Say You'll Be Nine

“Bullshit.”

I kicked at a clump of pine straw on the ground by my sneaker. “Well, I do now. But that’s not the point. I want to be an actor. That’s not the kind of life where a man like Nine would thrive, and I like him too much to see him unhappy. I wouldn’t want to put him in that situation.”

“But you like him. If there was a solution, you’d want to try.”

Damn my brother for pushing and pushing. “Yes, okay? I like him. I like him a lot. And if all of this… shit… wasn’t in our way, I’d want to try a real relationship. Okay? You happy now? I like Isaac Winshed. There, I said it. He’s sexy and sweet and smart. You’d really like him, Jacks. He’s…”

Nacho appeared in my vision, sniffing at the clump of pine straw I’d been kicking around. If the dog wasn’t in the RV, that meant someone had opened the door and let him out. I glanced up and saw Nine standing in the open doorway with his mouth set in a firm line and his eyes lasered in on me.

Oh fuck.

13

Nine

I’d heard Cooper talking through the open window, but I hadn’t realized it was a private conversation until I’d walked out and overheard him telling someone that he liked me. The sincerity in his voice was hard to ignore, but the words themselves were impossible to believe.

I was almost too scared to ask, but I had to know. “Is that true?”

The whites of Cooper’s eyes circled his pupils. “Shit. Sorry, Jacks. Gotta go. Yeah, you too.”

He took a tentative step toward me. “Listen, Nine, I—”

I shook my head at him. “It’s a yes-or-no question. Don’t play word games with me, Coop. I’m not good at them and you know it.”

“Yes. It’s true. I like you.”

When I was little, I’d been poking around in a creek with a stick when I noticed a bunch of tadpoles hatching underneath a little overhang on the bank of the stream. There were a million of them and they wiggled around all over the place, so much so that I didn’t know where to rest my eyes. I felt like those tadpoles were hatching in my stomach right now, but I forged ahead anyway.

“I like you too.”

Cooper’s grin lit up the entire White River National Forest area. “Good.” He strode closer to me. “Then I guess we have an answer about the whole ‘date’ conundrum, don’t we?”

I laughed and shook my head, feeling freer than I had in a long time. “I guess so. But I’m buying. And we’re getting steak.”

Cooper clapped a hand to his chest. “Wow, look at me landing a big spender.”

I closed the final distance between us and drew him in for a kiss. I could hardly keep my hands off him when given half a chance. “But first you need to change that shirt because there’s a sweaty Nine-shaped stain on the front from earlier.”

Cooper kissed me some more before running to change and meeting me at the truck. We’d decided to bring Nacho along since it was a forty-minute drive each way. I didn’t feel comfortable leaving him alone that long with us so far away.

The drive itself was gorgeous. The trees were lush green, and the sky was still bright and blue despite the late-afternoon hour. Cooper hooked his phone up to the stereo and played an oddball selection of music, but managed to throw in some country tunes just for me. We rode through the fading sunshine singing along to the music and feeling the cool mountain air swirling around us with the windows down. It was a moment I hoped I never forgot as long as I lived.

When we got to the tiny town of Shale Falls, Cooper directed me to the hardware store first so we could get the propane refill and pick up a few odds and ends I needed. We pulled into the lot and were preparing to leave Nacho in the truck with the windows halfway down when an old man carrying a bale of pine straw out of the store lifted his chin at us.

“Tim don’t mind no dogs inside. Go on.”

Cooper shot me a wink and reached for Nacho’s leash, eliciting overly excited tail wags and a giant leap down to the ground by the big golden beast.

We entered the store and took a look around. Even though I for damned sure knew my way around a small-town hardware store, every one was different. This one had a nice big camping section since we were close to the national forest, and I even saw a good selection of work clothes and boots. Cooper was going to get some steel-toed work boots even if I had to sneak them to the truck behind his back.