13. Cole

Chapter 13

Cole

H orse riding was not my strongest ability.

I clung to the horn of the saddle with a death grip, the reins in my free hand, doing my best to remember the leg motions for controlling the supposedly loving horse beneath me, Darcy. He didn't seem to like me very much.

Dana, Lottie, and her husband, Hunter, all seemed to ride as if they'd come out of the womb on the back of a foal. I'd told Lottie at least ten times that I'd rather stay on my own two feet, but apparently, I would be ruining the fun if I did that.

Dana shot past me at lightning speed, the widest smile across her lips as her long hair flowed in the breeze. It startled Darcy enough to whinny and raise his hooves. I held on for dear life, throwing myself forward and wrapping an arm around his neck, shooting a death glare at Dana as she laughed ahead of me.

"Struggling a bit?" she called back to me, as Darcy finally began to calm down."You scared him!" I shouted back. The reins shifted as the horse shook his head in frustration at my attempt to squeeze my thighs.

Lottie and Hunter raced past Dana, shouting profanities at each other as they tried to gain the upper hand, and Dana chuckled at them. I wished I were more practiced at riding so I could join in the childish behavior with the rest of them, but no matter how many lessons I took, I'd never quite gotten the hang of it.

Dana looked far too confident as she sat up straight and directed her horse toward me, approaching slowly enough so Darcy didn't get spooked again. Her smile morphed into something a little more sinister. "Feeling left out, pretty boy?"

A chuckle bubbled up my throat. "Surprisingly, no, not too much," I admitted. Darcy shifted forward and turned, saddling up next to Dana's horse. Our knees brushed against each other. "It's nice seeing Lottie and Hunter this happy after everything they went through. I don't mind your smugness, either."

Something akin to surprise flashed briefly in her eyes before her little smirk returned. "Good. Don't want you to be pouting the whole way back to the stable."

Before I could blink, she'd taken off ahead of me, heading back toward the barn outside of Lottie's late father's house, leaving me and Darcy to figure it out on our own.

————

The moment my feet hit the ground, Lottie was shoving a brush into my chest. "You're not putting him away dirty," she said, her shit-eating grin far too wide for comfort.

Dana grumbled in the stall to my left, her horse already cleared of gear but her brush half tangled in the knots.

"Don't tell me you've lost your touch already," Lottie joked.

"You need new brushes," Dana said, her boot colliding with the bucket at her feet as she kicked it beneath her horse's head. He happily drank from it. "This one's old as shit."

"Can you two try not to bicker?" Hunter grunted, his hands wrapped tight around the plastic handles of the hay bale he carried. He'd buzzed his hair since I last saw him, and every time he turned the corner, I'd had to do a double take. We'd met a handful of times before he and Lottie got together at various events hosted by her father, who had been a business mentor to both of us.

"When's your mom dropping off Brody?" Lottie asked, avoiding his comment entirely.

He dropped the hay bale at her feet and sliced the plastic straps with a box cutter. He checked his watch, squinting through the dripping sweat. "About thirty minutes or so."

The time passed fairly quickly with all of us focused on our assigned tasks. I brushed down Darcy with a little help from Dana, and with every soothing stroke, he seemed to grow a little more fond of me. I almost wished we'd started with this; maybe it would have given me a moment to actually bond with the massive horse before me.

I actually felt like this had been good for me.

We made our way into the house together, Dana walking beside me as Lottie walked backward next to Hunter, rambling on about all the improvements they'd made to the house since I'd last been here. It was apparent as soon as we stepped through the sliding glass door—all-new hardwood flooring, a remodeled kitchen that combined modern with homey, brand new carpets spread throughout the living room and entry area. The walls had been repainted a dusky green, and altogether it formed a cohesive, farm-style house that looked like it had been plucked from a magazine. Brody's old recliner still sat in the living room, standing out like a sore thumb, and I assumed she didn't want to get rid of her dad's favorite spot.

Hunter started prepping lunch as Lottie, Dana, and I sat around the kitchen island. I always looked forward to Hunter's cooking—he was definitely meant to be a chef in another life.

"How's the brewery?" Hunter asked, his attention focused wholly on the absurdly sharp knife slicing into vegetables beneath him.

"Good. We've got a new lineup coming out soon," I said. I wasn't sure if they'd told Dana anything about my rehab stint or if they assumed I had, and a little piece at the back of my mind kept worrying about it with every word spoken. "You guys will have to come to the launch party."

Lottie beamed at me as she slid her fingers across the cutting board and stole a baby carrot. "I'd love that."

She and Dana disappeared around the corner when the doorbell rang a few moments later, likely fawning over their son. As much as I was anxious to meet him, I kept myself calm, hanging back with Hunter while he cooked something on the stove that smelled incredible. "I haven't told Lottie about rehab yet," I said quietly, hoping he'd be able to hear me. "Please don't bring it up."

He shook his head, jokingly pointing his knife at me. "Do you honestly think I'd just casually ask you about that in front of her? It's not my place to do so."

"I just didn't want you to think I'd already told her and mention it."

"I won't, man," he said, his lips forming a straight line as he leaned back against the counter, his eyes half on the food and half on me. "You know, we're thinking of forming a new section of the company."

I snorted. "Does the Harris Agricultural Empire really need another venture?"

"I didn't choose the name, okay?" he laughed. "It's still agriculture, to be fair. We've got so much farmland and so many contracted farmers, I figured, hey—why not branch into fresh produce? We could sell to local businesses, give them better, organic options for their restaurants and such."

Fresh produce . That wasn't a bad idea at all. "We'd happily add you to the suppliers list at the brewery," I grinned. "And our new lineup is infusion-based. We could work together on something, maybe even a zero percent."

Hunter's head tipped back and forth as if he were thinking about it, his lower lip between his teeth, before he broke out into a full-on smile. "Hell yeah. We could definitely make that work."

A tiny giggle chirped out behind me. I swiveled on my seat, locking eyes with a chubby little eight-month-old boy with piercing hazel eyes and a massive grin.

God, he looked just like Lottie.

"Cole, this is Brody," Lottie beamed, holding the little guy outstretched to me as if she were the monkey in The Lion King.

I stared at him in awe. It had been a long time, years on years, since I'd interacted with a child his age. They were the cutest before they could talk. And their heads smelled like heaven.

"You can take him," she laughed, her arms just barely beginning to shake from holding the weight of him.

Hesitantly, I reached out and wrapped my arms around his little torso, lifting his weight easily. He babbled incoherently, his eyes stuck on mine like glue, his smile far too wide to be anything other than cute. "Hi," I said, setting him down on my lap and bobbing my leg up and down. He giggled, his little hand wrapping around one of my fingers.

"He likes you," Hunter said from behind me.

"You're a natural," Lottie chuckled. "He didn't even like Dana the first time they met and she's?—"

Dana's elbow landed square in Lottie's gut. "Oh, sorry," Dana gushed, but from where I was sitting, it looked intentional.

Odd.

I don't know how long I held him. It felt like hours, but it didn't get old. He seemed happy enough in my arms, content to play with his stuffed animal, my fingers, or a set of teething rings. All I needed to do was ensure he didn't fall from my lap and that he was sufficiently entertained.

Lottie set the table for the four of us, her eyes trained on me and Brody as she went. Occasionally, Dana would pull her to the side, whispering something urgently. As I watched the two of them, I realized I'd never really seen them together outside of Lottie's wedding and the first time I'd met Dana. Maybe this was just their relationship, whispery and secretive, weird as it was.

"You seem comfortable with Brody," Lottie grinned as she stepped around me with a handful of plates.

I chuckled. "Yeah, I guess I am. He's easy."

"Only when other people are around," Hunter quipped, his eyes rolling as he carried a pot of steaming something to the table.

"You'd make a good dad, Cole," Lottie added. "Have you ever thought of having kids?"

Dana's head swiveled to Lottie faster than my eyes could keep up. "Lottie."

"It's fine," I chuckled, waving my hand as Brody started to coo in my lap. "I've thought about it a bit, yeah. Maybe down the line."

————

A glass of wine in each of our hands and a lightly snoring baby in a bassinet made for a fairly calm, post-meal hangout. Lottie idly rocked the bassinet with her foot as she babbled on about horse breeds, but all I could do was watch Dana.

The way her face lit up whenever Lottie spoke was sweet. Their friendship was odd, but in fairness, I found most female friendships to be somewhat alike in that sense. Girls had a way of connecting deeper than most men did, I suppose. But when her lips parted, her smile like something out of a fairytale, I felt something in my chest go soft.

"So Lottie's gotten into scrapbooking," Hunter declared, a little smirk crossing his cheeks as he reached for something behind him.

"Babe, no?—"

"It's cute," Hunter laughed. "Every mom goes through this phase, right? And what better time to do it than when he's still little and you can keep all the memories in one place."

A loud thunk echoed through the room as he dropped the photo album onto the table.

This was the part of parenthood that had always seemed incredibly boring to me. I guess it would be different if it was your own kid but being made to look at photo after photo where they basically looked the same other than different clothing and covered in different food wasn't the type of thing I liked to spend my time doing. But I appreciated Lottie and Hunter for everything they'd done for me over the last seven months, and if that meant I needed to pretend like a scrapbook was the greatest thing in the world, then so be it.

"I'd love to see it," I said, doing my absolute best to sell it.

Hunter came around to my side of the table, glass of wine in hand, and flipped the book open to the first page.

Although I didn't know a whole lot about scrapbooking, I could tell that Lottie wasn't a very good scrapbooker. Random stickers and extravagant, unrelated backgrounds littered the pages, but I had to admit, the photos were cute.

Brody's first bath, one of them read, and included a handful of pictures of a very young Brody, still wrinkly and raisin-like, clinging to a toy for dear life as water was poured over him. Brody's first walk , another said, and I couldn't even see him in the stroller because he was so small. Brody's first meal , said another, and yep, there it was, the famous photo of him covered in food and laughing about it.

Hunter turned the page, and my stomach flip-flopped.

Brody's first friend.

There, on a hospital bed, sat Lottie with Brody on her lap. Beside her, clad in a hospital gown with a smaller bundle in her arms, was Dana.

Hunter tried to turn the page but I reached out, almost bending the paper to keep it open.

It was Dana, no doubt about it. The freckles were the same, the hair, the lips, the intense hazel eyes. The only difference was the width of her face—just a tad bit rounder.

"Dana," I said, her name barely breaking past my lips. I lifted my gaze to look at her, and she looked pissed. "You have a kid?"