Secondhand Cowboy

by Lacy Williams

She dumped water over Levi's head, the boy spluttering and glaring at her. But by the time Callum had sung six or so verses, they were done soaping off.

  "Here."

  She looked over her shoulder to see Callum extending three toothbrushes to her. "They brush their teeth in the tub?"

  He shrugged. "Two birds with one stone."

  She passed the toothbrushes to the boys, who happily took to that task—for a moment. Then they began waving the brushes like swords, and she had to confiscate them.

  "All right, let's get out—one at a time!"

  Levi hadn't wanted to take the bath but whined the loudest as she pulled him from the tub and stood his dripping body on the rug while she rubbed him dry with a fluffy towel. Callum gave Tyler his rubdown.

  "Can we go back to see the p'liceman again?" Brandt asked from the doorway, naked except for the towel wrapped around his shoulders.

  Callum had swung his leg toward the hallway, presumably to exit the bathroom, but tension shot through his body at Brandt's words, and he froze. His brows came together when he shot Iris a glare over his shoulder. "What policeman?"

  She smiled, forced it. "I had to stop at the station today to make a formal report about the accident."

  "My accident?" He pushed out into the hall with his crutches, finally allowing her room to move out of the bathroom.

  "I was a witness, if you recall." She ushered Levi past him and into the bedroom.

  He was silent as they worked together to stuff the boys into their pajamas.

  From the opposite side of the bed, he looked up at her. "I thought I told you to stay out of my business."

  She had a smart reply on the tip of her tongue—something about him asking versus telling, but Brandt and Levi tackled him, falling into his chest.

  "Tuck us in, Daddy!"

  He flopped back on the bed, his arms coming around the boys as they dissolved into giggles. Tyler pushed his arms through the pajamas she'd pulled over his head and launched himself onto the bed to wrestle with them.

  Iris backed away from the tender moment, moving into the doorway. She watched Callum press his jaw to Tyler's temple. He settled all three of them against him and balanced a book in his lap.

  Her heart leaped at the picture of them together. Callum's eyes met hers above the dark heads, and stuck. Her heart beat up in her throat until Brandt nudged him with an elbow.

  "Read, Daddy!"

  She didn't hear the words as Callum finished the book, only watched as Tyler snuggled deeper, as Levi pointed to the pictures on the pages, and Brandt started nodding off.

  "Iris, come pray!" Levi said as they finished the book.

  "Oh, I..."

  She should have left minutes ago. But she hadn't.

  She wanted to be here with them, so she slipped back into the room to kneel beside the bed.

  * * *

  Callum reached for Brandt, covering his son's head with his hand—but Iris's hand was already there.

  The contact unnerved him. Her too, from the way her eyes darted up to his before Levi whispered, "You're s'posed to have your eyes closed, Iris," and she ducked her head back down.

  But she didn't pull her hand away. And he had to close his eyes against the sting behind his nose.

  This. This was what he'd dreamed about those nights on the road at the rodeos, sleeping in his truck because he'd been so broke, he couldn't afford a hotel room. He'd had big dreams, most of them involving Iris.

  "Good night, bubba. I love you," she whispered.

  He struggled to get out of the bed without dislodging the boys.

  He hated not being able to move freely and do the things he wanted. Like carry his sons to bed or wrestle like they were used to.

  He didn't like Iris seeing his vulnerability. He hated being vulnerable.

  Callum stood and watched his sons sleep for another moment, trying to get a handle on his wild emotions.

  What was wrong with him? He felt like he'd been split open and was bleeding all over the carpet. And he was afraid to let Iris see it.

  "Here," she whispered, shoving his second crutch at him, the one that had fallen a little out of his reach as he'd gotten into bed.

  At the doorway, he lost his balance, and his shoulder banged into Iris's. Heat flared in his chest and face at the unexpected contact, but the lights were off. Maybe she hadn't seen.

  In the hallway, he squinted in the brighter light until she flipped it off, and two nightlights provided a lighter ambiance.

  He expected her to escape into one of the rooms or hurry down the stairs, but she stayed close as he faced the mountain of the flight of stairs he needed to descend.

  She went down one step ahead of him.

  "That was very creative."

  At first he didn't understand her words. She was below him on the step but looked back at him when he didn't respond.

  "Your song. It was creative."

  "Yeah, well, Levi in particular started getting grumpy about taking baths at about eight months. And you already know how vocal he is. Singing to him was the only way to get him calmed down. The other two seemed to like it."

  "And so the bath song was born."

  He took another slow step down, keeping his hurt foot elevated in order to manage.

  "Yes. I haven't had to use it in a while, but I can't really blame him for being upset. Their whole routine has been disrupted these past few days."

  "Yours too."

  More than she could fathom. In no universe had he imagined being here, with her. He hadn't guessed she would be in Redbud Trails at all.

  "It's okay to feel a little lost, Cal. I—I want to help." The softly spoken nickname made his gut churn. It's what she'd called him in their most intimate moments, when they'd shared kisses and, more importantly, their secrets and dreams.

  He was in mid-step when the left crutch slipped off a stair, and he lost his balance. A flare of panic was all he had time for.

  His casted foot came down on the stair, and he grunted as pain fired through the limb from heel to hip.

  He dropped both crutches with twin muffled thuds, and they slid down the stairs.

  "Watch out," he hissed.

  "Wha—?"

  Iris's startled exclamation cut off as he pummeled into her, finally catching himself with both hands flat against the wall. He'd kept her from falling with those hands, and now she was sandwiched between his chest and the wall.

  The curve of her hip against him almost, almost, distracted him from the fire radiating up his injured leg. He gulped in a big breath but only managed to inhale her scent. Didn't help him concentrate one bit.

  "Callum...?"

  Her question was only a breath of hot air against his jaw.

  He wasn't sure he could speak through the pain, was afraid of uttering an unmanly squeak, so he just grunted.

  "Are you hurt?"

  "I think I've got a broken leg." There. He'd only squeaked once in that sentence.

  "Ha."

  He tried to maneuver his cast, but it hurt too badly. He groaned at the flare of pain. "Give me a minute."

  He felt it when she tried to shrink into the wall, but there wasn't anywhere for her to go. At least she'd broken his fall, sort of, because he might've tumbled down the stairs without her to stop his momentum.

  She cleared her throat. "I have to say I'm pretty impressed with how you handle the boys."

  She was? And more to the point, she was trying to distract him with casual conversation?

  It wasn't working.

  He stood there, just concentrating on breathing, his forehead against the coolness of the wall.

  "I can't imagine how you did it when they were infants."

  He had to be hearing things. They'd barely spoken at all since he'd been here, mostly about the boys. But he had to be imagining the faint admiration in her voice, didn't he?

  "I was pretty freaked out the night I brought them home from the hospital."

  He remembered the terror he'd
felt. All the way to the parked car, carrying one of them, the other two in nurses' arms, he'd thought, any second, they'll realize they can't send these babies home with me.

  He'd been expecting to take them home with Rachel. And instead, barely after their first breaths, they'd already lost their mother.

  He didn't know what do to, when to feed them, and what if they got sick? And then there was the deeper fear that he was going to make a mess of the boys' lives, just like his parents had done to Callum's. All of it had been tinged by the grief of losing Rachel. The emergency C-section had saved the boys, but he'd stood helplessly outside the circle of doctors and nurses as Rachel's life had slipped away. Their whole relationship had been built on her pregnancy, and through the expectation of the boys' birth, but she'd become a friend, one that he'd been deeply sad to lose.

  "You just...do what you gotta do," Callum said, his voice rough. "I had the help I needed." At least for a while.

  One of her hands settled at his waist.

  She knew his emotion was high.

  It had always been like that with them. She had never hidden her feelings from him, the kid from the wrong side of town. And she'd been able to read him so easily, when no one else had ever cared to.

  He clamped a lid on those old memories. No use dwelling on the past.

  But as he pushed those long ago memories out, a new memory slipped in. This one of Iris upstairs, brushing her finger through Tyler's hair.

  He needed distance, now.

  Pushing off of the wall, he kept his balance with one hand against the plaster.

  "Can you grab my crutches, please?"

  She ducked away from him quickly, maybe as glad for the distance as he tried to be.

  "What happened? With your in-laws...?"

  Her question was unexpected, like punch in the gut, and he inhaled too sharply when she handed him one of his crutches.

  The old familiar fury—and the biting fear beneath it—rose in his chest. He didn't even know if he could talk.

  "I'm sorry," she whispered. She pressed his second crutch into his hand, their fingers brushing against the handle.

  He'd wanted distance, hadn't he?

  "Rachel's parents were keeping the boys over the weekend while I was gone for an event."

  He went down one stair, forcing Iris to move or be trampled on. The pain in his leg had abated some, but he was going to need a pain pill when he got into his bed.

  "I came home to find their house empty, everything dark. I tried calling both their cells and got bounced to voicemail."

  He knew some of the long-ago terror was leaching into his voice. He couldn't help it. He tried to put it out of mind as he concentrated on taking the next two stairs.

  "I called the police. It was hours before I heard anything."

  Those hours had been the longest of his life, even longer than driving away from Redbud Trails the night he'd left.

  "They picked up my in-laws at the state line."

  It had been eighteen months ago, and he still couldn't believe it. He'd trusted them. More than that, he'd needed them. Just like that, their support was gone.

  "They'd had some plan to leave for a few weeks and file for full custody." He shook his head. He couldn't make sense of how they thought they were going to get away with it, but he guessed emotion made people do irrational things sometimes.

  He hit the bottom step. He'd made it.

  "I'm sorry," she said softly, one touch on his forearm.

  She disappeared in the direction of the kitchen. He should go to bed, but between the almost-fall and rush of adrenaline, he was wired now. Being so close to Iris again wasn't helping that, either.

  He clomped his way to the back porch instead, remembering as he went why he was supposed to be upset with her. Some time away from her would be good. Healthy for them both.

  Except she followed him out and joined him at the railing.

  * * *

  Settling in, he let thoughts of the past go. He could guess what she'd been doing in the police department. Sticking her nose in where it didn't belong.

  But as he watched the moonlight limn her features with silver, he lost track of why exactly he should be angry. Especially after her tenderness with the boys. Seeing her comfort them, tuck them in...it killed him.

  "Do you remember when we watched the harvest moon?" she asked.

  Her words threw him back into the past, chasing her into the sunset on horseback.

  He'd called after her as she galloped ahead of him. "Iris!" The responsible thing would be to turn back, to get her back to Joe's place before darkness fell.

  But she didn't seem to want that as she tossed her hair over her shoulder and laughed, the sound thrilling through him. His heart beat with each thud of his horse's hooves in the grassy soil.

  He loved her. They'd been on a handful of official dates, but the way their relationship had progressed from friendship into something more had been natural. He couldn't deny his feelings anymore, not after two years of fighting them.

  He knew he wanted to be with her for the rest of his life. But she was only seventeen. She hadn't felt two years younger than he, but those two years made all the difference.

  And she probably deserved someone a lot better. Which was why he'd held off on kissing her.

  Iris disappeared as she guided her horse down an impression toward the little farm pond in the back corner of Joe's property.

  Like the sotted dope he was, he followed, leaning back in the saddle to balance. Leather creaked beneath his weight, and the scent of water and mud rose to meet him.

  He drew his mount up next to Iris. She'd given her horse its head, and he did the same. The animals shifted beneath them as they drank from the pond.

  The sun slipped below the horizon, leaving them in the soft gray twilight.

  "Joe scare you with those driving lessons?"

  She smiled, her head tilting back and her eyes going to the sky. "It wasn't so bad. If I learn on the stick shift"—Joe's old farm truck—"it'll be easy taking the test in dad's car."

  Her horse shifted a few inches toward him. Then a few more.

  And then, instead of the feet that had separated them, there were only inches. Her jean-covered knee brushed his thigh, and he got a whiff of her sweet, flowery scent.

  He looked down on her as she slipped her hand into his, their fingers intertwining.

  "That was a neat trick."

  She smiled up at him, her teeth white against her summer tan even in the near-darkness. "Wasn't it? I've spent two weeks teaching her to get it just right."

  He couldn't take his eyes off her lips. The way they parted softly curled his toes in his boots, and even though he told himself to back away, he couldn't. Her face tilted toward him. She met him. And he kissed her, a tentative brush of their mouths. Except for the clasp of their hands, their lips were the only place they were joined

  Callum's horse blew and shifted, breaking the fragile connection.

  A deep orange moon was rising over the horizon, and it bathed her face, still tilted up toward Callum's, with gold.

  I love you. The words were there, caught just behind his clenched teeth. She liked him enough to kiss him, but he had no gauge of her feelings for him. He couldn't remember anyone loving him since his mom.

  He swallowed hard and looked away, out over the dark surface of the pond.

  She squeezed his fingers. "Whatever it is you're afraid of, don't be."

  He couldn't help looking back at her earnest, upturned face. It was uncanny how well she knew him, could sense his rioting emotions.

  "I love you," she whispered. His brave, honest girl.

  And the tornado of conflicting emotions inside him dissipated. He drew her in for another kiss, still clinging to her hand but letting his opposite hand come up to cup her jaw. He had the shakes, all the way from the top of his head to his boots, but she didn't seem to care, responding to his kiss sweetly.

  And when he ended it, afraid to
let things get too carried away, she leaned her head in the crook of his shoulder, and he found the courage to whisper, "I love you, too."

  That night would be burned into his memory until the day he died.

  Now, remembering the sweetness that had been between them heated his neck and face, especially knowing how he'd betrayed her love.

  But she didn't seem to be thinking about that part of it. She seemed soft and approachable, as if the moon knew their secrets and kept them.

  Or maybe her thoughts had followed the same track his had, because her next words were, "Champ died that same night you left. He was hit by a car."

  He knew. It had been a horrible accident, minutes he would have given anything to change. If he hadn't been so lost in his thoughts, panicking about what to do about her...If he'd only been paying better attention on the dark country road.

  If only Wade hadn't been there.

  "I'm sorry." The words emerged a hoarse whisper, just a hint of the river of regret that ran through his veins. The words were so inadequate, but they were all he had.

  And then her hand closed over his, cool in the warm night air, a shock of touch that he hadn't been expecting. She kept her eyes on the barn silhouette.

  "It wasn't your fault," she whispered.

  Giving him comfort!

  "I know how much he meant to you, too."

  They'd worked with her uncle to rehabilitate the horse after it had been found abandoned and neglected. It had taken over a year for the horse to regain its health and trust Callum enough to let him mount up. Callum felt like the animal's journey had mirrored his own, as Iris took an abandoned boy and loved him until he'd trusted her so much, he would have done anything for her...even leave.

  She didn't know he'd been the cause of its death.

  Callum thought her dad would have rushed to tell her after he'd run Callum off that night.

  But apparently, she didn't know.

  "Iris, I..." He had to tell her, but as she looked up at him with her trusting eyes, moonlight and hope shining up at him, he couldn't do it. All he could do was lean toward her, drawn by an irresistible force.

  She rose on her tiptoes to meet him as their hands separated. He wrapped his arm around her back.

  And he kissed her.