Fuck, the memories we’d made that summer.
“What did you just say?” Matty’s growl was quiet and full of rage.
“Nothing.” I turned slowly, wiping my hands on my dirty jeans. “Am I done for the day, or is there something else you want?”
I bit my tongue as a memory punched me in the chest of asking him that same question before. He’d pushed me up against the wall of an empty stall and taken the something else he wanted.
As a bi man, I’d always leaned heavily toward women. I’d always topped the men I’d been with before Matty. But somehow Matty could get the Pope to spread his legs for him and thank him for fucking him all in the same breath.
The fact that he was younger had niggled at me at first, but Matty had pursued me hard, leaving me defenseless that summer of us. Our passion hadn’t fizzled out. It had blazed too hot, too fast, and in the end, we got burned trying to hold on to something that never stood a chance. We were both too different.
He’d practically swept me off my fucking feet, and I’d blown it.
“You came in an hour late, and you want to fuck off already?”
“Yeah, my kid wasn’t feeling too well this morning. Gray said it was okay.”
More like my wife had been hungover from last night, and I’d had to find someone who could babysit for me.
Matty flinched, and his gaze faltered like it always did when I mentioned my daughter. I got the sense that he resented her existence.
Last Christmas, when I brought her to the ranch for the usual family potluck, everyone had fawned over her, which only made it obvious how much Matty went out of his wayto avoid us. By the end of the night, when my wife eventually showed up drunk, he’d looked disgusted.
When Matty accosted me in private and snapped that I should have never brought her here, I couldn’t decide if he meant my wife or my daughter. I’d taken it to mean both and never brought them back to the ranch for any of the family events Gray put on.
“Given I’m your line manager, you should have reported your lateness to me. Don’t let it happen again, Hudson. And you’re staying behind today to give back the hour.”
“Like hell I am.”
“Are you saying you’re not going to do it?”
He was itching to fire me, wasn’t he? But I needed this job. I wasn’t qualified to do anything. That summer, Gray had taken a chance on me with nothing but my word that I would work hard.
“I gave back the time by not taking lunch.” I scowled at him, standing my ground. Matty was stubborn, but so was I. How else did I end up marrying the town’s mattress, intent on making a family out of us, even though I knew the relationship never stood a chance?
“I saw you having lunch.”
“You saw me eating a friggin’ sandwich.”
“Sounds like lunch to me.”
“You got a real charming way of saying ‘thank you for fixing the fence’ you should have mended when you went riding Junebug instead.”
“I’d thank you if you’d done those fences right the first time, so they didn’t need fixing.”
The air between us sparked immediate, electric. Matty squared up in front of me, chest heaving like he’d been looking for a reason all day to fight with me.
I gave him one.
“You ever try not being a dick for five minutes straight?”
“I’ll be a dick if it gets the work done. We’re not paying you to do a half-assed job.”
We were toe to toe now. Close enough that I could see the flecks of gold in his eyes, the way his pulse jumped at his throat, the faint scrape of stubble on his jaw. That stubble usually left the inside of my cheeks prickled just right.
He smelled like sweat, sun, and hay dust. Familiar. Unavoidable.
Matty stepped in even closer, almost nose to nose. “You got something you wanna say to me, Granger? If not, get back to fucking work.”
