Of everything in his line of sight, he starts with my crammed bookshelves?
“I found myself with more time on my hands after everything started happening with Anna. The kids went to bed and I didn’t want to spend the rest of the night watching endless sports and drinking beer.”
Wes nods, walking the length of the bookshelves. He glances at the bed, strewn with paper and the laptop with the bright screen that might as well have a blinking neon light on it. It’s so obviously a resumé. The heading, the bullets, the format. Little else looks similar. He still doesn’t mention it.
I could tell him to get the hell out of my room. He may be my boss and my big brother, but it’s my house.
“I read Grisham. And some Stephen King, but it’s scared me a few times.” He sends me a warning look. “Don’t tell anyone I told you that.”
Through the disbelief I’m feeling that this conversation is taking place, I manage a smile. “It’s in the vault.”
Wes pulls open my closet and rifles through my shirts. “You going to tell me why you have an updated resumé open on your computer?”
I cross my arms and lean on the doorjamb. “That depends. Are you asking as my brother, or my boss?”
Wes pulls a shirt off the hanger. “Brother.” He takes off his stained shirt and changes. “Though I can’t help it if the information bleeds over. Nobody is that good at separating personal and professional.”
I take a deep breath. “Reading isn’t the only thing I’ve picked up in the past few years. I got my master’s in English from an online program out of ASU.”
Wes is quiet. I wish he’d look at me, but he’s meticulously rolling up his sleeves, taking his sweet time. He steps back from my closet. “What are you planning to do with it?”
Here it is. The moment of truth. In true Wes fashion, he’s looking the problem dead in the eye.
“Verde Valley CC has an opening for an English professor.” If Wes looked at my resumé, he’d see how I tailored it to fit the role.
“You’d no longer work for the HCC?”
He knows the answer already. I cannot be a single father, second-in-command of the largest cattle ranch in Arizona, and a college professor at the same time. Anger boils. Why do people expect me to handle it all? Good old Warner, the wide net at the bottom. The catchall.
“You know the fucking answer, Wes.”
“No, Warner, I don’t.” Wes’s voice holds none of the anger of my own. “That’s why I’m asking. I want you to say in plain words exactly what you want for yourself.”
My teeth grind together. “I love this ranch, but I don’t want to bleed for it the way you do. There’s something else out there for me. Whether or not it’s being an English professor, I don’t know, but I want the chance to try.”
Wes lifts his chin to the ceiling. “Thank Christ,” he mutters, lowering his gaze. “How long have you been waiting to say what’s on your mind?”
My anger, my indignation, deflates. “A long time.”
“Too long.”
“Don’t lecture me.”
“I’m your big brother. It’s my right, even if we are adults. Which leads me to my next question. What the hell happened with Tenley?”
My hands go to my pockets and I raise my shoulders, slowly letting them go. “She and I want different things. Simple as that.”
Wes’s chuckle is hollow. “It’s never simple. In fact, there was a time when you told me to stop making everything so damn hard. So,” he widens his stance and crosses his arms, like he’s settling in for an argument. “I’m going to say the same to you. Quit making it difficult. If you love her, you love her. End of story. Everything else is just details.”
“Now you’re an expert?”
“I’m someone who has walked on the road you're currently on. I know what it’s like to deny myself because I think what I want is wrong.”
I’ve been married. I’ve had kids. Can those boxes only be checked once? Maybe for some people, but for me? What’s my right answer?
I honestly don’t know.
Wes can tell I’m done talking. We’ve given one another enough to think about. “You ready to go?” he asks.
We walk out, and just as I’m closing Wes’s truck door he looks at me and says, “Do you know what this makes you?”
I sigh. “An asshole?”
“No.” Wes clicks his seatbelt into place. “You’re changing course. Taking a chance. You’re a maverick.”
The word turns over in my head. I like it.
We leave the house and stop at the homestead to pick up Wyatt and Jessie. Wes pulls off for a six-pack, and we arrive at the lookout just as the heavy, bright orange sun sinks halfway down the horizon. Wyatt hands out the beer and presses a lemonade into Jessie’s outstretched hand. She scowls.
We sit under the sparse canopy of a large pine, away from the openness of the overlook, four Hayden siblings shooting the shit. We quiet down when we hear footsteps. Twenty yards out, two young boys walk past us. They can’t be more than thirteen and probably know Peyton. Each has a pellet gun over their shoulder, and neither has seen us.
“Quail hunting,” I whisper.
They walk on, and Jessie stands up. She creeps after them, parallel to the line they walk. Wyatt whisper-hisses her name, and she brushes him off with a wave. Jessie makes it to the next tree and palms the trunk, leaning around to keep the young boys in her eyeline.
I watch one of the two boys take a rock from his pocket. He throws it at a bush, and the quail inside scatter. Both boys take aim. They shoot.
Jessie howls like she’s been hit. The boys look at each other for a split second, then break into a sprint. They tear off away from the lookout like someone lit their asses on fire, back the way they came. They don’t slow down, and they don’t see us.
Jessie’s doubled over, slapping her thigh. Wyatt laughs so hard no sound comes out. I’m shaking my head and trying like hell to keep from laughing. It doesn’t work. That was too fucking funny. With the three of us cracking up, Wes doesn’t stand a chance. He lets go of his stoic leader of the pack routine and joins in.
“You’re fucking crazy, Calamity,” Wyatt says to Jessie. “Those boys think they hit a person.”
“Can’t grow up with you three and be sane,” she shoots back. He sneaks her some beer when Wes isn’t looking.
Later on, when I’m getting out of Wes’s truck in front of my place, Wyatt rolls down the window and yells, “I found the home address of the guy who wrote that article about you and Anna. In case you want to drive out there and throw a bag of flaming dog shit in his face.”
There are plenty of things I’d like to do to that guy, but what’s the point? It’d be a lot of time and energy for not much benefit. I shake my head at his offer and go inside. The second I’m home, my mind drifts back to the place where it’s been for two weeks, like a record stuck on repeat.
I open my phone and sift through pictures of her, serving myself a heaping plate of misery. Why the fuck not? There’s one in particular I get stuck on. Her lips are poised to kiss my cheek, her eyes shut tight. My grin is as goofy as they come, but so damn happy.