Never the Cowboy's Lover

by Amelia Wilde

  Because I love her. Damn, but I do. I want things to go well for Julie May like I want the sun to shine every day. Like I want the air to be crisp and clean and breathable.

  By the time I’ve gotten down two mugs of my own, Laura’s getting ready to slip out of the kitchen.

  “Laura, stop.”

  She catches herself at the kitchen door and looks me in the eye. “Need something?”

  “Yeah, I need to talk to you.” I can’t pour coffee when I’m all riled up like this. “Listen—Julie May has been looking for her birth family for years. She always knew there was a chance that she wouldn’t find you, or that she’d find you but you wouldn’t be interested. What she didn’t count on is anybody waffling about it once they were already in contact. When she was already in their house. And look. I’ve been helping her, so maybe I’m too invested, but if you don’t want us here, then say it. Say it so we can go and end this.”

  Laura’s shoulders sag and she grimaces, but her mouth pulls down into genuine sadness. “I’m sorry, Luke.”

  “Then we’ll go. It’s nothing to pack up and get back on the road.”

  “No—that’s not what I meant.” She raises a hand and presses the back of it to her forehead. “I always knew I had a sister. From pretty early on, I mean. But I’d given up hope too. I honestly thought that Julie May might be a scammer.” Pain shines in her eyes, and in that instant I know she’s been taken in before. “But then she got here, and it’s obvious how similar we are. I wasn’t ready to accept it.” Laura swipes her hand across her eyes. “It was like getting whiplash. I fully expected for her not to be who she said she was, and then...I’m sorry.” She straightens up and looks me dead in the eye. “I hope Julie May will give me another chance.”

  I shrug. “She was pretty heartbroken last night. I’ll go up and talk to her.”

  “Thank you,” she says, and she sounds plenty relieved. “You’re a good guy, Luke.”

  Good enough? That remains to be seen.

  I bring Julie May a coffee that’s mostly milk and ten sugars, and when I get back to the room she’s pulled the blankets over her head.

  “Hey, hideout.” I sit down on the edge of the bed. “If you want coffee, you’re gonna have to show your face.”

  Julie May peeks out. “I heard you talking to Laura.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I couldn’t hear what you said.” She wiggles out from beneath the covers and accepts her coffee, then looks at me with those huge tell me more eyes of hers.

  “She was worried you might be a scammer. I don’t know what on earth people would try to run that kind of scam for, but...honestly, Jules, I think something like that happened to her in the past. She just didn’t know how to handle it when you turned out to be, you know, you.”

  Jules has never looked more relieved in my presence. “Is that all?”

  “She thought you were a scammer.” I laugh out loud. “That seems like a big deal.”

  “I’m not a scammer, though.” She hops out of the bed, just barely keeping control of her coffee. “I’ve got to go talk to her.”

  Julie May takes the stairs as fast as she can with hot coffee in her hand and makes a beeline for the kitchen, where Laura stands with her back against the counter, looking nervous as all hell. And what does my Julie May do? She throws her arms open wide, spilling coffee on the floor in the process, and says, “It’s okay. New day, fresh start.”

  Laura chews at her lip. “Are you sure?”

  “Bring it in, sister.”

  The two of them hug, laughing hard, and after a minute they move to the kitchen table. Both of them like too much milk and sugar in their coffee, and Julie May is right—it’s a new day and a fresh start, and what happened yesterday doesn’t seem to matter.

  I go over to the coffee pot and pretend to refresh my cup just to give them some time. Thank god it was something simple. I even go so far as to tip some extra sugar into the mug. And then I lean against the counter, right where Laura was standing, and take a sip. It’s good—I have to admit it.

  Julie May’s eyes meet mine at the same moment Laura says, “Your boyfriend’s not too bad himself.”

  I hold my breath, waiting for Julie May to say the same thing she always has when somebody assumes we’re a couple. Oh, he’s not my boyfriend. We’re just very close. Best friends, you might say. That’s what happens when you meet somebody in preschool and they’re nice to you. She’s always said it with an affectionate glow in her eyes and a pat to my shoulder. Of course, she didn’t say it at Maya’s, but…

  “Yeah, he is,” she says, and my heart goes wild. I have to put the mug back down on the counter so I don’t spill it with my jittery hands. It’s like a joy bomb has gone off in my chest, followed by a full set of fireworks. Like the night Julie May and I went to watch the Harvest Fest fireworks senior year and she leaned against me under the blanket. I could feel every shock wave through her body and through mine, and in that noise and beauty it was easy to forget that she didn’t belong to me.

  I love her. And not in the way that I’ve always loved Julie May, which is as my best friend and a damn good person. I love her as mine. And from the looks of it, she feels the same way.

  My body settles enough to pick up the coffee cup again and I sip it for cover. Let this moment last, I think over the steam. Please, let it last.

  13

  Julie May

  I know that Luke has worked some sort of magic here, though I can’t for the life of me figure out how he managed to turn my sister into this. She’s gone from a cold, suspicious stranger to the laughing, happy, hugging sibling of my dreams. We gather around her kitchen table with the remnants of breakfast scattered on the dishes in front of us and talk, and talk, and talk. And I finally get to ask her about our birth mother, and why she hasn’t wanted to reach out to her.

  “Really?”

  “She’s been around.” Laura’s eyes go distant. “Around in a half-assed kind of way. In and out of my life. I never wanted her attention on me, if that makes sense. I didn’t know how to deal with the fact that she left me with my grandmother. I guess you wouldn’t have found all this out until later. When were your records supposed to be unsealed?”

  “When I’m twenty-five.”

  She gives me a sympathetic look. “That’s not far off, right?”

  “Not that far. But I had to find her first. So, you’ve met her?”

  Laura presses her lips together. “No, not really. Maybe once or twice when I was really young. But I don’t remember anything about her and I don’t have any plans to try and see her now.”

  “Really?”

  “I didn’t want to be disappointed.”

  My own sister has turned into someone I recognize and even identify it. Now, in the buttery light of the morning, even her house looks more familiar. There are touches that I’d have chosen for myself, like the bright red kitchen towels over the handle of the stove and a little statuette of a bird wearing glasses on the windowsill above her sink. I might even have a bird like that. Or at least my mom might.

  My mom. My adoptive mother. A fission of guilt moves through me at that one. My mother…I haven’t thought about her too much in all the excitement of this process, but it’s not because I don’t love her, or that she didn’t love me. Doesn’t love me. It’s only that she’s different.

  I don’t have the time right now to think through all the ways she’s different and I don’t want to—not now that I’ve finally found my birth family and, thanks to Luke, made a connection with more than one person. My adoptive mother—it feels wrong to think of her that way—has always been a bit of an outsider in Paulson through no fault of her own. She can’t help that she’s a bit reclusive. It’s just the way things need to be for her to feel safe.

  Which I understand now, as an adult. Though a little voice in the back of my mind says that I don’t. Not really. And that’s why I’ve spent so much time seeking out my birth family. Because the fact that my
mom stays inside most of the time has never explained the way I feel. After all, I don’t stay inside. I’ve gone out my entire life.

  Ugh. Maybe it does. But I need to focus on the here and now.

  “I kind of understand that,” Luke pipes up, bringing me back from my bizarre reverie about family and reclusiveness and all the other things that have colored my life. He’s been listening quietly, a thoughtful expression on his face. His fingers are curled around a ludicrously large coffee mug that looks normal-sized in his grip. He looks…adorable. I keep smiling every time I see him and I’m afraid I look like a crazy person in front of Laura, so I haven’t looked at him all that much. But every cell in my body is aware he is right there.

  He looks at me and raises a significant eyebrow. I know, I know, I tell him via brainwave. I get that he’s warning me. He’s worried about this quest.

  But Laura knows who my birth mother is. I could find her. I could talk to her today. “I’m here now,” I tell my sister, keeping my voice carefully controlled so as not to betray my excitement. “We could…maybe do it together?”

  Laura’s eyes widen. “We could…”

  I can barely breathe I’m so excited I might faint. Luke gets up and silently goes into the kitchen, returning with a glass of water. He shoves it unceremoniously into my hand. “Take a breath, Jules,” he says, soft enough that I don’t think Laura can hear.

  I dutifully sip my water. It’s clear and cold, but it doesn’t do anything to quell the fire in my belly. The wheels in my brain spin faster and faster. “Do you know how old she is?”

  “She had me at seventeen,” Laura says.

  I calculate. “She might be retired. Maybe she’s home now. It’s worth calling, anyway.”

  “You want to do it?” Laura’s eyes are starting to shine with an expression I recognize from my own reflection.

  “We could do it,” I urge.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Should we?”

  “Right now?”

  A beam of sunlight comes through the window, catching Laura’s hair and lighting up her face in a way that’s so familiar that my heart jumps to see it.

  “Okay, let’s.”

  We both jump a mile as the landline phone rings.

  Laura presses her hand to chest and laughs. “Oh my god. I sincerely thought that was her for a minute.”

  “Incoming call from JASPER SCHOOL DISTRICT,” the Caller ID blares.

  Laura goes pale. “Oh, crap. That’s not good.”

  14

  Luke

  There’s nothing better in the world than being with Julie May, and I mean with her, inside her. All around her. I cage her in on the bed and she opens for me the way I’ve been dreaming of and she’s so soft, so wet...

  I don’t ever want to stop feeling the way it feels to rock into her. I sink my body into hers again and again and again and Julie May twists beneath me in the sheets, riding it out. She thrashes her head side to side, arching with every touch. A distant part of me is jealous at the nebulous Other Man who got to do this before me, but most of me is lost in her. This is the best game we’ve ever played and it’s called Make Julie Come. Every time I win, the game starts over and I want to do it again.

  There’s only one focus, and it’s her. I finally get to find out how she responds to soft circles on her clit, which is by tipping her head back against the pillow. I finally get to discover how she reacts when I tug her nipples one by one between my teeth—yelps of pleasure and pain that turn into a whine for more. I want to look at this for the rest of my life. Look at her.

  Because God, it’s a pleasure to see it. It’s more than a pleasure. The pull of her body against mine feels cosmically right and almost torturously good. My fingertips burn with wanting to touch her, even when I am touching her. When I’m swiping my thumbs across her nipples. When I’m teasing at her clit with a hand between us. When I’m running my palm over what feels like miles of soft skin. Of her.

  Finally she twists her hips beneath me, writhing with an intensity that shoves me bodily closer to the edge. My own orgasm winds up tight, making me jump inside her, and I push her back against the hotel pillows and drive deep. The world is nothing but her slick tightness around me. I have an insane, errant wish that I was barely—that there was nothing between us—but it floats away in a haze of pleasure. Her fingernails dig into my shoulder, and her teeth, and my balls draw up and tense just before the moment of obliteration.

  It’s a long time before I come back from it. The first thing I hear is the sound of her heart, beating fast. It brings me out of whatever other world I’ve been in where there’s no hotel room or sister or mother—it’s just me and Julie May, the way it was always supposed to be.

  “I love you,” I tell her, the words coming free. “I’m in love with you, Julie May.”

  She tenses.

  I’m still flooded with enough sex goodness for it not to crush me, but I pull back so I can see her face. She looks...tentative. A little distant.

  “Did you hear me, Julie May?”

  “I heard you,” she says softly.

  I sweep the hair back from her face so I can really look into her eyes. Fear. Hesitation. Why?

  “Is this not what you want? You can tell me. It’s just us two in here, and you’re not gonna hurt me.” A lie, but it feels right to say it. Julie May is the only one who could hurt me like that. I’ve just never admitted it to myself before.

  Julie May looks at me, eyes liquid with emotion. “You’ve always made my life better by being in it.” Her voice wavers. “But if we start being something other than friends, will it still be the same?”

  “Oh, god, Julie May, it’s gonna be better. It’ll be so much better.”

  “Of course it will,” she says, but I can tell she’s still wary. Her hands swipe nervously back and forth on my shoulders. What happened? She’s the one who wanted a single room, and now it’s like she’s three towns away even as I look at her. “It’s a weird situation.” The words tumble out quickly, as if Julie May doesn’t really want to be saying them. “With my new family and finding everybody. Maybe what we just did is a reflection of that.”

  My heart cracks open and a gush of sadness spills out. I don’t go out of my way to get deep in my emotions—I’ve never been that kind of guy. But now I’m drowning in this. And worse, I feel like a fool. How many times do I have to read this wrong before I finally get it right?

  A shiver moves down my spine. What if I get it right and the facts are that Julie May just doesn’t feel this way about me?

  Because the thing is, I love her. And now that I know it—now that I’m not spending all my energy denying it—I’m all in.

  I crawl backward off the bed, but that seems like an asshole move on its own, so I help her cuddle down into the blankets. Julie May hates to be cold. It’s the thing she dreads most about the winter.

  “I should shower.” The words feel ridiculous in my mouth and sound ridiculous in my ears and yeah, maybe I should shower so I can scrub them all away. The buzz from being with her drops away like the ground dropping out from under a guy who’s missed the edge of the cliff. Julie May’s looking up at the ceiling, her lips pursed, but I put a smile on in case she looks this way. Damn it, I didn’t think I’d ever end up this confused—not after I knew what I wanted. Sadness batters at my heart. This should be a good day. Or at least a good hour, now that we’re staying in the hotel room.

  “When you get out…” The words are slow enough to let hope flare up again. “We should figure out the best course of action. Maybe me and Laura could track our mom down. Just…go out and find her.” She sits up in the bed, wild-eyed. “Do you think we could, Luke? If she’s close by, we could meet her today.” Julie May bites at her lip. “Is that too much? Would it seem too desperate?” She clutches at the covers. “I never thought I’d be this close to meeting my birth mom.”

  What am I supposed to say? I promised Julie May I’d be there fo
r her through thick and thin. I’m not going back on that promise. This just seems like a lot, like diving into open water when you’re not sure how deep it is. There’s a risk she could get hurt. Badly hurt. Because meeting Julie May’s birth mom means coming face-to-face with the facts—that she placed her for adoption. And that doesn’t mean she didn’t love Julie May, god knows it doesn’t. But is Jules ready to meet this head on? It’s one thing to know that her mom thought she’d be better off with different parents in an abstract way. It’s another to confront the woman about it.

  All of my arguments pale in comparison to the blazing determination in Julie May’s eyes. Nothing I could say would convince her to pump the brakes a little bit. To test the waters with a call or an email. I’ve seen this look before, and it means she’s made up her mind. It’s hardly my business, anyway. This is her mom.

  “I think you could,” I hedge. “Are you sure about doing it today?”

  If she feels anything like I do, she’s a mess. I’m the last person on earth who should be making big decisions. The last big decision I made—to get into bed with Julie May and tell her exactly how I feel—seems to have backfired spectacularly.

  But Jules doesn’t seem to feel that at all. “As soon as Laura’s ready. And if she’s ready today, she’ll do it today.” She doesn’t even look at me as she hops out of bed, the blanket still wrapped around her, and pads over to her bag to dig out her phone. “I’m going to call her. You can go ahead, though. That way we’ll be ready if she says the word.”

  What the hell, Julie May? The painful question lingers on the tip of my tongue, but Julie May doesn’t check to see if I’m waiting on her. She goes over to the window and pulls the curtain open an inch. What, is she thinking her mom’s going to be out there waiting right now? Am I nothing to her? Was this all for nothing? Get over yourself. That’s the right answer. Whatever happens with Julie May and her mom, I need to get over myself. We’ll figure all of this out. We’ll have plenty of time.