I had no real connection to my mother. She passed away when I was two. It had been a fast-moving breast cancer, which they’d caught too late. I’d spent so much of my childhood and teenage years staring at those photos, wondering about the ethereal creature with the wide smile staring back at me. She sported the same light skin as I did now, though, thankfully, my hair was less of a fire-engine red and more of a rich auburn. The freckles scattered across our cheeks and noses were the same.
It was a shame how a baby didn’t remember the first few years of their lives, when I was probably never far from my mother’s arms. As a baby, I would have known her face out of a crowd. I probably ran to her whenever I got hurt. I was sure she would have kissed away all my scrapes and tears. Sung me lullabies to help me sleep. And I remembered nothing. I loved hearing stories of her, whatever I could sneak out of my non-emotional father. Sometimes Chad would tell me a few bits he remembered. He was eleven when she passed, but by the time I had been old enough to ask for some of his memories, he only had a select few he could remember clearly.
I added the frame to the pile to keep. I was about to take another load to my car when a folded-up paper tacked to my wall gave me pause. It had been tucked up in the corner of a bulletin board, almost hidden away. I pulled it down and opened it, immediately making way for the grin that bounded across my face.
The contract.
Memories of a horrendous moment being stuck to Jake’s braces came flooding back to me. This time with more amusement and less mortification. It was the sneeze that had actually dislodged us, breaking a couple of wires on both of our braces in the process, but at least we’d been freed. I tucked the paper in my pocket, planning to show it to Jake on a rainy day.
My small hometown of Eugene,Idaho sat quietly near the center of the state, about thirty miles south of the town of Salmon. To get to the dude ranch, I followed the highway for seven miles before breaking off onto an obscure dirt road heading toward the Lost River Mountain range. The SalmonRiver meandered alongside the road toward my destination. It was the first week of June. The snow had all melted, except for a light dusting on the tops of the mountains. This was the prettiest time of year for Eugene. The fields were growing green, the trees were once again stocked with leaves and birds, and the morning air felt warm and full of possibility.
I rolled down the window at the next turn. Mountain air mixed with sagebrush and a hint of wildflowers filled my lungs. About two hundred yards ahead was a tree-lined driveway leading toward the ranch. The trees were tall and flanked the lane cheerfully. Past the trees, there stood a cluster of log buildings.
I hadn’t been here in years. The dude ranch had always been a quiet staple in the community for as long as I could remember and had only recently passed hands from the original owners to Layne Marten and his son, Logan, and son-in-law, Cade. It had been a good pairing. Logan knew construction and could make repairs on the buildings as well as build new cabins for the bigger vision the new owners had for the place.
Cade and his wife, Kelsey, had recently moved back to the area after he’d finished with vet school. Cade still kept busy as the vet in town, but according to his wife, in his heart, he was a cowboy. Cade helped with the horse and cattle operation of the ranch and had plans to buy more land and more cattle. They had just recently built a beautiful white house with a porch, big enough for their growing brood of children and overlooking the mountains.
I took a deep breath as my car crept toward the buildings until a cardboard sign nailed to a tree caught my attention. Squinting closer, I made out the wordSHOTGUNSscrawled across the sign.
I craned my neck as I passed, making sure I had deciphered the correct word.
I kept driving until I came upon a second sign, smaller than the first, but with two scrawling letters spelling out the wordOR.
By the time I came upon the next sign, twenty yards up, that statedPISTOLSwith an arrow pointing toward the right side of the road, a smile had spread wide across my face.
I pulled into the gravel parking lot. It looked like a construction zone of sorts, or at least the place where they parked their equipment. Loaders and dump trucks and piles of gravel spanned the parking lot, where a group of people stood a hundred yards away, their backs to me as I parked.
I tucked my straight hair behind my ear, not sure I’d ever be used to the feel of it, and stepped out of the car. I had dressed in a pair of cutoff jean shorts and a green striped shirt that had been approved by Tessa.
The group hadn’t seen me yet, though it looked like most were sporting noise-cancelling ear protection and probably hadn’t even heard me. I shut the car door quietly.
A tall, broad-shouldered man with his back toward me and a lazy confidence in his movements snatched my gaze immediately. I walked closer, still unseen by the crowd. A shot rang out from Jake’s rifle, along with the sound of a tin can being blown off a log. In the opposite direction of the guns, a group of small kids was building a fort on a pile of gravel. I’d been around Cade and Kelsey’s children enough to recognize them, but a blonde-haired little girl soon caught my gaze. I’d seen pictures of Sophie a couple of years ago, via text, but I’d never met her.
Tessa spied me first as I picked my way through the weeds toward the crowd. She was about to shout a hello before I shushed her and motioned to Jake. Her eyes widened with delight as she understood my meaning. Pretty soon, the eyes of the entire crowd were on me as I crept my way towardan unassuming Jake, deaf to all underneath his black ear protection and checking something on his gun.
Logan grinned and handed me a loaded rifle before plopping his earmuffs on my head. I inched forward, to the side and only slightly behind Jake, and carefully took the gun off of safety. I waited until Jake had raised his rifle again before I made my move. There were four cans left on the log. The feeling of the old days blasted through me as I shot off four rounds in quick succession, knocking over three cans.
Jake whipped his head around in surprise and found me with a delighted smile on my face, even though the one remaining can on the log would haunt my dreams forever.
For a moment, we just smiled at each other. Before long, however, his brow furrowed as he took me in from the straight hair all the way down to my cutoff shorts and flip-flops. Nothing was fancy, but none of it was anything like what I used to wear, and I couldn’t help the satisfaction as Jake’s eyes skittered down my legs before he yanked them back up to my face.
With his eyebrows scrunched, he reached out and lifted one side of my earmuff. “Tuck? Is that you in there?”
I gave a laughing Jake a slight push before I pulled him back for a side hug, both of us still clutching our rifles in the other hand.
The moment his arm wound its way behind my back, something relaxed inside of me. I maneuvered closer, inhaling deeply. He smelled like hay and gunpowder, and his body immediately felt familiar to me. His mannerisms. The friendly teasing in his eyes. It was Jake.MyJake. I had just spent the past few weeks feeling displaced in a house that had always been mine. My dad’s marriage, though happy, had left me unsure of where I fit in my own family. So, I was a little shocked to feel the wave ofhomehitting me with such nostalgia that I probably clung to him longer than I should have.
He was broader in the shoulders than I remembered, and more filled out, maybe a few more crinkles around his eyes, but he was still Jake. Right down to the sun-kissed brown hair and mischievous smile. He wore his boots, loose-fitting jeans, a short-sleeved plaid button-down shirt, the top two buttons undone, showing a peek of tan skin underneath.
He pulled away first. That also felt normal.
“Did Evans just get smoked by a girl?” Cade Williams called out from behind us. He was leaning against a truck with his wife, Kelsey, tucked in his arms, watching us.
“Don’t be distracted by this.” Jake pointed at my outfit. “She’s not a girl. She’s Shelby.” Jake pointed at the log toward the can that was still standing. “You missed one.”
“I didn’t want to embarrass you too badly on my first day.”
“Rematch. Right now. I can’t have this on my conscience.”