Page 3 of Came the Closest

Life-alteringly so.

“Colt, hey, this is Beau,” Cheyenne’s brother says evenly. Like I wouldn’t recognize his voice if we were in a crowd of a thousand people and I was blindfolded and half deaf. You don’t play board games with Beau Kolter for two-thirds of your life and not know his voice. “There was an accident about an hour ago. Dad’s…”

Staggeringly, I grope for the counter behind me.

Gone.

He doesn’t say it. I don’t know if it’s because he can’t or because he knows he doesn’t have to, but my lungs deflate. Oxygen is nonexistent, like the time I fell from a horse during drills all those years ago and the wind was knocked out of my sails.

But back then, I sputtered a surprised laugh when I figured out how to breathe again, Cheyenne’s pale face too close to mine as she demanded to know I was okay and a very alive Tripp Kolter holding out a steady hand to help me to my feet.

“Beau, I don’t…understand.” I don’t. I can’t.

Tripp can’t be gone. He can’t. I haven’t been close with Cheyenne in half a decade, but her father is the man I’ve looked up to since I was six years old. The man who fixed more than my scraped knee and my flat bike tire that fateful day in May. I owe every success on the rodeo circuit to him. He has never failed to call me before a ride regardless of how busy he is at home. He’s the man who sat at the table with me, patiently helping me understand my homework, the one who tossed a football in the yard and treated me like I was a third son to him.

Tripp Kolter is more of a dad to me than my father has ever been.

“Can you come to the hospital?” Beau doesn’t answer my question, he just asks one. It prickles against my skin like a scratchy, over washed towel. “We don’t know if he’ll pull through surgery.” He pauses and lowers his voice. “Look, man. Chey needs you right now. I know things are tense between you two, but please. Please come.”

He’s not gone yet.

This realization—or, revelation—is the only thing that gives me the strength to nod my head. I open my mouth to respond, but Cheyenne’s voice comes back over the line before I can.

“Cole,” she whispers brokenly, “please come.”

“I’ll be there as fast as I can,” I vow, fumbling for the bathroom doorknob. I miss, and my thumb jams against the doorframe. “Hey, don’t hang up with me, okay? Stay on the line, Cheyenne. Please stay on the line.”

She doesn’t say anything, but her quivering sobs confirm we’re still connected. I feel like a walking paperweight. Jordan’s carrying a piece of paper as I follow him down the entryway hall to the kitchen, but I don’t think it’s a big deal until I take in my brother’s ashen expression. If possible, my stomach knots tighter.

“Uh, where’s Indi?” Graham asks. He sits at the kitchen table with Jolene, dark brows creased, a beaded bracelet in my niece’s hand. “And why do you look like you’ve seen a ghost?”

“I don’t know,” Jordan says, seeking Sydney’s gaze across the room. He lifts the paper in his hands limply. “This was all there was.”

I should be walking out the front door to a biting north wind stinging my cheeks. Trying to come up with something reassuring to say to Cheyenne as I back my truck up and hope to high heaven there’s not a cop around while I gun it to the hospital.

As it is, I’m so confused that I can’t do anything.

“What do you mean, she’s gone?” Graham demands. His chair legs scrape scuffed wooden floors and he crosses the kitchen in long, purposeful strides. “Jordan, she was here ten minutes ago. She can’t be gone.”

Wordlessly, his fiancée, Ember Bryant, tucks herself under his arm. A hint of tension drains from Graham’s expression. Sydney does the same with Jordan, and even though my father is more unapproachable than a cactus right now, Hazel smooths a tender palm between his shoulder blades. Even Nash, Jordan’s former detective partner, seems to sense Gran’s need for support because he holds his arm out to her while he hugs Jolene into his body.

And here I stand like the loner I’ve always been, one foot in this world and one foot in another. Motionless, while courses of action are planned around me in both worlds.

Dad and Jordan grab for coats while Graham and Nash encourage them to think it through before taking off after Indi. Beau’s muffled voice is in my ear while he talks to someone in an authoritative tone and Cheyenne’s quiet, heartbreaking sobs whisper against my skin. Gran says something about trying to call Indi, and Ember and Sydney jump in to guide Jolene back to the kitchen table so they can continue making bracelets.

As if that’ll make things normal.

I open my mouth to say something, anything, but I have nothing to say. Possibly for the first time in my thirty years, I come up empty.

I just know that tonight, on Christmas, my life has been irrevocably changed.

Chapter Two

Ben Down Those Rhodes Before

Colton

May, 2024