music. He plays in a band. He loves music.”

“C-Call of—I can’t read it, Momma.”

“Which is why you need to practice, Daze. You gotta get that reading and spelling grade up and stop fightin’ me when it’s time to do your homework.”

She took the disc from her and tipped it into the headlights from her Rover shining through the back window. Her brow crinkled, because she’d been expecting some country band but instead… “Huh. Call of the Wild.”

“What band is that?” Daisy said.

“It’s a book.” She glanced at the others as she put it back in the sleeve. “White Fang. Hatchet. Where the Red Fern Grows, Catcher in the Rye, Old Yeller…”

She pressed the eject button on his dash and a disc emerged. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

He liked classics? About adventures? Of boys dealing with grief, anger, or abandonment coming of age? The themes throughout the stories resonated.

Was it any wonder why with parents who’d kicked him out? And yet … he’d said he’d not been able to read well, had dropped out, that he often mixed up letters. He’d misspelled Flower Girl. He’d reversed two digits on his phone number and had a case of audio books.

Was Thaddeus, the boy whose parents made him hate his name, by chance … dyslexic?

Chapter Fourteen

You better watch your back … watch your back … two-dimensional ditz…

Daisy was crying, her wisps of baby hair sticking to Charlie’s lips as she curled her body around the toddler. The doorbell chimed. Kept chiming. His friends coming over? The cops? They never helped. They took him away for a night, but he was always back the next day.