Page 63 of Swift and Saddled

“C’mon,” he said. “I’ll show you.” He took the pie boxes off my lap and got out of the truck, and I had no choice but to follow.

When I got out, I realized the truck wasn’t as close to the edge as I thought, which was a relief, but it was still pretty close. Wes hadn’t outright told me this, but I felt like he had a thing for triggering his own fight-or-flight.

I wasn’t afraid of heights, but I hadsomesense ofself-preservation, so looking over the cliff made my stomach flip a little.

Wes popped the tailgate and set the pie boxes on it. He hopped into the bed effortlessly (I was going to be playing that little jump on a loop in my mind for the foreseeable future), lifted the lid of the silver storage box behind the cab, and started pulling out blankets and pillows and lining the truck bed with them. He’d gotten all of this ready…for me?

I was reeling over that when he offered me his hand. “Use the tire to step up, and I’ve got you the rest of the way,” he said with one of his soft smiles.

At his core, Weston Ryder was gentle, and I thought that was the best thing that a man could be.

I grabbed his hand and stepped up onto the truck tire as gracefully as I could, which wasn’t graceful at all, and then he pulled me the rest of the way up and I was in his arms. We stood together in the truck bed for a minute, and I looked up at this man, this cowboy who had been a stranger to me just months ago.

Now I was wondering if I could ever live a life that he wasn’t a part of.

The thought petrified me, so I pushed it out of my head. I didn’t want to think about that. Not tonight.

We settled onto the blankets, and Wes started popping open pie boxes. There were three of them, eight pieces in two and four in one.

“So,” he said, “you might not know this, but Meadowlark is the pie capital of the western United States.”

“Really?”

“No,” Wes laughed. “But should be.” He handed me a forkand took me through the options. I couldn’t remember them all, but there were, among others, strawberry, blueberry, peach, banana cream, pistachio cream, sweet potato, pumpkin, pecan, key lime, cherry, and Wes’s favorite, coconut cream. “Which one are you going to try first?” His excitement was rubbing off on me. I wouldn’t say I was a fan of pie—I didn’t hate it by any means, but it wasn’t something I ate or thought about eating often—but Wes’s energy for the things he loved was contagious.

So the possibility that I would become a pie enthusiast after tonight was quite high.

I studied the slices for a minute before settling on the key lime. I scooped some up with my fork and slid it in my mouth.

Holy shit. I felt my eyes widen, and Wes beamed at me. “I told you so,” he said.

“That is seriously the best pie I’ve ever had in my life.” And so the pie eating began. Wes even pulled one of his small sketchbooks out of the truck so he could draw up a pie bracket for us.

As he flipped through the pages, I could see some of his drawings. He was good. Really good, actually.

We ate, we laughed, and we talked.

“Do people come up here a lot?” I asked.

“They used to. In high school, this place was known as Makeout Point,” he said with a waggle of his eyebrows and a mischievous grin that made my heart flutter. “But I don’t think it is anymore—or we’d be surrounded by foggy-windowed trucks right now.”

That made me laugh. “Were you a frequent flyer up here?”

Wes shook his head. “Not really, but when I turned sixteen, Gus and I shared a truck for a while. One night, I was lying in the truck bed just outside the Big House, looking at the moon and the stars, when I heard Gus sneak out of the house. I was curious about what he was doing, so I stayed down and quiet. Then he got in the truck and started driving.”

“With you still in the back?” I asked, giggling.

“Yes! And then he stops to pick up this girl—Mandy Miller—and at that point, I’m like shitting myself, but I felt like it was too late to say anything. He drives her up here, and instead of making out inside the truck like a normal person, they get out and pull the tailgate down.”

A laugh bubbled out of me—the kind that comes from your belly—at the image of a teenage Wes ruining his brother’s night because he got stuck in the back of a truck.

“And when Gus sees me, there’s practically smoke coming out of his ears.”

“What did you do?” I asked, still laughing.

“I waved.” Wes shrugged. “What about you?” he asked. “Any embarrassing stories?”

“Plenty, I’m sure,” I said. “But not as good as that.”

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