The sun was just lighting the horizon on Thursday morning when Branch knocked on the hotel room door. I was up and dressed, and Frankie blinked sleepily from the bed, looking adorably ruffled. I leaned forward and kissed his cheek.
“Branch says we’ll be back tonight. I’ve left the keys to the truck on the nightstand,” I whispered. He just nodded sleepily, squeezing my hand before going back to sleep. Frankie was not a morning person.
I kissed Dylan’s cheek too, though he slept through the whole thing. I'm pretty sure he could sleep through the running of the bulls.
I opened the door to a fresh faced Branch. He looked like sex on a stick and I wanted to eat him whole. “Ready?”
“Lets go,” I whispered, shutting the door with a barely audible click. Beau was standing in the doorway to their room, a mug of coffee in his hand. “Mornin’ Beautiful.”
His hair was mussed and his eyes still sleepy, and I mentally apologized to Dylan for lying. There was no doubt in my mind that I loved these men. It might have laid dormant for awhile, but now they were here, it had roared back to life like an inferno. The realization must have played across my face, because the look Beau was giving me was so earnest that it was breaking my heart. I walked over and kissed him.
“I know, Sweetheart. Take your time,” he whispered against my lips, and I felt the hot gaze of Branch against my back. I wrapped my arms around his waist and sank into his warmth. He gave me a tight squeeze then released me. “You guys better get on the road. It's quite a drive.”
I frowned and locked eyes with Branch. “Where are we going?”
He firmed his jaw. “We’re going home.”
My heart fell to my feet, weighed down by dread. “You can do this, Tessa. It's time. We got you. Branch has got you,” Beau whispered behind me, and I swallowed hard.
Tessa May Everett wasn’t a runner, even from the demons of my past. “Let’s do it.”
My hometown was a crossroads, both figuratively and literally. Being back here was like standing in the center of my past and future. Part of me always imagined me coming back after I retired from bull riding, but the reality of the place brought up painful memories that I wasn’t sure I could deal with. Right on the border of New Mexico between Texas, Oklahoma and Colorado, it was one of those blink and you’ll miss it kind of towns where everyone was still living in the previous decade and life was slow and easy.
And I’d missed it so bad. The road to my family’s ranch skirted the town proper, nothing but dry grass plains for as far as the eye could see. My pulse started to race when a familiar arch came into sight, and a lump formed in my throat that refused to dislodge.
Home.
We turned and traveled down a driveway that I could navigate even in my sleep. This place was layered with memories. Almost every single one of my firsts had been done on this patch of earth. We got to a fork in the road, the left going toward my old house and the right going to Branch’s, my heart stopped beating in my chest until Branch wrenched the wheel to the right. I wasn’t ready just yet.
We bounced down the new gravel driveway, and up to a two story ranch house I knew as well as my own. I’d spent as much time at Branch’s place as I had at my own. Judy and my mama had been best friends, and when my father had been left widowed with a baby, Judy had stepped up. She’d all but raised me and Branch together, and she was as close to a Mom as I’d ever had. I felt a huge wave of guilt that I’d cut her and Jack, Branch’s dad, out of my life like that four years ago, but I’d exorcised every part of my old life because it had been too damn painful.
Maybe I was ready to take it back and this was a good start. Judy and Jack were on their front porch when we arrived, and I couldn’t help the smile that stretched across my face when I saw them. I was out of the car and running into Judy’s arms before the car had even come to a complete stop.
She caught me in her ample arms like I was six all over again, wrapping me in a tight hug that smelled like vanilla and burnt sugar. “Sweet girl. Gosh, I’ve missed you so much.”
I’d missed her too. My aunt had tried after I got shipped out to her in Cali, but she’d been grieving too, and she hadn’t been the most demonstrative woman. She’d been saddled with a teenage girl who was in mourning, who’d lost her father and her identity in one fell swoop. When she’d disapproved of me getting back into riding, it had been the death knell of our relationship.
So this? This moment hugging a woman who looked a little older but hugged the same, this was the first time I’d had matriarchal love in almost four years. My eyes welled with tears as she whispered how much she missed me, how big I’d gotten which was immediately contrasted with how skinny I was at the moment.
I laughed and pulled back. “I’ve missed you too,” I hiccuped. “I’m sorry.”
Judy waved a hand. “We all cope how we have to cope. Didn’t help that your aunt was a mega-bitch and wouldn’t let me come and visit.”
“Mom!” Branch groaned but Jack just grinned. He was used to his wife's take-no-shit attitude.
She shushed Branch and hustled me inside. “Well she is Branch and I make no apologies about it. Come on, Nugget, lets have some coffee, or I made up some sweet tea if you’d prefer?”
“Please.” I’d missed Judy’s sweet tea almost as much as I’d missed her hugs.
Jack pulled off his hat and followed us inside. “Well, I guess I have time for one glass.”
I looked over at Branch, who rolled his eyes at his parents. I smiled and choked back the emotion that wanted to spill over. I could do this.
The afternoon with Branch’s parents was like slipping into the past. Comforting in its own way. Jack took the opportunity to catch me up on the business side of things.
“We have control of both sides of the business until you turn twenty-five, as per your Dad’s will, but I’m happy to sign back over your half whenever you’re ready, Nugget. You can have it now, or you can wait until you finish riding.”
Yeah, I remembered all the paperwork Daddy had to do every Sunday. No thank you. Not just yet, anyway.
They showed me the new training yards they’d had installed a year ago, the new bulls they’d acquired, and I must have made all the appropriate noises because Jack was looking proud.
Branch yawned from where he was sitting on the rails.
“Pay attention, Son, because one day all this will be yours too. And when you and Tessa May get married, this will all be one big business like it was supposed to be.”
I choked on my own tongue and Branch went a little pale. “Mom!”
“Pssht. Don’t Mom me. You’ve been in love with Tessa May since you were four. Even when you were thirteen and a right shit, you’d never hear a bad word spoken about her. I had to pull you from the Principal’s office so many times because you’d got in a fight about Tessa. Some things are just made to be.”
Jack chuckled and wrapped his arm around his wife. “Leave them be, Judy. They’re young and have plenty of time to worry about that kind of thing later. Let them live a little first.”
Eesh. I looked at Branch and he looked amused. Yeah, imagine if I told them that I was sleeping with Beau as well.