Page 85 of Cattle Stop

Whit smiles back, just as small and tentative. “Exactly. Drew—” Whit smooths his shirt and takes a deep breath. “I tell you everything important, I promise.”

“Yeah.” Drew tucks his chin down toward his chest and nods at his feet. His expression is still a little too tight, shoulders too tense. Though when he looks up again, his smile is bigger. This’ll blow over, clearly. It apparently nearly already has. “Which bed is yours, anyway?”

Cooper’s stomach turns. Tells Drew everything. Of course. Everything except this, Whit cuddling Cooper close a minute ago and then a mad scramble to pretend they weren’t doing exactly that. Ouch, he thinks and tries to find the humor in it but feels only a dull ache.

“The one that doesn’t have an entire bale of hay in it,” Whit says. “Listen, Drew, we’re in this together, okay? You and me. You’re not on your own here. I want you to know that.”

Drew nods and that tight smile loosens a little bit, reaches his eyes even as he holds his arms out for Whit. They hug, clapping each other on the back. Cooper sniffs at a stray sock. He should do laundry. He should get the hell out of here, leave them to their moment. Their farm, more like.

The three of us, he could say if he wanted to butt in and be obnoxious. But that’s not right, is it? Two Pines Farm is theirs, and all this time Cooper’s only been visiting.

Drew and Whit step back, and the moment’s gone anyway, carried out under the creak of the hall floor as Drew walks away, a quickness to his steps that wasn’t there last night, and the words left behind on the squeak of the door, You and me in this together, that echo through Cooper’s head.

“You want a hand with milking?” Whit asks.

Cooper shoves the sock into his bag. His chest is cold, his hands a bit numb. “It’s your day off.”

His extra shirts, a pair of jeans he doesn’t wear that often because of how threadbare the knees are. He puts those in the duffle too.

“Are you okay?” Whit asks.

“Yeah.” Cooper stands, dusting his hands off. He wants to go and nurse his sharp pain in private. Grab Whit’s shoulders and shake him until something else falls out of his mouth, You too, it’s your farm too, you’re important also, Coop, of course, it’s always been you.

How dumb, to wish for something that’ll never happen.

“Someone cutting onions in here?” Cooper says. “You and Drew were so touching—especially the big hug. Now excuse me while I go shed a quiet tear with Buttercup.”

Outside, the day is already hot and muggy, the wind too weak to do more than stir hot air against Cooper’s cheeks. The cows take longer than it feels like they should to amble their way to the barn, and as they’re chewing over their breakfasts and the milk is chilling, Cooper strings up the last lines of fencing for the lane. The final fence posts’ll need to be pounded in before winter comes, but it’s good enough for now, stretching from the far fields up to the side of the barn. Cooper tosses open the barn door and one of the heifers pokes a curious nose out, sniffing at the sunshine.

“Come on,” Cooper says, clapping his hands. He grabs a bucket of grain and shakes it. “Buttercup, c’mon, my man. Don’t show me up.”

It’s not gonna work, he can hear in Whit’s voice, and no, he should really be doing this for the first time with Whit and Drew, and even Penny if she’s around. They’d help coax the stubborn and unsure herd away from their normal routine and through an entirely different morning. Teamwork makes the dream work, right? And here he is, facing down cows that won’t budge.

It’s fine. Fine. Cooper’s just in a crappy mood, and Whit tells Drew everything important, and besides, it’s too hot for this, sweat already dampening his shirt despite the early hour. His phone buzzes as he stands there, the back of his wrist pressed against his forehead. He thinks about just not answering, sitting down in the shade of the barn and feeding handfuls of grain to whichever cows want to come over and be his friend.

Terry’s name is on the screen. She’d understand if he didn’t answer. She’d leave a cheerful message for him to call her back, that she loves him, she’ll talk to him soon, and she hopes he has a great day.

Though maybe Cooper could use a little bit of that cheer now. He slides his thumb across the screen and says, “Ter, can I put you on speaker and have you help me give these cows a talking-to?”

“Cooper.”

“Mom?”

“I missed you yesterday. I was hoping you would stick around more of the afternoon.”

“Yeah, no, we had to get back.” He squints against the sunshine. He’s just so damn hot and the sun’s barely above the trees. “Though I did stick around for lunch.”

“I know. I had a meeting I couldn’t get out of.”

Cooper puffs up his cheeks on a breath, and then blows out hard enough it makes a crackling sound into the phone. That meeting was probably important. So damn important.

“You know what,” he says, “I think I’ve heard that one before.”

Silence.

Don’t talk to your mother like that, he can hear in Terry’s voice, that gentle firmness she’s taken with him only every so often in her years of playing referee between him and Mom.

Normally, thinking of Terry would temper Cooper’s ire, but today a fly buzzes too close to his face. He swats but misses, and sweat rolls down between his shoulder blades. “I’ve been back in New York since April,” Cooper says. “Haven’t exactly seen you.”