Page 143 of Saltwater Cowboy

A moment later, the door creaked open, and Rose slipped outside. She hesitated—just for a second—before lowering herself onto the bench beside me.

Neither of us spoke.

The fire crackled between us, orange embers drifting up into the night like tiny ghosts. The air smelled like burning wood and fall. It should’ve been peaceful.

But peace felt impossible when Rose sat beside me, stiff and quiet, her eyes locked on the flames like they held some kind of answer.

I’d been watching her all day, trying to figure out what was going on inside that head of hers. She wasn’t acting like herself—not the woman who challenged me, teased me, softened against me when no one else was looking. She was somewhere else, lost in her thoughts, and it was driving me crazy. As we sat here with nothing but firelight and silence between us, I was getting tired of pretending everything was fine.

She let out a breath, taking a sip of her wine. “You ever notice how easy it is for you?”

I glanced over. “What do you mean?”

She shook her head like she was frustrated, but not at me—at something bigger, something she couldn’t put into words. “You have a bad day, and you just… let it out. You don’t hold it in. You get mad, you yell. You don’t swallow it down and pretend everything’s okay.” She turned to me, her eyes darker in the firelight. “It must be nice.”

Something inside me twisted.

“You think it’s easy?” My voice was low, but there was an edge to it.

She exhaled sharply, rubbing at her temple. “I don’t know, Wells. I just—sometimes I look at you, and I think, ‘I wish I could do that. I wish I could just let it out.’”

She didn’t get it.

She didn’t understand what it cost me—what it had always cost me—to feel things this deeply.

“You think it’s so easy being me?” My fists clenched at my sides, my whole body going rigid. “Do you know why I kept this place, Rose?” I let the words hang between us for a beat, daring her to guess.

She didn’t.

“My mother’s dying wish was for me to keep it running,” I said, my voice rough. “She asked me to promise her, right before she—” My jaw locked. I shook my head, forcing myself to keep going. “Being here makes me want to crawl out of my damn skin. Every flower reminds me of her. Every damn sunrise over the fields feels like a punch to the ribs because she’s not here to see it.” I let out a shaky breath, my chest heaving. “I don’t sleep because living in this house hurts.”

Her face softened. “Wells, I didn’t think—”

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore, alright?” My voice came out sharper than I meant it to.

Rose stiffened beside me, her expression unreadable. She had every reason to walk away. To leave me to drown in the mess of my own making.

But she didn’t.

She stayed, watching me unravel, watching as my anger gave way to something raw, something I couldn’t control. I took a sip of my beer.

My breath hitched, and I turned away, pressing the heel of my palm against my eyes. My whole body was buzzing, like the weight of all these years was finally pressing down on me.

“I tried so hard to save her,” I whispered, barely recognizing my own voice. “We tried everything. Every doctor, every treatment, every desperate last-chance prayer.” My throat closed up, but I forced the words out anyway. “But nothing worked.”

The fire crackled between us, but I barely heard it over the roaring in my ears.

“I’m trying to save this place to keep my parents’ legacy alive,” I choked out. “But it’s killing me, Rose. And I don’t know how to stop it.”

I sucked in a breath that didn’t seem to go deep enough.

I didn’t want to cry.

But cowboys cry too.

And when Rose reached out—her fingers wrapping around my wrist, grounding me, holding me together—I didn’t pull away.

Her grip was steady and warm. Like she knew I needed something to hold onto but wouldn’t force me to take more than I was ready for. Years of grief pressing down on me, stealing the breath from my lungs.