Page 9 of Cowboy Bull's Promise

No note. No goodbye. Just an empty space where he used to be.

So we came here.

And for a little while, I thought maybe that meant we’d be okay. That maybe this time, we wouldn’t be left behind again.

Then Mom got sick.

Ovarian cancer.

Fast. Ruthless.

Like it had been lying in wait for her, ready to strike the second she thought she could rest.

And just like that, it was me and the old man.

God, I love my Gramps.

He is the best man I’ve ever known. The kind of man who carries the weight of the world on his shoulders and still has a story to tell at the end of the day.

He taught me how to cook, how to sew, how to fix the little things most people would rather throw away.

And his stories.

Hell, I could listen to him talk for hours, weaving together pieces of the past like they still mattered. Like they still lived somewhere, tucked in the spaces between here and what came before.

He collects social security, but it’s not enough.

Not with the hospital bills still haunting us, not with the cost of his own medicine eating through what little we have left at the end of each month.

So I work.

I work, and I scrape, and I survive.

I pick up extra shifts whenever I can, doing everything I can to make sure Gramps doesn’t see how tight things have gotten.

And the last thing I need taking up any space in my already overworked brain?

A too-good-looking-for-anyone’s-good Romeo.

Kian O’Malley.

A cowboy with a crooked grin, easy charm, and the kind of presence that makes the air feel too thick, too charged, too damn dangerous.

A player, plain and simple.

And I know better than to mess around with that.

I have too much on my plate. Too much to lose.

And Kian O’Malley?

He’s the kind of trouble I can’t afford.

Which is exactly why I should’ve left early. Should have gone the second he came strolling in a few minutes after one AM.

I am so screwed.

Chapter Two-Kian

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