Page 41 of Take a Chance (Blue Creek Ranch #1)

For one, she hadn’t been raised with love and respect and was unsure she knew how to do it herself, but she also didn’t want her parents to have anything to do with Payton. If she was in his life, she’d have too many fears, and she wanted something different for herself and for us.

I wished Crew good night and set my alarm. Payton and I would have an early breakfast at home, get ready for our day, and then go surprise Crew at the house where he’d hopefully be finishing up his own breakfast.

With our bellies full of omelet, toast, and fruit, we pulled our hiking boots on.

“Okay, Daddy. Do we have everything we need?” Payton asked, Mr. Raven tucked under his arm.

“Yes. I double-checked.” I patted the backpack where I had our regular hiking kit, including a First Aid kit and some clothes if we got wet despite the rain ponchos—with one extra for Crew—I’d packed.

“And Mrs. Jenn has the snacks and the food?” He pulled on his hoodie while Mr. Raven fought for his life between Payton’s skinny knees.

I put my own hoodie over my slightly-nicer-than-work jeans. “Yes, she wanted to handle everything.”

“And we’re taking Crew’s truck?”

“Yes, unless he doesn’t want that. But it’s nicer and it has a car seat for you.”

“Yeah. It’s so nice he got me one.” Payton came to hug me from the side. “I think I love Crew a bit. Is that okay?”

Swallowing hard, I replied, “Yeah, bud. It’s completely okay.”

He let go, then looked up. “Okay! Can we go now?”

I checked my phone for the time. “Yep, let’s go!”

If possible, my son was even bouncier this morning. We had a decent plan, one I was pretty certain Crew would like, and my weather app was looking promising, too.

As we entered the house, a handful of Harringtons were still sitting at the table.

“Morning, you two!” Jenn beamed, then accepted the vigorous hug from Payton.

“Morning, Mrs. Jenn!”

“Hey, you look ready for something fun,” Crew commented as he lifted his head up for me to give him a kiss.

“Yeah. You about done with breakfast?” I asked and squeezed his shoulder.

“Yeah. Do you need help with something?”

He was wearing his usual work gear, which would do, but he needed hiking boots. Good thing we’d prepared.

“You could say that.” I grinned. “There’s a pair of footwear on the porch for you.”

Jenn, who had made sure we had said hiking boots ready, came to us and kissed the top of Crew’s head. “I don’t need you today. Mal and Payton do.”

Crew looked confused for a moment. Then Payton started to jump up and down and chanted, “Family date! Family date!”

Mike, Hawk, and Gemma chuckled and smiled.

“You go change into your hiking boots while I get Mal the food.”

Shaking his head but smiling, Crew downed the rest of his coffee, then got up and hugged his mom, lifting her clear off her feet. “Have you been scheming behind my back, mother dear?”

“Put my wife down. She would never scheme,” Mike deadpanned, then laughed.

“Listen to your father,” Jenn tried to sound scolding.

Damn I loved these people.

Crew went to get his boots. He said he had a hoodie in his truck, so we were all set.

While Payton went to the bathroom, Jenn gave me a medium sized cooler for the picnic and a small one for car snacks. I hugged her and made a mental note to do something nice for her soon.

Once we stepped off the porch, I gave the smaller cooler for Payton to carry, and with his tongue sticking out of his mouth, he walked toward Crew’s truck.

Crew met him halfway and ruffled his hair as he took the cooler. “Good job.”

We loaded the boy and the food into the truck, then smiled at each other.

As the owner of the truck, Crew climbed into the driver’s seat, and as soon as I had my seatbelt on, he looked at me expectantly.

“So, does the kidnapping victim who is also the driver get to know where we’re going?” he asked, raising a brow at me and glancing over to the backseat at Payton.

Payton giggled.

Grinning, I replied, “Well, let’s leave the ranch first and head toward Denver.”

“Denver it is.”

Soon, we were on the road. The radio was turned low and Payton concentrated on the view for the time being. He wasn’t a hard kid to entertain during a drive, so I wasn’t expecting issues.

“Oh, louder!” he exclaimed just as we got past town and were properly on the road.

I did as I was told, and Payton began to sing and shimmy along to one of Wren Paxton’s songs.

Crew chuckled and shook his head. He reached for my hand and squeezed.

I squeezed back. “What?”

“Are you fans of Wren’s?” he asked, glancing over at me with a little smirk.

“Payton is. I do enjoy his music, but I wouldn’t call myself a fan. Why?”

“I’ll tell you soon.” Once the song wound down, he glanced in the rearview mirror while I turned the radio down again. “Payton? Do you know where Wren Paxton is from?”

Payton frowned. “Colorado, right?”

“Yep.” Crew’s expression was pure mischief. “He’s my big brother Bodhi’s best friend from childhood.”

Payton’s jaw dropped, but hell, so did mine.

I blinked at Crew. “What?”

“Yeah. He grew up on the property that’s on the north side of ours.”

That set Payton off, and for the next half an hour, Crew told us stories and answered Payton’s questions.

We sang along to some other music, played a couple of car games. Payton’s favorite was car spotting.

“Tell me again what the rules are?” Crew asked.

“We gotta see five white cars, four gray cars, three black cars, two red cars, and one that’s not one of those,” Payton recited in a serious tone. “And gray and silver are the same color for this game.”

I grinned as I got us drinks from the small cooler. I had said the latter sentence numerous times, and now he was teaching Crew.

“Can they be parked?” Crew knew the answer, because I’d already explained it, but Payton didn’t mind telling him again.

“No! Only driving, so it’s not too easy.”

“Okay, let’s do this.”

I handed Payton a juice box and opened a bottle of water for Crew, then waited for him to drink and took it back before opening one for myself.

We played the car game until we were about twenty minutes out from our destination.

“So, Payton, do you want to tell Crew where we’re going?”

“Oh yay!” Payton shimmied in his seat again. “We’re going to the Red Rocks!”

“Oh, that’s great.” Crew’s tone was genuine and his smile was happy. “I haven’t been in years. What do we do there?” He squeezed my fingers, having taken my hand again at some point.

“We’re going to do the… the trail?”

“The Trading Post Trail,” I reminded him.

“Yes! That one. We’re gonna have a picnic and then we’re gonna go look at the cow!”

Firstly, I loved the fact that the other kids at the daycare had rubbed off on Payton enough to have my son use the word “gonna” instead of “going to” like he’d done only weeks ago. Secondly, I chuckled at the mention of “the cow.”

“Don’t we have cows at home?” Crew asked, clearly wanting to know what it was about but also teasing Payton.

“Noooo, this is a painted cow!”

“There’s a restaurant with a cow sculpture in front. I thought we could get ice cream there on our way back.”

“Oh, makes sense.” Crew grinned. Then he said, “Look Payton!”

“Blue car!”

The Red Rocks Trading Post Trail was less than a mile and a half and would take us an hour and maybe some change, given that Payton would be super into everything.

Since I had the backpack, Crew offered to carry the cooler. It was one of those ones you could carry like a bag with a strap over your shoulder, so he did that and then took my hand while Payton bounced ahead with Mr. Raven.

“What do we say about the rattlers?” I called after him.

“Listen carefully and don’t go off the path!” he called back.

An elderly couple was coming toward us from the other direction, and they heard the interaction.

The lady smiled and the old guy chuckled.

“That’s solid advice,” he said, tilting his head at us as they passed.

Neither of them reacted to Crew and I holding hands, clearly being out as a family, and something inside me unclenched a little.

“You okay?” Crew asked quietly once they were gone.

“Yeah. It’s… the town I grew up in wasn’t….” I grimaced.

“Ah.” He lifted our hands and kissed the back of mine.

“Crew?” Payton asked and ran back.

“Yeah, little man?”

“Remember you’re not allowed to climb on the rocks!”

Stifling his laughter, Crew called back, “I promise not to climb!”

Payton waited for us in a certain spot like I’d thought.

“Crew, can you help me throw a rock there?” he asked, pointing at one of the boulders nearby.

“You need to find a rock first,” I reminded my son, who had had this plan since we’d watched a video on YouTube showing the custom.

Finding a rock was harder than you’d think, because people had picked the surroundings clean. After a couple of minutes, he exclaimed and ran to Crew with a pebble the size of my thumb in hand.

“Okay, what do we do?” Crew asked, handing me the cooler.

Smartly, Payton gave me Mr. Raven for safekeeping, too.

“See those big rocks with the little rocks on them?” Payton asked and let Crew pick him up.

With the seriousness of a four-year-old, he explained the process, and I took some photos of them while they concentrated on their task. It took them only one try to throw the pebble onto the boulder that was closest to the path.

They cheered, and Crew twirled Payton around while I tried not to cry.

“Did you see what we did, Daddy?” Payton ran to me as soon as Crew set him down.

“I did, bud. Well done!” I gave him his toy back.

“Okay, onwards!” Payton exclaimed and dashed off again.

Crew took the cooler and then grabbed my hand. He tugged me closer and gave me a kiss. I smiled into it and felt his lips curl, too.

There weren’t that many people on the trail, which was nice. Coming early on a weekday clearly worked in our favor. We had a little picnic on the way when we found a spot that worked, then continued on.

Payton’s energy was contagious, and the only hiccup was when a woman and her large dog appeared from around a bend and Payton got momentarily scared.

She apologized, and the dog was friendly and on a leash, so there wasn’t really anything anyone could’ve done to prevent the upset.

Once she was gone, Crew cupped Payton’s cheek and looked at him seriously where he was hanging onto my leg.

“Do you think they have sprinkles at the cow restaurant? For your ice cream?” he asked.

Almost immediately, Payton forgot about being scared and off we went again. The two of them talked about ice cream, and I watched them, feeling like this might be it, like maybe, just maybe , this was my family now.

That feeling just intensified when we sat in the sunlight outside the “cow restaurant,” with our treats.

Out of the blue, while meticulously eating his ice cream, Payton stated, “Okay, I think we’re good.”

I handed him a napkin. “What do you mean, buddy?”

“I think we should be a family. Crew should be my other dad.”

I looked over Payton’s head at Crew who was sitting on his other side. He looked a bit stunned, but there was also a small smile forming as he processed.

“Yeah?” he asked, his eyes going from me to Payton, who was still people watching and not really paying attention to the big emotions the adults on either side of him were having.

“Yeah. This was a family date to see if we were good as a family, right? Well, we are. So we should be.”

Crew chuckled, and I could see he was tearing up a little.

“I’m sure we’ll get there,” I said firmly.

“Yeah,” Crew agreed, and reached to put his hand on my back. “Yeah.”

On Thursday, a couple of days later, I went to get Payton from daycare.

I’d promised to take him to the library to return the books he’d read and to get more for the weekend.

They’d last longer, but for some reason he was obsessed about the “for the weekend” idea, and I happened to be a parent who would forever indulge my kid when it came to reading and books.

“Did you get everything?” he asked me as soon as I had him in his car seat.

“Yeah, everything from your pile. It’s all in the tote,” I promised.

He’d gone through our cabin and found all the books he needed to return.

We drove to the library and he chatted about his day all the way, only stopping when we walked inside the building.

“You can go find new books; I’ll return these,” I said, because I could see the way his attention was stolen by the bright colors and books of the children’s section in the front corner of the space.

It wasn’t a very big library—there was a bigger one in the nearby town—but it was enough for us.

As I walked to the front desk to return about ten children’s books and one thriller that I’d managed to get through, I realized that the annoying librarian, Kathy, was sitting behind it.

There was another woman who looked to be in her early thirties sorting some books behind her by another desk.

“Good afternoon, Malachi,” Kathy said as if we were great friends.

“Afternoon, Ma’am.” There, boundaries.

“I enjoy seeing little ones who love books this much.” She began to handle Payton’s returns.

“I better go grab myself something and then go wrangle him before he tries to fill the whole tote to drag home,” I joked, and for a moment, I thought I’d gotten away from her.

“You know,” she said, her tone changing into something I couldn’t read and getting louder for the other librarian’s benefit. “If I’d known that all you needed to do to bag a Harrington was to go work on the ranch, I would’ve gone there myself decades ago!”

The other woman giggled but stayed concentrated on her task.

The rage and shame that bubbled up inside me were so potent that for a moment, my vision went blurry.

Instead of heading left to the adults’ section, I went right to try and get Payton his books as quickly as possible.

With the tote bag under my arm, I stuck my hands into my pockets to hide how much they were shaking.

The women laughed behind me, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. It was a blessing and a curse, and I felt the agitation roll over me in waves.

I wanted nothing more than to grab my kid and run, but I couldn’t do that to Payton. So instead, I waited for him to be done, let him go to the desk himself, and then carried the books for him.

I hoped someone could take Payton for a while, because I needed… I needed to get home to my man, except neither of those things seemed as perfect and as real they had been lately.

With Payton in his car seat in the back, reading one of his books, I drove back to the ranch, and tried not to vibrate out of my skin.