Page 1 of Cattle Stop

Prologue

Five years ago

The fire pops, Whit grins, and far off in the pasture, a cow moos, low and long. Cooper blinks and Whit’s still smiling, and Whit never smiles.

“Easy there,” Whit says, and that’s more how he normally sounds, bossy and sharp.

“Just looking for a beer,” Cooper says, but instead of finding a bottle, his fingers meet a slush of melted ice in the cooler and he drops heavily, gracelessly, onto a hay bale.

“Another?”

“I want one,” Cooper says, but really he wants to know why Whit’s smiling.

Cooper reaches up two wet fingers to press to the fullness of Whit’s bottom lip. Whit’s tall. Cooper is too, but he’s sitting and Whit’s standing and the fire’s sending up sparks into the glitter of stars in the night sky.

“What’s so funny?” Cooper asks. Whit’s mouth is soft and his hand is warm and strong around Cooper’s wrist.

“You.” Whit pulls Cooper’s hand away to sip from his own beer.

There should be more bottles, the cooler full when they’d dragged it out here to the pasture as the sun set and Drew lit the brush pile. But the pile’s smaller than it was, the glow of sunset has long faded, and the world spins a little whenever Cooper closes his eyes.

“Where’d you get that?” Cooper asks, but when he reaches for it, Whit draws the bottle away.

“It’s mine.”

“Give it.”

“No.” Whit settles next to him on the bale. He’s warm. Whit’s warm, not Cooper. His hands are cold and he tucks them into his armpits, clumsy and tired. He should help Penny and Drew drag brush from the edge of the field onto the fire, but instead he hugs himself tight and yawns.

Whit’s throat works as he takes a drink, tendons flexing against skin burnished a deep brown tan from the summer sun. The rim of the bottle presses a divot into Whit’s lip and Cooper wants that more than he wants a sip of beer, wants that curve of Whit’s mouth. He leans in and Whit’s smiling again—and that’s really something, isn’t it?—straight teeth and those lips that were so soft to touch. They’re soft under Cooper’s mouth, too. And there’s the sharp taste of beer and the fire-warmed skin of Whit’s cheek and the smell of him, all woodsmoke and clean sweat.

Whit pulls back, and Cooper chases after him. Slumps with the motion, into the curve of Whit’s shoulder.

“You’ve had enough to drink,” Whit says. His hand is nice on Cooper’s chest. Firm as it braces him. Warm, too. And big.

“M’fine,” Cooper mumbles.

“You won’t remember this.”

Cooper’s mouth is wet. His hand is too. But cold, unlike his lips.

“I will,” he says and come dawn, and the dew wetting his clothes and glittering on the grass, and the smolder of embers, Cooper rolls over, a throb going through his temples with the glare of sunshine and the thought, I did.

Whit’s already tossing hay bales down from the loft of the barn and the cows are milling around their pen and the pigs are kicking up a ruckus. Cooper presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. I did remember, he thinks, I did.

I

April

Present Day

Chapter One

“I’m here!” Cooper jumps down from his truck into the muddy sludge of the barnyard. Silence meets his shout and he cups his hands around his mouth to call, “Drew? Penny?”

But Two Pines Farm is quiet, even the cows in the barn only glancing his way as they chew over their cud. The frozen puddles don’t answer him and neither does the tractor, nor the stray chicken who clucks to herself as she strolls past the barn. Cooper tosses the truck door closed with a thump that echoes across the empty plane of crusty snow on the fields and the trees’ bare branches.

The only movement from the house is Sadie wagging her tail where she’s sprawled on the porch. It takes her a long, slow heave to get to her front feet, and longer still to drag her hips under her. Cooper jogs across the slush in the driveway before she can totter down the porch steps on her short legs, and bends to rub behind her drooping ears.