Page 18 of Serious Cowboy
“You two just hung up without saying goodbye.”
“All that hello and goodbye and small talk nonsense is a women thing. We fellas would much rather just get to the point.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Is that right?”
There was a challenge in her tone, and he knew he must’ve stepped in it somehow. But he wasn’t in the mood to give in right then, so he mimicked her pose. “Yeah. We don’t require extraneous words.” It was Tim’s straightforward mannerisms that had made Zeke accept him as a friend originally.
“Sounds like your mama didn’t teach you how to be polite.”
His mama.
Internally, Zeke froze. He never ever discussed his parents. Not his mother or his father. Not with anyone. The subject was too…
He didn’t like talking about it. Aboutthem.
“Must not have,” he dodged the topic, then promptly changed it. “It’s late. I should go.”
If he’d chosen to stride away without glancing at her, he might’ve gotten off scot-free, but as if she’d been watching him closely, she didn’t let him. Instead, she embraced him, looping her arms around his back and holding tight. His initial instincts had him wishing he could back away and break that bond, but the longer she held on, the better it felt.
At least until it made his throat feel thick and his chest twinge.
Zeke stayed still and quiet, afraid if he spoke his voice might crack. When it became safe some interminable amount of heartbeats later, he murmured in her ear.
“I really should go.”
She peeked up at him, her pale blue eyes too wise, too understanding. But eventually, after tightening her grip around him once more, she released him.
And he thought about that hug all the way home.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The months passed,and the harshness of winter stayed with them. Montana was a beautiful place regardless of the season, but Zeke had always considered spring to be something special. The dreariness of the cold months faded. The lavender shaded bitterroot and golden avalanche lily had sprung from their spots in the ground, the pink shooting stars following suit.
But it was the Indian Paintbrush with their vibrant crimson hues that always caught Zeke’s eye. They lit up the plains and the culverts along the sides of the road like fire, and no matter what might be on his mind, he couldn’t help but slow down to pour over them each year when they returned in earnest.
Too bad they had a ways to go yet before things warmed up.
Still, life had been treating him kindly. So kindly that he’d begun to grow a tad bit paranoid. Rarely had his existence ever been untroubled for long swaths of time, and when it was, that was nearly always due to him restricting himself to going from work to home exclusively. Yet that hadn’t been his modus operandi for a while now, and he’d started to get jumpy about when the other shoe would inevitably drop.
He tried to forget about his anxieties when with Callie, and she made it easy to do so. She stayed so full of laughter and lightness that he didn’t slide into his festering moods like he normally did. In fact, he hadn’t done that since they’d been together. Dating. But not really.
Mainly, he still thought of their outings as helping her get to know the town better. And that was a little silly. It had been months of exploring.
Even if they’d been everywhere and seen everything at least twice by this point.
One thing that had become tricky was their goodnights. Farewells had never been a problem for Zeke with anyone else, but with Callie hugging him so firmly every night, letting her loose felt… difficult. Partly because he didn’t want to hurt her feelings. And partly because… well, he didn’t want to break that connection.
It felt so nice to be held, to have that link with someone. To have that link withher. He didn’t know if it was simply physical or something else in addition, but the more she did it, the more he wanted it. Evencravedit. Not that he ever told her that out loud.
They’d created a pattern of going out while keeping any possible public displays of affection virtually absent.Exceptfor that last embrace when he drove her home.
But they never discussed it, never spoke a word once their feet made contact with the surface of her porch. It was almost as if that time was happening because of some anomaly, as if it was occurring outside of the regular realm of time. Like it was too sacred to speak about aloud lest that bubble of theirs burst.
Maybe that’s why after snowshoeing on a mountain trail to led up to one of the highest summits around—the view had been breathtaking—and seeing a moose and her two calves at a lower elevation. They were in the distance, but not super distant. The event had excited him and Callie enough for their usual dynamic to change.
“I was so afraid that she’d see us and come after us,” Callie confessed, her lips lifted in a smile but her voice relieved as he pulled up in her driveway. “They can run fast when they want to.”
“Faster than any human,” he agreed, as caught up in the craziness of that moment as she was.