Reagan
I wake up to a tinny, clanking sound. I sit up, sticky where I slept against Pete’s shoulder. We must have sweated together, our skin pressed close. And I might have drooled on him a little bit, too. Yuck. I wipe the side of my mouth and sit up. Pete stirs under me and then freezes. He lifts his head and looks around. He groans and falls back against the blanket. “Shit, I’m f*cked,” he grunts.
“You better not have been,” my dad calls out. He clanks the lid of the feed bucket as he scoops out sweet feed for the horses. Link helps him, and Dad’s making a lot more noise than Link is.
I close my eyes. Dad’s mad. I just slept in the barn with Pete. And he knows it. “Oh shit,” I say.
“Oh shit,” Link parrots.
Pete closes his eyes as he grins. “You better stop while you’re ahead,” he whispers with a laugh.
“Good morning, Pete,” Dad says, faking joviality as he walks by us carrying buckets. I start to sit up, but as I pull the blanket from Pete, I realize he still doesn’t have a shirt on. He took it off last night so I could explore his ink. This looks really bad.
“Where’s your shirt?” I whisper. I look around in the lump of blankets and don’t see it.
“Oh shit,” Link says again. He pops his head up beside mine and holds up Pete’s blue T-shirt.
“Oh, blue shirt,” Pete says.
“Oh, blue shirt,” Link parrots.
Pete takes it and pulls it over his head. He reaches out to ruffle Link’s hair, but Link steps to the side. “At least he’s not saying shit anymore,” Pete says.
“Shit,” Link says.
I groan and run a hand through my hair.
“Lincoln!” Dad barks. “Bring me that bucket.”
“Bring me the bucket,” Link says. He scampers off to get Dad’s bucket.
“Good morning,” Pete says quietly. He turns to drop his feet to the floor and stands up, stretching tall. He shows a small strip of his abs, and I want to lean forward and lick him. God, where did that come from?
“Morning,” I mutter. I lick my lips.
“Stop looking at me like that,” Pete whispers.
“Like what?” I whisper back. But a grin tugs at the corners of my lips. I can’t help it.
“Like you want lick me like a lollipop,” he says. He adjusts the front of his pants, and I can’t help but notice the bulge there. “Stop looking at it,” he hisses.
I look for my dad, but he’s gone outside the barn. “I don’t even know what I’m looking at!” I complain. Pete takes my hand and presses my fingertips against the bulge of his erection. He gasps in a breath as my fingertips explore the ridges of him. “Reagan,” he groans. He turns his hip and puts up a knee to block me. “Would you stop it? I’d like to walk out of here sometime today.”
“Licking it like it’s a lollipop?” I ask, unable to get the idea out of my head. “You can do that?”
He grins and scratches the back of his head. “Well, I can’t. But you could.” His voice is gravely and kind of nasally since he just woke up. “Never mind,” he says. He pulls me to my feet and presses a quick kiss to my lips.
“Uh,” I say, brushing him away. “Morning breath.”
“I don’t care,” he says, leaning to kiss me quickly. I give him my cheek. “Give it to me,” he says. I pucker my lips and touch his quickly, careful not to breathe on him. “That’s better,” he croons. “Should I go talk to your dad?” he asks.
It’s really sweet that he would even think of that. “I doubt that’s a good idea.”
I hear a horse blow, and I remember the whole reason why we slept in the barn in the first place. I step onto a bale of hay and look down at Tequila. She’s on her feet and apparently, I was wrong. False alarm on the foaling.
Pete drops an arm around my shoulders and pulls me close to him. Dad bursts back into the barn with the slam of a door. I jump. Pete doesn’t let me go.
“Pete, don’t you have somewhere to be?” Dad asks. “Like in your own cabin in your own bed?”
Pete nods his head. “Yes, sir,” he says. He turns to me. “I’ll see you later?”
I nod. My belly does a little flippy-floppy thing, and he touches his lips to mine.
“See you later, Mr. Caster,” he calls.
“Not if I see you first,” Dad calls back.
Dad slams around the barn for a few more minutes while I feed Tequila a carrot. I totally missed the birth. I’m so relieved that things went well.
“Have a nice night?” Dad barks. He doesn’t look up from whatever he’s doing.
I smile. My belly drops down toward my toes at the thought of it. “I did, actually.”
“Reagan,” Dad breathes.
“Yes, Dad?” I say sweetly. He’s mad, but I can’t make him un-mad. And I probably deserve it for spending the whole night in the barn with Pete.
“Don’t make me have to kill that boy,” Dad warns.
“Yes, sir,” I say, dipping my head so he won’t see my smile. “You should know that we didn’t do anything wrong, though. He was a perfect gentleman. He just…” I square my shoulders. “He just held me.”
Dad draws in a quick breath. I don’t let anyone touch me, and Dad knows it. So in this situation, I might as well have said, “he just f*cked me all night long.” The level of intimacy is about the same in my dad’s mind. I’m sure of it. “All right,” he mutters. He throws hay to the horses, one flake at a time.
“Dad,” I call out. He stops and looks up at me. “Is it okay that I might be falling in love with him?”
Dad’s eyes open wide, and he blows out a breath. “Reagan,” he says quietly. “You should go and talk to your mother about this.”
“Okay…” I say.
“If you want to talk about the best way to knee him in the nuts,” he says, pointing to his chest, “then I’m your guy. But if you want to talk about feelings and emotions and birth control and stuff, go talk to your mother.”
“How did you just jump from feelings to birth control?” I have to ask.
“Because that’s what happens, Reagan. You jump from strong feelings to birth control. It’s the natural order of things for men.” He takes off his cap and runs a hand through is hair. “I was a twenty-one-year-old man once myself.”
“That’s when you met Mom,” I say, and I start to smile. He looks uncomfortable. So I have to press it. “So you and Mom went from strong feelings to birth control?” I ask. I snap my fingers. “Like that?”
“Nope,” he says, stopping to stare into my eyes. “How do you think we got you?” He grins this time. He nods his head toward the house. “Go talk to your mother.”
“TMI, Dad,” I sing. “TMI!” I turn to walk toward the house.
“Reagan!” Dad calls. I turn to face him. “Pete’s a good guy,” he says. “But he’s still a guy.”
“We’re taking things slow, Dad,” I say. Heat floods my face.
“Mmm hmm,” he hums. He goes back to work.
“Take it slow,” Link says.
“I love you, Link,” I call.
“I love you, too,” he calls back.
I walk into the back door and find my mom pouring a cup of coffee. “Pete still alive?” she asks me as she goes to sit down at the table.
“For now.” I sigh. “We fell asleep. Nothing happened, I swear.” Well, not nothing. But we didn’t do anything, really. Nothing that didn’t rock my world as I know it.
“That’s why you’re glowing?” she asks. “Because nothing happened?” She pats the table next to her. “Come sit,” she says.
“Mom,” I grouse, sounding like a child, I know.
“Sit,” she says more forcefully. I drop into a chair.
“Was he kind?” she asks.
I nod.
“Was he considerate?”
I nod and draw my lower lip between my teeth as I fight a smile.
“Was he careful?” She arches her brow at the last question.
“God, Mom,” I complain. “We didn’t do anything. He just kissed me.”
“I’ll make an appointment with my gynecologist if you want birth control,” she says. She looks at me.
I find myself nodding my head, and Mom smiles and pats my hand. “Good girl,” she says on a sigh.