Page 23 of Cattle Stop

Drew gives a weak sort of smile. “Where would you sleep?”

“Fuck.” Cooper lets out a laugh. “That’s just details. Is that a yes? Want a hand for a bit?”

Drew shakes his head. Then he steps forward, crushing Cooper in a too-tight hug. “I’m not going to say no, you jerk.”

Cooper hugs him back. “We’ll figure this out, okay?”

“Okay,” Drew says, and maybe it’s what Cooper wants to hear, but he sounds a little more certain.

Cooper leaves him to his wheels of cheese and tank of curds, making his way back to the center aisle with his hands in his pockets.

“Whit?” he calls. Maybe Whit’s already halfway out to the fields, intent on fixing the same fences that’ll just break in the same place they always do each summer. Time after time, the cows so well versed in the weak spots in every field that they just saunter out whenever the fancy strikes.

Though, no, there’s Whit crouched down next to a cow lying in a bed of straw and breathing in hard huffs. She grunts once, then settles as Whit strokes her haunch, his voice low as he murmurs to her.

“Whit,” he says again, leaning against the wall of the cow’s pen. “How’s she doing?”

“Fine,” Whit says without looking up. He keeps petting the cow’s rump, his hands as gentle as his voice as he talks to her.

Cooper braces his hand on the post next to him, rubbing his finger over an old nail worked into it. He and Drew carved their initials just up there, one summer long, long ago. Where would the herd go if Drew sold the place? Auction, most likely. Some other farm, somewhere else. Maybe they’d follow Brad’s cows out to Ohio. Most of these girls were born here, and their mothers before them. Cooper presses his lips together as the cow heaves herself to her feet.

She turns in a circle and huffs out a breath. Beyond her, the rest of the herd chews through their breakfast. It’s the same every morning and evening for these ladies, and soon enough their calves too. They spend their days concerned with the choicest bite of clover each summer, and through the winter all they care about is getting a prime spot at the feeder, where they can stuff their mouths with hay cut and dried from the season past, and as the weather turns come spring, they get ready to do it all over again.

The cow stretches her neck and lets out a bleat that rings in Cooper’s ear, her eyes wide.

“I told Drew I’d stay for a few weeks, help get the season started.”

Whit’s shoulders rise, though he keeps his eyes on the cow. “How great.”

You don’t mean that, Cooper could say. Though the fight drains out of him when the cow calls out again, her cry pealing through the barn.

“I can take some of the work off your plate.” Cooper pushes his hands deeper into his pockets. “And help Drew with the house too.”

Whit pets over the cow’s back and flank. Her udder’s full, ready for the little one inside of her. They both watch as she pushes her calf out, and it lands on the straw with a quick inhale and a bleary slow blink of its brown eyes.

“Welcome,” Cooper says softly.

“Well, this makes it officially spring,” Whit says. “Hi there, sweet thing.”

The calf rises to its feet, nosing until it finds where to drink. It’s a girl, Cooper can see now, and her birth will mean plenty to do this afternoon and tonight. Check the calf over, get the cow some fresh water, her own flake of hay, and move her to a smaller pen, away from the herd until the calf’s gotten her bearings. There’ll be more calves tomorrow, too, if not tonight, and soon enough an entire herd’s worth of them on skinny, too-long legs as they race each other up the length of the barn and back again, heads tossing and hooves kicking.

“Um.” Cooper shifts his weight, poking at a piece of straw with his foot. “So, can I maybe crash in your room a little longer?”

Whit finally looks up at him. Oh hell, this is a bad idea. Cooper can feel that truth as certainly as spring in the air, the season crashing down on them no matter if they’re ready for it. The last time Cooper spent more than a couple weeks here on the farm, it ended in firelight and his mouth against Whit’s.

Cooper turns away, staring at the milling herd. How fucking embarrassing that he did that. And how clear a response on Whit’s part, to never, not once mention it again, his firm no to any interest from Cooper coming through that silence loud and clear.

“I’ll try not to, you know, drive you too crazy.”

Whit just watches him with soft dark-brown eyes. His work pants are stretched across his knees from how he’s crouching, the cuffs neatly folded up above his boots. Fucking hell, this is going to be torture.

Cooper clears his throat and shifts his weight again. “I know. I get it that you don’t like me, but I swear I won’t be a total pain in the ass.”

“I don’t not like you.”

Cooper lets out a huffed laugh before he knows he’s going to do it. “Well, that’s news.”

“You can stay, if you’re really going to help.”