by A. J. Pine
He shrugged. “It’s just a few minutes outside town. Do you think Colt could bring you?”
She nodded. “Or Sam. Or Barbara Ann. I’m sure I can get a ride. How about ten?” she asked.
“Perfect,” he said. “The farm—that part was all Tess. She’d wanted hens, so…” He trailed off.
“Then we’ll get you ready for some hens,” Jenna said. “I’m happy to help. Before you know it, you’ll be more than sustaining. You could turn a small profit at local farmers markets and such.”
He nodded absently, and she figured she’d lost him to thoughts of his late wife. She couldn’t imagine that kind of loss. Her brother-in-law had experienced it when Clare died and had slowly killed himself drinking because of it. Eli was still going through the motions of everyday life, but it didn’t seem like he’d exactly made it back to the land of the living. Jenna was happy to help with what might be the next step.
How quickly she’d become attached not just to the ranch but to everyone she seemed to meet in this town. And she’d barely scratched the surface.
“I should go shower the goat off me before lunch,” she said with a laugh. “Are you going to be okay on your own without Delaney?”
“Of course,” Eli said. “I actually kind of enjoy it when it’s just me and the animals. No offense,” he added.
Jenna laughed. “None taken.” She got it. Sometimes it was easier being with company who couldn’t talk back. “I’ll see you on Friday. Ten o’clock.”
“Ten o’clock,” he said, and that was that.
Jenna had opted for denim shorts and a green tank top for the concert, with a hoodie tied around her waist in case it cooled off at night. She doubted it would, especially being three hours south.
She entered the dining hall to find the place buzzing with guests. But amid the melee she found her cowboy, sitting with the two little girls they’d met at the swimming hole, along with their parents. He waved when he saw her, then stood and started walking in her direction.
She paused to enjoy the view, the way his well-worn jeans hugged his hips and how his snug white T-shirt left so little to the imagination. Beneath the cotton lay a lean muscled abdomen she’d kissed up and down a time or two, and would again tonight. She pulled out her phone and asked her question with raised brows.
Fine, he mouthed, then shook his head with a laugh as she snapped a candid photo of the sexy cowboy that was all hers for the rest of the day and night.
When they were finally face-to-face, she could see his hair was damp, just like hers.
“Fresh out of the shower, huh?” she asked.
He nodded with a grin, but then his brows drew together as he realized her hair was still wet as well.
“I’m seeing a real missed opportunity here,” he said.
She laughed. “True. But then we likely would have missed lunch. Or gotten on the road late. And we wouldn’t want to miss any of Willow’s set.”
Or meeting her beforehand.
Jenna’s stomach did a somersault at the thought. Willow was Colt’s only family. And he wanted the two of them to meet.
He leaned down to kiss her, and Jenna held her breath. The anticipation of this kiss felt different. Today felt different. It hadn’t when she’d woken up this morning, and it hadn’t when she’d visited Lucy at the shelter. But the second she stepped foot in the dining hall and saw Colt, something shifted.
His lips brushed over hers. The kiss was quick and chaste. They did have an audience after all, but Jenna still felt like she’d been socked in the gut—in a really good but really terrifying way.
“Hey there, Texas,” he said before pulling away.
His warm breath on her cheek and that soft, deep voice of his made the fine hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.
“Hey there,” she said back, her voice coming out hoarse. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Hey there, cowboy Colt.”
He beamed at her, which made her smile.
“You hungry?” he asked.
“Always,” Jenna said.
“Good. Because Luis’s BLT grilled cheese is probably the best thing you’ll ever taste.”
She raised her brows. “No dessert for lunch, Mr. Morgan? This doesn’t seem right.”
He laughed. “I told you, what Luis makes doesn’t count. Even if it’s fantastic. Tonight. Sacramento. I’m making good on my promise to feed you real food.”
Jenna pouted. “Does that mean no ice cream?”
He slipped his fingers through hers and led her toward an empty table. “For you, Jenna, there will always be ice cream.”
It was two o’clock by the time they packed up Colt’s car with small necessities like snacks and emergency overnight bags. They weren’t planning on staying the night, especially since Colt was working the stable the following morning, but based on what happened the first time they took a road trip together, they weren’t taking any chances.
But there was nothing but blue skies and open road ahead of them, so when they finally hit the highway, Jenna plugged her phone into Colt’s radio and insisted she be the DJ for the duration of the trip.
“So,” she said, when she had her music library opened and ready to go. “What do you like to listen to?”
He didn’t say anything for several seconds, but she could see the wheels turning as his eyes stayed focused on the road.
“You mean other than Willow Morgan originals?” he asked with a grin.
“I’ve got some of Willow’s songs in here,” she assured him. “But she’s pretty new on the scene. What did you listen to growing up? What kind of music was the backdrop for your life? Like, if you were putting together a slideshow of my life, the music would be all over the place. My teen years were filled with a mix of No Doubt, New Kids on the Block, and the Cyrus that came long before Miley.” Jenna laughed. “Awkward, thirteen-year-old Jenna had a really big thing for Billy Ray.”
Colt glanced her way, and even though his eyes were covered by his aviator sunglasses, she could tell they were narrowed at her.
“Didn’t Billy Ray Cyrus have a monster mullet?” he asked.
“I like to refer to it as spectacular,” she said. “But yes. Total and complete mullet, and it worked for him. And for me. Billy Ray Cyrus was my first crush.”
Colt ran a hand across the back of his neck. “There’s not a lot I wouldn’t do if you asked,” he said. “But never ask me to grow a mullet.”
She rumpled his sandy hair with her palm. “Wouldn’t dream of you doing any such thing to this already sexy ‘do’ you got going on here.”
This made him smile. “You start talking like that, and I’m going to have to pull over at the first rest stop I can find and let you really mess up my sexy ‘do’.”
She backhanded him on the shoulder.
“You just stay focused on the road. We need to make it by five thirty if we want to spend some time with Willow before her show,” Jenna said. “So give me a song or a band or something so I don’t play ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ on repeat for the next few hours.” She didn’t want to be the rational one here, because the thought of what they could accomplish at a rest stop in the back seat of his car had her squirming in place. This was why they needed to get a playlist going: so they could carpool-karaoke their way to Sacramento and keep their minds from wandering into inconvenient territory.
Colt sighed. “You promise you won’t judge?” he asked.
Ooh, this was going to be interesting. “I just admitted I crushed on a man with a mullet. What could possibly be worse than that?”
“It’s not worse. It just says a lot about my frame of mind during my teen years. While you were crushing on mullet man, I was listening to The Black Parade…My Chemical Romance…pretty much on repeat.”
Jenna’s heart sank. She hadn’t considered what period in his life she was forcing him to recall. Jenna was lucky. Despite the tragedy in her life, she’d had a loving family—especially her mom and her sister—for much of it, especi
ally her formative years.
“Yep,” he said when she still hadn’t responded. “I was emo as hell behind closed doors and angry as hell in front of them.”
Jenna hesitantly placed a hand on his thigh, and he covered it with his own.
“I should probably tell you something about—about my time in foster care.”
“Colt, you don’t—” she started, but he squeezed her hand and shook his head, his eyes still focused on the road ahead.
“No,” he said. “I do. I need to get this off my chest before we meet Willow—and before I tell you any of the other million things I want to tell you before you leave.”
Her throat tightened, and she nodded.
“The book I bought you at Trudy’s…it’s in the bag on the floor behind my seat if you want to grab it. It’s—um—part of the story.”
Jenna hadn’t forgotten that night, but she had forgotten the book. She reached for it now with nervous hands but smiled as she pulled it from the bag.
“Where the Wild Things Are?” she said. “I don’t understand.”
She watched his throat bob as he swallowed. “Where the Wild Things Are is the last book I remember my mom reading to me when I was a kid and Willow was a baby. When I had a family.” A muscle in his jaw ticked. “I have my own copy hidden away in my room at the ranch.”
Her heart squeezed, and she wanted to wrap him in her arms. “And you wanted me to have a copy of a book that means so much to you?”
He blew out a breath. “Yes, but—I also wanted to explain where my copy came from.”
“Okay,” she said, her pulse quickening.
“Back when I was sixteen and in my first week at what was—let’s see—the fourth high school I’d attended in three years, I got into it with my foster parents’ son.”
Jenna held her breath. She knew what got into it meant. It meant violence. When she didn’t say anything, he went on.
“My foster brother, apparently, was not too happy about having a new sibling who seemed to hit it off with his ex-girlfriend. One day after school he came at me before we were off school grounds and threw the first punch. Split my lip. I told him I wasn’t going to fight him. I couldn’t, not after some minor run-ins I’d had before. I knew if this went south I wasn’t getting off with just a warning. If I messed up again, it meant I might not be around to find Willow once I turned eighteen.
“So I ducked a few times, pivoted out of his reach once or twice. Then he decided to throw some choice words my way about why my birth parents didn’t want me—not even knowing my father had left or that we lost our mom in a car accident—which caught me off guard, and the next time he swung, I just stood there. He broke my nose, and that was it. I swung back. Once. Knocked him out cold and broke his jaw.”
Jenna pulled her trembling hand from his thigh, the reminder of what a man could do with his fists making every muscle in her body tense.
“If you want me to pull over or take you back to Meadow Valley, Jenna, just say the word. I won’t blame you and I won’t chase after you because the last thing in the world I want to do is scare you. But if you trust me…If you trust what I told you, that I would never raise my hand to you, then I’ll tell you the rest.”
She pressed the copy of Where the Wild Things Are to her chest and crossed her arms over it, like it was somehow the life preserver that would keep her head above the river of fear that was suddenly coursing through her.
She reminded herself of her nephew Jack, of the terrible incident that happened between him and another boy at a graduation party the summer of his eighteenth year. Despite the justification for his actions, Jack had put that boy in the hospital and had almost gone to jail for it. She reminded herself that even though Jack had lived for years as a victim of his father’s abuse, that one incident when he was a teen hadn’t defined him. He broke the cycle so many were unable to break, and Jenna realized the man next to her wasn’t the boy he used to be either.
“I’m still here,” she said, not even trying to hide the tremor in her voice.
She watched the rise and fall of Colt’s chest as he inhaled and exhaled before continuing.
“Didn’t matter that I was a bloody mess. Didn’t matter that I had an audience full of witnesses. I was expelled from the school,” he finally said. “And spent six months in a juvenile detention center. And the book? Where the Wild Things Are? I stole it.”
He let out a long breath, though Jenna felt like she was still holding hers.
“My foster family had it on this massive shelf of books they all pretty much ignored for the short time I was living with them—so I took it with me for my trip, and I never gave it back. Ended up reading it every night while I was away. I didn’t care that it was a kids’ book because it reminded me of Willow and my mom and what I wanted for myself one day—a house full of kids of my own who felt loved and safe. Always.” He shrugged. “When some foster family in Oak Bluff took a chance on me, I decided not to mess up my last chance. Met Ben Callahan at school, and give or take a few years, here I am.”
For several long moments, neither of them said another word. Jenna simply breathed as Colt continued to drive.
“I’ve never raised my hand to another person since then,” he finally said. “Hell, Sam works out in the boxing ring at the fire station, and I won’t even spar with him no matter how many times he asks.” Then he laughed softly. “But be sure you ask Delaney about the time she did and almost laid him out cold. By accident.”
This made her laugh, too, and she sat up straight and shifted so she could face him, the tension in her shoulders relaxing.
His mouth was curled into a sweet smile, but it didn’t reach his dark brown eyes. For a man who’d seemed so comfortable in his own skin—especially when that was all he was wearing—since the day she’d met him, he looked so unsure.
“I’m not afraid of you,” she finally said.
He let out a shaky breath.
“And I’m glad you told me,” she added, realizing tonight was the night they both were putting it all on the table. She could tell him right now about not being able to have kids, but something he said sank in.
A house full of kids of my own who felt loved and safe.
She swallowed. If she told him now, that would be it. They’d be done before the night began. So Jenna tucked it away, deciding to make the most of what she now realized would be their last great night together—before she told him she loved him but couldn’t give him the future he wanted.
“I’m not that pissed-off kid anymore,” Colt added.
“I know you’re not.” He was the man she was falling for, and even if he felt the same, how could that be enough? She wanted him to have everything he’d missed out on, just like he was helping her experience everything she thought she’d missed when she was younger.
“Hey,” he said. “You were trying to do the music thing for fun, and I feel like I’ve sort of killed the vibe here. So…sorry about that.”
Jenna scrolled through her list of artists with one hand, keeping the other on Colt’s thigh.
“No worries at all,” she said. “No My Chemical Romance on my list, so we don’t have to go there.”
“But you have Billy Ray?” he asked, the corner of his mouth turning up. “And New Kids on the Block in their first iteration?”
Jenna scoffed and backhanded him on the shoulder, thankful for the levity even if her stomach was tied in knots. “Did you just make the first-ever joke about our age difference? Because if so, it is on, mister.”
He laughed. “I didn’t mean it like that. I swear.” He crossed his finger over his heart. “It’s just that I’ve only ever known the band since their comeback a decade or so ago.”
She lowered her own sunglasses so he could clearly see her pointed look. “You’re still doing it. And by the way, you existed on this earth when NKOTB was first a thing. Maybe you were too young to care or realize their greatness, but that doesn’t change the fact that you’re not that
young.”
“Ouch,” he said, then laughed again, and she decided that it was time to school her younger man on a little bit of musical history.
“We’ll start with one of my favorites.” She queued up a classic and hit PLAY. And then, because she couldn’t help it, she sang along to every word of “Please Don’t Go Girl” while Colt shook his head and laughed the whole way through.
And that was how the boy band of her youth became the soundtrack to their ride. Only when they were just outside of Sacramento did she run out of songs, so she just put her entire list on shuffle.
The first song to pop up was “Achy Breaky Heart,” and she skipped it as soon as it started. “I’ve put you through enough,” she teased. “Even though I still love that song.” Before he could respond, the opening to the Garth Brooks version of “To Make You Feel My Love” started. “I can just skip over this one too,” she said. “I’m guessing country maybe isn’t your thing altogether.”
He placed a palm over her wrist and shook his head.
“I like this one,” he said. “Willow always covers it at the end of a set. You know it was originally a Bob Dylan song, right?”
Jenna nodded. “Yeah. But this is my favorite version.”
“Mine too,” he said. And then somehow her hand flipped so it was palm up, and her fingers slipped between his.
And as if she’d timed the perfect all-New-Kids-on-the-Block playlist—save for one song—they rolled into downtown Sacramento just as Garth crooned the final line of the song.
“I mapped it out ahead of time,” he said. “There’s a parking garage on Tenth Street. Then it’s just a couple of minutes to the park, which Willow said will be lined with gourmet food trucks—or we can find a sit-down place nearby.”
Jenna’s whole body thrummed with nervous energy. She didn’t want things to end. She didn’t want to lose Colt. If tonight went as well as it felt like it could, maybe it would soften the blow of what she had to tell him. She’d never ask him to give up the future he wanted, but she didn’t want to be a painful reminder of his past.
