Page 95 of Ride Me Cowboy

I don’t look around.

I can’t.

I can’t even think of him right now. But Caleb is right beside Elsie, and I see him stand up taller, squaring his shoulders, like he’s getting ready to say something for Cole.

“It’s not?—,”

“Don’t tell me it’s not what it looked like,” Elsie spits. “I’m not stupid. I have two eyes. I could see you two going at it up there. Do you have any idea—hejustdied. How can you do this to him? To his memory?” She looks at Cole again, shaking her head. “And with this guy?”

My stomach twists. “Leave Cole out of it,” I say, my voice quiet but firm.

“That’s what you should have done.” She shakes her head, and a tear slides down her cheek. I know this is coming from a place of grief, rather than anger, but it doesn’t make much difference right now. “I can’t believe this. I came out here because we’vebeenworried sickabout you, and all the while you’ve been screwing everything in a cowboy hat.”

“Hey,” Cole’s gruff voice comes from behind me, and I turn to face him.

“Leave it,” I say, pleadingly. His eyes shift to mine, and there are so many emotions swirling in his depths that I can’t think straight. It’s happening again—that weird vortex thing we have, that pulls me out of reality and into our own little existence.

“Come on, Beth, you can’t just let her—,” Cole says, gently.

“Let her what?” Elsie demands, so I turn back to my sister-in-law, feeling totally caught between them.

“You can’t come onto my ranch and talk to Beth like that. I’m sympathetic to what you’ve been through, but Beth’s her own person. She can make her own choices.”

“Her husband just died. Do you really think you’re the kind of choice she’d make if she were thinking clearly?”

I stare at Elsie, totally shocked by how cutting that comment is. “Elsie?—,”

“What? It’s the truth. You’re obviously not thinking straight or you would never have come out to his backwater place, to do a job that’s miles beneath you, working for these—these—hicks.”

My jaw drops. “Okay, Els, just—stop talking a second, okay?”

I whirl around to face Cole. He’s looking straight ahead, a muscle jerking in his jaw. My old life and my new life are at war with each other, and I’m on a strangely wobbly little precipice between them. I need some time and space to sort this out.

Cole’s eyes flick to mine, probing my depths, before he says, “I’ll give you both some privacy.” He leans closer, so I feel his warm breath on my cheek. “But you should tell her the truth, Beth.”

“Cole,” I say, warningly, panic rising through me at the thought that he’s going to reveal the reality of my marriage to Christopher.

He shakes his head a little. “It’s the only way you’re ever going to be free of this.” And he lifts his hand to my cheek and brushes his thumb across it tenderly, so my heart does a little flip, like Elsie isn’t even here. Like Cole’s the only man I’ve ever known—the only man I ever will.

As he leaves the stables, his feet make a crunching sound on the gravel beneath us. Caleb and Mack follow in his wake, and finally, Elsie and I are alone.

“What’s he talking about? What truth do you need to tell me?”

My heart drops to my feet.

“Damn it, Beth. I feel like I don’t even know you anymore.”

Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe she never did?

“Are you actually sleeping with that guy?”

I flinch at her question.

“I mean, he’s hot, obviously, but you were married to Christopher. You had the world at your fingertips. How can you come out here and just—,” she shakes her head. “It must be grief. I’ve heard of this, of people doing really unhinged things when they lose someone they love. I guess that explains it.”

I nod, a little, but now, in my mind, it’s not Christopher I see, but rather, Cole. His patience and goodness, the way he wentrunning with me each afternoon, though it was probably the last thing he felt like doing, just because he wanted to protect me. I think of everything we’ve shared. The conversations, our secrets, the trust we’ve built, and I can’t let Elsie’s summation sit out there, even though I know it would make her feel better.

“It’s not that,” I say.