Page 109 of My Cowboy Trouble
I'm done being the entertainment. Time to find out if I can be the main event.
16
ASHER
I findher at the diner at eight in the morning, sitting in the same corner booth where I heard she met Darla yesterday. It's true, there's no damn privacy in this town.
She's got a cup of coffee that's probably gone cold and a plate of toast she's only picked at. Her hair is pulled back in its usual messy ponytail, and she's wearing yesterday's clothes, which tells me she probably spent the night at the local motel.
If I were her, I wouldn't come back either. Not yet, anyway.
She doesn't look up when I slide into the booth across from her, just keeps tearing her toast into smaller pieces until it looks like bread crumbs. Orsomething we'd feed the chickens. Silence stretches between us, and I'm trying to figure out what the hell I'm supposed to say. Sorry doesn't seem like enough, even for someone who’s usually good with words like me.
"Coffee's okay here," I say finally.
"I've had better." Her voice is flat, emotionless. The same tone she used when she first arrived at the ranch, before we'd earned the right to hear her laugh.
"In New York?"
"Everywhere." She finally looks up, and the exhaustion in her eyes hits me like a physical blow. "What do you want, Asher?"
Straight to the point. No small talk, no pretending this is fun.
"To... uh." Shit. I rehearsed this on the drive over, but now I can't remember a damn word. "To fix things."
"Things." She raises an eyebrow. "That's specific."
"You know what I mean."
"Do I? Because from where I'm sitting, it looks like you guys had your fun and now you're worried about the consequences."
Each word cuts, and they're supposed to. She's pissed, and she has every right to be.
"It wasn't like that."
"Wasn't it? Because that's sure what it sounded like when Clara Mae?—"
"Clara Mae doesn't know shit." The words come out harder than I intended, but I'm tired of that woman'spoison spreading through everything. "She wasn't there."
"There for what?"
I run a hand through my hair, trying to find words that don't make me sound like a self-serving idiot. "There when you told Sir Clucks-a-Lot to go to hell. There when you fixed that delivery situation better than any of us could. There when you..." I trail off. I don’t know why.
"When I what?"
"When you stopped being what we expected and started being..." Fuck. "Just come with me. Let me show you something."
"Asher—"
"One hour. Give me one hour, and if you still think this was all fake, I'll... I don't know. I'll figure something out. I’ll drive you to the damn airport if that’s what you want."
She studies my face, probably looking for lies or whatever it is she expects to find. I let her look, because I've got nothing to hide. Not anymore.
"One hour," she says finally.
"One hour."
She leaves money on the table, and follows me out to my truck. The ride is silent except for the radio playing something low that matches the mood in the cab. She stares out the window at the passing landscape, and I wonder if she's thinking about how much she'll miss it or how eager she is to leave it behind.
