Page 58 of Indigo Ridge (The Edens 1)

Keeping busy.

Keeping my distance.

My skin craved the heat from hers. My fingers twitched, desperate to thread through her hair. My arms ached to hold her as she fell asleep.

I missed her blue eyes. I missed the freckles on her nose.

The nights had been brutal. Sleepless. But even the days were difficult. It was noon and all I wanted to do was turn my truck around, head into town and track her down.

I refused to let myself break.

The ranch and my family needed my full attention. There was no time for anything else.

It shouldn’t be like this. Never in my life had I struggled so much to let go of a woman. Especially when there’d been no commitment involved. Hell, I’d had girlfriends in college easier to erase from my mind, despite dating them for months before calling it quits.

So why the hell was Winslow Covington stuck in my head?

Her beauty was unmatched, her intelligence as attractive as her slender body. Her responsiveness in the bedroom and the way our bodies came together were like nothing I’d felt before.

This had to be a physical thing, right? Chemicals and hormones fucking with my rationality. One thought of her bare, creamy skin and I was hard again. Like I’d been for the past two days.

“Goddamn it,” I muttered.

“What?” Mateo asked from the passenger seat of my truck.

“Nothing.” I waved it off. “Thanks for coming out today.”

“Sure.” He shrugged those broad shoulders.

At twenty-two, he hadn’t quite filled out his frame. But he would. If he kept eating Mom’s cooking and working on the ranch like he had been this summer, breaking a sweat and testing those growing muscles, soon he’d be as big as me.

Of all my siblings, Mateo and I looked most alike. We all had the same brown hair and blue eyes, but Mateo and I shared the same nose, the small bump at the bridge. Like mine, his Adam’s apple was pronounced, a feature I hadn’t thought much about until Winn.

She loved to drag her tongue up my throat, especially while I was buried inside her body.

Fuck. Why couldn’t I stop thinking about her?

“What’s the plan for today?” Mateo propped a forearm on the open window. The smell of grass and earth and sunshine clung to the air.

There weren’t many places I’d rather be in life than rolling down a Montana dirt road in June.

Winslow’s bed was threatening to take that top spot.

“I’d like to check the fence along the road to Indigo Ridge. Conor started on it but . . . you know.” I hadn’t had the heart to send anyone back there since Lily Green.

“Yeah,” Mateo mumbled. “How’s he doing?”

“We’re working him hard.” On the other side of the ranch and as far from here as possible.

“He always liked Lily. Even after their breakup. I always thought they’d eventually get together.”

“I’m sorry.” I glanced over and gave him a small smile.

Lily had been a year younger than Mateo, but the size of Quincy High meant they would have known each other well.

“I hadn’t really talked to her in a while. But every time I bumped into her, she’d smile. Give me a hug. She was sweet like that. Like you were this long-lost friend she hadn’t seen in years. Not someone you saw once a month at the bank. I had no idea she was struggling. No one did.”

Because maybe she wasn’t.