Chapter 18: No Judgment
“You’re not the same man since you came back from New York City,” Mama says, finding me in the barn, pitching hay for the horses.
I’m sweaty from head to toe, exhausted from the hard work, but enjoy myself. This is my life: horses, pitchforks, a tractor, Mama, my business, and six hundred and fifty two acres. All mine. Everything I have worked for. I find a canteen of water and gulp some of it down. I wipe a hand across my face and think about what Mama has just said.
“You love him?” Mama asks.
Blake went home an hour ago. Saul, another ranch hand, has been off sick with a summer bug. It’s just Mama and me in the barn. Mother and son. Friends.
Do I blush? I think so. I shake my head and say, “We shouldn’t be talking about this.”
“Why not? You think I didn’t kn
