Page 28 of Take a Chance (Blue Creek Ranch #1)

Malachi

I hated it when I felt like people went behind my back. For obvious fucking reasons.

I also hated that I knew that if Crew needed to talk about something with someone, there would be literally a dozen people waving their hands in the air to volunteer.

Who did I have? Nobody. All I had was a mom I didn’t feel comfortable talking to about a man, and no siblings. As much as I’d hoped for those, there were none and seeing Crew with his was a little painful.

When my dad’s betrayal had become common knowledge in town, even the guys I’d went for beers with on occasion vanished to thin air.

Who knew that mismanagement of the family funds and being a liar rubbed off on the offspring even when they had no idea that shit was going on. Christ. Then we’d moved and… yeah.

Befriending people as an adult seemed like such an impossible task. I also couldn’t really talk to anyone here, because most people were Harringtons.

After Crew’s little speech at the barn while I was grooming the colt, I just needed to talk to someone. I just didn’t know who, and I didn’t really know what to say, either.

I stewed on it for a couple of days. I redid the section of fence that needed to be replaced for the broodmares and foals.

It was a two-day job after I discovered more rotted fence posts than we’d anticipated, so I had one of the hands helping me one day and then a very ecstatic-to-be-helping Tommy the other.

That night, after Pay went to bed, I took my phone and went to sit on my porch. There was a light on in Crew’s cabin, but somewhere deeper than the front room. Russ’s light was off already, so I assumed he was either asleep or not at home.

Sighing, I took a sip of my beer and called Aunt Win.

“Hey, kiddo, how’s it going?” she asked, her tone quiet enough that I knew either my mom was somewhere nearby or asleep.

“Hey Auntie.” I sighed.

“My sister is sound asleep in her room. Talk to me, Malachi.” Her tone was patient and kind.

I inhaled the night air slowly, then pushed the words out. “You know… you know I’m bi, right?”

“Yes. Your mom talked to me about that when you came out to her.”

“Okay. I assumed she would.” They were sisters and best friends, after all.

“I told her that it didn’t matter to me, and I’d wait until you wanted to tell me about it. If you wanted to tell me, that is.” I could hear the smile in her voice when she continued, “Thank you for trusting me with your truth.”

Something about her words choked me up a bit, so I stayed quiet for a moment. Then I took another gulp of beer.

She chuckled. “I hope that’s a beer and not a pop.”

I snorted. “It’s definitely a beer.”

“Good. So is this where I tell you I’m bi, too?”

My eyes widened, and I must’ve made a sound, because Aunt Win giggled.

“Christ, you’re even more of a hippie than I thought!” I teased, because there was a sudden warmth spreading in my chest and the realization that she knew what I was going through for real, at least on some level, was a bit much right then.

“Oh, nephew mine, you have no idea.” She sounded delighted. Then she got more serious. “So, what’s his name?”

Snorting softly, I took a long pull from my bottle. I smothered down a belch, then grunted out, “His last name is Harrington.”

She whistled. “Well, that’s not ideal.”

“No, no it’s not.”

“Is it Crew?” she asked gently.

I almost dropped my bottle. “W-What?”

She chuckled. “Pay talks about him all the time when he calls us.”

Right. I’d forgotten that Pay and Mom chatted more often now. Jenn had told me that on the days when Pay got tired after lunch, he often wanted to call his Nana “for a chat” and then he fell asleep on the phone with her.

For Aunt Win to know about all that wasn’t surprising in the least.

“Why hasn’t Mom mentioned anything?”

“Because she wants to give you space.” Then she snorted. “And because she can’t quite wrap her mind around bisexuality. We're working on that, though.”

I snorted too. “Yeah, I think I knew that.”

“Thus you called me instead.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Tell me everything, let’s see if I can help you sort out your thoughts.”

I dove in and told her everything. Twenty minutes later, I sighed.

She hummed thoughtfully. “I think your biggest issue is that you lost your belief in people after what happened with Daniel.”

The fact that she didn’t say “your dad” was telling. She carried the weight with us, after all.

“Yeah.”

“But you have to see that Crew is doing everything he can to give you all the choice. He’s not hiding anything—”

“Anymore.”

Aunt Win snort-chuckled. “Honey, he went to get your horse because he knows how much a heart horse means to a person. He didn’t know you yet, but he still knew to get her because he could.”

I was getting to the point where I could grudgingly agree with her assessment.

Then she dropped the final thing. “If you had the farm still and you hired someone who had lost their horse like you did Jaina, wouldn’t you go get that horse for them, too?”

I blew out a breath. “Yeah.”

“Would that mean you were doing some gesture of charity, or that you were a good person?”

“Okay, okay. Enough.”

She laughed. “As far as you kissing him, I get that it scrambled both your brains a little. I bet he wasn’t expecting it any more than you did. Do you want to do it again?”

I thought about Crew, pictured him in my mind’s eye. “Yeah.”

“I assume you haven’t had many chances to explore your sexuality—”

“No, I haven’t.” There’d been a couple of hasty hand jobs in bars while out of town before everything went to shit but nothing more than that.

“Do you think that might make this even scarier?”

It was a good question and one I hadn’t really thought of. “No,” I replied after thinking for a bit. “I don’t see Crew being negative about that in any way.” Not before, during, or after. I might’ve blushed.

“Good. So you know he’s a good man, just like you’re a good man. He’s given you every opportunity to choose here. All he’s asking for is a chance.”

I groaned, then drank the dregs of my beer. “That’s still not…. I mean it’s still jeopardizing everything I’ve built here.”

“Of course it is. I won’t lie and say it’s not, Mal.

But would you rather just keep these people and your job for certain and be around Crew from now to what, until you retire?

Or would you take a chance and see if there’s something that could be real with Crew, and believe that those same good people, Crew included, will be there for you even if you and Crew don’t work out in the long run? ”

Shaking my head, I said, “I don’t know the answer to that.”

“It’ll come to you. One day you’ll have the answer pop up from nowhere, and then you’ll know. Give it time.”

We talked for a moment longer, then said goodnight, and I retreated inside, put the empty bottle into my recycling bin, and went to curl up under my covers.

The answer would come. I hoped.

As I took my time trying to figure things out, life on the ranch rolled on like it was bound to do.

The colt, who everyone was just calling The Colt now because I hadn’t made up my mind yet, was doing well and wasn’t showing any sign of illness.We’d agreed to two weeks of quarantine for him, but on the fourth day after his arrival, I took him to the arena to see what he could do.

Hawk and I quickly deduced that he learned quickly, but he hadn’t been taught shit. He responded to treats like a dog but was polite enough not to be pushy about them. We knew immediately that training him would be easy once we had him out of quarantine, gelded, and ready to rock.

That night, Pay asked for an evening walk, so I took him to the yearling barn that was nearly empty. I grabbed one of the name plates and a marker, then went with Pay to the other end of the barn to the colt.

I wrote a name on the little whiteboard thing and hung it on the door.

“Can you read what that says, bud?” I asked Pay, who was standing on a step stool, peering into the stall.

He got down carefully, then went to decipher my writing.

“E-z-i-o? But I don’t know how to say that.”

“Ezio,” I pronounced it as they did in one of my old favorite videogames.

“Oh! It’s that guy from that game!” Pay shimmied his butt.

“Good job remembering. It’s been a while since I played that.

” He hadn’t been much more than two and a half the last time I’d taken virtual Ezio for a spin.

The games were much older than my son, but since they made a Nintendo Switch version of the second Assassin’s Creed game, he’d seen a few less action heavy bits when I relived my nostalgia in a new form a couple of years back or so.

Sadly there’d been a sink related incident with that Switch and I was sorely lacking in gaming equipment at the moment.

“If Crew buys you another horse, can we call it Mario?”

I wanted to groan. “Okay, first of all, Crew didn’t buy Ezio for me.

He bought him for the ranch. It’s a joke that he bought him for me, okay?

He’s not mine in the same way Jaina is.” I waited for Pay to nod at me to show he understood.

“Secondly, we had that horse at the—the old place whose name was Mario. The one Nana used to ride.”

“Oh, the white one.” He sighed. “But then he got old and had to be sent to horsey heaven.”

“That’s right, buddy.”

“But Ezio is young, right? He’s not gonna go to heaven, right?” Pay’s big, wide, worried eyes almost did me in right there.

“No, bud. He’s young. He hasn’t even been ridden yet.”

“Okay, good.”

We went out through the washing room, then rounded the barn as I took the marker back to where it belonged. Yeah, I was particular about stuff like that. I hated misplacing things.

“Daddy?” Pay asked as we meandered back toward the cabin.

“Yeah?”

“Can I go have a sleepover at Auntie Demi’s place some time? I really like playing with Aria, even though she’s little.”

There were so many things about that sentence that punched me in the heart that I launched into a coughing fit.

“Sorry, I think I swallowed a bug,” I explained as I got my breathing in control.

The horror in his gaze was immense. “Oh eww, let’s go inside!”

Yeah, maybe that hadn’t been the best white lie to tell him.

Once we were inside, he looked at me patiently until I remembered I hadn’t answered his question.

“Let me talk to Demi, okay? We’ll see.”

“Okay, Daddy!”

In the next two days, two more foals were born. One delivery was a bit touch and go, and by the end of that 48 hours, everyone was exhausted, but relieved.

I’d briefly talked to Demi, who was all for taking Pay for the night.

In fact, the idea hadn’t been his but something Demi and Jenn had chatted about too close to little ears.

I didn’t really mind, and it would do Pay good to hang out with others I trusted, and I’d get a child-free evening.

Not that I needed or really wanted one, but it would still be nice.

Demi also told me not to worry about getting him back, because she was coming to work the next morning anyway. Mid-morning, even, so she’d drop him off at the main house and I’d see him at lunchtime.

Because I knew that Crew was exhausted, and that the last mare that was about to pop wasn’t due for at least a few days and showed no signs of delivering early, I knew he had some time.

Demi came to the cabin in her SUV to grab Pay and his stuff at the end of the day, and soon they rolled off, my son bravely clutching Mr. Raven as he jauntily waved at me.

Crew was still somewhere, working away. I went to find him.

I had a pretty good idea that he’d be at his office, if not leaning against another stall door, looking at the youngest members of the Blue Creek herd.

I used the walk to try to figure out what I’d say. I still hadn’t come up with anything smart. So when I found him in his office, I just leaned on the doorframe and looked at him.

He was so concentrated on something on his computer that he didn’t notice me immediately.

Exhaustion was plain on his face. He’d been awake for far too long, because he just couldn’t let go of staying on top of things.

Sure, he talked a big game of sharing the hours with the foal watch, but he wasn’t as sneaky as he thought he was.

Everyone knew that even when he went to his cabin to sleep, he was keeping an eye on the live feeds just in case.

It was proven when Joan Collins began to have issues the other night. Russ had been in the barn, keeping an eye on the proceedings. Before he could alert anyone, Crew had materialized.

I shifted my weight, which finally alerted him to my presence.

“Oh, Mal.” He almost shook himself a little. Then he frowned and checked the time. “Is everything okay?”

I smiled. “Well, for one, the day’s done and you’re exhausted. You should go take a shower, eat something, and nap.”

He raised a brow at me, something like hope flaring to life in his gaze. “Oh, I should, should I?”

“Mhmm. In fact, if you stop working, walk with me to the cabins and go shower, I might be able to bring you some of my famous beef stew that I’ve had in my slow cooker all day.”

He looked away for long enough to finish what he was doing and close his laptop. Then he pushed to his feet.

“Famous huh? I guess I could be persuaded.”

“Pay is having a sleepover with Aria tonight,” I said as he stalked toward me the short distance.

His eyebrows popped. “That’s nice.”

“It is,” I agreed, pretending as if my heart wasn’t trying to gallop out of my chest. “Now, I’m not ready for any sleepovers of my own, but I think a dinner with a friend, maybe a movie on a comfy couch after… that sort of thing might sound nice.”

Crew tilted his head as he tried to read me. “A friend?”

I shrugged casually, while feeling anything but casual. “I mean, you got to start from somewhere.”

I reached to take his hand, tangling our fingers together.

He smiled, and suddenly I knew I’d made the right decision. He was breathtaking when he looked this hopeful and happy.

“How about this: I go shower and then show up at your place for dinner. I think your couch is about ten times comfier than mine.”

I laughed. “It’s a very nice couch.” I squeezed his fingers and then let go. “Come on.”

I had no expectations, but I knew I would need to have a frank conversation with him about the extent—or lack of—my experience with men. I’d heard enough talk around the ranch that I knew he’d had some relationships before.

That meant that unless I’d read him terribly wrong, I’d be in safe hands. But he couldn’t make informed decisions without the knowledge.

That was what, about thirty minutes later, led us into a situation where I’d just opened the door for him and he’d padded inside in his socked feet after seeing my boots on the porch.

He inhaled the scent of the stew we were about to eat. I’d set my tiny kitchen table. It looked very nice, almost date-like.

“It smells amazing in—”

“I’m pretty much a virgin when it comes to guys,” I blurted out.