Page 6 of Blue Norther
Novembers in East Texas really were a mixed bag, but this year, it felt colder than normal.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
“Ford,” I answered.
“Hey, you got plans tonight?” my brother Hayes asked.
“Other than getting my old ass to bed for a few hours so I can flip to days, nope. Not a thing. Thought you’d be heading into the firehouse.”
“Nah. Finally got a night off. Beau was thinking about bunking with the guys out at the bunkhouse, but I convinced him we’d be fun company, too. I’m gonna grab a couple of steaks and some beer from my place, and then I figured we could head to Lach’s.”
“Yeah. Okay. Did you ask Jessie and Hawk?”
“It’s kind of a brothers only event.”
“You’re almost forty. It’s just a family dinner at this point. Don’t you want to see Beckett?”
“Of course I do. But Jessie’s on a tear about not swearing around him. I can’t deal with it tonight. We got shit we need to address with Lach, anyway. You’re going to see Jessie this week for your dinner with them. What’s the difference?”
That was true. My sister, her husband, and my nephew came to dinner once a week at my place. It was a tradition Jessie had started after Violet left, and now that they were all living on the ranch, it was something I looked forward to every week.
“Yeah, shit. Fine. But I’m telling Jess I wanted to include her, and thatyoufroze her out.”
I closed the cabin door behind me, setting my hat on the counter before I marched over to the thermostat and turned the furnace on. The house was at sixty-three degrees, which wasn’t terrible, but that probably wasn’t going to be comfortable for whoever was coming.
The low battery alarm started flashing.
“Cold. That’s just mean, Colt. You’re in a pissy mood today, aren’t you?”
I opened the first drawer in the kitchen, trying to remember where I stored the batteries from the last time I changed them out.
“Damn it.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. Look, I gotta go. But I’ll see you at your house later, okay?”
“Alright.”
I pulled the phone away from my ear and tucked it back in my pocket. The first drawer was a bust, but I hit the jackpot with the second drawer. It only took a minute to swap out the batteries, and I could already feel the cabin warming up as I walked around, checking on the rooms. Everything was exactly how I’d left it at the beginning of the month.
I grabbed my hat off the counter and a flash of silver out the window caught my eyes. Perfect. Whoever was staying looked like they made it, just in time for me to have to say hi.
I stepped out onto the porch, and time stood still. My throat closed up and I shoved down the urge to cough. My mind must’ve been playing tricks on me, because there, standing with her eyes closed and her face tilted towards the sun, her beautiful red hair cascading down her back so far it disappeared behindthe car between us, was the one person I’d been dying to see every day for the last seven years.
“Violet?”
Violet
“Ouch,” I groaned as I rubbed the tiny foot pressing against the skin of my belly. “Keep it down in there, would you?”
It was ridiculous to be arguing with my stomach, but I still took every chance I could to talk to it. My belly was so large at this point in my pregnancy, it sat on my lap. And the sweet baby boy rolling around in there would just not listen to me.Typical.Was there a part of me that feared I might struggle parenting on my own in the future? Oh, absolutely. But I also knew there was more than enough love in my heart to get us through.
My son’s butt pressed out against my hand, and I couldn’t help but laugh. This was the third—and final—day of our drive from New York to Texas. Leaving my apartment, my life, behind was unexpected and I was still numb from how quickly everything had happened. A quick call to my OB, and it was clear they weren’t happy I needed to travel this far into my pregnancy. But I had no other choice. Since flying this far along was out of the question, the only choice I had was to drive.
So I did. And we were finally,finally,in Texas. My GPS was happily counting down the hours, and we were just about to cross the one-hour-left line.
“I promise, sweetheart, we’re almost there.”
