Page 47 of Not Our First Rodeo
His eyes widen, recognition dawning. “The party where we met.”
My eyes trace the contours of his face. The strong nose. The full lips that I’ve always been jealous of. The thick brows that frame searing brown eyes framed by the thickest lashes I’ve ever seen. The mustache I still can’t think about without feeling a hot blush stain my cheeks.
I can still remember that night like it was yesterday. The way our eyes locked from across the room. How I turned away, cheeks burning, and tried to throw myself into conversation with Jade and Sierra, a girl who danced with me at the studio. The feeling of his hand on my elbow when he walked up to me. The sight of that smile that I could feel all the way down to my toes. How he reached his hand out and introduced himself right thenand there, and how I knew in that exact moment that I was a goner.
“That’s the one.”
“So I owe Tonya a thank-you, then,” Beau responds, and I think his voice is thicker.
I shrug, guilt surging in my stomach for the way I’ve handled everything over the last year, how I’ve drawn away from him, how I’ve hidden pieces of myself for even longer than that. “I don’t know about that.”
He moves in front of me, blocking my view of Maya, and when I look up at him, his face is both stern and soft. I don’t know how he’s managed it.
“I’m going to thank her,” he says earnestly. “Because she changed my life that day. She made one small decision that turned my entire world upside down, and I’ll get on my knees to thank her for it every day for the rest of my life if I need to. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, Elsie Jennings,” he says, voice dripping with a sincerity I canfeel.His eyes bore into mine, like he needs me to understand this one truth. “You have to know that.”
Before I can respond, before I can think of a way to express to him what his words mean to me, the door to the studio opens, and a horde of giggling teen girls comes crashing in. The cacophony is so familiar that I sometimes hear it in my sleep.
I know I only have a moment before one of them asks if I like their new leotard and another one tells me about the boy she has a crush on at school and another asks if I listened to the Beatles growing up—because they have no concept of how old I am. So before I get sucked into the hurricane that is teenage ballerinas, I lift up on my tiptoes and press a kiss to Beau’s stubbled cheek, breathing in the earthy, leathery scent of him. He’s always smelled like Montana, even when we lived far away, and it’s one of the things I love most about him.
I tell him the only thing I can right now, the only piece of truth I have time for. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me too.”
WhenIreturnSugarto her stall after a successful thirty-minute ride around the ranch and find my dad leaning against the opposite stall, I know the time for avoiding him has come to an end. Ever since announcing the pregnancy, I’ve managed to not be alone with either of my parents. I don’t want them asking questions I don’t have the answers to yet, and I don’t want to hear anything negative they may have to say about Elsie. I know they love her like their own daughter, but after the comments Cooper has made, I’m worried they’ll also feel protective of me.
“Hey, son,” Dad says, and adjusts his hat on his forehead. He might be nearing sixty, but he still has a full head of dark brown hair that’s just beginning to streak with gray. His skin is weathered from years spent in the sun, and there are deep creases beside his eyes and around his mouth from a lifetime of easy laughter. He looks like he was formed right out of the mountains and dirt around us, a piece of the land just as unmoving.
I dust my hands off on my jeans and close the stall behind me, stalling for time. It clicks into place, echoing through the barn, and I finally meet my father’s eyes. “Hey, Dad.”
“I’ve hardly seen you since you moved back home.” He says this without any judgment, just a touch of sadness in his sandpapery voice, and guilt pricks at me for avoiding him. I feel it settle like lead in my stomach.
I glance down at the dirt and drag my boot through it, watching a line form in its wake. “Yeah, things have been crazy.”
That’s not entirely true. Things at home have been slow moving. Two steps forward, one step back. I feel like things are getting better between Elsie and me, but we’re healing at the rate of a deep cut without stitches. It’s as frustrating as it is rewarding.
“You’re going to be a dad,” he says.
I lift my gaze back up to his.
He’s still leaning against the opposite stall, one leg bent at the knee and resting on the stall door. There’s a small smile tugging at his mouth, lines crinkling the edges of his eyes. “I’m so proud of you.”
My lips twitch. “I put in a lot of work for it.”
He rolls his eyes at me, fighting back his smile. He’s always been so much quicker to laugh than Mom, but I always find it just as rewarding anyway. “I’m sure,” he says. “But I meant I’m proud of who you’re becoming, and I think you’re going to be an amazing father.”
His words hit me in places I didn’t know were vulnerable, places that have been wounded for possibly longer than I’ve known. When things went south with Elsie, I blamed myself, even though she told meshewas the one who needed to figure things out. I thought I wasn’t doing enough for her, or I was doing too much. That something about me was wrong. I’d lie awake in that tiny bed in the cabin on the ranch and stare atthe ceiling, questioning myself and my choices and what I could have done differently until my eyes burned from the need to sleep and my heart was pounding hard enough in my chest that I could hear it.
It wasn’t until I moved back home that I started to realize that even though I definitely needed to work on some things, she wasn’t bullshitting me when she said all that. Shedoeshave things she’s working through, things that don’t involve me. Still, there’s a wound beneath the surface that hasn’t quite healed yet, something I think may always linger just a little, a scab that could easily be picked at.
“Thanks, Dad,” I say, voice hoarse, and smooth my hands down the legs of my dusty jeans to hide their trembling. The denim scratches against my palms, rough and familiar.
“Let’s go for a walk,” he says, and turns on his heel, heading for the big barn doors without waiting to see if I’m coming.
I follow after him, dirt kicking up beneath our boots, and we step outside into the blinding sunshine. I have to blink at the change in brightness, but I soak it in, nonetheless.
Summer is officially on its way here. Every day is warmer than the last, and I love the feeling of the sun on my skin and the wind in my hair. I love all the seasons in Montana, but summer is my favorite. I always feel like I’m coming alive—defrosting—when the snow melts and the wildflowers come out and the sun stays out in the sky longer, chasing away the moon.
This year is no exception. I’ve never looked forward to summer the way I have after this long, hard winter.
Dad leads us out into one of the pastures, and we walk through the tall grasses without saying anything. My dad is like that. I know he wants to talk, to find out what’s really been going on in my head the last few months, but he’s quiet. He bides his time. He gives people room to breathe, to think.
