Page 34 of Rogue Cowboy (Montana’s Rodeo Cowboys #3)

R iley hadn’t wanted to attend the Ballantyne Bash.

She’d forced herself to just as proof that she could and would have a good time without Cole who still hadn’t texted her.

But she was having a terrible time and didn’t want to talk to anyone.

She didn’t want to eat. And the happier everyone was, the worse she felt.

She wasn’t sure if she was sad—there might not be any room for sad with all her mad.

How dare he show up this weekend spouting about courting her and making their marriage real and going at her pace when he pushed her to follow his agenda for her healing and shut down after their first argument.

She knew she wasn’t being fair. He had a family emergency. She was being a selfish B-word.

But he could text. He left her sick with worry. How dare he look at her like she’d scattered all the stars in the sky and then run home and not update her. Why hadn’t he asked her to go with him?

Cole hadn’t shared his emergency. He hadn’t wanted to bring her with him to share his burden and meet his family.

She stewed at one of the several fire pits—with her family and a few Wilders and some friends from high school.

She smiled and toasted a successful rodeo with sparkling water along with everyone and couldn’t take one bite of the delicious food because her stomach was in knots and her mind was chaos.

Her mom kept giving her mom looks. And Riley felt like she was on the verge of screaming.

Or crying.

And none of that was acceptable.

She was a Telford. A pillar in the community.

Telfords did good. They didn’t get drunk and drugged at parties.

They didn’t have inappropriate pictures of themselves on men’s phones.

They didn’t break dates with nice men because they were ambitious and stupid and ended up throwing all their hard work away.

And worse, they didn’t run away from their problems. Hide from their families.

That was the worst part. She’d worked so hard, severed herself from her family, insisted she was the one person who was going to get out of Marietta and make it big in LA only to discover she didn’t have the stomach for any of it.

She’d missed her family. She’d missed the ranch. She’d missed the horses. And she’d lost her music. She wasn’t pop star material. And she didn’t cut it as a rocker though she’d tried and tried until she felt like she’d died inside.

And now she couldn’t even keep Cole.

Because Mr. I’m in it for the Long Haul had taken off with NO explanation or text or…

“What’s up?”

Riley didn’t realize that she’d stood up in the middle of one of Boone’s hilarious stories about losing his pants at a rodeo in Bozeman. She held her still-full plate of food and stared at Boone like she didn’t know him.

“I’m tired,” she said, suddenly feeling it. “I’m going to head home.”

“I’ll go with you.” Her mother stood and slipped her arm through Riley’s.

“I parked up by the house so I could leave early if needed.” Twenty pair of eyes watched her, all of them realizing something unusual was happening, but everyone was too polite to mention anything.

Riley felt like after nearly six years, her mask was crumpling, and part of her was relieved and the other, worried there’d be nothing left she recognized.

“Taryn, you’ll join us.” Her mother wasn’t asking.

“I got the keys. Night, all.”

And just like that Riley knew her secrets were over as she climbed into the back seat of one of the ranch trucks.

*

Normally Riley was a shower at night girl because her job was so physical. But after a night where she felt like she’d been tossed off of a horse and stomped on, she needed another shower the next morning. Her parents had let her sleep in, although Riley doubted they’d gotten much sleep.

She’d told them everything. How she’d been so lost in LA.

How she’d hated the music industry and how it had messed with her music.

She confessed to the drinking—so much more than they’d imagined before she’d pulled away from that cold turkey.

The attack. Cole’s rescue. The secret marriage.

The lost baby. The nightmares. The pretending. So much pretending.

After her parents had held her like they had when she was a little girl, and she’d been utterly spent, but almost euphorically relaxed, she’d stumbled into her room and slept and slept until she’d finally blinked awake like a computer coming online and had comically stared at the clock, willing it to not be nine.

She’d never slept that long in her life.

She’d stumbled to the shower, feeling guilty as the water cascaded down her body, but she had to wash her hair after three nights camping in the trailer.

More awake now she pulled on some jeans and a Henley and wrapped a flannel shirt around her waist in case the morning was chill and staggered out desperate for coffee.

She blinked. Cole was in the kitchen. Her mom was hugging him and sobbing. And her dad sat on a barstool staring out the window, a full cup of coffee not even steaming in front of him.

Cole noticed her first. He looked shattered but smiled hollowly and walked over to her. Her parents looked aged, and she hated that she’d done that to them. Cole, a sequoia for her mom, looked stoic, numb.

“The accident?” she asked, heart in her throat, not wanting him to sustain another loss. But he was back. Was that good or bad news?

“Good morning, baby,” Cole said.

She stared at Cole trying to read him.

“Is it?” she asked, voice small. She’d done this. Hurt her parents. Hurt Cole.

“It is,” he said. “Definitely. It is.”

“Sorry, sorry.” Her mom smoothed her hand down Cole’s striped dark blue and lighter blue shirt. “Sorry, I’ve gotten you all wet, but I…” She looked up at him, her eyes still swimming with tears. “I wanted to thank you for taking care of our baby.”

“Didn’t feel like enough,” Cole stoically said.

“It was more than enough,” Riley objected, as what he’d done had felt like too much when she’d had enough headspace to judge her own actions driven by fear and shock. “I’m the one who was a shallow idiot compromising my values and chasing fame. And then I was a liar, and I used Cole.”

Riley sipped her coffee, hoping the heat and bitterness gave her courage.

“None of it was Cole’s fault,” she stated.

“He stepped in. He took care of me. He wanted to meet you both. Tell you want happened and that he’d be a father if there was a baby before he headed off to his deployment.

But I was the coward. I lied and told him I wanted to tell you alone.

I promised I’d see a counselor, but I didn’t.

And I never told you. I sent Cole away into danger without even a thank you or a kiss. ”

But she had prayed every night for God to keep him safe though she’d feared God wouldn’t answer the prayers of a liar or a coward. And yet would he punish a good man because a weak and flawed woman loved him?

Love had been there for so long—maybe since that first weekend, but it hadn’t been given a chance to grow because it had been damaged and shadowed. But now—if she had another chance with Cole, she was going to prove herself.

She waited for his condemnation. Or her folks’. It shocked her to hear the words come out so easily. Like she was reciting facts to someone else’s life story.

The baby that never had a chance to be. The baby that had terrified her and that she hadn’t loved the short time she’d had it.

The baby who was blameless and no more and hadn’t been cleanly grieved because she’d been relieved as well.

But even now she had to admit to herself that she’d mourned the loss of Cole because he would no longer feel obligated to stay with her.

“He wanted to do the right thing always, and I was stubborn and scared.” She wasn’t shirking that. Her parents should be mad at her, not Cole, though last night they’d only cried with her and held her. “Cole is noble.”

But why was he here now? To break up with her finally or to give her yet one more chance?

“I’m not that noble,” Cole said, his gaze on hers. “I fell crazy in love with you from the moment we met,” he said, and Riley felt a fireball of shock race through her to hear him admit that out loud. “I would have done anything…will do anything to keep you.”

“And this is the most deliciously awkward coffee run ever,” Boone said humorously entering, Rohan on his heels, from the mudroom.

“Don’t let us interrupt. Keep declaring your undying love, I’ll just fill up my thermos and grab my nosy brother who’s known to try to punch out men courting his sister and go.”

“Hurry,” Riley said, not looking at her clownish brothers. “You love me. Love me still?” she asked.

Boone, for all his amusement, hunched his shoulders a little and whispered to Cole, “Sorry for the bad timing, brother,” before filling his thermos and crashing into Rohan to steer him back out of the house.

“I want coffee too,” Rohan objected.

“I’ll share. Mom. Dad. Exit stage left.”

And then they were alone as both Sarah and Taryn quickly grabbed more coffee and scuttled away into the mudroom and out the side door.

Riley heard the grandfather clock clicking out the seconds, and she wanted to say something epic.

“For a woman who used to write sappy lyrics about love and longing, I don’t know what to say.

” She faced him, still in the great room with the kitchen island between them.

“Except I love you too. I crushed on you so hard that first weekend. You were so sweet and gorgeous and kind and masculine. I wasn’t sure what to do with you.

I’d been in LA nearly a year and everything seemed to be going wrong and I could do nothing right, but then you arrived and none of that mattered. Just you. You and me together.”

“I felt the same. Feel the same. Your songs weren’t sappy,” Cole said. “I still play them on my phone when I want to torture myself a little more.”

She struggled to swallow right.

“I wish you’d write some new ones.”

She nodded. “Maybe. If I had some inspiration.”

“What would that look like?”

“Tall, strong, dark, messy hair that I hope you grow out a little because the cowlick is weirdly sexy. Serious expression. Beautiful eyes that look like a dark lake with a question simmering just below the surface. Here with me.”

She took a step toward him. And he matched with a step toward her.

“Or with me in Texas,” she whispered.

“I don’t know where home is anymore,” he said softly, and that hurt her heart. He shouldn’t feel lost. Adrift. And that was partially on her because she too had been drowning.

And last night she’d taken her first deep breath as she’d started to swim to her metaphorical shore.

She took another step and then another and then she ran the rest of the way and threw herself against him.

“Home is with me,” Riley said, her words resonating deeply within her. “Home is with you. Wherever we are, we’re home.”

*

Cole still felt stunned by the turn of events. He loaded in Riley’s green and light blue leather weekender backpack and another leather tote in the back seat of his truck.

“Think of it as a delayed honeymoon,” Sarah Telford had said, as she handed him a handmade quilt that her mother had made for Riley’s ‘marriage bed.’ Sarah had laughed and cried a little at what she called an ‘old-fashioned word.’

Her father had stood silent, searching for words, not finding them. Then he’d shaken Cole’s hand.

“Boone’s packing up some sandwiches I made for the road. And baked goods. And fruit.”

“Mom, they’re driving to Bozeman for a few days and then they’ll be back for Cole’s rescheduled meetings with some ranches, including ours.”

Sarah nodded, blinking back tears, and Cole imagined she was thinking about the part that would come later when he and Riley would drive south to the Jameson Ranch.

But even that wasn’t forever.

Riley rushed out with her guitar. “I’m going to say goodbye to Cinnamon and Spice,” she called out running toward the barn.

“A word,” Rohan said. Boone exited the house with a cooler, shoved it in Cole’s truck and then joined Rohan and Cole, face grim.

“We want their names.” Rohan didn’t miss a beat.

“I’m in,” Boone said.

“No,” Rohan said. “I can handle this.”

“Handled, years ago,” was all Cole was going to say about that.

Half an hour later, with Riley’s hand on his thigh, Cole turned onto Highway89 and headed north. The future possibilities unspooled ahead of them like the asphalt.

“You have something of mine,” Riley said.

“I do?”

She wiggled the fingers of her left hand.

Oh.

“I blew it so badly last time I wanted to shoot for something more romantic this time.”

Maybe by Miracle Lake in the foothills of Copper Mountain that he’d heard about. Or by a river or over a nice dinner.

“I don’t need romance, Cole. I just need you.”

He linked his fingers with hers. Kissed her hand and then one handed slipped the ring on her finger. “You have me. You’ll always have me.”

She looked at the sparkle on her finger, and her eyes shone as she looked at him.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m keeping you Cole Jameson. And I’ll marry you again—on our ranch in Montana just family and again on your ranch in Texas if you want. I definitely do.”

Then she pulled out her phone and connected it to his Bluetooth, scrolled to find a song she’d been working on before the assault that her manager and the record executives had hated but she’d loved.

It had been still rough, but she’d worked out a new bridge and refined the chorus and had recorded with her phone alone in the barn, which had seemed thematically symbolic.

Riley pushed play and began to sing.

The End