“There is no point. There’s no point to either thing. You’re going to be carrying your baggage with you either way. You can either waste a bunch of emotional energy trying to understand people who never bothered to explain themselves, or you can just be angry. Both are probably a waste, but if you can figure out how to feel nothing, let me know. I haven’t even gotten close to that one.”
She took a sip of the scalding coffee, and it was so strong it might as well have punched her in the face.
“This is cowboy coffee for sure,” she said. “And I am not a cowboy.”
“Well, we can’t all be cowboys.”
She sighed and leaned her head back against the window. Pink was bleeding up through the sky now, the sun beginning to rise over the mountains to the east. Turning all that dusky gray brilliant gold. And as it spread over the view, her breath caught. The ridge they were sitting on was all fine red sand, with dark black brush strokes of soil along the sides.Painted Ridge. She could see it now. “Look,” he said, pointing off to the right.
She followed the direction that he was pointing in and covered her mouth. The mustang herd was running down below, moving in formation, brilliant and wild.
“It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” she said.
“I can’t imagine rounding them up,” Cody said. “They deserve to be free.”
“They do,” she said. “Have they always come past here?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I’ve been coming out here to watch them for a long time.”
Ever since he was a boy, so angry, looking at this ranch that should’ve been his, and he’d seen those horses, who were unwanted just like he was.
He had chosen to share this with her, even though it was casual.
And that made her feel something. Because it was casual. In the way that it wasn’t forever, but not in the way that it meant nothing.
She knew that for sure.
“I can see why this place means so much to you,” she said. “I can see why you needed to do this.”
It was the thing he hadn’t told her before. The why of it all.
It was in his blood in such a particular way. The longing for his land was a part of him, baked deep into his bones.
She didn’t know what it was like to long for a place in this way.
She had always been looking for a home, any home, but she hadn’t had one that was right there, being denied her.
She wanted to know more about him. Wanted to understand deeper what it had been like for him to grow up here, knowing his dad was only forty minutes away, but never actually seeing him.
“I legitimately have no idea where my mom went,” she said. “If I had known where she was, I think I would’ve gone over to her place and vandalized it.” Even as she said that, though, she doubted it.
She’d never been that brave, or that foolish. She’d never wanted to be that out of control.
He chuckled. “Oh, don’t think I never considered it. But my mom loved him so much and…” His mouth firmed into a grim line. “I never wanted to do anything to cause trouble for her. She still saw him sometimes. Obviously. I mean, Lila is quite a bit younger than me.”
“And they’re all his kids?”
“Probably not. Lila probably is. I think she and I look a lot alike.”
Walker. She would never have said that Cody and Walker were brothers, except that Walker was exceptionally handsome, just in a different way than Cody.
“But she was with him,” she said. “Off and on?”
“Yes. Off and on. And cleaning up after that was always a whole thing. I mean, she would go spend the night with him, and he would send her away, and she would be bedbound for weeks afterward. Couldn’t work, couldn’t take care of us, couldn’t… She really loved him. And she was so young when she first got together with him. You know, she got kicked out of her house when she got pregnant with me.”
“Her parents kicked her out?”
“They were furious that she got pregnant when she wasn’t married. She was only nineteen. My father was thirty-three.”
