Page 11

There’s nothing I hate more than sleeping in the damn guest bedroom. I thought staying at the cabin was my own personal hell, but I underestimated how much it was going to suck to sleep in the same house as my wife but in an entirely different room.

It would probably be bearable if that distance between us was only physical, but I can’t help but feel like every time we’re together, Elsie pushes me farther away.

“Okay, what the hell is wrong with you?” Cooper finally asks when I break the ice in the water troughs with just a little too much force, splashing water all over the both of us.

It’s not even technically my job to feed and water the horses in the morning, but on this particular morning, I was searching for something extra to do to burn off the anxiety churning in my stomach, loosen the noose-like feeling of helplessness that I haven’t been able to shake in a year.

The one that’s been slowly strangling me.

“Nothing,” I mutter with a little too much venom. Cooper sees straight through me.

He hikes his hands on his hips and pins me with a look. “I really thought your sour mood would start improving once you moved back home, but it’s somehow gotten worse. What gives?”

I don’t want to tell him that I’ve moved home, but that it hasn’t made much of a difference. That every time Elsie and I seem to take a step forward, she takes two steps back. And I sure as hell don’t want to tell him about sleeping in the guest room.

But I can tell he’s not going to let me bullshit my way out of this.

It’s freezing, but I’ve still managed to work up a sweat, so I wipe my brow and squint at him in the early morning sunshine. “I moved home, but I’m sleeping in the guest room.”

His brows reach for the sky. “Oh. Her idea, I’m guessing?”

I nod and palm the back of my neck. “I just thought we’d make more progress, that moving back in would force us to start working through things. But we’re basically just roommates.”

Frustration claws at me.

When I look at my brother, his jaw is popping and his arms are crossed. “I thought we talked about this. You have to ask for what you want, Beau.”

“I did,” I practically yell, then sigh and lower my voice. “I did, but there’s more going on that you don’t know about.”

Cooper just stares at me, waiting for me to continue, and I internally debate.

I was planning to wait to tell him until after the appointment today, when we had a better idea of how things were going, but the anxiety and the excitement and all the emotions I can’t seem to name feel like they’re itching to get out of me.

“Elsie’s pregnant,” I blurt, and watch the words land on Cooper. Shock colors his features, and his arms come uncrossed, hanging down at his sides. “And she still didn’t want me to come home, but I told her I was going to anyway, that I wasn’t going to let her deal with this on her own.”

My brother blinks, processing everything I’ve just said. “Well, that does complicate things.”

I nod, relief coursing through me at having shared this with him. I probably should have asked Elsie first, but she told Jade before she even told me, so I don’t think she would mind.

“And I thought things would get better with me home, that the baby would bring us together, but…” I trail off, not sure how much of my soul I really want to bare to him.

Cooper nods like he understands, and for the first time, I realize that while he and Ruby’s mom were only ever a one-night stand, they did have to navigate a pregnancy and figure out how to co-parent. My situation is unique, but it’s not the first unplanned pregnancy in this family.

And that makes me feel less alone.

He kicks at the dirt at his feet. “I still think you need to be honest with her about what you need and want, but I think figuring this out is going to take time,” he says, surprising me.

I look at him, and he must be able to see the emotion written on my face because he laughs.

“I do, occasionally, have brief moments of wisdom,” he says, eyes twinkling in the early morning sunlight.

He’s doing that thing he always does, downplaying his abilities. I want to tell him he doesn’t need to, but an alarm chirps on my phone. I pull it out and press the button to silence it.

When I look up, Cooper is watching me. “I’ve got to go,” I tell him. “We have our first appointment this morning.”

“How do you feel?” he asks.

I pause to really think about it, stuffing my hands into the pockets of my work jacket and staring down at the dusty ground, cracked with cold. “I’m nervous,” I tell him. “But I’m also so really happy, you know?”

“Yeah,” he says, drawing my attention back up to him. He’s giving me a soft smile, the one he reserves only for Ruby. “I do.”

Elsie is jittery when we climb into my truck an hour later.

She’s trying to hide it but doing a poor job, her fingers tapping on any available surface, gnawing at her plump bottom lip.

I want to reach over and tug it out, tell her she’s going to make it bleed, but I know that wouldn’t be welcome now the way it used to be.

When I got home and saw the way she was nervously flitting around the house, seeming like she was a million miles away, I forced my anxiety down. I knew today wasn’t the day for me to show it, that I needed to be a strong pillar she could lean against.

So I showered off my morning ranch chores and put some gel in my hair in an attempt to tame it, and by the time I came out of the guest room, I felt only excitement.

And a concern for Elsie. But I’d sunken so deep into my belief that everything was going to be okay that any other news would have bowled me over.

I found her in the kitchen, hands propped beside the kitchen sink, staring at nothing. But when I said her name, she turned to me, as if noticing I was there for the first time, plastering a fake smile on her face, and asked if I was ready to go.

It made nerves settle in my stomach, but I clung to that optimism and gave her what I hoped looked like a real smile and led her out to the car.

I can see now that it was the right course of action, because Elsie is not feeling any of the optimism I am. Her eyes are glazed over as she looks out the window, and she’s breathing louder than I think she realizes, her breaths coming in short puffs.

It makes me want to pull the truck over and gather her in my lap, hold her until the fear recedes. Instead, as we stop at a light, I ask, “Can I turn on some music?”

The cab is painfully quiet, only the sounds of the road bumping beneath the tires and Elsie’s breathing filling the air. She turns to look at me like she forgot I was there, like she’s retreated so far into her head that she doesn’t even know how she got here in this truck with me.

It makes worry gnaw at my gut, and I fight to shove it down.

“Yeah,” Elsie says, voice cracking with disuse. She clears her throat. “Music is fine.”

This truck is so old that the AUX cord is attached to a tape player.

I hook it up to my phone and turn on a nineties country playlist before the light turns green.

“Strawberry Wine” by Deana Carter starts playing, but Elsie doesn’t sing along quietly like she normally would.

Instead, she turns back toward the window, lost in her thoughts.

I can feel the tension rolling off her in waves the closer we get to the OB-GYN office, hear the way her breathing becomes more shallow. My heart, the organ I’ve been trying so hard to protect, shatters in my chest.

“Elsie,” I say the second we pull into the parking lot. I turn to face her, and my words fizzle out at the look on her face. She’s white as a sheet, staring straight ahead at the office.

“Beau,” she whispers, her gaze swinging to mine, eyes wide. “I can’t do this.”