Page 61 of The Cowboy and the Stray

“What happened to her?” I asked.

“She didn’t come home from her job. I was thirteen. They found her car in a ditch, but nobody looked that hard.” She stopped, and for a second, I thought she might say more. But she just shrugged. “So I bounced around the foster system a while. Learned how to pack in under five minutes. Learned not to get attached to anyone or anything.”

She gave me a sideways glance. “Tell me about your childhood?”

I sucked in a long breath. “It’s not a nice story. It starts as one, but then goes kind of sideways.” I took a swig of beer. “Things were pretty great until I was sixteen. Sloane was fourteen, and our parents had a surprise baby, Eli. He was only a newborn, just a few months old. It was a fire in the barn. My parents had been in the office and got trapped. They were, uh, tough. Resilient, but we couldn’t get to them, and they couldn’t get out. They died of smoke inhalation.” I couldn’t tell her that it had to have been a hell of a lot of smoke to kill a wolf. When I said tough, I meant really hard to kill. “It's still the worst thing I’ve ever been through. I was instantly in charge of the ranch. Midge took over finishing raising Sloane and she raised Eli entirely. Feels like I grew up overnight.”

She put her hand on my leg and squeezed. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that. I wish I could change things for you.”

“Funny, I could say the same for you and what you went through.”

For a while, I let the sounds take over. Wind in the grass, cows lowing, distant horse calls from the barn. I didn’t know how to fix what she was telling me. I wanted to. But I didn’t have any wisdom or magic words.

I went with the truth. “Sloane, Eli, and I lost both of our parents in a fire when I was sixteen. Midge raised us after that. There’s nothing special about it. But I know what it’s like to keep waiting for the next bad thing.”

Tess looked at me, like she was deciding if I meant it.

I said, “It gets easier. You get older, things don’t surprise you as much. But the waiting never stops. I don’t think it ever does.”

“Maybe that’s what I’m afraid of,” she said.

“What?”

“That I’ll get used to it. Being alone.”

I shifted closer, not touching her, but enough that she could if she wanted. “You don’t have to get used to it.”

She glanced at me, then at the sky. “Do you know all of the constellations?”

“Some, not all,” I said.

I leaned back, and for a long time, we just watched the sky get crowded with stars.

After a while, she rolled onto her side, chin on her hand, looking right at me. “Why’d you bring me out here?”

It was a good question. I wanted to say something clever, but all that came out was, “I like you.”

She didn’t laugh or make a joke. “You barely know me.”

“I know enough.”

She stared at me, all intensity. “I’m a mess.”

“Me too.”

She closed her eyes. “Are you gonna kiss me?”

“Do you want me to?” I asked.

Her eyes snapped open. “If you don’t, I’m leaving.”

I didn’t wait. I just leaned in and did it. She kissed like she did everything. Hungry, no time for half-measures. I ran my hand down her back, slow, and she arched into it.

Then something landed on her leg.

Tess yelped and jerked away, batting at her thigh. A moth as big as my thumb flapped around her knee, and she scrambled to her feet, swearing.

I caught the moth between my fingers and let it go. “You’re a menace,” I said.