Page 58 of Sexting the Cowboy
And now, there’s Annie for me to feel guilty about. Except, I can’t bring myself to feel guilty about her. Not in any real way. I’m falling for a woman who woke the part of me I buried next to his mother. That deserves a better word than guilt.
“Dad?” Levi says, waving a hand in front of my face like he’s checking pupils. “You here? Did you take a hit and not tell us?”
I almost laugh. The image that arrives on cue makes my ears heat. I keep it to myself, because a man doesn’t survive this long by advertising bad sense in a family that mocks it for sport.
“I’m fine,” I say. “Just tired. What’d I miss?”
“Only my claim to fame,” Blaze says. “I’m going to bully the grand marshal into letting me shoot T-shirts out of the air cannon next year.”
“She’s already planning the Kansas City after-party,” Cash says. “Theme—My sister has questionable taste but great playlists.”
“Second theme,” Blaze says, pointing a fry at him. “Cash thinks he invented the two-step and will provide tutorials for a fee.”
“Not a fee,” he says. “A suggested donation.”
Levi leans in, the picture of patience. “We were saying the travel is going to be ugly. Heat’s gonna punch. Dad, you’ll hate it.”
“Heat and I got divorced in ninety-nine,” I say. “We don’t speak.”
“Announcer in Kansas City is that guy you like,” Blaze says, and her voice goes wicked. “Stu Benson. I will personally hog-tie and castrate him in the middle of the ring if he calls me ‘little lady’ again.”
The announcer booms a name I don’t catch. A kid somewhere wins a stuffed tiger and holds it up like a bloodied flag. Wind pushes dust across the midway like a phantom of better times.
Levi drains his water and stands, stretching his back the way his mother taught him to. “I need to go tape.”
“Let me,” I say, automatic.
He smiles in that way that makes me feel useless and proud in the same beat. “I’ll come find you if I forget how.”
Blaze jumps up and kisses both his cheeks in quick succession. “Do not die,” she says. “It would mess up our vibe.”
“Nothing about our vibe is mess-free,” Cash says, tossing his trash and catching the bag on the rim like a show-off. “Dad, you doing your pacing thing, or do you want me to do it for you?”
“I’ll pace?—”
“Tradition,” Levi echoes, and claps Reno’s shoulder as he passes like he’s giving him an out if he wants it. “You coming?”
Reno hesitates one half beat and then shakes his head. “I’m gonna sit for a minute.”
“Suit yourself,” Levi says, then nods at me. “Don’t get lost.”
“I know the route,” I say.
The rest of us clean up our mess, and on the way to the chutes, Blaze hooks her arm through mine. “You okay?”
“Yep.”
“Liar.”
“Maybe not okay. Functional,” I correct.
She snorts. “Better. I like functional.”
We walk through the lights and the noise and the old song of this life that I love and resent in equal measure. I could list one hundred ways I don’t deserve a second sunrise and one hundred ways I have earned one anyway. I think about Annie in a ridiculous costume I would never ask her to wear, and then I think about her in her scrubs and her ponytail and the way she sets a suture.
I wonder how a man asks for what he wants without turning it into a joke or a weapon against his own son. I wonder if I’ll learn in time.
Behind me, somewhere, my oldest son decides whether tonight is a night where he thinks or drinks. I’m falling for Annie—ain’t no choice in that. But I have a choice in how I handle it with Reno. Don’t know if I’ll get it right.
