Chapter Nine
Every day there was a parade of deep concern into every inbox Skylar had.
Family and friends alike felt the need to weigh in about her decision to hit the road with Cody, in varying degrees of ALL CAPS astonishment. Every person Skylar knew thought she’d lost her mind, which didn’t have the result they all clearly wanted.
She didn’t take the next flight home. She settled in a little more with Cody instead.
I’m sure the man is hot, Scottie texted. And hot is great. But are you really the person who runs away with the rodeo? That doesn’t sound like you.
Skylar got that particular text from her sister a day or so after she’d packed a bag and left Billings. There had been no further scenes with her father or Angelique. They’d been out with the kids when she’d swung by that Sunday morning, so she’d had the great pleasure of writing them a note and avoiding the drama altogether.
If that was cowardly, she was at peace with it.
“Did you really leave me a note?” Billy demanded on her voicemail that same night, all the usual bluster and that darker current underneath that she thought might be hurt feelings. It made her feel something like small inside—but not enough to return his call. “A note, Skylar? You really made Angelique feel bad. I hope you’re proud.”
And it was the irony of that Skylar found she savored most as Cody had driven them west across Montana’s eastern plains, then up over the brash jut of Rockies. Because her father seemed to have forgotten his own long history of leaving notes to handle situations he didn’t want to deal with, like the fact he’d wanted a divorce from Skylar’s mother. Carolyn had left that particular note on the refrigerator, held fast by a magnet they’d gotten on a bitter family trip to Kansas, until Scottie had ripped it up and thrown it in the fire during one of the unpleasant mid-divorce winters.
But if Billy didn’t know how ridiculous his outrage sounded, Skylar wasn’t about to clue him in. Because that would require calling him back and opening herself up for all manner of commentary she didn’t want. She opted for a quick text instead.
Will be in touch soon. Love to all.
Scottie’s text had come late the next day, suggesting to Skylar that there had been a lot of unusual family discussion about her.
Apparently I’m exactly that person, she’d texted Scottie. I’m as surprised as you are.
Cody had bypassed Missoula, heading north to find a perfect little spot near the vastness of Flathead Lake to spend the time before the weekend show. Skylar hadn’t been to the lake since a trip in junior high school, if she was remembering correctly, but nothing had changed. She caught her breath in the same awe she recalled from back when as Cody drove them up and over the hills to the south. Flathead Lake gleamed blue and impossible before them, so big and wide it seemed like a dream, while the Mission Mountains stood sentry to the east. It was jaw-dropping. It made Skylar’s Montanan heart beat a little faster.
It made her think there was nothing better in the world than finding a place where they could spend a few days, nestled in the pine trees down by the water’s edge, as if the rest of the planet ceased to exist. Just for a little while.
Though no one in her life wanted to let her go off and do that.
Everyone, apparently, was an expert on exactly what kind of person Skylar was. And exactly what she should do. And more to the point, what she absolutely should not do in the company of a bad-boy bull rider, because she would regret it later. Or because it was as out of character as a drug binge and more scary, because she wasn’t actually high. Or because her behavior somehow tarnished Thayer’s memory, half a country away from the life she’d lived with him and his place in his family’s vault.
You will hate yourself for this, one of her Atlanta friends told her very seriously in an email of several dense paragraphs. The same friend who had spent years cheating on her sweet, emotionally available boyfriend with her awful, aloof musician ex. You will feel dirty forever.
It took everything Skylar had not to respond: I think maybe you’re talking about you, not me.
There were a whole lot of consequences waiting out there for her, Skylar noted every time a new text or email or voicemail came in, and everyone could not only see them coming at her, but really—really—wanted to make sure she knew all about them in advance. Because they were all deeply worried that, somehow, she might have overlooked the complexities of her own life. Or forgotten who she was. Or let Cody knock her over the head and drag her off by her hair into his den of iniquity.
What no one ever bothered to ask was how Skylar actually felt about what she was doing. Or the man she was doing it with.
And she was grateful for that, she thought now, sitting on the steps of the Airstream with her feet in the grass. Pine trees towered overhead and the July morning was still cool, with hints of the heat to come later on. The Mission Mountains turned different colors in the light, rising there on the other side of the sparkling, dancing water. And out there in front of her, cutting a fine form through all that golden-tipped blue, was Cody.
This was the “little swim” he liked to take after he did his usual routine of intense resistance training and then ran a few miles. Sometimes Skylar joined him for part of the run, but there was no keeping up with him. She liked to try, but always ended up laughing and waving him off before turning and walking back to their sweet little camp.
Before Cody, she’d never really thought of bull riders as athletes. They were usually hot in that laconic cowboy way, sure, but she’d never considered them the same as, say, football players. Maybe she’d thought that they simply climbed atop bulls and held on tight, which seemed more a question of grip and less about skill or athleticism.
She’d learned otherwise.
Cody came by the stamina she’d experienced in his bedroom—and in his truck, and out beneath the Montana sky, and in the office of Grey Sports—honestly. And he dedicated himself to honing it all the time. He not only worked out daily, he had a great many opinions about food and what he would and would not put in the body he treated like a favorite machine.
“I thought you liked to throw back the whiskey and get your party on,” she’d said when the true breadth of his my body is a temple mindset became clear to her.
Cody had grinned at her as he prepared something else green. “Whiskey is for winning. Everything else is training.”
For a woman who’d spent years in the Deep South, where bacon grease was considered its own kind of holy water, it was an adjustment.
Skylar smiled a little as she let the grass tickle the bottoms of her feet. Despite the food and exercise and athleticism thing, which was all a surprise, what was most surprising about living with a man she hardly knew in a sleek, compact trailer was how easy it was.
“I was worried we’d have nothing to talk about and would just have sex the whole time,” she’d told him this morning on the part of his run she’d shared, already panting and out of breath after a few yards.
Cody, not at all out of breath, had laughed. “That was a worry? I thought that was the draw.”
“I thought it could get old.”
“Are we talking about the same thing?” He’d nudged her slightly with his arm as they’d run down the long, shaded dirt road that wound down into the forest, with gorgeous little views of the lake peeking at them from behind the trees. “I make you scream, woman. Every time. Show a little respect.”
He was right. He did make her scream and she’d expected that part. It was all the rest of it that she hadn’t been prepared for. The stories he told as they drove for hours across some of the most beautiful country in the world. That dry humor of his that popped out more often the more time they spent together. The simple pleasure of sitting across a table from him in the mornings as they both checked their various devices and caught up on news, both personal and global. She often slid her feet onto his lap. He often circled one of her ankles with his hand, absently, as if he was anchoring her to him.
Skylar knew there were words for the way that made her feel, but she shoved all of that aside. None of this was about her heart. None of this was supposed to have that kind of depth or meaning. No resonance. This was nothing more and nothing less than what it seemed: a few days in the wilds of her beloved Montana with a man who wanted very specific things from her and no more.
What no one could seem to understand, sitting out there in judgment of her, was that Skylar had been displaced for two long years. It felt good to know exactly where she fit and what she was supposed to do. It felt more than good. She liked knowing the parameters. She liked knowing exactly what was happening, for a change.
It made her feel safe in a way she hadn’t since before Thayer died.
Her phone buzzed beside her, alerting her to a new call, and she was surprised to see it was her brother. Surprised, then wary.
Because the last time Jesse had called her had been to question her decision to move to Billings. Three guesses what this call would be about.
She thought about letting it go to voicemail, but the man was getting married in a few short weeks and Skylar was a bridesmaid. There was always the possibility that he was calling about something related to her sisterly duties.
“I must be missing something,” Jesse said by way of a greeting when Skylar picked up the call. Skylar could hear traffic sounds behind him, reminders that where he lived in big-city Seattle there were all the sorts of stores and museums and signs of urban life that she’d loved so much in Atlanta. And yet somehow didn’t miss, sitting out here on a gorgeous summer morning with nothing but blue skies, green trees, mountains and water in every direction. “Maybe Dad had a stroke? Because he said something about you running off with the rodeo.”
“When did we become phone-call people?” Skylar shifted on the Airstream’s steps and let the sun dance over her face. “Because I could’ve sworn that we weren’t that kind of family. And here we are again. On the phone. Discussing my life choices that you heard about through phone calls with our father, a man you have never taken as an authority on anything. Ever.”
“I spend my entire day talking on the damn phone to people I don’t want to talk to,” her brother said. In that voice of his that was all business and was likely supposed to remind her that he was very important, but only made her roll her eyes. He might be the king of construction out in Seattle, marrying the ridiculously wealthy woman who was the right hand of Amos Burke, everybody’s favorite computer genius, but he was just Jesse to Skylar. Her annoying older brother. “The last thing I wanted to do is any more of it. So that should tell you, Skylar, that your life choices are being treated as an emergency situation.”
“There’s no emergency. I’m perfectly fine. Feel free to report back.”
“The rodeo, though? Really, cowgirl?”
“I shouldn’t have to tell a man named after a famous Wild West outlaw, born and raised in Montana, the difference between a rodeo and the American Extreme Bull Riders.”
“I have to tell you, this is a curve ball,” he said after a moment and what she was pretty sure was a hastily concealed laugh. “I never figured you for the problem child. That was always me. And I figured if there was a dark horse who might come from behind to mess things up now that Dad and I are talking again, it would be Scottie. She’s always had a little freak show in her soul.”
There was no reason that should have pricked at Skylar. As if he was insulting her when she was almost certain that was meant to be a compliment.
“She’s a corporate lawyer. It’s basically the least freak show thing you could possibly do unless you became a tax attorney. Or possibly a pastor.”
“I don’t think you know about the secret lives of tax attorneys, Skylar. Or the average pastor, for that matter.”
“Just like you don’t know about the secret life of me, Jesse. Or anything else about me, apparently.”
“You were the one who wanted a family,” Jesse replied, a little too quick and much too certain for Skylar’s liking. “Always. After all that bullshit between Mom and Dad, who could blame you for wanting something stable?”
She pinched the bridge of her nose and had the sense she was willing back a headache. “Thank you for making me sound like a psychology textbook. Something I would have doubted you ever read, incidentally.”
“You found a nice guy and you hung on,” Jesse continued. “There’s no shame in that. He was a good guy and he treated you right. He was everything Dad wasn’t. If you’d searched the entire planet, you couldn’t have found a guy less like Dad than Thayer.”
Skylar tensed, waiting for the mention of Thayer to roll through her like a thunderstorm, but it didn’t. She felt the same tug she always did. The memory of his face. His smile. His arms wrapping around her in that bear hug of his she’d always loved so much. But for the first time, thinking of him felt more sweet than bitter.
And then the fact that there was no storm made her feel as if she was sitting on the deck of a wildly pitching ship for a moment, surrendering to the waves whether she wanted to or not.
She had to dig her bare feet into the dirt to get her bearings. And some part of her wasn’t sure she wanted to.
“All I’m saying is that this seems like a deliberate and calculated swing in the opposite direction,” Jesse concluded. “Like maybe you’re trying to scrub your past from your life by desecrating it a little bit.”
“Desecrating it,” she repeated. “Wow. I may not be acting exactly the way everyone expects me to act, but I have to tell you, that strikes me as everyone else’s problem, not mine.”
“It’s just a theory.”
There were so many things she wanted to say. Unkind things about Jesse’s romantic past. Defenses. Arguments. But there was no point.
“You don’t even know him,” she pointed out quietly. “He could be a living saint.”
“You’re not the kind of girl who has flings, Skylar,” Jesse replied. “Does he know that?”
“Do you?” she retorted.
And then she ended the call, because Cody was coming out of the water and she didn’t want him to hear her. And more—Cody in swim trunks low on his hips and nothing else made her heart kick at her and her whole body go a little limp in anticipation.
Because being near him was always about anticipation.
“Rough call?” he asked as he drew close, rubbing a towel over his sculpted, scarred chest and making it all that much worse.
“My brother,” she murmured, noncommittally, because she wanted to think about his acres of hard-packed perfection, gleaming with water—not Jesse.
Cody’s dark green gaze was direct and burned its way into her whether she wanted it to or not.
“You don’t have to tell me your stuff,” he said, a little stiltedly, she thought. As if she was disappointing him, too. And she didn’t know why that made her stomach knot up when no one else’s disappointment seemed to touch her. “But don’t pretend nothing’s happening when I can see it all over your face.”
“He’s getting married soon,” Skylar said shortly. “That’s what’s happening.”
“And let me guess.” Cody hung his towel around his neck. “I’m not his fantasy wedding date for his sister.”
Skylar wanted to get up then, but she thought that if she did, he would see that he was getting to her and she couldn’t allow that. She thought something in her might break wide open if she let him see how deep under her skin he was, because she might not have had a whole lot of flings, but she was pretty sure the whole point of them was to avoid depths of any kind.
“You’re not good date material,” she reminded him, throwing his own words back at him from the night they’d met. “You told me so yourself.”
“You told me your family could use a little horrifying,” Cody replied instantly, clearly not fazed at all. But Skylar was even more surprised that he clearly remembered that conversation they’d had out behind her father’s house. “And it looks like I’m already doing my part. Why not eat some sad chicken at a big party filled with people who hate me? I’m hungry already.”
“You don’t want to go to a wedding.” Skylar could hear that her voice was too raw, but she didn’t know how to stop it. How to change it. How to back up somehow and get off this strange path she was on.
Something moved over Cody’s face, then. Some shadow that Skylar told herself was the sun behind a cloud, nothing more.
And she didn’t want to hear whatever he was about to say. She didn’t want to allow this moment to get any weirder. There was a storm coming, she could feel it inside like that spooky wind that made her hair stand on end in the summertime, and it wasn’t about Thayer.
It was about her.
It was about this.
And Skylar had always been a good girl. Jesse wasn’t wrong about that. She’d not only never done something like this before, she’d always let something like this be something that other people started. Not her. Maybe she was happy to go along, but she’d never been much for the initiation.
She didn’t really know how to go about it. It was one thing to roll with something that was already happening. It was something else to make it happen.
Skylar decided not to overthink it.
She stood up in a sudden surge, glad that she was wearing nothing but the little, stretchy sundress that could be worn as a top, a dress, or a skirt depending on her mood. She pulled it up and over her head, then dropped it to one side, and stood there in nothing but her thong.
Then, as Cody’s gaze got dark and heated, she hooked her fingers in the sides of her panties and tugged them down her legs, kicking the little scrap away. And then she was standing there before him, completely naked, letting the Montana summer pour all over her. There was the sound of motorboats in the distance. Birds and waves against the shore. The rustle of the wind high up in the trees.
But all she could see was that arrested look on Cody’s face. It made everything inside of her melt.
Then hum.
Cody dropped his towel and reached over to get his hands on her, making them both sigh a little when his palms closed over her hips. He brought his mouth down to hers but didn’t kiss her, teasing them both.
Skylar surged up onto her toes, pressing as much of her body against his as she could, reveling in the feel of his skin, cooled from the lake, against hers. Her nipples ached into hard points. She felt wild and raw and slippery with need, as if she hadn’t had him deep inside of her already this morning.
It was never enough. She always wanted more. And she didn’t need anyone to tell her that didn’t bode well. A fling was supposed to feel shallow. She was supposed to feel shallow.
But the things she felt when she touched this man were anything but.
“Maybe you have a point,” Cody muttered, right there against her mouth, when Skylar couldn’t remember that she’d been trying to make a point in the first place.
But then she didn’t care, because he was picking her up and carrying her inside, where both of them could indulge the fire that burned so bright between them.
And Skylar could pretend that all of this was what it was supposed to be. Shallow. Temporary. Easy and fun.
Nothing raw. Nothing real.
Because this was just a fling, nothing more.