Page 16 of Colt (The Bull Riders #2)

I can’t do that to her. I can’t do that to us, to the family.

She made it all very clear earlier today. She was assertive about it.

She doesn’t want this.

And that’s just fine.

Neither of us should want it.

Stepsiblings.

My thoughts are interrupted when we pull onto the dirt road that leads to our parents’ place. She takes the dirt road a little bit quick, the tire slipping as she rounds the corners, but it’s what I would do.

We’ve both driven this road so many times we could practically drive it with our eyes closed. Her little car doesn’t have the traction my truck does, though.

“Speed demon,” I say.

“Like you aren’t,” she says.

I have nothing to say to that. She pulls up next to Gentry’s truck, right there in front of the house.

“I don’t need help,” I say, opening the door and managing to get my crutch planted in the gravel driveway.

“Don’t be stubborn,” she says.

“I’m stubborn. Deal with it.” I manage to maneuver myself out of the truck without having an incident. I’m grateful for that. I don’t need any more incidents today. I don’t need any more incidents ever. I’ve maxed out on those. For the rest of my life.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Yeah. I have to do it.” I guess she means that I don’t have to do it by myself.

I don’t have to put distance between us.

The answer to both of those things is that I do.

She doesn’t get to make proclamations. I’m the one who screwed up earlier.

I’m the one who hurt her. I don’t want to do that. Not again.

I take the stairs up the front porch slowly, but it’s not impossible.

It’s just methodical. She’s standing behind me.

Like if I fall backward, we can trust fall or something.

I don’t say anything. I just grit my teeth and get myself up to the front door.

My mom doesn’t even let me ring the doorbell before she’s flying halfway out onto the porch.

“I’m so glad that you felt well enough to come tonight. ”

I wrap her in my arms as best I can while bracing myself on the crutches. “Of course. Thanks for inviting me.”

“You know you’re welcome here anytime. But I figure that you needed to rest a little bit at home first.”

“Yeah. Probably.” Except the rest makes my skin itch and makes me feel like my brain’s on fire, but that’s fine.

“How’s he doing?”

My mom directs this question to Allison. I wait for her to tattle on me.

“Great. I mean, you know how he is. He wants to take things a little faster than he should, but other than that, he seems to be doing great. That’s my professional medical opinion.”

She’s being too nice. I don’t like it.

But she goes into the house, and my mom does too, so I just follow them in.

Gentry and Lily are sitting in the dining room already talking to Jim.

“Glad they let you off to come have dinner,” I say to my stepbrother.

“Yeah. We got the Trigger Fire 90% lined. Everything’s going great. I’m going to get moved to a different location in a couple of days, but I'll have some time off until then.”

“Yeah, we’re both getting sent to California,” Lily says.

Lily is one of the few women that I’ve ever known to fight wildland fires. She takes the job seriously, but then, she’s always been one of us. I half expected her to take up bull riding when Dallas and I started it, but she went with the firefighting.

Probably because Gentry is the person that she’s really attached to. Not that she’s ever said that. Not that it’s something we ever speak about. But it’s apparent to me.

“Well, great that you guys get to drive down together.”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe I’ll do some firefighting after I’m done with the rodeo,” I say, sitting down at the table.

“Excuse me?”

My mom walks into the room holding a basket of bread.

“Just planning for the future, mom.”

“Could you give me a break? Because I would like that, Colt. What if you became an accountant?”

Lily snorts, and Gentry smiles and looks up at my mom. “Do you know accountant is a chronically online euphemism for something else?”

“No,” Cindy says. “For what?”

“For a sex worker,” says Lily.

My mom rolls her eyes. “Oh, please.”

“I was thinking about that earlier,” I say. “I could start a rodeo cowboy page.”

“If you do that, you have to not tell me,” my mom says.

“No, I’ll definitely tell you.”

“You’re trouble,” she says, swatting me on the shoulder, and one of the very few places I’m not injured.

Allison isn’t in the room., And I’m wondering where she went.

But I don’t ask. Mom leaves and comes back in with a pan of meatloaf and a bowl of mashed potatoes, followed by a giant bowl of green salad.

Allison appears after everyone starts taking their plates out of the pile at the center of the table.

She sits down at the table at the furthest seat away from me. Is that what she was waiting for? A way to sit as far from me as possible without it being obvious? Like she just took the last seat.

Though she did take the last seat, and there’s no way she planned that, I guess. But still.

“How’s school?” Gentry jabbed his fork toward Allison, and then she proceeds to give him the same rundown she gave me earlier.

I’m not used to spending so much time with her. Normally, this would be news to me. But I feel like I’ve been on the interior of her life now for the past couple of days. A couple days that feel a hell of a lot longer than they actually were.

But that’s part of the time warp of this injury. It feels both like no time has passed at all since that night at the rodeo, and like I’ve lived an entirely new lifetime.

And yet, here I am, surrounded by my family.

That’s a gift. I wonder how many people are lucky enough to have a family as nice as this?

Here we are, all sitting around the table.

There’s no tension. There’s no weirdness.

It’s a blended family, and yet we all get along.

Gentry and I are practically best friends.

My mom gets along with both stepkids, and Jim is the father I never had. It couldn’t be more important.

The only tension that has ever existed has been between Allison and me, and that’s just normal.

You. It’s normal.

At least mostly was until today.

But this is the reminder for why we can’t do this. The reminder for why from the very first moment I ever felt attracted to her I decided that I had to shut it off.

And I need to shut it off now, too.

Because this family is what matters. It means everything to me. And now that I don’t have the rodeo, this is what I have. It’s all I have.

She looks up, right at that moment, and our eyes clash.

My stomach feels like she reached through that stitched-up wound in my side and wrapped her hand around it.

I can’t not see that moment earlier today. Where I was staring at her mouth, looking at it and realizing that I wanted to devour it. That I want to devour her.

She looks away, down at her food, driving her fork through her mashed potatoes, and I have a feeling she’s imagining driving that fork through my hand.

Joke’s on her. It wouldn’t hurt as bad as getting gored by a bull. As much as I know she would like for it to. And still, I’m having trouble taking my eyes off of her.

“Does anybody want dessert?”

My stepdad makes a mean pie. My mom made dinner, but I guarantee he’s the architect of whatever masterpiece is coming out last.

Everyone agrees to dessert – obviously – and Jim gets up from the table and heads into the kitchen, coming back with two beautiful pies. “Huckleberry and blackberry, berries picked by me.”

See, this is what I mean. Idyllic. Everyone gets heaping helpings of pie, and vanilla ice cream to go with. And I forget for a little bit that everything is shit. Honestly. That’s how good Jim’s pies are. That’s how good it is to be here with my family. That’s how normal it is. How wonderful it is.

“You and Dad should go sit,” Allison says. “I’ll do the dishes.”

“We can help,” Lily says.

Though, it’s obvious that they’re wrecked from work.

Allison sees it immediately. “No. The firefighters should go home and rest. Seriously. Until I start my clinical rotations, I’m not nearly as exhausted as anybody here.”

I think she’s downplaying. I’m noticing that she does that quite a bit. I haven’t really noticed that before. I don’t get why she does that.

I wouldn’t think that she admires what I do so much, maybe what Gentry does. He actually helps people. Makes a difference.

“I don’t want to leave you with everything,” Gentry says.

“I’m good,” she says, making a shoeing motion. “Seriously. Get out of here.”

I wait until Lily and Gentry are gone, and then I push myself into a standing position.

Allison whirls around toward me. “No. You’re not going to–”

“Allison,” I say. “I can dry some dishes. I’m not that bad off.”

I can see that she’s really weighing arguing with me. But also the moment that she decides it’s not worth it.

Smart girl.

Although, as we head into the kitchen together, Allison with a stack of plates nearly scraped clean of pie residue, I realize that it might not have been the best idea.

Because here we are by ourselves in the kitchen. I think we must’ve done the dishes together a hundred times, though. And I’ve never given any thought to it.

In fact, I remember very clearly her being about thirteen and angry that she was being made to clean up and Gentry and I harassing her by snapping dishtowels in her direction.

She got mad, and even almost started crying.

Yeah, it kind of makes sense why she doesn’t like me.

I was annoying, and I was sort of intrigued by the idea of being a brother.

I was by myself all my life. And then I got Gentry.

Then I got her. So teasing her seemed like the right thing to do, and she was soft and easy to get a rise out of.

I realize now, though, that it probably wasn’t the most gallant move.

“All right. Let’s set up an assembly line.”