I shook my head, splashed more water over my face, and bit the inside of my cheek until the pain blotted out everything else.
It wasn’t Rawley I was afraid of, not really. It was the idea that maybe I’d ruined the one good thing that ever happened to me. That Carter would never look at me again the way he had in the dark.
I put my teeth on edge, forced a slow exhale, and finished lacing up the boots. Time to work. Time to pretend I could dig enough holes, drive enough posts, or stretch enough miles of wire to undo what I’d done.
I left the washroom, hands still wet, and grabbed a banana off the kitchen counter. Burke had scrawled “DO NOT TOUCH” on the bunch with a Sharpie, so I bit into it anyway, grinning around the mouthful. It tasted sweet, which was the opposite of how the morning felt.
The clock over the stove ticked loud in the quiet. It was barely 5:30, but I knew Rawley would be up already, working through the night’s ranch ledgers like he did every Monday.
Some part of me wanted to go to him, say, “I fucked up. I touched your brother. I can’t stop thinking about him.” But I never did. That would mean admitting I wanted something I couldn’t have, that I’d made the same mistake my old man had warned me about: falling for someone who wouldn’t ever stay.
I threw the banana peel in the compost, wiped my hands on a dish towel, and checked the day’s job list, taped to the fridge in Burke’s chicken-scratch. There were five new tasks: fence repair, tractor tune-up, grain run, goat vaccinations, and weed-whacking the back paddock. All chores designed to keep a man busy, to keep his hands full and his mind blank.
I took the list and started for the mudroom, shoulders hunched against the memory that followed me like a bloodhound.
Some mornings, the ache dulled a little. Some mornings, it was all I could do not to walk out the front door, climb into the truck, and drive east until I hit whatever city Carter had disappeared into. But I never did. I stayed here, anchored to this patch of ground by a promise I’d never made, not to anyone who cared.
I opened the door to the morning, boots sinking into the rutted earth. The sun was crawling over the ridge, turning the clouds orange and gold. It looked like a new day, but I knew better.
I squared my shoulders, put on my best blank face, and started walking. If Rawley saw me first, maybe I could ask him what it felt like to be loved without apology. Or maybe I’d just keep my mouth shut, same as always.
One foot in front of the other, down the drive and across the pasture, until the only thing left was the work, and the ghosts I carried with me.
That was the trick: keep moving. Don’t look back.
There’s a rhythm to ranch work you can’t learn from books, only by failing at it a couple hundred times and wearing out your pride along the way.
Most days I could sync up to that rhythm and forget myself, at least until the whistle of a distant train or the smell of new-cut cedar tripped some wire in my head.
Rawley was waiting at the east paddock, already elbow-deep in a tangle of barbed wire and bad attitude. The morning wind dragged his voice all the way to the gate before he said, “You’re late.”
I checked my watch, though I knew I wasn’t. “Clock says six on the nose, boss.”
He didn’t smile, but the left side of his mouth twitched. “Get the auger. The posts aren’t gonna drive themselves.”
If you wanted to measure time on a ranch, you could do it in fence posts, in yards of wire, in the weight of things carried until your bones ached. That’s how we did it: side by side, eyes fixed on the horizon, never talking unless a job required it.
Rawley stretched wire with his whole body, the sleeves on his shirt tight over the muscle he built during his SEAL years and never let go of. I hauled fence posts from the pile near the tree line, one on each shoulder, teeth gritted until I could taste blood.
Burke would have said we were trying to out-macho each other, but it was simpler than that. You worked until the work was done.
We fell into the old military rhythm without thinking. Rawley would call the measurement, I’d dig and drop the post, he’d make sure it was plumb, then I’d fill the hole and tamp the dirt. It was as close to peace as either of us got, but even then, the ghosts kept pace.
Sometimes, when the wind shifted, I could smell Carter’s shampoo—the green bottle he left on the shelf in the guest bathroom, the one he insisted was “for sensitive scalps.”
It was probably an $80 bottle, some imported Scandinavian bullshit, and I’d mocked him for it the first week he showed up. He’d laughed, tossing his head back, then handed me the bottle and dared me to try it.
I never did. But I stole a capful once, after he left, just to remember.
Rawley squinted at the sky, fingers twisting wire with quick, brutal efficiency. “Storm’s coming,” he said. “You sure you’re good to work all day?”
I slammed the auger down, spinning it into the soil with more force than was required. “Can’t work from bed, can I?”
He shot me a look, sharp and assessing. “Didn’t say you couldn’t. Just don’t want you keeling over halfway through.”
“I’m fine,” I said, and meant it less every time.
We worked in silence for a while, the only sounds the metallic whine of wire, the crunch of dirt under boots, and the distant bawl of a calf separated from its mother for the first time.
