Page 59

He had to dress his own wounds.

Her soft hands wouldn’t be the ones soothing him, not anymore.

He’d sat in that realization for a long time. His mother had been wonderful. She’d cared for him like no one else.

No one would ever love him or care for him like that again.

He’d cried that night, over that cut on his arm. Over the realization he’d lost something he would never get back.

He hadn’t known that he’d be without his dad a year later.

That he’d watched the strongest man he’d ever known go down in a field, felled by that same strong grief that had immobilized Levi that night when he’d cut himself.

Grief was a monster.

He’d tangled with it too many times.

No. Losing his rodeo dreams wasn’t the tragedy.

Even though ranching hadn’t been his immediate dream, he’d imagined he’d settle into it someday. He’d always known this place would go to him. Just not when it had.

He’d imagined life away from the tyranny of school would be carefree.

Wonderful.

He’d never had a carefree moment from the time his mother had first gotten sick.

Really, the closest he’d come to that was in the last few years. After the kids had grown and gone, and he had finally started finding his feet with what he wanted to do with the land. Finally found a way to make it profitable for him. Now he had a little bit more of that.

But he’d had it from the time he was a kid. Those big, blue-sky dreams that had stretched out before him like the promise of a new day.

It was just that they’d been taken away.

Because that was what life did.

But it seemed to him that Quinn might even understand that.

Based on what she’d said about her father, based on what she’d said about the decisions that she’d made in order to protect herself, to keep herself safe. To make sure that no one could ever take anything from her.

He hadn’t anticipated standing there in a feed store feeling like maybe Quinn Sullivan was more his kind of person than he might’ve been able to imagine.

“I’ll show you the vitamins we need.”

He took her over to the corner, and she was messing with all the different syringes.

“Those are for calves.”

“All right. Do you do your own castration?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Though, you might want to be careful with that. You go asking men that out of context and it sounds a little bit rough.”

Her cheeks went slightly pink again, like they had that morning when he had been looking at her breasts.

Lord Almighty.

“Right.” She cleared her throat. “But you knew what I meant.”

“I did. I’m just being difficult.”