He began to kiss her and I’d decided I’d seen enough. I was still careful not to put too much stock in their fledgling relationship, but I couldn’t help the very good feeling their mere existence put in my heart.

I dressed, showered and drove myself to the auction—just myself and no one else. Since realizing I was in love Cricket, I had never felt more alone in my life. I sort of felt myself spiraling, retreating into myself, but I had no idea how to crawl out of the hole.

I was in love with Cricket.

She was choosing to be with Ethan.

Ethan didn’t really understand her, as cliche as that sounded.

So I, I was going to accept that, be as kind to both Ethan and Cricket as I could, get through the next few months for Bridge, set her up wherever she wanted to be, and get myself as far away from the Hunt Ranch as possible—not just for my own heart’s sake, but also to protect them from my father because his eerie silence was starting to scare the bejezus out of me.

I’d also made the decision to come clean to the man I’d helped my father blackmail. That I’d do it when I could secure the safety of Bridge and all the Hunts.

The inside of the old schoolhouse was packed; hundreds of people gathered around, mingled and laughed while waiting for the rest of the comers and the auctioneer. My eyes went straight for the stage and I wished I’d never come.

“Hey,” I heard from behind me.

My head hung low for a moment.

“Hey,” I said, turning around and facing Cricket and an older man in a wheelchair.

His right leg was missing below his knee.

“This is Amos McAllen. He wanted to meet you just as soon as you got in. He insisted.”

I smiled at him and extended my hand.

The old cowboy took it and shook it with a strength I hadn’t expected of a seventy-year-old. “Mr. McAllen, it’s an honor.”

“Son,” he said, patting our joined hands with his free one. “I needed you to know that what you and Jonah Hunt have done for my family will not go unpunished.” He smiled. “My wife and I pray for you every day and your generosity is much appreciated. I’m humbled, young man.”

This shamed me because I remembered complaining almost every moment of the day with Jonah. If I had put his face to the ranch, I would have been silent and worked twice as hard. “Sir,” I said, “you give me entirely too much credit.”

“Not possible,” he said, unwilling to accept anything else.

I nodded and smiled and gave it to him. He was obviously the more generous one. He wheeled off and Cricket stood beside me.

“He’s a very nice man.”

I watched him struggle with the chair and it broke my heart. “Extraordinarily.”

Around five o’clock, the auctioneer began the auction and things took off at an entertaining pace. I found a chair at a table near the back and sat.

“Can I roll in here?” I heard Amos McAllen ask me.

“Of course,” I said, sliding out the chair next to me so he could wheel himself in.

“Faye tells me you liked her cooking.”

I laughed. “Yes, I did. I miss her daily baskets, but I think my love handles are thanking me they’re no longer around.”

Amos chuckled.

“So how long have you been a rancher?” I asked him.

“I’ve lived on that property since I was born.”

“No kidding. What a life you’ve had.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” he said.

It turns out he was not seventy but seventy-nine and he’d fought in Korea when he was seventeen. He said he saw things no human should ever witness and to this day detests communism with every fiber of his being. He told me when he first got home, the slightest noise would send him back to Korea and that Faye was the only one who could bring him back to the present.

He told me that when he’d left for Korea, Faye was just a wispy fifteen-year-old with curly red hair and buck teeth, but when he came home, she was a steamy eighteen-year-old redhead with curves for days and the prettiest face he’d ever seen. He said he knew he had to have her five minutes after seeing her in town for the first time since he’d left. “I was smitten,” he said simply.

He talked about marrying Faye. He put me in stitches when he said he thought he’d died and gone to heaven their very first time and how they didn’t leave their bedroom for practically a year straight. He also told me it was how they got their first son. I was almost rolling on the floor by that point.

He talked about how he lost that first son in Vietnam, but that’s all he mentioned of that. It was obviously too painful to talk about, so I didn’t press. He spoke of hard times and good times, of feasts and famines, of disease and health. And before I knew it, two hours had passed and I had heard his life story.

I’d discovered that Amos McAllen was the kind of man whose name would never make the history books or national headlines, but there was something so extraordinary about him. It pained me that America would not know him personally. I imagined there were many people as incredible as Amos, but I would never get to know them. They would pass and their memories of people before them would die with them.

That seemingly short conversation with Amos told me that life is more than what the media wants you to think it is. He taught me that your world shouldn’t be any bigger than the people around you, that you should serve those around you with fierceness, but we still had an obligation to care for those who needed our caring, even if they were half a world away.

It seems such a contradiction, but the way he explained it made perfect sense to me. Basically, care nothing for celebrity, love only your God, your friends and your family, and be generous with your neighbors, even if they’re very far away.

When Amos McAllen rolled away from that table, I felt my entire world shift and tilt and I knew I would struggle to find its balance for a very long time.

When Amos left, I went out to my truck, grabbed an envelope I kept in the glove box for emergencies and came back into the schoolhouse. Inside, I made sure everyone was good and distracted before I stuck one thousand seven hundred and thirty-seven dollars in the donation jar, wishing I had a whole hell of a lot more with me.

I began to walk away when that voice startled me again, making my heart pound in so many different ways.

“Spencer Blackwell,” Cricket teased, “aren’t you one big, giant softie.”

I pursed my lips. “You weren’t supposed to see that.”

“I know.” She winked. “That’s what makes it all the more fun.”

I shook my head and smiled.

“The auction’s almost over, and they’re about to serve dinner. Would you like to sit with me?”

I turned around and searched the crowd behind me before facing her once more. “Are you talking to me?” I joshed.

She smirked. “Yes, you.”

“Where’s Ethan?”

Her brow creased. “I’m not sure,” she said, searching the crowd.

“I don’t think he’d be pleased if he saw us sitting together.”

“Well, that’s his problem, not ours,” she cheekily replied. “I’m tired of tiptoeing around him,” she said, surprising me. “I can be friends with whomever I wish to be friends with.”

At one time, this would have pleased me to no end, but that day of all days, I could not, would not, be her alternate.

“Cricket,” I said, narrowing my brow. “I won’t be your backup.”

“What?”

“I refuse to be a backup,” I told her. “I don’t deserve it, and we both know we could never be just friends.”

She looked wounded but I couldn’t feel sorry for her. She made her choice, and I wasn’t it.

“I-what are you saying, Spencer?”

“I’m saying that I don’t just want to be friendly with you, Cricket. I want all of you. I want to be able to taste your lips whenever I feel like it, feel your skin, wrap my arms around your waist. I want to be with you utterly, and I won’t take anything else but your entirety.”

I turned and walked out the schoolhouse doors, got in my truck and headed back to Bitteroot.

“There,” I told the steering wheel. “I made the declaration. It’s up to her now.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Two months had passed.

It was mid-April, Bridge was huge, but she and Jonah were going strong. It helped to see her so happy when I was suffering so completely. Those words at the schoolhouse were the last I had said to Cricket, and she had yet to respond. I lost hope in getting one after the first week and was living day in and day out in a zombie-like state. The only relief I could get from how badly my heart ached was when Eugie would come stay with me.

He was my new best friend since Jonah and Bridge got together, and he was my little old stone. I noticed Cricket would let him stay with me often and that surprised me. I don’t know why she did it but I didn’t question it. I needed him. Dogs are funny little animals. They’re such a curious thing. They give and give and give and expect nothing in return.

Calving season had come to an end, and the ranch had planted the hayfields in preparation for next winter. Branding season came and went, and we were exceptionally busy for almost two weeks. Apparently, the ranches helped one another out there. Each set of hands would pitch into each ranch’s branding day, and we got all the ranches done in eleven days. I got to know a lot of the locals a little better and came to respect each one tremendously with how generous they all were with their time and opinion.

The people of Montana were some of the hardest working, genuine and charitable people I’d ever met.

Apparently, at the end of every calving season, all the young adults of the nearby ranches got together and camped in the mountains for two days. If you’d have asked me six months prior what I thought of the concept of camping, I’d have told you it was ludicrous. Now? Not so much. In fact, I was really looking forward to the fresh air, the burn in my legs from the hikes and just relaxing.

We left early on a Friday morning.

“Am I riding with you?” Jonah asked as I tossed my pack into the back of my truck.

“Hell yeah, dude. Load it up!”

I picked up his tent and launched it in with my own pack. I got in the driver’s seat and Jonah opened his door.

“Hey, give me a second, I’m gonna say goodbye to Bridget.”

I nodded.

He bounded up the trailer stairs and ducked inside. A minute later, he emerged and got in.

“I wish she was coming,” he said.

“Yeah, pretty sure a heavy-with-child Bridge would annihilate us within the first hour.”

Jonah laughed but he didn’t disagree.

“You guys seem pretty happy,” I observed.

Jonah grinned like a little kid. “Yeah, she’s a fascinating girl.”

“That’s refreshing,” I told him.

He looked at me. “Why?”

I shook my head at the memories. “All my friends back home couldn’t describe Bridge as anything other than hot. I beat more than my fair share of asses.”