Page 2 of Entwined Hearts
“I’m sorry that happened,” I said.
He shrugged a shoulder like it didn’t matter. “Don’t be. It was a while ago.”
I found myself going back to the fence and leaning against it just like he was. “Doesn’t make it hurt any less.”
He let out a sound that wasn’t exactly an agreement, but not a disagreement either. After that, it was silent. The only sound was the chirp of crickets and the million questions in my mind.
“Want to talk about it?”
He looked at me then, his face in half light and half shadow. He looked…handsome up close like this. He’d always been cute, objectively speaking, but he looked grown up now. Sharp jaw, thick brows, light stubble, pretty eyes. They were as blue as I remembered them.
“Why would you care?”
The snarky question pulled me out of my perusal. “Because you look like you could use someone to talk to, and I’m a nice person,” I replied, and the corner of his mouth curled in a small smile.
“Our families hate each other in case you’ve forgotten.”
“I never hated any of y’all,” I said honestly.
His eyes searched mine as if he were trying to see if this was a trick. But when I didn’t budge, he swallowed roughly and nodded. “Okay.”
He lowered to the ground, his back resting against the fence post. He stared out into Circle M’s pastures as if he were trying to convince them to speak for him. “They told me they were going to the casinos in Dallas for the weekend,” he started, his voice low, soft. “Told me to stay here with Colt and the rest of the McLeods. And then they just…never came back.”
He took a long pull from the bottle like he was trying to drown the pain, and my heart broke for him in that moment.
It broke more when he told me about Mr. McLeod getting custody of him, how his parents had still never reached out to him, how people around town gave him pitying looks he despised.
We kept talking for hours. He told me about how he loved bull riding, but hated school. How he resented that everyone in town knew his “sob story” and felt sorry for him like he was some “dog left at the pound.” He told me he wanted to be a professional bull rider because it was the only thing that ever made sense to him, and he loved the adrenaline rush.
I told him how I loved school, but had no clue what I wanted to do with my life. How my brain never shut off, and I worried about things that hadn’t happened yet or might never happen, and how exhausting it was. But he didn’t laugh; he just nodded like he got it. Like maybe he had a tornado in his head, too.
When he told an especially sad story about winning his first buckle and searching for his parents in the crowd because he had forgotten they had left, I climbed to his side of the fence and sat with him, placing my hand over his.
He stared at it as if it were a grenade with the pin pulled. But he didn’t pull away, and I didn’t either.
I’d never been able to just sit and pour my heart out to someone the way I had with Weston. My parents always told me I worried too much, and my siblings didn’t understand. Weston listened to me and didn’t make me feel crazy.
He made me feel seen.
The first rays of sunlight covered him in a soft, pinkish glow, highlighting the subtle wave in his blonde hair and the various shades of blue in his eyes. He really was handsome. Especially with the way he was looking at me now, as if I were something special, something worthwhile.
It made my heart race in a way it never had before.
He leaned forward, and I jerked back, eyes wide. “What are you doing?”
He let out a gentle chuckle. Reaching forward, he tucked my hair behind my ear, and my breath caught in the back of my throat. “Trying to kiss the girl who let me spill my guts all night.”
I blinked quickly. “You want to kiss me?”
His eyes lowered to my mouth, and he nodded slowly. “If you’ll let me.”
“But why?” I didn’t understand why a guy like Weston Tate, popular and attractive with the whole cheer team falling at his feet, would want to kiss a girl like me. I wasn’t even in his grade.
“Because I think you’re beautiful and I’ve been wanting to for hours.”
The honesty was startling. “You’re not drunk still, are you?”
He laughed for real this time. His smile was luminous. “Define drunk. On whiskey? No. On the way you look right now? Definitely.”
