Page 29 of Up in Smoke (The Bunkhouse #3)

MESA

“Why do we like baseball again?” Tripp groans.

I let out a heavy breath and toss a small handful of popcorn in my mouth.

Blowing a three-run lead in the bottom of the eighth is nothing new for this team.

As their resident super fans, Tripp and I still sit through the torture.

It doesn’t compare to my own torment of sitting next to him, knowing something is most definitely wrong, but it comes close.

“I have no clue,” I say. “Let me know when you find a less heartbreaking hobby.”

“We could get into knitting,” he suggests. He speaks slowly, and I hardly recognize the sound of it. He’s off.

“Your fingers are too big for that.”

“Yeah. Probably.”

Short sentences. I’m becoming even more on edge. What’s on his mind? Interrogating him would be easy. I do it all the time. But something tells me that, right now, it’s better to act normal and wait for him to come out with it on his own.

Maybe he’s just tired.

“Look at all this shit,” he says with a sad laugh while holding up an empty box of cookies.

Between our dinner, jumbo bowls of popcorn, and every unhealthy snack in the pantry, the bunkhouse living room looks like an entire group of starving tweens were left unsupervised at a sleepover.

“No regrets,” I mumble through another mouthful of popcorn.

He smiles and turns his attention back to the late-night game. We sit quietly next to each other on the couch for a while, and I start to miss our usual comfortable silence. We’re normally great like this, him and me. No pressure to entertain or please. Just be.

Except tonight, the tension hangs thick in the air. It lasts ten more minutes before Tripp finally bends a knee and twists to face me.

“I got a phone call before you got here.”

I lean forward to set the bowl of popcorn on the coffee table and then pull the blanket up onto my lap. “You did? Was it a good phone call or a bad phone call?”

He looks at me like he wants to talk about it. I focus on choosing my words carefully. Something about this really affected him; that much is clear. I knew it the moment I stepped into this room hours ago.

My gut told me it wasn’t about us messing around and taking things too far last week, either. My instincts were right: if he’s ready to let me in on what’s bothering him, then I need to let him lead the conversation on his own. No pushing.

“Well, I don’t know how to answer that. It was my dad.”

I nearly swallow my tongue and let out a choking sound. His arm on the back of the couch lowers so that he can pat me on the back.

“Sorry.” I clear my throat. “You mean, like . . . your biological father?”

“Yep. I hired a private investigator a long time ago. She followed a wild hare rumor that one of my old case workers told her. It led her to a guy she had evidence to believe might be my dad, and she convinced him to spit in a tube just to see. It was a match. Anyway, we exchanged numbers. I spoke with him.”

The bit about a private investigator is the first thing I’m tempted to quiz him about. But I can read between the lines, and sticking to the subject of his dad is more important right now. I can fish for details later about how and why Tripp has his own personal P.I.

I sit up straight and scoot closer to him. “I can’t believe it. How do you feel about this? I mean, you talked to your dad . What did he say to you?”

“I didn’t even know he was alive. So, yeah, I’m happy about it in a way. He—said he was looking for Iris Lathan. That’s my mom’s name. I told him she was dead and that he was speaking to her son. He didn’t know she’d passed.”

Without hesitation, I gently reach for his hand. Our fingers don’t lace together. Instead, our palms rest softly against one another, and I curl my fingers in a slight grip. He brushes the back of my hand with the tips of his fingers.

We’ve never held hands like this before. Not really. Yet, there’s no awkward shuffle. It feels less charged and more grounded. Natural, like breathing or blinking.

His grip tightens slightly as I mull over what to say that will help him open up. He doesn’t need saving right now. His eyes say he just needs something solid and real to hold onto. Just me.

Tripp has a way of wearing emotions that I’ve never seen before. On one hand, he’s open and obvious in his joy or disappointment. There’s no work to put in when trying to figure out what he’s feeling.

Other times, like now, the dejection is hard to decipher. The intense hurt seems buried deeper than his other emotions, and he’s an expert at masking it. The only reliable clue is his voice. It’s lost all its usual spark of humor and light. It’s low. Hoarse, almost.

“Tripp,” I whisper. He looks down, and I pull his hand into my lap. “This is a lot, but I’m glad you told me all of that. Your mom—” I fight back tears I have no right to cry right now. “I’m so sorry. Did you know her?”

His eyes meet mine again while he shakes his head. “No. I don’t know much. She died when I was a baby, and we have the same last name. It’s on the back of a picture that I was given at some point in foster care. It’s why I came here, actually. To Westridge.”

My lips part, and I lift my brows. My free hand soothes over his forearm to help validate the strength it took for him to let me in on the few details he knows about his mom.

He’s been keeping those to himself until now, I think.

The invisible weight they carried seems to evaporate into thin air after voicing them out loud.

The current mood is fragile, and I refuse to let it break like a thin sheet of glass on concrete. I keep my eyes on him and my tone soft.

“I can’t imagine what it feels like to have never met her. Or not be able to remember it because you were so young. But it sounds like you still felt connected to her. The picture—it led you here?”

“Yeah. It’s super faded and doesn’t show much of her face because she was riding away on a horse.

With no saddle and no shoes on,” he chuckles.

It makes me smile that even though the topic is heavy, talking about the picture’s details brought him a moment of happiness.

“She’s looking to the side, though. So, you can still see her smile and some parts of her expression. ”

“Will you show it to me sometime?”

“Yeah,” he says, and I can feel his pulse slowing a bit where it thrums beneath my hand. “I’ll show it to you. The back of her shirt had a logo on it that said Regal Vineyards.”

“Regal? Your horse.”

He blinks slowly with a smile. “Yeah, I got her from an animal rescue maybe four years ago. Named her after a damn shirt.”

“I love it.” I laugh softly. “She’s special to you.”

“Very,” he confirms with a nod. “There’s a road sign in the distance of the picture of my mom, too. Hard to read. But I finally figured out that it said ‘Brush Bend.’”

My mouth opens with a silent gasp. “Wait. I live on that road.”

He nods. “I figured out the picture must have been taken just a few miles from here after searching for another road by that name anywhere else in the United States. Westridge made the most sense, anyway. With me growing up in the system, not two hours away.”

“That’s wild. I’m sure you’ve asked around town about her. Tried to learn more?”

Tripp looks to the side and shrugs. “I did. For years. No one around here had any idea who I was talking about, and I never found out anything else.”

But he wanted to . . . and my heart is breaking for this man who I’ve grown to care about so much. This unfathomably compassionate but secretly hurting man.

“Iris.” I say the name out loud, letting it hold space. “This might be a silly idea, but I have a patch of irises around the little fairy garden in my backyard. We don’t have to—but maybe we could do something for her there. A tribute.”

“You’d do that,” he states. Less like a question and more like a promise.

“We’d do it together.”

I reluctantly let go of his hand and rise to my knees in front of him.

Without me closing the distance between us fully, he knows my intention. Both of his arms circle my waist, and my chin lands on his shoulder. With both of my hands pressing tightly on his upper back now, I can once again feel the rhythm of his heartbeat racing.

I’d planned to simply hug him, but he pulls me forward until my legs straddle his waist and I’m sitting in his lap.

“I haven’t talked to anyone else about this stuff, Mace.” I can feel his words on my neck where he buries his head.

“I know,” I whisper.

Never in a million years would I have guessed the things Tripp has dealt with. He’s the funny one. The one without a care in the world. He’s been hiding, carrying this emotional weight alone all this time.

A weight heavier than even I realize. With his dad emerging, there must be more underneath.

Time slows, and I close my eyes, hyper-aware of our embrace with no signs of it ending. He clutches me like he might drift away without an anchor.

I could scream and grab fate by the throat—forcing it to undo every devastating thing it gave him. But I don’t make a sound. There’s no way to remove his pain entirely. Instead, I do what I can to transfer even the slightest bit of grief from his body to mine.

As the minutes pass, the strength in his limbs weakens. I ease back to scan his face without getting out of his lap. What I see guts me to no end. Sadness.

I tilt my head and study the handsome features in his face. Even as down as he is at the moment, they’re hard to look away from. He’s always been attractive in my eyes.

But for whatever reason, as I look at him now, it’s more apparent to me than ever. I might have shied away from admitting how devastatingly handsome he is at times to protect myself. But inviting me into his darkness revealed a side of vulnerability that intensified my opinion on the matter.

Now that I’ve seen parts of him that make him even more beautiful, I’ll never be able to downplay my attraction to him again.

“Tripp?”

His voice is gravely. “Yeah?”

“I’m not going to ask if you’re okay. I hate when people ask me that, like they aren’t smart enough to know the answer is no .”

“Okay,” he breathes out with a lopsided smile.

“You’re safe with me.”

He leans forward to grab the blanket that had long since fallen to the floor. His other arm lifts me at the hips as he scoots down.

I have no idea how, in the next moment, we end up lying down and fitting like two human, life-sized puzzle pieces. His nose brushes my hair, and I’m happy about the lack of space between us so that I can continue keeping a close watch on his still wild heartbeat.

Since we’re both facing the TV, I can no longer read his face. His voice tells me all I need to know anyway, so I ask him another question.

“Where’s your dad now?”

“Rehab. Gets out in a week.”

Whew. This is so much for me to take in, and I can’t even imagine how it feels for him. I want to hug him again, but I stay in my spot.

“Good,” I whisper. “That’s good, right?”

He nods. “Do you want me to drive you home? I mean, if you have work to tackle early in the morning or something?”

I yawn and wiggle my shoulders to claim more of the couch cushions and blanket. Tripp obliges by inching backward with a chuckle.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I say.

He nuzzles into my hair until his nose is right under my ear.

My eyes well up, and I battle against the flood of emotions that are threatening to break free right now.

Not just with this news about Tripp’s dad, but also the insurmountable weight on my chest as I realize, for the first time, just how much I’m willing to fight my way into his heart.

He may not be the type of guy to invite me in, but that doesn’t bother me.

He’s so much more than his jaded past and unwillingness to love.

I know the real him, and I want him to be mine.

Almost as if he’s reading my mind, he whispers low in my ear, “I’ll pretend. For five minutes.”

I smile, hearing his familiar words. They’re a game of his at this point. An avoidant loophole, for sure. But I’ll take what I can get until we have a chance to talk it over.

I turn to face him, and I’ve barely circled my arms around his neck before he presses his lips to mine, soft and slow. It’s an emotional kiss with no pressing or roaming hands. It’s perfect.

He pulls away after a minute to scoot down the couch and bury his head in my chest. My fingers hook lightly under the chain around his neck, absentmindedly lifting it from his skin and running my thumb over the metal.

After a while, I can’t ignore the urge to get even closer to him. One hand moves to cradle the back of his head. The other lets go of his chain and smooths over his upper back in slow circles.

I blink away tears until the beat of his heart slows enough for him to fall asleep. We stay like that for several hours—drifting off, him waking up from tossing and turning, me soothing him back to sleep.

I’m exhausted, but I’d do it all again. Every night, if it meant knowing he never had to go through this alone.