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As part of their salary for working full-time for me, they were each housed on the property in cabins. It helped to have some of the ranch hands nearby, because farming and ranching wasn’t a nine-to-five job. Sure, I’d tried to accommodate typical work hours, but unexpected things happened, like storms popping up or cattle getting out, and those were things that needed immediate attention. Gene had worked for my dad, and I’d asked him to stay on, which he did happily.

I had met Travis at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. He had broken down, saying he needed accountability and more distance from his current living situation. He drank for some of the same reasons I had. Where I’d been sober for almost eight years, he’d just reached his six-month mark. I worked to be sober because Lane and Jonah pulled me from the depths of my hellish regret, and Travis had his own reasons.

I hadn’t considered AA in a new light until lately. When Sawyer pulled that slip of paper from my hoodie pocket, I had forgotten it was there. Every morning I wrote down how many days I’d been sober with a greater-than sign followed by the number one. Reminding myself that one sip could undo all the days I had worked diligently to achieve. I didn’t have the same desire to turn to liquor as I had in the past, but I wasn’t foolish enough to think that I couldn’t break my sobriety. I never wanted to be the person I was when I used alcohol to cope and live another day. Drunk Soren made so many shitty mistakes, which led to the second worst day of my life.

My life had fractured at the seams, and Lane and Jonah had given me a lesson in tough love. They had locked me in Jonah’s house for a solid two weeks while the effects of alcohol addiction racked my body. Lane had hired a private doctor to be at my side. Lane and Jonah sat with me while I broke down repeatedly, experiencing the grief I had ignored by way of an amber-colored liquid. They waited until after the two weeks to say anything to my parents, knowing they couldn’t handle seeing their only living son at his lowest. After those hellish two weeks, I went to a rehab facility. After rehab, I met George and he became my sponsor. George was a retired school teacher and coach with over thirty years of sobriety under his belt. He believed in tough love and hard work, in that order. When reality hit, I was shell-shocked by the disaster I had created in my life. I had destroyed the goodwill that most people had toward me, and sometimes, I still heard the small town whispers about me—most of which weren’t even true.

Chet Hagan, a frequent coffee drinker at Ronnie’s Diner, had always claimed that if you hadn’t heard a good rumor by noon, then you should just make something up. Even in a small town, there were those who made stirring the rumor mill their full-time job. It was unorthodox, but George had pretty much adopted me as a nephew, and we’d get together for lunch whenever I was in Lewis City. This was a part of my life that I haven’t talked to Sawyer about. Not because I was necessarily ashamed of it. I know I did the right thing, and I’m deeply grateful for those who walked by my side through it all. But telling her made me nervous and unsettled. It was foolish to think that alcohol was no longer an issue for me, but I had bone deep knowledge that I’d never touch it again. Not because I’ve lost the taste for it, but because it obliterated my life before, and I’d never do that again. I had too much to lose. I had people that depended on me for their livelihoods to feed their families. I was in a good place and I wanted to move forward, but the possibility of losing someone else weighed heavily on my chest. My phone rang, and I reached for it. Travis.

“Hey.”

“Man . . . ”His voice didn’t sound right.

“Travis, where are you at?” I tossed things in the bed of the UTV.

“The cabin.”

I didn’t know Travis as well as Jonah and Lane, but I knew he didn’t make unnecessary phone calls. My gut rolled, knowing something wasn’t right. I was determined to be the person in his corner, the same as Lane and Jonah had been for me. He had no support, and he had more at stake than I ever did.

Clouds of dust flew as I raced to his cabin, down the gravel roads. When I arrived, he was sitting on the steps, dark hair disheveled but still knotted behind his head, and holding a bottle of unopened whiskey. I paused, watching him. He tossed the bottle between his hands. Left. Right. Left. Whiskey used to be my poison of choice too. I sat beside him. He was about the same size as me, but leaner and more heavily tattooed than Jonah. His calloused hands tossed the bottle back and forth. Back and forth.

“What’s going on, man?” I asked calmly.

“I haven’t had any, if that’s what you’re wondering.” His voice was husky.

“I can see it’s sealed and that you’re sober,” I acknowledged.

“My mom brought this by.” Damn.

“Why do you think she did that?” I asked, even as I wanted to swear at the audacity.

“Because it’s the only way she knows how to cope,” he sounded resigned.

“Travis, you are not her. You have tools,” I reminded him.

“I know. It’s just that today was so damn hard, and then she came by and I knew I couldn’t be trusted to be alone.” Reaching the point of acknowledging your weaknesses was such a notable step in this journey.

“Why is today hard?” I studied his face. I didn’t know his whole story and I didn’t push.

“Today is a year.” Grief. Nothing ached quite like the anniversaries of before and after. The day that marked the moment that ripped your life to shreds.

“Hell. I’m sorry, man,” I replied, but it didn’t feel like enough.

Travis blew out a breath and scrubbed the back of a thumb across his forehead.

“Watch me pour it out?” he asked after a pause.

“Sure, thing,” I agreed.

We made our way into the cabin and he poured it down the drain. These days were the most challenging, but I knew that Travis had that same fight in him to make it that I did. That fight in his eyes is what made me hire him six months ago. He’d make it, but it was going to be a hell of a fight along the way. I made a note to include him in more things whenever possible because a good support system made all the difference. We talked a little longer, and I reminded him to reach out again if he needed to. Not long after, we loaded up and went to work on the fence together. He was in good shape again by the time his daughter got home from preschool.

Chapter

Twenty-Seven

Sawyer

When we arrived at the historic, luxury-style theater on the main street of Wilson, there were groups of people trickling in through the large wooden doors. Men wore starched, pearl-snap dress shirts, cowboy hats, and blazers over denim pants. Soren wore dark denim jeans that molded to his thick thighs with freshly shined cowboy boots. His cream-colored shirt, with a few buttons at the neck, clung to his muscular body in all the right places. He was handsome in a way that made my stomach feel funny. Women were in skin tight denim jeans, cut-off shorts, summer dresses, and cowgirl boots. The light blue summer dress that Talia declared would “make my eyes pop” was what I ended up wearing after sending her multiple selfies to make sure it looked okay. I had curled my hair in waves and left it down. It hung almost to my waist.