And my brain instantly freezes.
How am I doing?
Horrible. Sad. Sick to my stomach with grief.
But I know enough about flirting to know that I can’t say any of those things. So instead I say, “Uh, fine. You know, not the best but uh, fine. Fine-ish. A-okay.”
“Okay,” Will says slowly, clearly unsure of why I came over here in the first place. Beside him Garret has completely tuned out of the conversation and is glued to his phone.
“How are you doing?” I manage to get out.
“Great, actually. Why don’t you let me buy you a drink?” Will asks.
My brain freezes again. Buying me a drink means he actually wants to talk to me for longer. It means my pathetic attempts at flirting are working. But instead of feeling proud of myself for successfully approaching a man, a rising tide of panic wells inside of me instead.
I realize that I really,reallydon’t want to flirt with Will.
“I have to go,” I mumble, and then I high-tail it out of there, and head back to where Jenny is sitting.
“Well?” she says as I sit down and slump in my seat.
“He wanted to buy me a drink, but I just—I just think it’s too soon. I’ll practice flirting with men next month or something.”
As if a month will be long enough to get over Nathan fucking Booth. I bite back a manic laugh at the idea. I’m sure I’ll be ninety and in a nursing home and I’ll still remember the press of his hips against mine. The brush of his lips against my temple.
I’m so deeply fucked.
Jenny swirls her drink around and stares at it pensively. “Can you at least admit to me that letting Nate go like this really isn’t that much easier?” she asks after a beat. “Sure, you’re less attached, but you’re still sad, and Nate’s still gone. You’ve lost him already anyways.”
I don’t say anything, because my mind catches on the phraseless attached.If this is what being less attached to Nathan Booth feels like, then I definitely don’t want to know what it’s like to fall even harder for him.
“I’ll take some of that liquid courage now,” I say, and Jenny silently passes me a shot.
It burns on the way down and doesn’t make me feel a damn bit better.
40
NATHAN
“If I’d knownyou were going to be in a pissy mood the entire day, I wouldn’t have taken you up on your offer to help,” Cassandra says.
We’re in the calving barn, doing some maintenance on it and making sure it’s ready for calving season. Cassandra wants to install some type of heating system and we’ve been talking through the options all morning. Well, she’s been talking, and I’ve been giving her one-word answers, like an asshole.
“Well, Riley and Cameron were busy so I’m all you got. Are we done here?”
My older sister whirls around to face me and hits me with her “I’m basically your mom” stare.
“Nathan Sebastian Booth, you tell me what the deal is right now, or I’m not letting you stay at the ranch another night.”
“You can’t kick me out of my childhood home, Cass. And don’t use my middle name.”
“Watch me.”
I sigh and scrub my hand across my face. It’s been about a week since I left Star Mountain, and while I’ve trained with Bally a few times at a local barn, I’ve mostly just been sitting around the ranch, alternating between acting like a dick to my siblingsand moping. It hasn’t made me feel any better, but I can’t seem to stop. I was itching for something to do when I woke up this morning, which is why I told Cass I’d help her around the ranch today. I thought work would be a distraction, but I’ve been thinking about Candice all day regardless of the task at hand.
“The deal is that I have to compete again in a week and I’m nowhere near ready. The deal is that my career hangs by a thread and depends on a magazine article.”
Cass just rolls her eyes and shakes her head. “You’re such a drama queen, Nate. You can still win with a bad reputation.”
