Page 110 of Riding the High

“Daddy, I need more juice please!” Mabel calls.

“Coming, buddy,” he says, his eyes still on mine. Cole dropshis lips to my cheek, kissing me like he would a friend. “Look, I’m on no sleep and I have a lot of shit to sort out today.” He’s talking to me but glancing at the clock on the wall. There is hesitation in his every action this morning, just as there was last night—even in the way he moves to brush the hair off my forehead and kiss me there.

“I’ve got to go,” he says, squeezing my hand, and I feel his angst in his touch.

I nod, not knowing what to say, and discovering that all my resolve to make him tell me exactly what’s going on has somehow gone out the window. He gives me one last look before grabbing Mabel’s juice and taking it to her. And then he’s gone.

I hear the door close behind him and I lean on the counter, placing my head in my hands. Gemma’s words play through my mind. But it’s not just Gemma’s words that I remember; it’s CeCe and Liv’s too.

Could I have been completely, and utterly, wrong about Cole? Panic rises in my gut. I should’ve thought this through more. But the way I felt, the way we felt together. It was perfect.

I spin around and look out the back window to the pool beyond, contemplating how I let this happen. How I let myself fall madly, crazily, insanely in love with Cole Ashby. All I can do is hope I’m wrong about what’s going on in his head, because if I’m not, I have no idea how I’m getting out of this with my heart intact.

“Can I have another muffin?” Mabel says, startling me as she stands in the doorway.

I turn to her and smile. “You’re hungry this morning.”

“I had a tummy ache last night. Daddy stayed with me,” she explains. My eyebrows raise up.

Oh.

“Is your tummy all better now?” I ask.

“Yes. Sometimes it hurts when I’m nervous,” she says, looking down and twiddling her fingers.

“Do you want to talk about why you’re nervous?” I ask, pulling another blueberry muffin from the package from Spicer’s Sweets. She looks up at me, her amber eyes full of honesty and way too much maturity.

“I like when you’re here and …’ she starts, then looks at the backyard. “Our tomatoes are so big …”

Her bottom lip starts to quiver.My heart.

I immediately set down the muffin in my hand and go to her, crouching down and putting my arms around her. My heart shatters into a million pieces and I squeeze her tight.

“Listen, sweet girl—me and you?” I say, pushing the hair off her forehead to look at her properly. “We’ve become good friends, haven’t we?”

She nods and winds her little fingers in my hair like she did the night we came back from the cottage. It’s a comfort thing, I’m sure.

“You’re my best girl, and no matter what happens, when those tomatoes are ready to be picked, you’re still going to see me all the time, okay?” I tell her with a sense of certainty I’m not sure I feel. “Because if I didn’t see you, I’d miss you way too much.”

I tweak her chin and she nods and smiles at me.

“Okay. Will you still see Daddy?” she asks. “Will you miss him too?”

“Of course I will,” I tell her. I squeeze her again. “Now, let’s eat. We’ve gotta fight those thorny bushes and make some jam.”

I tickle her and she giggles, knowing how hard it is to pick all those berries without getting pricked by the thorns.

We get ourselves dressed and I remind Mabel to put on pants as opposed to shorts to avoid getting poked. I grab our clippers, tossing them with gloves for both of us into a couple of baskets, and we head out into the yard.

The sun is already warm and there is a light breeze as we move through Cole’s yard. Mabel skips ahead of me and picksa few wildflowers that have seeded from our garden into the grass and pops them into her basket for pressing. Two bunnies munch on clover in the corner of the yard and don’t move when we pass them, and Mabel does her best tiptoeing so as not to scare them. I smile at her; she’s so carefree, so happy. I hope this is the way she’ll always be. Worry knots in my stomach at the thought of leaving her and heading back to my own place in less than a month. How am I supposed to pretend I haven’t fallen in love with her too?

Mabel is animated with chatter as we drive to the big house; her morning nerves are long forgotten and, when we pull into the driveway leading to Silver Pines, I breathe out a sigh of relief the way I do every time I come here. In a lot of ways, this ranch was like my home when I was younger. Unlike my own parents’ house, it was a place of no judgment. A place where parents just loved their kids. A lot of the time it was like the entire place ran on laughter and inappropriate humor.

I look at Mabel in the rearview mirror. She’s watching the horses out of her window and I smile at the beautiful scene that surrounds us. Ivy and Wade are sitting at a picnic table near Silver Pine’s largest breaking pen, eating their lunch. A thick brush of trees sways in the distance and, just beyond them, I see Rowan McCoy working with Wade’s derby horse Angel’s Wings. Ivy is so pregnant she looks like she may burst any moment as she kicks her sandals off and runs her feet through the cool grass. I’m guessing she’s uncomfortable in the summer heat. But even so, she’s beautiful and manages a little smile and a wave to us as we drive by them and up the extra few hundred feet to the big house.

“There’s my girl,” Jo calls, coming into the foyer in shorts and an old Shania t-shirt of CeCe’s. Her long blondish-gray hair is in a big bun tied up with a scarf. Mabel hands her a jar of our jam and Jo takes it like it’s the most precious gift she’s ever received. She looks down at the label stuck on the top: “Daddy’s Girls Jam” and the year. Mabel wrote everything herself.

Jo’s eyes meet mine in question but she says nothing.

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