It’s why I’ve come to the homestead for dinner. The kids are with Anna again, an unexpected midweek visit, and without them to distract me, I start feeling pretty damn sorry for myself.
Wyatt stomps onto the front porch. “The fuck’s wrong with you?” he demands. He’s wearing a half-tucked flannel print shirt and tight-ass jeans piled on top of boots that nobody in their right mind would call cowboy.
I lean back in my seat and stare openly at his choice of footwear. “Where’s your motorcycle?”
Wyatt ignores the jab, pulling a single cigarette from his back pocket and lighting it. I frown. “Since when do you smoke?”
He shrugs. “Since when I decided that I fucking felt like it.”
I join him at the porch railing. “You’re in a foul mood.” I hold my hand out for the cancer stick. “Let me have some.”
He side-eyes me like he doesn’t believe I want to smoke, then hands it over. I bring it to my mouth but drop it right before it touches me, and stomp on it with my real-ass cowboy boot.
Wyatt’s jaw twitches. “Prick.”
I stare back at him. “Dumbass.”
Wes steps out of the front door Wyatt left half open and stops, looking at us. “My money’s on Wyatt.”
I take a step back from my little brother. “Thanks a lot, Wes.”
He shrugs. “Your heart’s broken. No way you’d put up a real fight.”
My lips turn down. “Maybe I’m angry and I need to take it out on someone.”
Wes snorts. “Yeah, angry at yourself. Are you going to punch your own face?”
I’m somewhat seriously considering bull-rushing Wes, but a buzzing sound grabs my attention. Looking in the late afternoon sky, I spot a small object flying around.
“It’s the drone Tenley asked me about.” Wes searches my face after he says her name. “They were here earlier too, getting shots at different times of the day.”
He doesn’t say it, but the only way he’d know that is if he’d talked to Tenley recently. More recently than me. It’s been two weeks since she left the ranch, but it feels like two years. I’m waiting for the sharp pain in my chest to fade to a dull throb, something I can learn to live with for the rest of my life.
I open my mouth to speak but the front door opens so forcefully that it looks like it’s coming off its hinges. My dad treads heavily on the wood-planked porch, also wearing real-ass cowboy boots. I’m about to point this out to Wyatt because I can’t resist giving him shit for wearing something so trendy, but my attention is pulled away by the swing of a gun. Dad steps from the porch, strides to the center of the yard, and takes aim. The drone explodes, fragments falling to earth like a clumsy firecracker.
Wes sighs. Loudly. Deeply.
Dad turns and stares at him. The look on his face is close to a sneer, but sneering requires a certain amount of emotion, which my dad isn’t exactly known for displaying. “I told them no pictures of the HCC. Not by land, not by air, and if they create a sea in a landlocked state and send in a picture-taking jet-ski, I will torpedo them.”
Gramps’s laughter floats through the front porch window, and I tuck away the smile it puts on my face.
Wes shakes his head slightly. “Dad, I gave them permission.”
“Like hell you did.”
Wes looks to me for help. I was there for the conversation between Wes and Tenley, but there’s no fucking way I’m stepping into this cow pie.
Dad grumbles on his way past Wes and into the house. Wes locks onto me with his death stare. “Thanks a lot.”
“You would’ve done the same thing.”
“I was coming out here to ask you to go get a beer with me, but maybe not. Maybe you should stew in that pulverized heart of yours all by yourself.”
I ignore what he said and consider his invite. “I could go for a beer.” I look at Wyatt. “You want to come?”
He nods. Without asking, I know we’re going to the Chute.
I start for my truck. “Let me go get changed and—”
