Page 28 of Not Our First Rodeo
It means that I’ve been holding myself back from him when he’s always given me every part of himself. But I don’t know how to do that, how to live like that. I’ve tried the most with him and with Jade, but even with the people I love the most in this world, I can’t make myself let go of the little pieces of myself I’ve always kept hidden.
Letting out a sigh and rubbing my palms over my thighs, I say, “I just haven’t been totally honest with him.”
She arches a brow, the neon lights casting her in shades of blue, purple, and red.
“About why I needed time. I’ve been…struggling,” I say, avoiding her eyes. I focus on a spot on the dashboard, a dent she made with the heel of her snakeskin boots one night when I was her designated driver and she was completely wasted after one too many tequila shots at KC’s. “I’ve been struggling, and I haven’t wanted him to see me like that. So I asked for time.”
It’s the most honest I’ve been with anyone about the separation. Jade asked why when it first happened, but I wouldn’t tell her. She probably thought we had problems to work through. But that was never it. The problem was never us. It was alwaysme.
“Els,” Jade says with a heavy sigh. “You can’t cut out everyone who gets too close.”
“I’m not,” I reply, even though we both know I’m lying. Finally meeting her gaze, I say, “Or I don’t want to. Really, I don’t. I just don’t know how not to.”
The words hang in the air between us, and I watch as my best friend digests them. We’ve been Jade and Elsie since she took one ballet class at the studio when she was twelve. Ballet didn’tstick for her, but we did, and she’s stuck with me through thick and thin since. She knows me better than anyone else, except maybe Beau. But she’d say it’s a tie.
I’m holding my breath, waiting for her to respond, unsure of what I want her to say. I just said so much, although it really wasn’t much at all. But it was enough, and my heart feels raw. I don’t think I can handle more tonight, but I owe it to her to try if she wants me to.
“When the food gets here, can I have some of your fries?” she asks. “I got onion rings and I’m already regretting it.”
A relieved sigh slips out of my lips and my shoulders drop from where they stationed themselves around my ears. A small smile lifts my mouth. “Yeah, Jade, we can split my fries. As long as you don’t let those onion rings in the truck. I think the smell would be my last straw.”
She smiles back, although I can still see the words she’s holding back hovering on the tip of her tongue. “Deal.”
I’mnotshockedtofind the big house loud and chaotic when I arrive for family dinner. The ranch has been in my family for generations, but my grandparents were only able to have one child—my dad. After they passed, my dad was the only blood relative left of the Jenningses, but he wasn’t the only family. Over the years, he and my mom have been collecting people and sewing them into the patchwork quilt that is this family.
The big house is an oversized log cabin, sprawling over three thousand square feet. My parents always said with two boys and a little girl, each one wilder than the two of them combined, they needed space to breathe. They built the new big house when Cooper and I were four or five, and I have distinct memories of Dad letting us nail boards into place and write our names on the walls before they painted over them. This house is as much a part of our family as the people in it.
I make my way into the living room and see Cooper first. He nods in my direction, so I make a beeline for him, wiping my sweating palms on my jeans. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Dad talking to Willow, Ruby’s mom, and her husband, Jesse.They look deep in conversation, and I’m thankful for it, because I don’t want my dad cornering me. Cheyenne is chasing one of Morgan’s boys around, and Morgan is nowhere to be found. Mom is definitely in the kitchen, finishing dinner, and I’d bet my last dollar that Jade’s parents are in there too.
I think I’m in the clear. Tonight, I have to tell my family that I got my wife pregnant. Not all that crazy under normal circumstances, but these circumstances are anything but normal. And I’m not ready to face the music just yet.
I remember when Cooper told the family about Ruby. He wasn’t nervous at all to tell everyone that he was having a baby with a stranger. He knew that even if they were shocked at first, they’d be thrilled. And internally, I know that too.
But that doesn’t make me less nervous, especially since I’ll be sharing the news without Elsie here with me. Not having her here feels like I’m missing a vital part of myself, the way people who have lost a limb say that they sometimes still feel phantom pains in the spot it once was.
“You look like you could use this,” Cooper says, handing me his beer and pulling me from my thoughts as I reach him. I take it gratefully, the cold, sweating glass bottle a balm against my overheated palms. There’s a headache building at the base of my skull and sweat prickling beneath my shirt.
I take a long gulp, welcoming the bitter flavor against my scratchy throat. “That obvious?”
He grins, eyes assessing me, and I swear I see a flicker of concern there. “Not to everyone.”
“Just to you?” I ask before taking another sip, practically downing the rest of the bottle.
His smile stretches. “Just to anyone who shares our blood.”
To prove his point, Cheyenne sidles up next to me, her blue eyes narrow. Her dark brown hair, the same color as mine andCooper’s, falls in tangles down her back, just like it always does. “What’s wrong?”
I let out a sigh and push a hand through my hair, avoiding her gaze. “Nothing.”
She steps closer—she’s never been one for personal space. I can smell her floral and honey perfume, the same scent she’s worn since high school, something she picked out at the mall in Bozeman and still dutifully purchases ten years later. “You’re lying. Spill.”
Cooper laughs, drawing Cheyenne’s stare away from me, allowing me to take a full breath.
“Doyouknow?”
Before he gets a chance to respond, someone asks, “Know what?”
I turn to see Morgan joining our group. He’s dressed in worn jeans and one of the plain short-sleeve T-shirts he wears year round, like the cold has no effect on him. The gel I know he haphazardly ran through his dark blond hair is barely holding it in check, the thick waves fighting to break through.
