Page 57 of Boston (Coral Canyon: Cowboys #12)

CHAPTER

THIRTY-SEVEN

B oston did not have time to talk to Cash, but he couldn’t believe his cousin was awake before seven a.m., so he slid on the call, despite his misgivings. “Howdy,” he said. “Why are you up so early?”

“I got an email from Cal last night,” Cash said. “And I’m just now seeing it. We only have until three o’clock this afternoon to counter or dismiss the counter-offer, and I know you’re going hiking.”

So this was serious, because the email had gotten Cash out of bed early.

They’d been going back and forth with the sellers of the two-house property for weeks now, and Boston just wanted it done.

He moved around his cabin, packing the food he’d set out last night and getting out the extra water bladder he’d frozen.

“What’s the counter-offer?” he asked.

“Cal says they absolutely will not go below four-seventy-five.”

Boston scoffed. “They get that we’re going to be pouring at least one hundred grand into that property and six months of time before we’ll even be able to live there, right?”

Cash chuckled. “I don’t think they care about what happens after we buy it. We could probably set the place on fire, and they wouldn’t know.”

“Yeah, probably,” Boston muttered. “So what do you want to do? If they won’t go below four-seventy-five, and that’s what we want—” He sighed and stopped packing to sit in one of his dining room chairs.

He’d stayed on with Cash at the vacation rental, but his best friend would be moving out next week, and that meant Boston had to come back to the lodge.

Since he’d wanted to leave early this morning for the six-mile hike up to the cabin, he’d come back last night.

He had a whole heap of clean clothes in his hamper sitting just down the hall, and his apartment felt unused and sterile.

“I’m not going to be able to invest as much in it as you,” he said.

“I know that, brother,” he said. “We’ve got Uncle Gabe working on a contract for us.”

“I’m just worried about it,” Boston said, adopting his new persona of saying the things he thought and felt.

“What are you worried about?” Cash asked.

“I don’t know,” Boston said. “That if you own seventy percent of the property, we won’t be able to make joint decisions. That you’ll just go, ‘Well, I own more of it, so I’m going to do what I want.’”

Cash sat there for a moment while Boston heard what he’d said. “I obviously know you’re not going to do that,” he said.

“I don’t think I will,” Cash said in a sober voice. “Bryce and Kassie have made it work, and they’re not fifty-fifty. I really just want to establish a cutting horse training facility.”

He paused while he coughed, as he’d caught a little something. “Would it help you feel better if I have Uncle Gabe put that in the contract? That I get my twenty acres for the cutting horses, and you can do whatever you want with the rest? That I have no say over the other land or your house?”

“Of course not,” Boston said. “That’s not fair. Twenty acres out of seventy-seven and you’re paying seventy percent?” He shook his head. “No, it’s not fair.”

“I’ll do whatever you want,” Cash said, his voice mild and barely coming across the line.

“I think this would be awesome for both of us. You’re still close to Silver Sage.

I get to start working with horses, and I don’t have to go back on the rodeo circuit.

We’re close to each other, and we’ve always gotten along real well, haven’t we? ”

“Yes,” Boston said. “I’m sorry, Cash. I didn’t mean to imply that we hadn’t.”

“Ain’t no thing,” Cash said easily. “I don’t know what you want, Boston. Maybe this isn’t it, but I don’t think you want to leave Coral Canyon or live in a studio apartment for the rest of your life. And no matter what happens to each of us, we can get married and have families here.”

“Yeah,” Boston said, because the picture that Cash had been painting for the past month was glorious and beautiful, and Boston wanted it.

The problem was he wanted it with Cora , and he wasn’t sure that she would leave Silver Sage.

She had a house there, free and clear, no commute.

Why would she ever want to leave that to come live with him on a hoarder’s property that needed to be gutted, roads leveled, and a metric ton of stuff to “deal with”?

Boston already felt like he didn’t have anything to offer her, and if he bought this place with Cash, it felt like committing her to a prison. Boston wasn’t even sure why he was considering Cora. They’d broken up three weeks ago, and he’d only seen her around Silver Sage a couple of times.

“Here’s what I think,” Cash said, and Boston realized he’d been quiet for too long. “You’re going to go up to the eagle habitat today, and I’m going to say yes to this offer. When you get back on Saturday, if you don’t want it, it’s okay. I’ll buy it and it’ll be mine, one hundred percent.”

Boston thought of Bryce and the way he said “one hundred percent” for everything, and it made him smile.

“But if you get back on Saturday and this still feels like the right thing for you, then I’d love to have you with me.”

“All right,” Boston said.

“You know what this means, right?” Cash asked.

“I’ve been praying about it,” Boston said defensively.

“I don’t mean that.” He chuckled. “It means you’re going to have to talk to Cora.”

“Why would I have to do that?”

“Because whether you’ll admit it or not,” Cash said, some of that bossy, broody rodeo star coming out in his tone. “You’re hesitating on this because you think if you get back together with Cora, the two of you will live at Silver Sage.”

Boston couldn’t argue. And when Cash said, “Tell me I’m wrong,” Boston couldn’t do that either.

“All right,” Cash said. “I gotta get back to bed, and I know I’ve delayed you on your start time, which you hate. So I’m going to go. You’ve got a lot to do in the next few days, and I think I will too.”

“How are you going to sign papers without me?” Boston said.

“I’ll just tell him you’re up in the mountains, and if we have to amend things later, then we will.

” He made it sound so easy and like anyone would just bend to his will, which in many instances, they did.

Not only that, but Cash had a lot of money, and money could get people to do things that they normally wouldn’t do.

“All right,” he said. “I wish you were coming with me.”

“Me too,” Cash said. “I’ll get up there one day.”

“Yeah.” Boston ended the call and looked at his phone as it darkened.

Cash had decided last night, after he’d been fighting a cough for a couple of days, that he wouldn’t be able to go on the hike with Boston. Not only that, all this stuff with the house and property kept happening, and Cash didn’t think it was smart for them both to be gone and unreachable.

Boston sighed and finished putting together his things. Then, he put everything on his back and left his apartment.

The hike through the wilderness cleansed his soul and gave him time to think about what he really wanted. He’d started to paint his own picture of the future, and every time Cora entered it, he would erase it and start over.

No matter what, she always came back into the picture, and Boston had just accepted it. Now he didn’t know what it would take, or who would make the first move, or when they might be able to try again, but he knew all of it would happen.

He lost cell service, ate his lunch overlooking the crystal blue lake, and kept going. He did want his own place, and he wanted Cora. Could he have both?

He wasn’t sure, and by the time he reached the cabin just outside the eagle sanctuary, he’d missed a couple of calls from his daddy.

Using his portable charger, Boston plugged in his phone and unpacked everything before moving back over to it. He wasn’t sure how his father always seemed to know when Boston needed to be confronted about something, but he did. And today, Boston wasn’t going to shy away from that conversation.

He got out the premade chicken cordon bleus that Beth had made for them last month and put two of them on a tray, cut up a couple of potatoes, and slid everything in the oven.

She told him that she bought them from the butcher and that anyone could get them.

Boston had been eating them once a week since.

Now, he had forty-five minutes before dinner would be ready. That would give him an end time for his call with his father, and he sank onto the couch in the cabin and dialed his daddy back.

“Hey, son,” Daddy said, and a light started inside Boston’s chest.

“Hey, Daddy,” he said. “I didn’t answer because I was hiking up to the cabin. Remember?”

“Oh, I totally forgot you were doing that today. How was it?”

“It’s six miles,” Boston chuckled. “But I love it up here. It’s so quiet.”

“I’ll bet it is,” Daddy said. “I could use a little bit of that peace and quiet right now.”

“Oh, yeah?” Boston asked. “What have you got going on?”

“It’s the last week before school starts,” Daddy said. “We’ve just got shopping bags everywhere, and Lars keeps begging for pudding cups and Fruit by the Foot and all this other weird fangled stuff I’ve never heard of.”

Boston laughed. “That’s so not true, Daddy,” he said. “Beth and I begged you guys for those things too.”

“You did?” he asked. “I do not remember that.”

“Totally,” Boston said. “I kept trying to get you to get me that subscription to that video game. Remember, with the penguins? And you and Momma never would.”

“Well, a video game is different than fruit leather.”

“Fruit by the Foot is not fruit leather, Daddy.” Boston laughed again.

“You sound good,” Daddy said. “I don’t know why, but I’ve been worried about you.”

That caused Boston to sober. “Yeah, well, I’ve been really busy,” he said.

“I thought some of that abated once we moved into August.” Daddy wore a question in his voice, and Boston could just see the tilt of his eyebrows. They sat at different heights on his head, and he and Beth had always teased their daddy about it.

“Yeah, things got a little easier as far as work goes,” he said.

“Ah, so this is not a work thing.”

Boston laid down on the couch, remembering when Cora had told him that he couldn’t sleep here. It was hard, and he would have been miserable.

“Yeah, Cora and I broke up a few weeks ago,” he said.

“I told you,” Momma said, her voice coming through the line as she yelled. “He’s been avoiding all texts about her.”

“Oh, boy,” Boston said, his voice dry and filled with disgust. Still, he smiled at the ceiling. “When I’m on speaker with Momma, you have to warn me.”

“You’re not on speaker with Momma,” Daddy said. “I told you to let me talk to him alone.” The next thing Boston heard was the near-slamming of a door and then Daddy sighing. “I’m sorry. She just happened to come in right then.”

“It’s all right,” Boston said.

“I just know sometimes you’d rather just talk to me about stuff, because I don’t make as big a deal about it.”

“Well, that’s true, but you can tell her at least I’ve had a girlfriend now.”

“Boston,” Daddy said, plenty of chastisement in the word. “Your mother didn’t mean anything by that.”

Boston didn’t say anything, because he didn’t want to argue.

“Of course, neither one of us are happy that you broke up if you liked her.”

“Of course I liked her,” Boston said. “And I know I’ve never really had a serious relationship, and I know I’m really young, but I really liked her, Daddy, and sometimes I felt like I was falling in love with her.

” He sat up then, suddenly keen to know what his father knew.

“What does that feel like? How would I know?”

“It’s hard to say,” Daddy said. “Love is such a beautiful, wonderful thing, but I think everyone experiences it differently.”

“She was easy to talk to,” Boston said, his memories moving fast now. “And I felt like I could really be myself around her. I wanted to take care of her, and I wanted her to know that no matter what happened, she could rely on me.”

“That’s real nice, son,” Daddy said, matching his lower voice and energy to Boston’s. “Is that why you took all the shifts in July?”

Boston ran his hand through his hair and sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe. The money’s real good too.”

“Yeah, I bet it was.” Daddy chuckled. “So what are you going to do? Why’d you break up?”

“I think I got my feelings hurt,” Boston said slowly. “And she did too. We’d chosen things over the other, because we didn’t communicate, and because we thought the other person didn’t have time. It really was about time.”

Right then, Boston found himself wanting to find a way to carve more hours into the day, simply so he could see Cora.

“Well, it sounds like if you could talk to her and make a different choice, then things might not be so bad.”

“Yeah,” Boston said.

“Maybe this is just God teaching you two how to communicate with one another. He has something great and amazing waiting for you, if you’ll be brave enough to open your mouth.”

Boston heard the parallels between what his father was saying and what Cora had told him. You should have said something.

Maybe he should say something to her now.

“Anyway, you’re a smart man, Boston, and you’ll know what you need to do, when you need to do it.”

“Thanks, Daddy,” Boston said.

“Love you, bud.”

“Love you too.”

He ended the call, sighed, and got back to his feet, which protested that he wanted them to walk some more.

He glanced at the timer on the stove and saw that he had twenty more minutes.

He put the same number on his phone and headed outside.

After all, if he had to spend time thinking about Cora and what he should do in this major pivot point in his life, he wanted to do it while eagle-watching, where he felt closer to God and closer to himself than anywhere else.