Page 43 of Cowboy in Colorado

He strips the condom off and tosses it carelessly into the trash can beside the toilet, urinates without embarrassment, reaches into the shower stall, turns on the water, wets and wrings out the washcloth, then uses it to clean himself. He doesn’t look at me.

His shoulders are tensed, and his brow is furrowed, his eyes distant and closed off.

“Will?”

He pauses in the middle of the room, his eyes finally touching mine. Searching mine. I see a fragment of something in his gaze, and then it’s gone and he’s shaking his head, jaw pulsing. He strides nude to the door, throws up the bar and shoves the door open—and goes right out into the pouring rain, into the flashes of lightning and grumbles of thunder.

I watch him go, disappearing into the wet haze of driving rain—he didn’t even close the door.

I get out of the bed and close the door but don’t drop the bar into place. I’ll be damned if I’ll chase him. I don’t know what his deal is, but I’m not chasing him out into that storm.

That’s a lie—I do know exactly what’s wrong. He’s freaked out by what just happened.

As I am.

I climb back into the bed, and crawl under the covers. Lying on my side, I watch the flames flicker and lick at the wood in the fire. I’m sore all over, aching in places I didn’t know could be sore—my thighs and butt from all the horse riding, and my sex from the vigor of Will’s thrusts; I’m bruised from the fall off of Molly, and my muscles are just exhausted from such intense exertion—everything, not just the sex or the horse riding.

Everything hurts. I’m confused by what happened with Will, hurt by the way he shut down and left. Not just hurt, but pissed off; I’m used to being the one to leave. I’m the one who discards lovers. I walk away. I call my own cab at four in the morning, after I’ve fucked my partner of the night to my fill. I don’t call them, don’t even ask for their number or much less give them mine—not even my business card with a generic office number. They get no more of me than I deign to give.

This time is different. I gave Will…god…everything. I let himtakeme. I gave himcontrol, and that’s everything to me. I had no rules growing up, or very few, and so the only structure my life ever had was that which I gave it. It doesn’t take a psychologist to figure out why I have such control issues, why I tend to be so alpha, insisting on control over every aspect of my life.

I gave Will his way.

Let him take me how he wanted me, trusted him to give me what I needed.

And then he just walks out?

I’m not crying. I don’t cry over men.

My eyes sting, but that’s—it’s…it’s just from the smoke.

I close my eyes and let exhaustion take me under. Suddenly I cannot stay awake, and my eyes flutter closed.

At some point in the night I waken and hear something. I take a moment to remind myself where I am—one eye opens, and I see the fire has become an orange glow of coals. I think I see a big male silhouette in the darkness. Is that a rustle of clothing I hear. I’m too sleepy to care.

I fall back under the curtain of sleep, pushing away the question of Will, and where he went, where he’s going, what’s going to happen with us.

Even mostly asleep, that question is monstrous and tangled.

* * *

When I wake up,full daylight streams through the window. It takes a moment to place myself in space and time—and then it all comes rushing back. I’m naked in Will’s bed, alone. My sex is sore, because he fucked me so thoroughly I know I’ll never forget it—and I fear I’ll never be the same.

And then he left.

He’s not here. He could be outside, or in the stable, but there’s a chill in my gut that tells me he’s not in either of those places. I think he left.

I scan the spare interior—no coffee made, no sense that he gave me a second thought.

There, on the table, a hastily scrawled note, the handwriting sharp, angular, messy:

Brooklyn,

Had to check on the horses. Clint will be by later this morning to take you to the Big House.

—Will

And that’s it. Nothing of us, of what happened.