Cattle Stop by Kit Oliver

Chapter Nine

Morning dawnswith the glare of the summer sun, and it shines straight into Cooper’s headache. The room’s empty. And Whit’s bed is neatly made. Cooper shoves his hand into his hair, his head throbbing. He feels gross, all sticky and tacky and sweaty after a night of tossing and turning.

And he feels good. Amazingly, bone-deep good.

Well, that happened. Years of imagining, wishing, wondering and…yeah. He and Whit fucked.

And it was awesome.

It’s even better that Whit’s cleared the hell out of here so Cooper can sprawl on his tiny bed and spend a long, happy moment basking with no Whit staring at him.

Though fucking hell. He’s going to have to see Whit today…and Penny and Drew—with the knowledge that he so recently, so deliciously had Whit buried deep inside him. Awkward, he thinks and kicks at the blankets twisted over his feet. Let’s do it again, crosses his mind next, immediately on the heels of the deep churn of reservation in his stomach. But, no. Once was a bad idea. Twice is real fucking stupid.

Cooper tests the lights and with the power apparently back on, he showers slowly, touching his waist where Whit had gripped. But there’s no mark to trace over, no sign at all beyond the deep looseness in his muscles and the zip in his stomach. Which is good. One drunk tumble and back to normal.

When he turns off the shower, he listens for any sounds above the drip of water down the drain, straining to hear a shuffle from their room that would mean he’s not alone. Very normal, he tries to think and makes his way downstairs carefully, like the steps will creak any less if he moves slowly. In the kitchen, the screen door rattles and his heart jumps. But it’s just the wind banging the frame against the wood.

Cooper rubs his palm over his face. What the fuck did he think would happen if he and Whit ever finally fell into bed together? That Whit would just magically disappear into the ether, and they wouldn’t have to dance through an uncomfortable morning shuffle? Maybe Cooper can just slip away and live in the woods for the next forever, and he’ll never have to see Whit again. Or deal with every memory that flashes through his mind, of soft lips and a wet mouth and the strong touch of long fingers.

“Coop!” someone shouts from the barn. Cooper jumps.

Though it’s just Drew’s voice, thank God.

But still, even the sound of his own name makes Cooper want to duck behind the counter, where Sadie’s sprawled in a beam of sunshine. Maybe he can hide out with her for the day and not have to actually see Whit, let alone talk to him. Drew and Penny won’t mind stepping over a Cooper lump as he holes up next to the fridge, his face buried in Sadie’s fur, daydreaming over memories that by all rights he shouldn’t have.

Cause he…he regrets what they did. Or it was the best idea ever. He rubs at his forehead, where that twinge of too much beer is sitting like a dull, pulsing reminder that without that last drink and the blunders it brought, this morning might be like any other.

“Cooper!” Drew shouts again.

Cooper winces and opens the door to call back, “Yeah?”

“Where are the fucking cows?”

“The what?” Cooper shouts. God, his head hurts.

“The cows! Where are they?” Drew yells from the open door of the barn.

“In their pasture where we put them yesterday?” Cooper squints against the sunlight. “The barn? I don’t fucking know.”

Drew jogs toward him, his boots splashing through the puddles dotting the barnyard and his eyes too wide. “They’re not there.”

“They’re not where?” Cooper presses his palm to his forehead. “How the hell are you so goddamn chipper? You drank more than I did.”

“They got out. All of them, the calves too.” Drew sounds out of breath. Looks it too, skidding to a stop in front of Cooper. His cheeks are flushed and his hair’s a mess from the wind kicking off the fields. “They’re not in the back field. They must’ve got out.”

“Okay.”

“Cooper.” Drew grabs his shoulders. “Where the fuck are they?”

“We’ll…we’ll find them.” Cooper nods once, to prove his point. He’s a little nauseous. And he still feels good. Heavy with the release of a really good fuck. If he focuses, he can remember the feel of Whit inside of him.

“The storm spooked them, fuck, this is so much worse than just the heifers going for a damn stroll,” Drew says, holding Cooper way too tight. “Where’s Whit? We need Whit.”

Cooper jerks backward. “I don’t know. Why would I know?”

“Running, he’s probably out running.” Drew turns in a circle like the cows might be just behind him. “We’re—I’m going to take the truck. No, you should, or I can drive to the—”

“Drew.” Cooper closes the door and steers Drew back around again. “Go get a bucket of grain. And take a deep breath. They probably just went down the road again.”

“Grain,” Drew says, nodding quickly. He grabs Cooper’s arm again and shouts, “Whit!”

“Ow, fuck.” Cooper rubs at his ear with the heel of his hand.

He has to shield his eyes against the sun to see Whit. His stomach turns over. He needs another couple minutes to figure out this new dynamic between them. Or a day. A day would be good. A week, even. Maybe he’ll just jump in his truck, drive to Oregon, and come back in half a dozen years, and by then, he’ll know how to handle the fact that he finally, wonderfully, deliciously fucked Whit.

But Drew drags him forward. “Whit! The cows are out.”

Whit slows from his run into a walk. “I know.”

“Hey,” Cooper says. His face feels too warm. The sun, he wants to believe.

“You know?” Drew jerks Cooper another step toward Whit. “Did you see them?”

“Their tracks.” Whit wipes his palm over his forehead. His shirt is already clinging to his arms and shoulders, and the day hasn’t really started to heat up yet. Those shorts on him look…they look good. Even the mud splattered up his muscled, tanned calves catches Cooper’s eye.

Cooper turns and frowns at the fields, where the cows should be. He’s not going to stare at Whit. He’s going to be utterly, perfectly normal.

“I’ll get the truck.” Drew finally lets go of Cooper’s arm. “No, I’ll get the grain. You guys get the truck. Whit, take Coop.”

“No,” Cooper says.

“No?” Drew asks.

Cooper wipes his hands on his thighs. “I’m driving, I meant.”

“You’re not,” Whit says.

Cooper’s closer to the farm truck, and it’s only a handful of steps to beat Whit there. Go with Drew, he silently pleads, though Whit’s footsteps follow him.

“They went into the woods past Caroline’s fields.” Whit slips into the passenger seat and Cooper can smell his skin, the sweat from his run. It takes Cooper two tries to fit the key in the ignition.

He looks over his shoulder to back the truck up, even though he hardly needs to. He’s been reversing this truck out of this barnyard since before he was old enough to legally drive, but it keeps him from staring at that bead of sweat rolling down Whit’s neck.

“You forget to shut their damn gate?” Cooper asks.

Is this what he’s going to be like anytime he’s around Whit from now on? Trying not to stare at Whit’s hands out of the corners of his eyes, strong and broad, with veins running down the back and his skin the deep brown of summer? Anyone else and it’d be just another morning. Hell, anyone else, and Cooper would reach right over there and lay his hand on the muscles cording Whit’s thigh, feeling up sweaty shorts and warm skin.

“You were there yesterday, it was shut,” Whit says.

“I just know what a fan you are of gates.”

“And this isn’t possibly because of your cattle guards?”

Cattle stops, Cooper thinks a beat too late. He presses his lips tight. You were there too, he could snap back. Or something better, more heated. And witty. Though, there’s just the headache and now the heat of embarrassment flushing through him where those words should be. Of course, Whit can be as normal as he ever is. It was just a quick fuck for him. It’s Cooper who fell into an awful crush all those years ago, and here it is, rearing its ugly head and rising through him again today, fumbling his words and setting his heart pounding.

Whit clears his throat. “Sorry.”

“Huh?”

“I’m sure it was the storm.” Whit stares out the window, his cheek turned so that Cooper can’t see more of his face.

“Oh.” He’d kissed Whit, right on that mouth of his. “Okay.”

Whit points toward the side of the road, and sure enough, muddy hoofprints line the way down to Caroline’s land. Cooper parks the truck and follows Whit until the tracks duck into the woods. Cooper breaks into a slow jog, pushing aside tree branches and wading into the trees.

“C’mon, girls,” he shouts. But it never does work to call for the herd, unless he’s got a bucket of grain to shake and rattle, enticing them away from their adventure and the snacks they’ve found for themselves.

Behind him, Whit’s not even out of breath, though where mud falls in clumps from Cooper’s boots, it works into the mesh of Whit’s running shoes. Whit must be cold, with sweat dampening his shirt and now the coolness of the forest, all bare legs and arms.

No, Cooper can’t even begin to handle that sight. Of all times, now is when he most needs to be irritated with Whit, not mooning over his pecs. He needs that old, familiar barrier of annoyance between them, built of all the reasons Cooper shouldn’t ever really, actually like him.

“Any other sign of them?” Cooper walks quickly to try to leave Whit behind him. “For fuck’s sake, where the hell are they?”

“They’re cows, they can’t have gone far.”

Argumentative, Cooper thinks. That’s reason one.

“All it takes is one hungry coyote,” Cooper says.

“Well, we’ll make sure to tell them that next time.”

That acerbic dryness to Whit’s tone. How quickly he dismisses Cooper. Be more of a dick, help me out here, he thinks.

“Why don’t you just ask them to stay put, if you’re going to go talking to them?” Cooper asks, squinting into the forest so he doesn’t have to look over at Whit. “I’ll check over there.”

“Come with me,” Whit says.

Bossy as fuck, Cooper adds to his list. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Come with me, let’s go together. It’ll be easier if we do find them.”

Cooper can’t stop staring at Whit’s mouth. It was so soft last night. And he knows how to use it too. Cooper turns back to the patch of woods in front of him and stares at it as hard as he can. “Is that a good idea?”

“I wouldn’t have suggested it if it wasn’t.”

Too sure of himself. Can’t take input. Hates all of my plans. Cooper presses his lips together. Some time apart might settle the blush he’s sure is still sitting on his cheeks. Though dammit, Whit’s not wrong. One of them versus a herd of cows isn’t exactly a recipe for success.

Fuck him. Treating this morning like any other, when Cooper’s falling all over himself after a single drunk fumble.

He draws his shoulders up. “Got an idea of where to start?”

Sticks snap under Whit’s running shoes as he heads into the woods. He probably doesn’t even really know where he’s going. Still, Cooper follows him, pushing branches away from his face and sidestepping a puddle when Whit does. Like a fucking magnet, Cooper thinks as he trails after that broad back, as if he were in high school all over again, drawn toward Whit and fighting that damn pull every step of the way.

The only difference is that back then, he wasn’t old enough to drink himself into a mistake, so chasing cows wasn’t this nauseous, hungover drudgery, singed through with too many memories.

So much simpler back then, all of it. Before that kiss, he thinks, and his cheeks flush hot. But no, the farm really was more manageable. A smaller herd, when they made their escape and led everyone on a merry chase. And this patch of woods was thinner when Cooper started spending summers here, less overgrown. In the years since, the understory has filled in, and soon enough, it’ll be an impenetrable tangle of saplings and fallen logs that Whit and Cooper can’t move through at all.

If…if there’re even cows around here to chase when that happens.

Cooper rubs his fingers over his mouth. His throat hurts. He clears it, though the sound makes Whit turn around.

“Do you see them?”

“Oh,” Cooper says. “Oh, no, I just…”

“Their tracks?”

“I can’t imagine Drew really selling this place.”

“What?”

“Never mind.” That wasn’t what he’d meant to say. He didn’t mean to say anything at all. Silence was working so well for them, and now Whit’s staring as Cooper starts toward another patch of woods.

“Did Drew say something?” Whit asks.

“No, you were the one who told me—I have no idea, why would I know?”

“Because you have this whole plan.”

“The cheese? And Brad, I’m trying, but—”

“Oh God, Brad.” Whit touches his forehead. “Right. Brad.”

“What the hell do you not like about Brad?”

“I thought you said you were going to fix the farm.”

“I’m trying, I just—” Can’t hold a real conversation, Cooper adds to his list. Ass. “I was just thinking about it. And Drew. But whatever, forget it.”

Though Cooper can’t. He chews over the thought like a cow with a mouthful of cud, his headache churning it back around again as he tries to brush it away.

“Are you nervous?” Cooper finally asks.

“That we’re never going to find the cows?”

“That Drew really will sell the farm?”

Whit runs his fingers into his hair and stares off towards the woods as if the stand of trees will cough up a wayward cow. “It’s fucking terrifying. I’d have to find something new. And it’d suck. I’m not, whatever, like you. I’d be awful at it.”

You absolutely would be, Cooper nearly says. He can’t even imagine it, Whit stumbling through job applications and trying to fit his life into a new shape. A new place to live, new roommates, unless wherever he ends up, he and Penny keep living together.

Which hurts to think about, Drew off on his own, if he didn’t follow the two of them. Drew and Sadie in some sort of sad, gray apartment, only a tiny square of grass for Sadie to laze around on, and the fridge full of pre-sliced cheese from the grocery store.

Awful. All of it.

“We’ll find the cows. They’re probably already on their way back,” Cooper says. “And you’d be fine. You have your parents nearby, it’s not like it’d even be that far to move.”

But Whit just squints past Cooper’s shoulder, his eyes fixed on the forest.

Cooper turns to look, but there’s no herd of cows staring back at them, just the trees, leaves, and roots.

“They’re moving,” Whit says, his voice flat.

“The…cows?”

“My folks. Don’t tell Drew.”

“Don’t tell Drew what?”

“Travis, Caroline’s son, helped sell their house back in March. They’re closing soon and are moving to an apartment in Albany. And Drew doesn’t…I haven’t told him.”

“Okay.” Cooper lifts his hat off his head and scratches his hair. Already, it’s damp with sweat. “Are they okay?”

“They’re old.”

“Most parents are.”

“They’re older than—they had me when they were already old.” Whit pulls in a breath. “And this winter was a lot for them.”

“Why haven’t you told Drew?”

“He’d…” Whit shakes his head. “You’re right, the cows probably circled back at some point. We should check the south fields.”

“He’d what?”

“I just—I don’t want him to worry.”

“Why would he worry?”

Whit pushes on into the woods. “He won’t. Never mind.”

Cooper catches a branch that snaps backward with his forearm and chases after Whit. “You’re a real shitty liar.”

“I really think we should check the fields.”

“How about you tell me, and then I won’t have to get it out of Penny?” Cooper pushes through a shrubby bush and then pauses, his head cocked. “Are you—are you moving, too?”

“It’s none of your business,” Whit says, his voice hard, a coolness to it that replaces whatever soft trace of vulnerability had crept in.

“You are? You’re moving to Albany too? Even if the farm’s okay, you’re—”

“No.”

“But you’re thinking about it?”

“I told you I’m not.”

“But—”

“Stop,” Whit says.

Stop, Whit had said last night and crossed to the bed.

“Fine.” Cooper hops over a log and keeps his head down, fighting the blood that rushes to his face. Rushes other places too, though at least he’s in jeans, not running shorts like Whit is.

This’ll pass. Cooper’s anxiety, stirred up on a morning hangover, a search for the cows, and played out in spiraling ideas of the farm’s murky future. Whit’s peevishness will blow over, too. Eventually. They’ll go back to some sort of normal, all of this forgotten. They did once, tacit in their silent agreement to never mention kissing all those years ago. Cooper blows out a long sigh.

A snort echoes it. A tree branch waves slowly, stirred by the wind. Leaves rustle too, and there’s the wet huff of another puff of breath.

A calf emerges from the woods, legs stained with mud, head held up, nose outstretched.

“Buttercup,” Cooper says. “Hey there, buddy.”

Whit points. “There’s the rest of them too.”

“You weren’t in the fields, were you?” Cooper gives Buttercup’s neck a scratch. “You’re right here, we found you. No, I don’t have a bottle for you. You gotta wait till you’re back at the barn, after staging your jailbreak.”

Buttercup still nuzzles all over the pockets of Cooper’s pants, leaving wet marks from his nose and a swipe of saliva across his thigh when he licks him.

“Gross.” Cooper shoves at Buttercup’s head, though it’s far more of a pat than any real attempt to push him away. He taps out a text to Drew on his phone with his other hand, scratching behind Buttercup’s ears. “Keep your tongue to yourself, my man.”

It’s a quiet wait. And a long one. More cows gather around, one rubbing her back against a sapling until it threatens to bend under her enthusiasm, and two others gently sniffing Whit as if wondering what he’s doing out here, too, and how he happened across their patch of woods. The entire herd finally wanders into sight, chewing their cud and unconcerned with the wrench they’ve thrown in the farm’s morning. They blink sleepy brown eyes and shuffle to let the sun filtering through the trees warm their backs.

“I asked Drew for some extra hours,” Whit says.

Cooper turns, his hand hovering above Buttercup’s nose. “You did?”

“My folks sold their house for less than they wanted to and—and my dad had skin cancer. Last year.”

“Holy shit, is he okay?”

“He’s fine now, but the cost of the medical bills—”

“Drew said no? To you working more?”

Whit’s eyes cut toward him. “He didn’t have the money. He was already paying you.”

“Oh.” Cooper shifts his weight to his other foot. “I’m sorry.”

Whit pushes his mouth to the side. “It’s not your fault.”

“Still, I—” Don’t think of you as a person who might ever actually care about something was probably going to be the end of that sentence. “Um, that sucks, though.”

“I don’t want to bring it up with Drew again, he’s got enough on his plate. I’ll figure out how to help my parents at the end of the season.”

Buttercup nudges his nose into Cooper’s hand for another pat.

Slowly, Cooper scratches beneath his chin, still staring at Whit. “You’ve been working with Penny. Picking up shifts at Murry’s.”

“She told you?”

“Brad said—um, I heard, is all.”

“Right.” There’s that curtness again.

Cooper licks at his lips. “You don’t like Brad.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Well, at least it’s never a mystery with you,” Cooper says to lighten the heaviness on Whit’s face. Whit’s expression stays stony, though, and the joke falls flat. Still, Cooper tries again. “I always know exactly what you think of me too, that’s for sure.”

Whit huffs out a breath, the corners of his eyes creasing as he stares off toward the road. His mouth works once, a flex at the corner of his jaw, though he doesn’t say anything, and eventually the rumble of Drew’s Jeep cuts through the woods.

The cows’ ears prick at the rattle of grain in a bucket as Drew shakes it on the other side of the tree line. With a slow lope that turns into a jog, they’re off, the entire herd crashing through the underbrush and weaving through trees to try to get a nibble of that grain.

“Stampede,” Cooper mutters, following after the stragglers.

The more dominant cows in the herd, the ladies who are the oldest and Drew’s worked with the longest, will make it to Drew first to get their handful of grain, and that’ll be enough to lead them back to the barn with a promise of more where that came from.

Sure enough, Drew’s Jeep sits empty, idling at the edge of the road when Cooper and Whit reach it. The driver’s door hangs open and hoof tracks lead down the road that curves eventually into the barnyard. Drew’ll be jogging ahead of them now, calling to the girls to follow him. Cooper lifts himself into the driver’s seat as Whit pops open the passenger door and climbs in after him.

Halfway back, Cooper pulls to the side of the road and parks in the same spot where they’d parked the truck yesterday. “It wasn’t the cattle stop,” Cooper says as he jumps out of the Jeep.

There’s a tree down, the fence snapped under it, and perfect impressions of hooves in the mud on either side. It’ll be good firewood at least, a huge oak that apparently couldn’t stand up to last night’s storm. Cooper pushes at the strands of the barbed wire fence with the toe of his boot and sighs. One more thing to fix. Don’t tell Drew indeed, or hell if they ever get him back to that loose, good mood he was in last night.

“We can get this restrung,” Whit says, pulling at a length of wire like he can just brush the branches and shattered trunk aside.

“We’ve got to get the tree cleaned up first,” Cooper says.

Whit’s arm flexes as he tugs and Cooper tries to ignore the heat that immediately builds under his skin. He needs to find some chill. Just like Whit, who’s breezily moving on as if last night wasn’t a big deal at all.

It was just sex.

With Whit.

Holy hell, Cooper thinks, his memories of warm, smooth skin mixing with the thread of disbelief still coursing through him.

“We can string the fence over it.” Whit sets his foot on top of the trunk, his running shoes still coated with mud. Trust Whit to want to work on this, rather than return to the house to change first, or even get the farm truck back from Caroline’s. “It’s low enough, it’ll work, and we can leave the chainsawing until the winter.”

“Yeah, that’ll be great until a cow decides to just walk up the trunk, step over your brilliant fencing plan, and stage an escape, round two.”

“They’re not acrobats.” Whit kneels to pick up the line of broken fence.

“Oh, right, they’re cows.” Cooper lifts his eyes to the sky. He hates how Whit’s shirt stretches over his back and hates all the more that he wants to stare at it, those dips of muscle the damp fabric clings to. “You know so much about farming, it’s incredible.”

Whit doesn’t bother to say anything, which is typical, his ping-ponging between acerbic cuts and steely silence. Whit stares at the fence, not even looking at Cooper, just studying his lap. Of course he is, ’cause he’s not spending all morning mooning over Cooper, because he’s able to keep his head on straight, which is only more irritating.

“Any other stupendous insights to share with the group?” Cooper asks.

“My, ah, hand.”

Cooper jogs over to him. Whit cups his right hand in the palm of his left, holding both away from his body. There’s blood on the grass. And a drop of it on Whit’s shorts, right in the middle of his thigh. It coats his fingers too, shiny and pulsing slowly from a gash across the base of his thumb.

“Whit,” Cooper breathes.

“I’m fine.” Whit presses with his other thumb, but the blood just seeps around the pressure, the cut too wide.

“You’re not.” Cooper tugs at his arm. There’s the shine of blood on a rough, sharp spur of barbed wire next to Whit’s knee. “C’mon.”

Cooper grabs a wad of napkins in a cupholder in the Jeep. They’re none too clean, but neither is the hand Whit’s still pressing to the cut. Cooper cups Whit’s wrist and nudges his thumb to the side, pressing hard. “Hurts?” Cooper asks.

“I’m fine.”

“Yeah, you look fine.” Cooper shouldn’t be holding him like that. He steps backward, and slowly, Whit curls his own fingers over the wad of napkin. “Try to keep your blood inside you, where it belongs.”

“If only you’d told me earlier.” Whit wipes his other palm on his shorts, then reaches for the tangle of fencing.

“What the hell?” Cooper grabs his wrist again. Whit’s so strong, tugging back against Cooper’s grip. Cooper learned that well enough last night, didn’t he? His cheeks flush hot. “Are you trying to cut both hands, you genius?”

“How are we going to put the cows back out if this isn’t fixed?”

“The only thing you’re doing is going to the hospital.”

“I’m fixing the fence, my hand is fine.”

“We have, I don’t know, dozens of other acres of pastures the cows can eat.”

“We’re about to cut it for hay.”

“You need stitches. A lot of them. And a workers comp form and a little thing called a tetanus booster. Get in the Jeep.”

Whit inhales through his nose. “I’m fine.”

“Oh Lord, I’m not going to argue with you.”

Whit’s eyebrow arches. “That would certainly be a first.”

“Funny.” Cooper gives Whit a push away from the fence.

Cooper parks next to the barn and a cow pokes her head out like she’s been there the whole time. Drew touches her nose as he waves, then stops short at the sight of Whit’s bloody hands held out the window of the Jeep.

“Is this what happens when I leave you two alone for too long?” Drew asks.

No, what happens is the clusterfuck of last night, Cooper doesn’t say. He jumps down from the driver’s seat. “Whit was just being a dummy. I’m surprised he even has any fingers left. I gotta grab my wallet, I’ll take him to the hospital.”

“I don’t need to go to the hospital,” Whit says.

“Just gonna wipe it off on Drew’s seats?” Cooper asks.

“Oh wow,” Drew says, leaning through the open driver’s door to get a look at Whit’s hand. “Now, that’s a cut. Coop, I’ll take him.”

“I got it, you have all that cheese.”

“It’s no problem.” Drew glances over his shoulder and catches Cooper’s eye with a smile and a lift of his eyebrows. You don’t want to be stuck with Whit all day, Drew might as well say out loud.

Right. Of course. It’d be a disaster, sitting with Whit in a hospital waiting room for hours on end.

The Jeep rattles off down the driveway in a crunch of gravel. Already, Drew and Whit are talking, silhouetted against the day’s sunshine. Drew laughs and the Jeep turns a corner, and Cooper works his finger into a hole at the bottom of his pocket. From her spot in front of the barn, Sadie yawns and stretches all four legs, then slumps back onto her side. The cows, he reminds himself, and he doesn’t watch the last glimpse of the Jeep or the billow of dust kicked up behind it.

I wanted to go with him. Cooper sucks in a breath as he spins the handle of the spigot, like it’ll force the water to flow any faster. The thought is as crystal clear as the sun streaming in the barn, dust motes playing in the beams like flecks of gold. He wants to spend today with Whit. All that time to hang out together, to chat and squabble, and drink in the lines of Whit’s profile. To hear more about Whit’s parents and chase after that soft note in his voice. That tenderness, that sweetness Whit normally holds at bay around Cooper. It’s always been there, just reserved for Penny and Drew, but now that Cooper’s gotten a taste—

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He stares at the bright square of barnyard through the barn door and pulls a breath in, a burn of want rushing up his throat. Idle hours with nothing much to talk about, no distractions, no work, no Penny and Drew. Just him and Whit and hours to while away—no. No, no, no.

Fucking absurd. It would be a drag to be stuck with Whit today, not any sort of fun. Absolutely awful to spend time with, he should add as the final point to his list, but he feels for that edge of irritation and all that sits there is the soft ache he knew so well in high school. It comes crashing through him now, a soft, delicate part of himself echoing that fragile tenor in Whit’s voice.

Oh no. He doesn’t want to fucking care.

Water dribbles over his boots. From the trough. The cows’ trough is overflowing right onto his feet. He pulls the hose back and fumbles to turn it off.

In the kitchen, he scalds his tongue on too-hot coffee.

“You okay?” Penny asks, tying her hair up in a bun as she comes in. “What was all the shouting?”

“Cows got out.”

“Again?” Penny pours herself a cup of coffee, picks up Cooper’s toast, and bites off the corner.

He shoves the plate toward her. “You can have it.”

“I was just messing with you.”

“I’m not hungry.”

You okay with the farm?Drew texts as Cooper sips at his coffee. Seems like this’ll take a while.

Cooper could text back that he’s leaving. That it’s suddenly, unexpectedly time for him to clear out for Oregon. Be gone by the time Drew and Whit get back. Or at least have his truck packed and go through a quick, cursory round of goodbyes. Except he doesn’t really want to leave. Not with that aching pull Whit yields over him.

He tips his head back and blows out a breath. His crush on Whit sits at the edges of his thoughts, all consuming.

“Coop?” Penny asks.

“Yeah, I’m good.”

I’m on it, he texts back to Drew.

He’s got to get his shit together. And then he’ll leave. See? he would ask if Whit were there. He can make a goddamn plan. One that doesn’t involve hanging out with Whit all day and giving into that infatuation that’s plagued him for so long.

Fuck, he thinks again. He swallows another drink of coffee, like the heat will help cauterize the soreness of the scab that gets picked away every time he spends too long with Whit, when he shouldn’t have messed with that old wound in the first place.