Total pages in book: 46
Estimated words: 44297 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 221(@200wpm)___ 177(@250wpm)___ 148(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 44297 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 221(@200wpm)___ 177(@250wpm)___ 148(@300wpm)
I recall how she was at breakfast. The way she blushed when Wade spoke to her. The way her voice went soft, like she was trying not to take up space. She’s got a kid. She told me that much, but is she still nursing?
“Kid’s back home with a friend, I heard,” Rick says. “One year old. I reckon she’s weanin’.”
Eli whistles. “Not anymore.” He winks at me. “If Wade weren’t helpin’ her out, she’d be in the barn gettin’ hooked up to the pump.”
That makes my stomach twist. Not because it’s gross but because it isn’t. An image slides in: her braced on a wooden bench, shirt off, full and aching, breath shaking. Her hands gripping the edge. Her mouth open, gasping for relief.
And Wade being the one giving it.
I drop the hammer. The sound jolts me. I turn away like I can walk out of my own thoughts.
She’s younger than us by too many years and practically a relative. I should not feel anything like this. I am not the man who hits the bars in town looking for girls barely past twenty. But Joelle is not some carefree, untouched thing. She carries herself like someone who’s lived a whole damn life already. You can see it in her shoulders, the way she walks, like she’s bracing for the next bad thing to drop into her lap
Still, she smiles. She smiled at me at breakfast, and I wanted to say something. I wanted to find out more about her life before she showed up here, tired and desperate. But all I could do was nod and look away. Wade has more confidence. Me? I warm up slow.
“Maybe he’ll share her with you,” Eli says, easy as talking about a beer on a hot afternoon.
My head snaps up. “What?”
“Wade,” he says. “He has that streak in him. Control freak, sure, but he likes to watch. Told me once after too much whiskey.”
Rick lets out a low chuckle behind his cigarette.
I stare at Eli. The man knows too much about what Wade likes behind closed doors.
My heart starts thudding hard.
A picture hits me like a blow: Joelle stretched across Wade’s bed, flushed and open, breath shaking. Me and Wade standing over her. Watching and taking turns. Her body arching. Her voice breaking. Her milk on our hands. On our tongues.
Heat floods through me. Shame right behind it.
God help me.
Whatever is happening up there is trouble, and I need to be the one who keeps his damn head on straight. Joelle does not need men like us dragging her into a situation she’s not ready for. She does not need me wanting things I have no right to even imagine.
But her moan echoes again, drifting over the pasture.
And I know I’m already in far too deep.
Chapter 9
Joelle
I clutch the phone with both hands like my grip is the only thing keeping me together.
“Say hi to Mama, sweetheart.” Janey’s voice is warm but tired in that bone-deep way that makes guilt sting under my skin.
There is rustling. A clumsy thump. The tiny grunt of effort from a small body trying to hold something too big.
Then his voice bursts through.
“Ma-ma!”
My knees go weak. My heart is soft and painful all at once.
“Oh, baby—hi, baby,” I whisper, fighting the crack in my throat. “Hi, sweet pea. Mama loves you.”
His voice is a squeak, high and wild and full of joy. He babbles unintelligibly, then Janey picks the phone back up, and he fades into the background.
I laugh, wet and shaky. “I hope he’s been good for you.”
“As good as any one-year-old can be,” she says, and I hate myself for leaving her to carry the weight of my choices—even if I am only doing it so I can build a life where he and I are not squatting in her spare room forever.
“I have two more days of my trial,” I say, “and then I can come get him.”
“Is it going well?”
“Yeah.” I swallow the truth about Wade’s mouth easing the pressure in my breasts, the way he touched me and left me shaking, the way it soothed a deep raw ache inside me that has been hurting for months. She does not need to know that.
“That’s good, Joelle. Bake your chocolate chip cookies. They’ll never want you gone.”
A quiet smile tugs at me. “You think?”
“I know. And make that beef stew with ale and biscuits. Cowboys love big, hearty meals.”
She’s right. They probably would love it. Maybe not as much as they love my body, but she’ll never hear me admit that.
“He’s fussing,” Janey says. “Call tomorrow?”
“I will.”
The line goes dead. I lower my phone to the counter and slide down to the floor, my back hitting the old wooden cabinets. The moment I sit, everything inside me unravels. I cover my face with both hands and sob.