A few more people shuffled by, and their attempts and immediate failures to ignore me confirmed I did freak well. As I fell in line behind the second to last person, my belief that people basically blew went up a few conviction levels.

Montana was bit warmer than Portland; that was the first thing I noticed as I stepped off the bus. The next thing? It already smelled like cow shit. Not overwhelmingly so, but that pungent tinge was in the air, along with the sweet note of grass and the not-so-sweet note of a sucky summer to come.

I almost sighed. I came so close.

But I didn’t.

I didn’t sigh anymore. Sighing showed disappointment, but I didn’t hope anymore . . . thus eliminating disappointment from my life.

But I came pretty darn close when I examined the landscape. I’d been right. Wide open spaces, no building in sight taller than two floors, and nothing remotely resembled something I was familiar with.

“This must be your bag, young lady,” the Greyhound employee said as he held out my bag.

“Why would you assume that?” I snapped, ignoring the man’s overdone smile. “Because it’s as dark and dilapidated as my clothing?”

That overdone smile fell quicker than my GPA in middle school. Apparently Montana and I were already off to a rocky start.

“Ehhh . . . no,” the man said, clearly flustered. “It’s the last bag in here.”

I glanced at the storage compartments. Empty.

Well, crap.

“Oh.” I took my bag from him. “Sorry about that.”

“I meant no offense.” The man dusted his hands off on his pants before closing up the compartment doors.

“Me, either,” I said as I headed away from the bus. “It just comes naturally, unfortunately.”

My bag had to weigh almost as much as I did. I wasn’t exactly a light packer, and sporting a black hoodie in the heat of a Montana summer day while attempting to haul my huge bag was my bad. I didn’t make it far before giving up my one-woman trek toward the parking lot. Tossing my beast of a bag on the ground, I plopped down on it. I couldn’t tear out of that hoodie fast enough.

I was supposed to meet one of the ranch hands from Willow Springs in the parking lot. I couldn’t remember his name, just that it began with a J and was one hundred and ten percent a cowboy name. I was supposed to link up with some total stranger, after driving across a couple state lines on a Greyhound bus . . . and that was the first step toward proving my responsibility to my mother?

Yeah, that was fucked up.

Tilting my head back, I searched the sky, half expecting buzzards to be circling.

Man, even the sky was different. Too big and too blue. Where I came from, the sky was gray on most days, and on the rare day the cloud cover did shift, the sky was never quite blue. Almost as if it couldn’t let go of the gray consuming it more days than not.

I was just about to close my eyes for a quick siesta and let Mr. Ranch-Hand-With-A-Gritty-Cowboy-Name wait when a figure passed by me.

On a typical day, I was passed by hundreds, if not thousands of people. Passed by, passed over, passed something, so I don’t know why that particular figure caught my attention. Leaning up, I shielded my eyes from the sun and watched the “figure” I couldn’t ignore. After a second, I understood why.

The guy was wearing positively the tightest, most painted-on jeans I’d ever seen a guy slide into. And my generation thought guys sporting skinny jeans was socially acceptable.

However, that cowboy, in what I could only assume were a pair of faded Wranglers, had just secured the sash and crown in the Tightest Pants in the Universe title.

“Excuse me, sir?” Tight Pant Boy tapped the shoulder of the employee I’d snapped at. He waited for the employee to turn around and acknowledge him before continuing.

“Yes?” the employee said, shaking Cowboy’s hand when he extended it.

“Is this the bus that came up from Portland?” Cowboy Tight Pants glanced up at the windows like he was looking for someone.

“Sure is. Last passenger just got off a few minutes ago.”

The cowboy’s back was to me, although his back wasn’t exactly what I zeroed in on. My attention had nothing to do with ogling, lusting, or wanting to run my hands all over it . . . I just couldn’t wrap my mind around how those stitches were holding strong with pants two sizes too small cupping those butt cheeks.

“Was there a young woman on board? A girl about my age?”

“There were lots of young women on board, son,” the employee replied, doing a better job of masking his sarcasm than I would have. “Do you have a description? Maybe a name?”

“I think she’s blond, maybe strawberry blond,” he began, tilting his head to the side. “Petite, I’m guessing . . . I don’t know. I’ve only seen a picture of her that’s ten years old.”

My stomach fell a little.

“I’ve got her name right here,” the cowboy said, sliding a piece of paper out of his front pocket. I didn’t need to hear him say it. I already knew the name scratched down on that scrap of paper. “Rowen. Her name’s Rowen Sterling.”

My subconscious couldn’t decide what to curse first, so it mixed, matched, and uttered a Shuk and a Fuit.

When my mom had told me I’d get a ride to Willow Springs with a ranch hand whose name I’d forgotten, I pictured a scratching, spitting, old-timer like the town sheriff in one of those old westerns. Not some young, fit man adhering to the tighter-the-better policy in jeans selection.

I had yet to see his face, but from what I’d seen of his back, I already knew what to expect. And if I was a typical eighteen-year-old girl who liked typical teenage girl things, I’m sure I’d be panting for the opportunity to catch a ride with Cowboy Montana in what I guessed was a big diesel truck with four tires on the back. I’d heard what that kind of truck was called, but I couldn’t remember. Where I came from, people didn’t need six tires because four did the job just fine.

Catching myself right before I let out a long sigh, I stood and made my way over. No sense in stalling.

Stopping a few feet behind the vacuum-sealed ass, I cleared my throat. “Looking for Rowen Sterling?”

Cowboy turned my direction. “Yeah. You know her?”

I gave a shrug. “Kind of.”

“Do you know where she is?”

“Yeah,” I replied, trying to get a look at his face. Between his huge-ass cowboy hat and the position of the sun, his whole face was shaded. He could have been the thing of female fantasies. He just as easily could have been eyeless and toothless.

After a few more seconds of quiet—I guessed he was waiting for me to add something—he shifted. “Could you tell me where she is then, please?”

I glanced at the photo in his hand. He’d been right. It was almost ten years old to the day. Taken at my ninth birthday party. I was wearing the biggest, pinkest, most god-awful princess dress ever created, and I was blond and beaming.

I was none of those things anymore. His reaction ought to be fun to witness.

“She’s about two feet in front of you,” I said, thankful I couldn’t see his face. Whether it was a ten or a zero or somewhere in between, I didn’t want to witness the shock and the cringe bound to come.

When someone compared the young girl in the picture to the older girl that was me present day, a cringe seemed the standard response.

What I didn’t expect him to do was remove his hat and extend his hand. “Hey, Rowan.” He flashed a smile that almost made me flinch. I hadn’t been smiled at like that when meeting a stranger in a long time. “I’m Jesse. It’s nice to meet you.”

Jesse. That’s right. The cowboy J name that had slipped my mind was the name that I was certain I’d never forget again. Not because his eyes were the same color as the sky, or because his light hair sort of cascaded down his forehead like it knew just where to fall, or because of the dimples drilled deep into his cheeks from the continued smile. Nope, the reason I’d remember Jesse’s name from that day forward was because of the way he looked at me. He didn’t study me like I was something different and scary. He looked at me like I was a human being, no different from himself, and yet unique just the same.