“He’ll punch me in the face. Anyway you all dance around this, so I guess this is how it is? You really are pissed I spent a ton of time over there.”
Lachlan let out a harsh breath. “Hell, man, I don’t know. Sometimes it felt like we could have used you here.”
He’d sensed that. He’d wondered. Apparently he’d been right. They did resent him. They did resent that. He gritted his teeth. Guilt rising up inside of him. Memories. “I didn’t want to be here. Not when we were kids. It’s fine. I’m over it. It’s not like we didn’t spend plenty of time together.”
“No. I know,” Lachlan said. “But yeah, maybe it kind of sucks that you had an escape that wasn’t just the mountains. But you had an escape, Hunt. You always had the Garretts. Why wouldn’t you just...run away to be with them?”
Run away to be with them.
Like he wasn’t a McCloud the same as they were. Like they hadn’t suffered their dad’s rages, all of them, even Brody, because you couldn’t be around it and not be ruined by it, even if the fists hadn’t landed on your face.
That straw that broke everything.
“That’s bullshit,” Hunter ground out, except he knew it wasn’t.
Lachlan shrugged. “Look. Bottom line, there was nothing to be done. Our childhood sucked. What are you going to do? There was nothing you could have done any different. Nothing any of us could have done any different.”
“Yeah. Except actually buried our old man out back. That might have fixed some things.”
Lachlan grinned. A grim sort of smile. “True. There is that. Still, whatever Gus did seems to have worked.”
“Sure.”
Lachlan was the baby. What the hell did he know?
He had to wonder, though, if there was some resentment. Gus had shouldered so many things as the oldest. And he was the one who’d borne the brunt of their father’s temper. He was the one who had to wear it on his face, and along with that, the unfairness of the suspicion of what had happened to their father.
Hunter believed Gus. Gus said that he had told their father to never come back, after unleashing his own fury and giving him the beating of his life. It hadn’t been a bloodless farewell, but it hadn’t been murder either. And he had a feeling that most everybody believed Gus well enough. But it was the suspicion that their father wouldn’t be so easily cowed that he imagined made the rumor endure. Especially among the older folks in the community.
“Basically,” Lachlan said, “I think we all live in an endless circle of frustration that there was nothing we could do to protect each other. And our parents were the cause of our problems.”
“Not Mom,” Hunter said reflexively.
He didn’t want to get into this, not with Lachlan. Or any of his brothers. Now or ever.
“She could have taken us with her,” Lach said, his tone grave.
“And then what?” Hunter asked. “Who would have the ranch?”
“It’s just land,” Lachlan said.
“Yeah. Tell that to Gus. And Tag. And Brody. It’s not just land. It’s who we are. It’s our blood. And Gus’s blood specifically is soaked into this ground. You know that.”
“No wonder you don’t like spending extra time here. You still see blood everywhere.”
He didn’t in the way Lachlan meant, though. He found solace in the work because it made him feel like he was fixing something. Found solace in the land.
He didn’t see blood. He saw his own failures.
And he worked to drown that out.
“It is everywhere,” Hunter said. “There’s nothing that can be done about that. But it’s what we have. And what we do with it matters. So I’m on board with Gus’s plans. It’s something at least.”
“Right. Well. This has been grim. You better go handle your hostage.”
“She’s not my hostage.”
“Whatever. Whatever your deal is with her, work it out. Because whether I get it or not, the Garretts are your family. The same as we are. You don’t want a little feud with the baby sister messing things up.”
“She owes me a day of free labor, and she’s going to give it. She’s mucking stalls, oiling up some leather, turning the compost—”
“She is going to tear your throat out with her teeth.”
“She shouldn’t play dirty. And she shouldn’t bet so far above her pay grade. That’s the thing. She isn’t a kid. She’s a grown woman, and she chose to tangle with me. So she’s going to get what she has coming.”
“Yeah,” Lachlan said, his eye taking on that same look that it had earlier. The one he didn’t like.
“Stay out of it.”
His baby brother lecturing him was something he could happily do without.
“Oh, I’m not in it,” he said, backing up with his hands held high. “In fact, to be very clear, I have no investment in this at all. I’m just commenting.”
“Yeah.” But he was feeling scratchy with his brother now, and he went out looking for Elsie, who he found sitting on the floor of the barn, with oiled up saddles all around her, bridles and other leather items, a cloth and rage. Her hair had fallen into her face, her cheek was smudged with something black and she was moving the cloth seriously in a circle around an old saddle.
“You hungry?”
She looked up, the fury in her eyes not remotely hidden. “Do I get bread and water?”
“No. But I might throw a sandwich your way. And maybe a beer.”
“I packed my own lunch, Hunter. I don’t need your belated shows of concern. You’re the one that sent me out here doing menial tasks. But they’re hardly going to kill me. Just irritate me.”
“Sure,” he said, annoyed by how much he sounded like Lachlan.
“I don’t need you to hover.”
“You need to get your next assignment,” he said.
“I’m tired,” she said, looking up at him, her brow beaded with sweat.
“Should have thought of that before you bet me all this work. And before you said I was like my father.”
“You’re acting like a mean bastard now.” Her expression was defiant.
“Yeah, but I’m not going to lay a hand on you. Different enough from my dad for you?” In context of the tension that had been mounting between the two of them, it was a different sort of promise. But if Elsie noticed, she didn’t seem to indicate it. She swiped her face with her forearm, and he didn’t know if she was trying to wipe oil off her skin or dash away some sweat.