Rugged Cowboy

by Elana Johnson

  “I don’t think you’re ready for there to be a real us,” she said.

  “We’ve talked about this already,” Dallas said. Frankly, he was tired of talking about it. Tired of defending himself.

  She nodded, absolute misery on her face. His heart started to pound. “I know,” she said. “I just…maybe I’m not ready to be with who you are now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I started to fall in love with the strong, sexy cowboy mechanic who knew exactly what he was doing out on that ranch. The man who was regaining his confidence one tractor at a time, one day at a time as he figured out how to be a single dad. How to juggle parenthood with his job. How to win over a woman.” She shook her head. “I know I’m not making sense.”

  She wasn’t, at least not much.

  “But, Dallas, that’s not who you are anymore.”

  “Who am I?” he asked softly.

  “You’re this strong, sexy cowboy mechanic who’s trying to save everyone but himself.”

  He blinked, unsure of how to respond.

  “You need help, Dallas,” she said. “You do. You can’t singlehandedly save Martha. Or Thomas. Or me, even.”

  He wasn’t even aware she needed to be saved, or how he would do it.

  “I can go see a counselor,” he said, because he’d already considered that possibility. “We could go together.”

  She shook her head. “You could, if you think that would help you get back to who you really are.”

  “I know who I really am.” Prison provided a man with a lot of time to contemplate that exact topic.

  “Then you need to find him again,” Jess said. “I want him. I want the man I started to fall for.”

  “I’m still that man,” he said, desperation rising through him.

  “No.” She shook her head. “He got lost in Miami, Dallas, and I haven’t seen him since.” She started walking again. “I’m sorry. I should’ve texted you about the cake, so you weren’t worried.” She kept her back to him, half in his house and half out. “If not for that precious little girl, I wouldn’t have come tonight.”

  “Jess.” Dallas stepped over to her, reaching out as if to touch her. He didn’t, because he didn’t think he should. “Is this it, then?”

  She turned and looked at him. “Maybe when you’re ready, we can try again.”

  “I’m ready,” he insisted.

  She shook her head and said, “No, Dallas, you’re not.” With that, she gave him a small, sad smile. Added, “I wish you were, but you’re not, and I deserve someone whose main focus is going to be on me, not their ex.” She turned and left, the winter darkness beyond his front porch swallowing her whole.

  He didn’t know what else to do, so he simply closed and locked the front door behind her. He turned and stared around at the furniture in the house. He went down the hall to his bedroom, put on his pajamas, and got in bed.

  He lay there, eyes closed, mind racing. Yes, he’d been focused on Martha, but he’d had to do that. He couldn’t have drug dealers showing up at his house or the ranch, putting everyone in danger. Putting Jess in danger. Why didn’t she get that?

  His confusion turned to anger, which morphed into misery. He’d seen it on her face too, but right now, he was powerless to change the emotion for either one of them.

  “Daddy?” Remmy’s tiny voice asked. “Can I sleep with you?”

  “Of course, baby,” he whispered. “Come on.”

  She hurried over to the bed, and he peeled the covers back for her. She settled on the pillows next to him, and with her tiny lungs breathing in and out, his thoughts evened too.

  They now rang with only one item: Jess, Jess, Jess.

  How could he fix himself, get ready for a relationship where she was the focus, and then get her back?

  Chapter Twenty

  “I don’t know, Abi,” Jess said, done with this conversation and it had just started. “It just happened. He’s not ready, like you said, and Nia’s right too. I deserve someone who’s going to put me first in his life. Well, maybe second behind his kids, but not a distant last after his ex-wife.”

  Bitterness filled her, and it made the stables far colder than they really were. A bitter kind of cold that never seemed to leave Jess’s soul.

  “How long has it been?” Abi asked. “You didn’t say anything last week.”

  “It’s been a while,” Jess said. “I’m not even sure what day it is.”

  “Okay, Jess, you’re a mess,” Abi said. “You always know what day it is. Day of the week. Date, even. You have training schedules for those horses that you make, remake, redo, and then do all over again for a fifth time.”

  Jess laughed, because that was true. Without Dallas in her life, she felt adrift. Purposeless. “I know what day it is,” she said. “It’s Friday, January twenty-second.”

  Dallas had been out of her life for fifteen days. She knew every minute of every one of them too. She just didn’t want to hash it all out with Abi, her now-engaged sister.

  She could still see Huey down on both knees in the foyer of the farmhouse. He’d been waiting there for Abi when they’d gotten home from the airport. He’d put Abi’s favorite flower—the calla lily—everywhere in the house, and he’d set up his phone to record the whole thing.

  He was sweet and romantic—and utterly focused on Jess’s sister. As she watched Abi and Huey, and her mom and dad, and Nia and her serious boyfriend Walt, Jess had seen so many things lacking in her relationship with Dallas.

  All of it boiled down to the fact that he simply had too much on his plate. She didn’t want to be a spoonful of potato salad crammed in among the other things he’d taken on, and she’d spent a lot of time talking to her parents about the relationship, about him, about why he’d gone to prison.

  She’d shown them pictures, and her heart had filled and warmed as she looked at her and Dallas beaming at the camera in one of their selfies. He’d taken it outside the stable one day, and Jess’s hair was a mess, the wind was blowing, and Dallas had his other hand flat on his head to keep his hat in place.

  But that didn’t matter. They looked so happy, and Jess realized the picture had been taken very early in their relationship. The man who’d come home from Miami was not that smiling cowboy in the selfie.

  She had pictures of her and the kids too, usually with one of them on a horse while she walked beside it. Remmy had both hands up, her fingers in peace signs, and Jess’s chest constricted every time she thought about the little girl.

  “Okay,” Abi said. “But Jess, we’re here for you. Dad is really worried about you.”

  “I know.” Jess didn’t know how to make him stop worrying. She paced back to her bed and sat down on it. “I’ll call him. It’s been a few days.” She sighed and rolled her neck, ready to eat dinner, put something on her tablet that would wipe her mind, and go to bed. “I just don’t want to hear his relief when I tell him I broke up with Dallas.”

  “He won’t be relieved.”

  “Yes, he will,” Jess said. “He didn’t like that Dallas had been to prison. He looked up everything about it online. He also didn’t like that he has kids or has been married before.” She loved her father; she did. He was right to be worried, she supposed.

  He’d said, “Marriage is already really hard, Jess.” He’d cut a look at her mom when he said it. “You’re adding two kids to that, plus an ex-wife, plus a man who’s restricted by being a felon.”

  His words looped through her head over and over, and she really wished they wouldn’t. Didn’t everyone deserve another chance? People made mistakes, and Dallas had paid for his according to the legal system.

  Everyone got to make their own choices, too, and he couldn’t control what Martha had done. He’d given her a second chance at life too—and that was what scared Jess the most. Once Martha got clean, would Dallas prefer to see if they could make their marriage work again? They had two children together, and Jess knew it was better for families to
be together rather than split up.

  No matter what, she’d have to share those kids with Martha for the rest of her life. Did she really want that?

  Jess didn’t know. She knew she wasn’t going to break up with Dallas because of his prison term. She knew better than that; she’d seen so many men get their lives back together and find a new, better, and correct path to be on.

  Everyone makes mistakes, she’d told her father. She wondered if she’d made one by breaking up with Dallas without giving their new normal a chance to begin.

  “I have to go,” she said to Abi. “Tell everyone hi. Tell them about Dallas. Tell Dad I’ll call him tomorrow.” She didn’t have the fortitude to make another phone call tonight.

  “Okay,” Abi said. “We all love you, Jess.”

  “I love you all too.” The call ended, and Jess set her phone on her nightstand. She didn’t have the energy or spirit to even go into the kitchen and get something to eat. She’d see Jill and Hannah, and she didn’t want to talk about Dallas.

  They were worried about her too, Jess knew. Hannah had brought her a box of Milk Duds yesterday, and Jess opened the top drawer of the nightstand and pulled them out. They’d do for dinner tonight.

  She changed out of her work clothes and into something more comfortable. Curling up in bed, she smelled the fresh scent of the dryer sheets on her comforter and snuggled into the mountain of pillows behind her. She just needed an escape for a little while. She’d be fine, if she could just be alone for a while….

  “Ho,” she called to the big, black horse she’d just gotten from the horse show she’d attended by herself. Lael Miller, one of the best trainers in Texas, claimed the beast couldn’t be tamed, but Jess had a different opinion. She also hadn’t put herself in the ring with the stallion, because he was free-spirited and absolutely huge.

  She’d had Midnight Madness for a few days now, and while she liked working with him, he also challenged her in new ways.

  The horse whinnied, and she went up on the fence rails to get more to his height. “You have to stay connected,” she said to him as Midnight ran by again. “Stop tossing your head, or I’m going to make it tighter.”

  Sometimes one of the other cowboys would tease her for talking to the horses as if they could understand English. Jess did it anyway, because she believed they could. They could feel her spirit, and they knew she just wanted to help them.

  Midnight ducked his head as he trotted away from her, and Jess watched him try to spit the bit. She’d kept him on the second shortest setting for the past two days, and he didn’t seem to be ready for more line at all.

  “How’s he doing today?” Rich asked as he climbed up on the bottom rung of the fence too. Midnight rounded the corner and saw him, tossed his head, and nickered. “Oh, all right,” Rich said with a laugh. “You don’t like the bit or the line. Too bad, bud.”

  Too bad, indeed. Jess said nothing, sensing that Midnight simply needed to get his frustration out, and then he’d do what she wanted him to. She simply had to out-wait him, and no one had ever done that before.

  “Time him,” she said to Rich. “We say nothing until he’s calm.”

  Rich pressed a button on the side of his watch, and she and Rich stood side-by-side on the fence and watched Midnight Madness trot around and around and around. He’d toss his head every time he passed, and eventually, it was every other time. Then every third time. Then not at all.

  He finally slowed to a walk, his head bobbing exactly where a horse’s head should, his breathing though his nose steady and strong.

  “Time?” Jess asked quietly.

  “Twenty-one minutes,” Rich said.

  “Start it again,” Jess said. “I’m going to lead him.” She climbed the fence and got in the ring with Midnight. She stayed on the outer ring as he walked by, aware that he was watching her too. The second time around, she stepped in front of him and walked along his shoulder. He let her do that too, and Jess relaxed completely.

  “There you go,” she said to the dark horse. “See? You and I are going to get along just fine.”

  She kept him on the lead for several more times around, then she released it from the clasp that kept him on the circle she wanted him on, and she led him around the pen. Each time they went, she pulled him out another foot.

  Eventually, they walked along the rail, Jess going whatever speed she wanted, and Midnight following her.

  “Time?” she asked Rich, because it felt like a lot of it had passed. Jess was surprised she possessed the patience to work with a horse like Midnight, but then again, she’d always had more patience and love for horses than she did people.

  Another flaw, she supposed.

  “Forty-seven minutes,” he said. He deserved credit for standing there and watching all that time.

  Jess smiled at him as she went around again. “One more time, okay, Midnight? Then you get to eat and drink, and I’ll even put you in the shady pasture.”

  “You’re going to spoil him,” Rich called with a smile. “Then he’ll think he can act all fussy and then get the best grass.” He laughed as he stepped off the bottom rung. “I have to go drive the bus. See you tomorrow, Jess.”

  “Bye,” she called to him, pausing at the gate that would leave the walking circle. Midnight did everything she asked of him, and she led him down the aisle in the row house to his stall, where he got brushed down for a good long while.

  She gave him fresh water, and fresh hay, and a bowl full of cut up apples and carrots from one of the fridges they kept in the stable. “Don’t go tellin’ the others,” she said to him as she stroked his neck. “These treats are for the best horses, and they all want them.”

  Jess made sure they all got them from time to time, too, because she wanted all her horses to think they were the best horse on the ranch. She stayed with Midnight Madness for a while longer than necessary, because she felt so much like him.

  Too loud, and too impatient. Too big, and too rash with her decisions. She regretted cutting Dallas from her life, but she didn’t know how to let him back in. He hadn’t tried to come back into her life, and that kept her inside her own space too.

  She took Midnight out to the pasture and walked back to the stables about the same time the kids started arriving for riding lessons.

  “Jess!” a little girl called, and Jess turned to find Remmy running toward her.

  A smile filled her face and her soul, and she crouched down to receive the girl into a hug. “Hey,” she said into Remmy’s neck. “How are you? What’s seven been like so far?”

  Remmy straightened and looked right into Jess’s eyes. “So good, Jess. Dad got me a new bike, and I’ve been practicing on it every night. I can ride it so far now, and I never tip.”

  “That’s great,” Jess said. “I bet it’s like riding a horse.”

  “Yeah.” Remmy reached up and touched Jess’s cowgirl hat. “Why don’t you come for dinner anymore?”

  “Oh, I’ve been real busy,” Jess said, keeping her smile in place. “We got this new horse, and he is so big and so wild.”

  “Like a wild stallion?” Remmy’s eyes rounded, and Jess giggled with her.

  “Yes,” she said. “Just like that.”

  “Remmy.”

  Jess looked up into Dallas’s face, lightning striking right behind her ribs. She straightened and nudged Remmy to go to her father. He nodded at her, ducked his head so the brim of his hat hid his face, and he walked his daughter over to her horseback riding lessons.

  Jess fell back out of the way, hiding in the shadows near the stable door to watch him with his daughter. It didn’t matter what her father was worried about. Dallas was a good man, and a great father, and Jess loved his kids.

  Go say something to him, she told herself. Don’t just let him walk away.

  He helped Remmy into the saddle and waved to her as the lesson began. He didn’t turn to look for Jess. He simply walked away in the direction of the mechanical shed.

 
Jess released the breath she’d been holding. Twenty-nine days, she thought. It had been twenty-nine days since Remmy’s birthday party when they’d broken up.

  She couldn’t dwell on all that she and Dallas could’ve been doing during those twenty-nine days. She’d told Remmy the truth—she was very busy right now. Dallas surely was too. Jess had to believe that, because she didn’t want to think that he had time to make things right between them and had simply chosen not to.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Dallas wasn’t sure what had happened in January. The month passed in a blur of mechanical grease, math homework his ten-year-old didn’t understand, and therapy sessions for everyone in his house.

  Himself included. He’d also decided to get Remmy in to see someone too. Out of the three of them, she was the bubbliest, and she definitely talked the most. But Dallas knew she’d experienced trauma too, and he wanted her to get the help she needed.

  He’d seen his son re-emerge from the shell he’d been in when Dallas had picked him up in September, and that made his heart heavy with happiness.

  He paused at the far corner of the stable, having just taken Remmy to her riding lesson. He’d finally seen Jess around the ranch. It was amazing to him that they both worked there full-time and yet never saw one another. Today, though, he’d seen her, and she was just as radiant and just as attractive to him as she’d always been.

  His voice had fled, and all he’d been able to do was nod.

  “You can’t have her right now,” he told himself sternly, and that was enough to get his feet moving again.

  She’d been right, and he hadn’t been ready for a serious relationship with a woman. He did have a lot going on in his life, and he hadn’t been putting her first. His kids came first. His job came second. Providing some stability for all of them was extremely important to him. Making sure he could keep his children safe also sat very high on his priority list, as did making sure Thomas and Remmy could have a real relationship with their mother.