Holy shit.
I can still feel him on my lips as I cross the parking lot. I keep his hat on until I’m safely inside my apartment, the door locked, my back pressed against it, my chest heaving like I’ve just sprinted a mile.
I go to the window.
He’s still there and something in my chest splinters.
I don’t think he’s coming back. He’s not the type to go against his friends and family. He’s a man with a kid who needs him more than I do, a ranch that demands every hour he has, and I think he has a loyalty to Reese that runs deeper than whatever this is between us.
I watch his taillights disappear down the road and press my palm flat against the glass.
I set his hat down on the dining table, grab the bottle of white wine from the fridge, and bypass the glass entirely. Because after today I damn well deserve this.
I want Hunter Sterling.
And I need Reese to fuck off so that can happen.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
HUNTER
By the timeI drive back to the ranch, the party has moved inside. Most of the parents have taken the kids home, and the gravel lot that was packed an hour ago is half-empty now.
I spot my cousins’ truck parked up beside Ace’s. Jett and Tate Lawson. They own a ranch an hour away, but blood runs thicker than distance. They’re like brothers to us, always have been.
I kill the engine and hop out, and that’s when I hear the bleating.
Gary.
I grab the goat before I head in. As much as I hate this little shit coming inside the house, he ate the corner of my couch last week and took a dump on the kitchen floor the week before that. It’s Wyatt’s birthday. The kid’s been asking all day.
And I’ve got the cleaning staff coming in tomorrow. So what the hell.
It might be cool to get a picture of Gary with the cake, actually. Which reminds me of watching Lola earlier, sneaking off between service rounds to take pictures of the ranch onher phone. The sun cutting through the mountains. The horses standing still against the treeline. She thought nobody was watching.
I was.
She seems creative. The free-flowing type who sees beauty in things other people walk past without a second glance. I wonder if she’s a photographer. I wonder a lot of things about Lola that I have no business wondering.
Like why the hell Reese has got it in his head that he has some sort of claim over her?
What has Reese really seen? He turned up at the bar just after we had sex. He was here earlier. Does he know more than he’s letting on, and that’s what spurred his big performance?
With Gary trotting beside me like an overgrown lapdog on one side and Rex on the other. I push through the front door and into the chaos.
Music’s still playing. The kitchen smells like barbecue smoke and birthday cake. My eyes find Wyatt immediately. He’s in the corner of the living room, trying out his new punching bag and gloves with Colten, swinging wild haymakers that wouldn’t hurt a fly but have the form of a kid who’s been watching his old man hit the bag since he could walk.
Jett hands me a beer the second I step into the kitchen. Doesn’t say a word. Just clinks his bottle against mine.
“Has something happened?” Ace asks, materializing beside me like he’s been waiting.
“No. Nothing bad. Just had to drop someone at home.”
I turn to face him, and he’s grinning. That wide, knowing, shit-stirring grin that tells me he’s already put the pieces together. Ace doesn’t miss much. People underestimate him because he’s feral half the time—more likely to blow something up than have a conversation—but the man reads a room better than anyone I’ve ever met.
“Are you going to make me an uncle again soon?” he jokes.
I shoot him a glare.