I closed my eyes and bolstered my strength. “You were always the one who was better at running, Conn. That’s more your style than mine.” Instead of down the stairs or back inside, I went toward him. I wanted him to see that he didn’t have power over me any longer. At least, I wanted him to see the façade of him not holding power over me.
“Yet how long were you frozen on that first step when you arrived? I kind of lost count at five minutes.”
His voice was just as smoky and smooth as I remembered it, and age had deepened it a key or two. The porch lights were out. With just the light coming from the buildings and barns dotted around and the orangey glow of his cigarette, I could barely make out Conn’s face. Not that I needed light to remember it. I’d memorized the perfections and imperfections of it years ago, and despite my efforts to forget, it had revisited my dreams too frequently.
Where Chase had been big, blond, and beefy, Conn was the opposite. He was taller than me but only by a couple of inches, and his hair was the same dark chestnut John’s had been before the silver took over. Conn’s body could have been described as lanky and lean, and his dark long-sleeved shirts and pants gave off just the right degree of sinister meets tortured. That, matched with his brooding expression, had alerted me from the beginning that he was the kind of boy I should keep my distance from. The kind who had let so much darkness into his life that it suffocated all of the light
“You were here the whole time? Camped out in your chair, smoking your cigarettes, watching me, and you didn’t say anything?” I stopped when I was still a good ten feet back from him. Distance was a good thing when it came to Conn, both mental and physical. “I should probably be surprised, but I’m not.”
Conn’s jagged smile crept into place, meaning there was still too much light. “So? Are you keeping your fingers crossed for a repeat of your sixteenth birthday?”
I didn’t have to see the image flash through his eyes to know exactly what he was talking about. “Nothing happened.” I crossed my arms and stood taller, trying to convince myself at the same time.
“And is that why you disappeared for seven years?” The cigarette dangled from Conn’s lips. The bottle in his hand was already a third empty, and even though I could barely see them, his eyes were both calling me closer and shoving me away. Everything about him flashed danger. Everything screamed stay away.
I’d never read the signs when it came to Conn. This time, I’d promised myself I would. I’d promised myself that I wouldn’t come back here if I wasn’t sure I could keep him at an emotional and physical distance.
“I came back because John, aka your father, is dying. I came to say good-bye.” I leaned into the railing along the porch, keeping a safe distance without making it seem as though I was concerned about how close or how far I was from Conn. “Unlike you, I’m not trying to discover what gives out first: my lungs or my liver.”
“I’m hoping they go at the same time.” Conn plucked the cigarette from his lips long enough to take a pull from the bottle.
Unlike his father, who was adamant that scotch was the only thing to drink when a person needed one, Conn chose tequila. It wasn’t a simple matter of a difference in taste. No, whatever John liked, Conn preferred the opposite. What was sad though was that in Conn’s effort to defy John at every turn, he was only proving just how significant a role his father played in his life. He was just as in tune with his dad as if he’d been mimicking him at every turn.
“Why aren’t you at dinner?” I asked, reminding myself to keep our conversation short. Conn was a master at wordplay and could lure even the greatest of cynics to his side.
“Because I don’t want to go.” He held out the bottle. When I shook my head, he let the bottle hang between us for a few moments before taking another long drink. At this rate, Conn would be shit-faced before that cigarette burned out.
“That seems to be your go-to answer to every question.”
“That’s because that’s my go-to feeling for most everything, family most of all.” Conn looked off into the distance where Red Mountain rested. Unlike the rest of us, who dodged looking at it or venturing up it, Conn seemed to view it as a refuge.
“Still haven’t gotten over your daddy issues?” I closed my eyes, instantly regretting my words.
I was just about to apologize when Conn leaned forward in his chair. All I could see were the whites of his eyes, but that was all I needed to see to know he was staring straight at me. When I’d been younger and under the impression that Conn could do no wrong, I’d measured my life in the moments when Conn had looked at me and me alone. There were only two ways he looked at me: straight through or straight on. Now I would have preferred he look straight through me because his eyes pulled things out of the place I’d buried deep inside myself.
“I don’t know. Have you gotten over your Conn issues?”
His words were biting. So much so I flinched.
“Tell you what,” he continued. “I’ll get over my issues when you get over yours. Sound like a deal?”
A decade ago, those words would have reduced me to a hysterical mess. “I’d tell you to go fuck yourself, but since I know that’s on your daily docket since you push everyone away, I’m just going to walk away.”
My back was to him and I was striding away when his low, sharp laugh filled the night. I used to be able to feel that laugh in my every nerve, as if my body were hardwired to respond to it. It felt different now.
“You’ve never been able to walk away from me. Not for very long anyway.”
I blew a rush of air out of my nose. I spun around and flailed my arms at him. “What do you call seven years? And just so you know, had it not been for me wanting to pay my respects to John before he dies, I would never have set foot in this place or around you for the rest of my life.” I hated that he was getting to me, riling me up. Even from a distance, I could tell he was absolutely loving it. “So put that in your damn bottle and drink it.”
Conn’s laugh restarted, but instead of marching back and slapping his face as he deserved, I kept going. Conn might have pretended to hate everyone, but he loved being hated. Ignoring him was the worst kind of punishment I could dole out. I was almost to the front door when a figure at the bottom of the front steps caught my attention.
The instant my eyes latched onto him, I almost cried. But they would have been happy tears. Unlike his dying father, his mourning older brother, or his malicious younger brother, when I saw Chance, the first thing I wanted to do was smile. I didn’t run away or wonder where the person I remembered had gone or resist the urge to slap the smirk off his face.
With Chance, Red Mountain Ranch was simple and beautiful.
“Hey, stranger,” I said, feeling as though I could breathe again.
Chance’s smile pulled up even higher, and he lunged up the stairs toward me. My surprised yelp didn’t have a chance to pierce the air before he had me in his arms, swinging me around as if I weighed twenty pounds. His laugh hit me differently than Conn’s. Instead of feeling like his laugh was grinding me into the ground, I felt like it was lifting me into the sky. It made me laugh with him.
He looked the same, he smelled the same, he smiled the same. Chance had been the pillar I could rely on then and, not surprisingly, now. After a few more spins, he let my feet touch the ground, his laugh tapering back into his steady smile.
“You better not call me stranger ever again,” he said, stepping back to look at me. Which gave me a chance to take a good look at him.
He looked exactly like the boy I remembered saying a hard good-bye to years ago. He might have grown his hair out some, and his chest was a little wider from throwing around dozens of bales of hay, and the boyish softness of his face had worn away to reveal straight lines and sharp angles, but he was still the Chance I remembered. His hazel eyes still shone with hundreds of yet-to-be-lived adventures, and his smile still fired to life so naturally it was as if he’d been born with it on his face.
I?
??d rarely seen him without one of his brothers close by, but on his own, he was capable of making a girl feel that tightening deep in her stomach. Why he’d never settled down or gotten serious with any of the five hundred girls just waiting for him to wake up and smell the potential was beyond me, but if he didn’t soon, he would become the most eligible bachelor in Jackson Hole. If he wasn’t already.
“You really shouldn’t have let yourself go like this.” I waved at him. “I’m embarrassed for you.”
He slid off his tan cowboy hat. His bronze hair was damp and matted down from what I guessed was a long, hard day of working a ranch. Really, though, every day on a ranch was a long and hard one.
“Enough about me. Look at you.” His brows peaked. “You look—”
“Like I really, really let myself go?” I glanced down at my worn-in jeans, simple T-shirt, and the boots Chance had mailed me for Christmas a few years ago. My hair was in a ponytail that had become a hot mess one layover ago, and my lip gloss had worn off before I’d gotten through baggage check. I liked to fly comfortably, but I was also dressed to un-impress because of Conn. I hadn’t wanted him to get the impression that I’d dressed up for him. That I’d highlighted my brow-bones for him. That I’d agonized over the right outfit for him. Because in my past life, I had. I’d agonized over nail polish color, sock thickness, and lingerie in hopes of impressing a man who was impossible to impress.
“If this is letting yourself go, then sign me up.” Chance waved his hat at me as though he saw something I didn’t. That was cool though. If he saw some vixen when I saw a slob, I’d take it.
“So since I’ve interrogated your brothers with the same question, I’m going to fire it your way, although I’m pretty sure I already have the answer. And I’m guessing it doesn’t have anything to do with trying to grind an eight ball into powder or see which vital internal organ you can get to give out first.”
He shook his head. “Sadly, my life isn’t that exciting.”
“So why aren’t you at dinner?” I crossed my arms, but any attempt at acting stern with Chance was impossible. He was a goddamn saint who would stop traffic to make sure a couple of ducklings crossed the road safely. He’d missed dinner or been late plenty of times in the past, and every reason why could have been added to the Book of Exceptional Excuses for Missing Dinner if there was such a thing. “No, wait. Let me guess. More fun that way.”
Chance made a proceed motion before sitting on the top stair to tug off his boots. I took advantage of his momentary distraction to assess him, what he was wearing, what he was covered in, et cetera. He was in his standard cowboy gear, so he’d been working with the livestock. However, which livestock? Chance wore plenty of hats at Red Mountain Ranch, and even though the Armstrong clan didn’t need to generate any more wealth, Chance ran the ranch as though they did. He acted as though every last steer meant the difference between starving and eating and made every last purchase as though pennies and nickels mattered.
Which hat had he been wearing today though?
“Branding day?” I guessed, although I knew that was wrong before he shook his sweat-matted head.
“If it had been a branding day, I’d be sitting here with a beer in hand.”
Chance twisted his forearm around, but I didn’t need to see the old scar to understand what he meant. Ever since the brander had slipped and bumped part of the brand into Chance’s forearm, who had been holding down the calf, Chance had been a little jaded about branding day. Conn had been the brander that day.
“Too late in the season for calving,” I said, tapping my chin.
He nodded. “Calves are all happily calved.”
“You would have already gotten all the weak spots in the fences fixed from winter, and if you were just doing a count of the herd, you wouldn’t look so beat.”
Chance tugged off his other boot, sighing as he stretched and wiggled his toes. “And to think you were some big city girl who didn’t know the difference between alfalfa and straw.”
I laughed. “You would have thought I’d committed high treason when I dropped that bale of straw in that cow’s pen.”
“In the cow’s eyes, you had.” Chance laughed with me.
“Okay, okay. So back to why you were a no-show at dinner. Does it have anything to do with the cattle?” I didn’t think so, but I wanted to make sure I was on the right track.
“Nope. Not the cattle who got me up before sunrise and kept me out past sunset today.” When he yanked off his socks, he balled them up and tossed them in my direction, but he missed.
Chance always missed when he threw his stinky socks at me. I used to think it was due to bad aim, but I’d figured out the opposite was true. He had just as good of aim as his two brothers, who had no problem flinging their stinky socks in my face. Chance just chose to be a gentleman instead of a jerk.
“So you were with the mustangs.”
“Getting warmer,” he said, twisting around to look at me.
“Were you moving them into a different pasture?” I collected Chance’s socks and balled them together to remember to toss them into the laundry later.
“Wrong. Although we’ll be moving them soon if that’s any consolation.” Chance glanced at the star-spattered sky. One of the first things I’d come to appreciate about the country were the starry nights. We didn’t have anything close to them in the city I’d grown up in. “Those things burn through grass like Conn burns through a liquor cabinet.”
I’d forgotten all about Conn and our “amiable” catch up not even five minutes earlier, but at the mention of his name, I glanced down the porch. The glow from his cigarette was gone, but that didn’t mean he was gone. Conn could hide in the shadows like no one else I’d ever known.
“Introducing new members to the herd?” I guessed again.
Red Mountain Ranch had hosted several thousand mustangs for over a decade, and that number had grown over time. It was part of a deal with the Bureau of Land Management, and while the payout of a dollar plus a mustang daily seemed to add up to a nice sum at the end of the month, the overhead was so much that there was barely ten percent profit in the whole venture. But Chance didn’t do it for the profit. He did it because it was the right thing to do, and in his eyes, letting the wild mustangs roam the same land that had once been their home was the right thing to do, pathetic profit percentages aside.
I scanned my brain, searching for other alternatives that had kept him so busy today. “You singlehandedly braided every last mare’s mane in the herd?”
He was still looking at the stars when he started laughing. “Considering they’re all mares, save for the few stray colts born this year, I would still be out there braiding horse hair.”
It was his answer, combined with him hoisting himself off the porch with a slow wince as he rubbed his side, that gave me my answer. “You were sorting the colts out from the herd.” I didn’t need to cap my guess with a question mark because I was that confident.
“There’s the countriest city girl I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing.” Chance winked as he walked closer to me. “What gave it away? My wince or my walk?” Now that he was up, he was moving just fine, but he’d gotten stiff enough sitting for just that short amount of time to give away he’d taken a beating out there.
“Both,” I answered, stepping closer. I pulled his shirt free from his jeans before hoisting it up his side.
“I think you’re like supposed to buy me a drink first. Or I’m supposed to buy you one first. Or something drink-related before you start ripping my clothes off.”
I wasn’t looking at his face, but I heard the smile in his voice as I traced the giant purple bruise that stretched from the middle of his ribs down to the tip of his belt. “It looks like you’ve already had your share of getting nailed today. I’ll spare you.” I glanced up to find him looking at me with a look in his eyes that I wasn’t used to seeing there. It made my fingers freeze and the back of my throat go dry. I averted my gaze, dropped
his shirt back over his side, and stepped back. My head felt strange, light and heavy at the same time. While that wasn’t a foreign sensation, I’d never felt it over this brother. “If you’re working with the mustangs again tomorrow, try not to get kicked, okay?”
“Not getting kicked is my primary objective every time I work with the mustangs.” Chance tucked his shirt back into his jeans. He seemed to be as concerned about looking away from me as I was from him.
“Chance . . .” I wasn’t sure how to start. How did one apologize for giving someone they cared about the brush-off for seven years? How did I explain why I had? How could I tell him that while he’d made me believe I could do anything, another Armstrong son had made me feel as though I was worth nothing and at the end of the day, I went to bed remembering the bad? I supposed there was really only one way to start that apology—just like any other kind. “I’m sorry.”
Chance shook his head. “You don’t have anything to apologize for. I get it. I understand. Really.” When I exhaled, he added, “You had to do what was right and best for you. I’ve never blamed you for that. It’s the same thing anyone would have done in your situation.”
I lifted an eyebrow. I felt strange keeping a safe distance from Chance as well, but after that shared look and the feeling that followed, maybe distance wasn’t the worst idea. “Not everyone, Chance Armstrong. In fact, I’m pretty convinced that you’ve never done anything with yourself in mind first.”
He slid his hat back into place and looked at his hands, which were creased with dust and dirt. “You’re wrong, you know. If I hadn’t thought of myself first, I wouldn’t have left a couple of hired hands to finish sorting the last couple hundred mustangs.”
My forehead creased. “You actually left a job before it was done?”
He nodded once.
“Why?”
This time when he smiled, it was more like Conn’s—the one tilted due to the tug of guilt. “Because I couldn’t wait to see you.”