“Sit down and tell us all about it, Brody.” Mama Louise’s kind offer of a chair beside her is topped off with a glass of her special sweet tea. It’s special because it’s got more bourbon than sugar, and if you’ve ever had sweet tea, you know it’s got a shit ton of sugar. I make a note to take it easy because we’ve all had Mama Louise’s tea set us on our ass unexpectedly. It goes down so smoothly, you’re drunker than a skunk before you know it. And I’m already three beers in tonight.
I sit down beside Mama Louise, take the offered tea, and have myself a healthy swallow before I say a word. I take the moment to look over my glass at our mish-mash, motley crew of a family.
The Bennetts. Mark, Luke, and James, the three boys who were once enemies and are now pseudo-brothers, though I’d deny that if asked, and Mama Louise, their mother by birth and ours by forced adoption when we were grown—but the woman won’t take no for an answer—are sitting around the yard in old handmade wooden chairs.
And the Tannens. My brother, Bobby, and my sister, Shayanne, are watching Brutal and Cooper play as Allyson watches on like only a mother can. Pretty sure they’re all cheering for Cooper at this point, and Brutal’s shit out of luck.
Katelyn’s gone to sit on Mark’s lap since we got here, where she is half the time you lay eyes on them. And Sophie, James’s wife, has a full-sized goat in her lap, mindlessly scratching under its chin, which means their daughter, Cindy Lou, must be inside asleep already.
It’s not the family I ever thought I’d have, but I’m damn thankful for it. There’s a saying about family, something about it giving you roots and wings. That’s what this right here does for me. I’ve always had roots—to this land, to our herd, to my family. But for a while, I had no wings. I was as landlocked as my cows are. Weighed down by Dad, by bills, by expectations.
When we’d been forced to sell our ranch to the Bennetts in the wake of Dad’s death, and came on as the hired help, I’d fought stubbornly against it. I’d been so arrogant and prideful. Don’t get me wrong. I miss being the one to shine if it’s all good, and even the one to rage if it all goes to hell, but it’s been nice to just work and go home, rinse, and repeat. It’s freeing in a way, finally giving me those wings in a way I didn’t expect.
Mark’s eyeing me, telling me to get on with explaining what happened. If Katelyn wasn’t running her fingers through the hair at the base of his scalp, he’d probably still be growling. As it is, with her magic, he’s almost purring. And glaring, but purring and glaring is a damn sight better than growling and glaring.
I take one more sip of my tea before I start, just to irk him because I like stomping all over that line where he goes from okay to aggravated. “Did Shay’s deliveries, had old ladies telling me all day that I was too skinny.” Mama Louise snorts, probably because she’s the one who makes food for all of us and knows how much we can put away in one meal. “I know, right?” I pat my flat belly in confusion. “But Bessie was doing fine until she wasn’t. Felt like the transmission, but I made it to a mechanic shop. They’re going to look at it and call you with an estimate before they do any work.”
Mark grunts. Could mean ‘good job’, could mean ‘I’m gonna beat the shit out of you behind the barn later’—no way to tell for sure. I choose to take it as the former.
Katelyn smiles, never missing a loop on Mark’s hair. “He’s skipping the best part.”
Mark leans in and acts like he’s whispering to her, even though we can all hear him just fine. With an amused tilt of his lips, he asks her, “What’s the best part of my truck needing a couple thousand dollars’ worth of work, Princess?”
“Where’d you go after the mechanic’s, Brody?” I swear, she’s almost sing-songing the question.
“Resort bar.” Another sip of tea.
“What’d you do there?” More singing. She might as well be turning into a damn Disney princess—Princess Katelyn of the Redneck Ranch, coming soon to a theater near you.
“Drank beer. Ate a burger. Watched the game.” Too soon to take another drink, but I lick my lips and press them together, telling her she’s getting nothing out of me.
“And who was your friend?”
“Ain’t got any.”
Mark scoffs at that. “Think again, asshole. Look around you.”
Mama Louise points. “Language.”
Mark apologizes to Mama Louise with a good-natured dip of his chin, but his eyes say he meant what he said. “Who’d you meet at the bar?”
Shit. Damn nosy cowboys, worse than gossipy hens. Katelyn threw me under the bus on this one, probably karmic retribution for my using Shay as an excuse earlier. And a quick scan tells me that everyone’s listening now. Even Cooper has stopped tossing his beanbags to listen to me explain my ‘not friend’. Guess my protesting was a bit overplayed.
“Just some woman who was chatting me up. No big deal.”
But the women scent blood in the water. My blood.
With Bobby and me being the only single ones left in our group, the women have decided to take us on as projects. They’ve tried matching us up for blind dates, which I refuse, of course, accidentally running into people when we’re in town and I suddenly remember that I need wire from the feed store, and trying to give us quizzes from some magazine website. That one was actually fun because I answered truthfully and it’d all but said that I was going to die alone. I’d celebrated, not the being alone part, but that I’d fucked with the girls’ big plans to find my soulmate or some shit.
Truth be told, I don’t want that.
Shay had it tough when Mom died, but she was young enough that I tried my damnedest to protect her from the worst of it. But me? I was the oldest, the one who had to deal with everything. I saw Mom and Dad, deep in love and happy one day, and Dad absolutely gutted the next.
The day Mom took her last breath, our whole family died too. She’d been the glue and we’d all been too young and stupid to notice. Until she was gone.
Dad crumbled, but he didn’t go down easily. No, he crash landed, taking out as many innocent bystanders as possible. Mainly me. I lost count of the times I had to go pick him up at the bar, the casino the next county over, or a few times, at the jail for drunken and disorderly charges. Hell, I had to add a bail line item to the family budget, though I called it a contingency fund so Shayanne wouldn’t know what I used the money for when she balanced the books.
And he was angry, so fucking angry. I’ve been in a lot of fights in my life, but I’ve never thrown fists like Dad did. And usually at me. I don’t know why he chose me to take out his fury on because I certainly hadn’t gone easy on him in return, once punching him in the gut so hard I’d had to drive him to the hospital to get checked out. He’d insulted my wimpy-ass punch the whole way, and the nurse had rolled her eyes at his bruised gut and my swollen jaw. I’d felt guilty, and he’d felt righteous that I should’ve somehow magically adjusted the market price on cattle so he could get the money he needed to pay his gambling debts.
That’s what love does to you—gives you false hope and happiness and then rips it away, absolutely ruining you.