The Cowboy's Sweetheart

“Right.” He slid his hand down her back. “I’ll be good. So, are you okay?”

“I’m good. I’m going back inside.” She took a step past him, but he caught her hand and held her next to him.

“Andie, I don’t want to lose my best friend. I’m sorry for that night. I’m sorry that I didn’t walk away…before. And I’m sorry I walked away afterward.”

She didn’t look at him. He looked down, at the ground she was staring at—at dandelions peeking up through the gravel and a few pieces of broken glass. He touched her cheek and ran his finger down to her chin, lifting her face so she had to look at him.

“I’m sorry, too,” she whispered. “I just don’t know how to go back. We’ve always kept the line between us, Ryder. This is why.”

“We don’t have to stop being friends,” he insisted, hoping he didn’t sound like a kid.

“No, we don’t. But you have to accept that things have changed.”

“Okay, things have changed.” More than things. She had changed. He could see it in her eyes in the way she smiled as she turned and walked away, back into the Mad Cow.

A crazy thought, that he had changed, too. He brushed it off and followed her into the diner. He hadn’t changed at all. He still wanted the same things he’d always wanted. Some things weren’t meant to be domesticated, like raccoons, foxes…and him.

When they got home, Andie changed into jeans and a T-shirt and headed for the barn. She was brushing Babe, her old mare, when Etta walked through the double doors at the end of the building.

“What’s going on with you?” Etta, arm’s crossed, stood with the sun to her back, her face in shadows.

The barn cat wandered in and Etta stepped away from the feline.

“There’s nothing wrong.” Andie brushed the horse’s rump and the bay mare twitched her dark tail and stomped a fly away from her leg. “Okay, something is wrong. Caroline is here. I don’t know what she wants from me. I don’t know why she expects to walk into my life and have me happy to be graced with her presence.”

“She doesn’t expect that.”

Andie stopped brushing and turned. “So now you’re on her side.”

“Don’t sound like a five-year-old. I’m not on her side. I’m on your side. I want you to forgive her. I want you to have her in your life. I have to forgive her, too. She broke my son’s heart. She broke your heart.”

Andie shook off the anger. Her heart hadn’t been broken, not by Caroline or anyone else.

“I’m fine.” She brushed Babe’s neck and the mare leaned toward her, her eyes closing slightly.

“You’re not fine. And this isn’t about Caroline, it’s about you and Ryder. What happened?”

“Nothing. Or at least nothing a little time won’t take care of.”

Etta walked closer. “I guess it’s too late for the talk that we should have had fifteen years ago,” she said with a sigh.

Andie swallowed and nodded. And the words freed the tears that had been hovering. “Too late.”

“It’s okay.” Etta stepped closer, her arm going around Andie’s waist.

“No, it isn’t. I messed up. I really messed up. This is something I can’t take back.”

“So you went to church?”

“Not just because of this. I went because I had to go. As much as I’ve always claimed I was strong, every time I was at the end of my rope, it was God that I turned to. I’ve always prayed. And that Sunday morning, I wanted to be in church.”

“Andie, did you use…”

Andie’s face flamed and she shook her head.

“Do you think you might be…”

They were playing fill-in-the-blank. Andie wanted option C, not A. She wanted the answer to be sick with a stomach virus. They didn’t want to say the hard words, or face the difficult answers. She wasn’t a fifteen-year-old kid. Funny, but until now she had controlled herself. She hadn’t made these choices. She hadn’t gotten herself into a situation like this.

She was trying to connect it all: her mistake, her relationship with God, and her friendship with Ryder. How could she put it all together and make it okay?

“Maybe it’s a virus. Joy’s kids had a stomach virus.”

“It could be.” Etta patted her back. “It really could be.”

And then a truck turned into the drive. Ryder’s truck. And he was pulling a trailer. Andie closed her eyes and Etta hugged her close.

“You’re going to have to tell him.”

“I don’t know anything, not yet. I don’t know if I can face this. I’m trying so hard to get my act together and I can’t pull Ryder into this.”

“Soon.” Etta kissed her cheek.

“When I know for sure.”

Ryder was out of his truck. And he was dressed for roping, in his faded jeans, a black T-shirt and nearly worn-out roper boots.

“You going with me?” He tossed the question before he reached the barn. His grin was big, and he was acting as if there was nothing wrong between them. Andie wished she could do the same.

“I don’t know.”

Etta’s brows went up and she shrugged. “I’m going in the house. I have a roast on and it needs potatoes.”

Andie watched her grandmother walk away and then she turned her attention back to Ryder. He scratched his chin and waited. And she didn’t know what he wanted to hear.

“Come on, Andie, we’ve always roped on Sunday evenings.”

It was what they’d done, as best friends. And they hadn’t minded separating from time to time. She’d go out with James or one of the other guys. She’d watch, without jealousy, when he helped Vicki Summers into his truck. No jealousy at all.

Because they’d been best friends.

But today nausea rolled in her stomach and she couldn’t think about leaving with him, or him leaving with Vicki afterward. And that wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen.

“I can’t go, not tonight.”

“I don’t want to lose you.” He took off his white cowboy hat and held it at his side. “I wish we could go back and…”

“Think a little more clearly? Take time to breathe deep and walk away?” She shook her head. “We can’t. We made a choice and now we have the consequences of that choice.”