It took another twenty minutes to part the buddies, but eventually, I was back in my car and headed into town. Sara called me while I was still inside my parents’ house trying to negotiate Beau actually agreeing to come home with me. We agreed to meet up for a walk through the town. She needed to run a couple of errands and it would be a good chance for us to catch up.
That translated into, she wanted to know what happened after we went our separate ways at The Junction the night before. That was fine with me. I needed to confide in her about it. It was much too big to just keep holding in.
I had Beau on his leash and he was still bouncing around with the lingering adrenaline of his night with Dad when we met up with Sara outside the candy shop at the head of Main Street. She was holding a little brown paper bag and as I approached, I saw her dip her hand into the bag and come up with a lemon drop.
“Can’t resist, can you?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I’m an adult. I can count this as a fruit.”
“I will not object to that,” I said, and she offered me the bag.
Sucking on the tart lemon hard candy, I guided her to start walking down the sidewalk.
“So,” she said after a few silent seconds. “What happened last night? Did you go home with Jesse?”
“Yes,” I said. “He was kind of in a bad way. That fight didn’t treat him gently. So Clayton brought both of us back to the house and we convinced Jesse to take a shower so he could get some rest. When he came out, I had an ice pack for his ribs. We got to talking and he said he wanted to tell me about why he left all those years ago without saying anything.”
“He did?” Sara asked, sounding surprised. “After all this time, he finally got a wave of conscience and needed to unburden himself?”
“Something like that,” I said. “You don’t exactly sound sympathetic to the situation.”
“It’s hard to be,” she said. “He hurt you so much when he just up and left, and now he’s come back here and you’re having to figure your feelings out all over again.”
“Aren’t you the one who came all the way out to the shop to tell me he was in town?” I asked.
“I am,” she said. “I just want you to be careful. If he’s being honest with you, I’m glad to hear it.”
The shift in the way Sara talked about Jesse was so intense I couldn’t help but wonder if some of it had to do with her own night with Cassidy—or lack thereof. The jury was still out on that one, but I wasn’t going to bring it up. I needed to get what happened with Jesse out into the open and off my chest.
“He was telling the truth,” I told her. “He didn’t try to make any excuses or make himself sound good. He apologized and said I deserved to know what was going on. Then he told me about the night he left. You already know things with his father were going downhill really fast around then.”
“I’d heard he was slipping,” Sara admitted.
“Apparently, it was worse than that. Worse than anybody thought. He was really awful to Jesse all the time. Not to any of the other brothers but just to Jesse. He took it because he didn’t want to cause problems, but that night, it got to be too much, and he just couldn’t bear it anymore. It turned physical again and he left so he didn’t have to deal with any of that anymore.”
“That’s awful,” Sara said.
“Yeah,” I said. “It is. He said he never told anybody and still hasn’t told his brothers because he didn’t want them to think of their father any differently. I asked him if he ever wondered what things would have been like if they turned out another way for us.”
“What did he say?” Sara asked.
“He said he knew exactly how they would turn out and he kissed me,” I told her.
Sara’s eyes grew wide. “And then?”
“And then we had sex.”
Her hand clamped over her mouth to muffle her scream of excitement. I gestured for her to quiet down and she finally got a hold of herself.
“What does this mean for you guys?” Sara asked. “Are you two back together?”
“We didn’t get that specific,” I told her. “But the conclusion was he would still be with me if he never left.”
“And would you still be with him?” Sara asked.
I nodded. There was nobody else for me. Never had been. Never would be.
“He’s always been the one for me,” I told her. “I knew that from the time I was a teenager and he gave me my first kiss. I was always going to be with Jesse Montgomery. But then he left and that changed everything. I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel or think right now. I’m afraid of what it means to go all in with him again. I didn’t even hesitate when we were younger, but you saw how that turned out. The last time I totally committed and gave myself over to him, I had my heart broken and I’ve never fully recovered from it.”
The memories of Jesse’s PTSD episode that morning flashed through my head, but I kept them to myself. I wasn’t going to tell Sara about it. I trusted her completely and I knew she would never judge him. After all, both of us had known other boys who came back after serving a few years and weren’t the same. It wasn’t like Green Valley was overrun with them or anything, but there were a couple we went to high school with and we both witnessed what it was like for them when they came back. But that didn’t change that Jesse’s condition was his personal business and not my information to share. When he was ready to let others know, he would. Until then, I needed to focus just on what happened between us and what we were supposed to do moving forward.
“I know,” Sara said. “It’s a lot to think about. Especially after what went down last night. What’s Cassidy going to do about the fight with the Hayes Brothers?”
The fact that she mentioned Cassidy by name seemed like a good sign. Maybe I was overdramatizing her flirting with him.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I don’t even know what Jesse’s going to do about it. I didn’t really ask him what his intentions were or if he planned on settling a score or just letting it go. It’s the same with Cassidy.”
“I find it hard to believe he’d let it go. Cassidy is a cool cucumber until somebody fucks with his family. Then all bets are off.”
“True,” I said.
Now that I was thinking of it that way, I got more nervous about what the conflict might turn into. Both Clayton and Cassidy had handled the aftermath of the fight well and neither one of them had seemed too surprised or worked up about it. But it was entirely possible that was just their initial reaction, them forcing themselves to stay calm so they could make sure Jesse was okay before really reacting.
I sincerely hoped Cassidy didn’t get himself, or Jesse, into even more hot water with the Hayes family. There was enough hatred there already.
The decades of bad blood between the two ranching families had always been a source of gossip around town, but things had been calm for the last year or so. It seemed things might have settled down and the new generations were going to let the feud die. Or at least not act on it.
I had a feeling that was soon going to change.
Chapter 29
Jesse
I really did have every intention of going out onto the ranch and burying myself in work. It would distract me and help me to keep my thoughts under control. Besides, I had a lot of years to make up for. I’d left my brothers to handle the ranch, and while a couple of the others weren’t exactly pulling their weight either, I wanted to so I was still a part of the family and could help.
Unfortunately, that didn’t work out for me the way I intended. After walking out of the house and leaving Sawyer, I found a few tasks to do. I worked myself into a sweat until my muscles ached. The soreness from the fight the night before brought that on a bit faster than would usually happen, but I pushed myself through it for a while.
It wasn’t enough to keep all my thoughts at bay, though. I eventually abandoned my work and wandered out into one of the fields that had been left out of the grazing rotation for the y
ear so the grass could build back up and the nutrients in the soil wouldn’t be depleted.
But I wasn’t thinking about any of that. I flopped myself down onto my back and stared up at the sky. Paralyzed by my thoughts, I succumbed to cloud watching. As they floated by across the pristine blue expanse, I found shapes in them and created little stories in my head.
It was something Shannon and I had done a long time ago. When we were still innocent and the world didn’t seem like such a big place. On days that were too cool to go to the swimming hole or when the water had already been taken over by my brothers and we didn’t want to share the space, we ran away together into one of the empty fields and stretched out on a blanket to stare up at the clouds. It was no surprise she was always able to see fantastical shapes and creatures among the puffs and wisps.
I loved having her point them out to me and then try desperately to get me to see what she saw when I couldn’t quite get there. That day, I thought about her lying along beside me looking at the clouds, but my mind was tormented by the reality of her being there to witness one of my episodes.
I never wanted that to happen. Even if I was to open up and tell her that I was struggling with PTSD and it was what took me out of the military and brought me back to Green Valley, I wouldn’t want her to actually see it. I could tell her what I was going through and let her know that I was working through it without her ever having to be a part of it.
I felt vulnerable and ashamed knowing she had seen me that way. I didn’t know why, but seizing up and my mind going completely out of my control that way left me feeling weak.
A piece of a shadow fell over me and I realized someone else had walked into the field. It wasn’t Shannon. Her shadow wasn’t that shape.
I tilted my head and realized it was Cassidy. That wasn’t that much of a surprise. He would be looking for me around the ranch to see what I was up to, especially if he had a talk with Sawyer. I turned my head back to staring up at the sky and Cassidy sat down beside me in the grass. He pulled his knees up and wrapped his arms around them, clasping his hands and staring straight ahead.
“The last time I found you out here, it was three days before you ran,” he said. “Hope this isn’t a sign that you’re going to leave again.”
I shook my head. “No. Not yet at least.”
Letting out a sigh, Cassidy lay down on his back in the grass beside me, one arm bent under his head and the other rested across his stomach.
“Good. I’m just starting to get used to having you around again. And I’d hate to see you throw away a good thing over some Hayes bullshit.”
I looked over at my brother, confused. That was definitely not the reaction I was expecting him to have. Not only was he not ripping me to shreds over getting into a fight with Roy and Benjamin, but he was hinting at something else. He was clearly not happy about the fight but not because of the brothers.
Because of something else I might be throwing away.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Shannon,” Cassidy said flatly. “That girl has never stopped loving you. And based on the way you looked at her last night, I suspect you feel the same about her.”
I drew in a breath but didn’t confirm or deny his suspicions. “You do?” I asked.
“You can’t leave her again, man,” Cassidy said, not buying into my innocent act. “If you’re going all in with her, that’s what it has to be. All in or nothing. No in between. It’s not fair to her. Got it?”
I almost laughed. This conversation had gone so far off the rails, I barely even knew what direction we were going. But at least it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. Cassidy narrowed his eyes at me, and I shook my head slightly.
“You sound like Dad,” I told him.
Saying that made my heart squeeze but also brought some happiness to the back of my mind. What I really meant was he sounded like Dad how I remembered him when we were younger. Not the father I had in the last few weeks and months I was living at home. Not the man who was such an incredible departure from the man who raised me and who broke me down so far, I couldn’t even stay home anymore. I was talking about the man who raised eight boys, loved my mother with every fiber of his being, and built up the legacy of the ranch so we would have everything.
“So I’ve been told,” Cassidy said with a slight nod.
It was difficult to interpret his emotions. Of all my brothers, Cassidy was probably the one who was the closest to knowing what went on between Dad and me. I never told him and didn’t plan on it, but there were times when he witnessed some of the smaller spats between us, and he saw that Dad was getting angrier and had a short temper toward the end. But even then, it was only a slight change, a minor shift that happened in so many men when they got older. Cassidy still got the best of Dad right up until the end.
“It’s not a bad thing,” I told him. “You got his good qualities.”
“All he had were good qualities,” Cassidy said with a grin.
That answer only underscored what I’d told Shannon earlier and the commitment I’d carried with me ever since leaving the ranch. It was why I never told my brothers about the fight I had with Dad that drove me away. They all looked up to our father. They saw him as their idol, and I never wanted to taint that memory. I dearly wished it could still be my memory, too. But it wasn’t. Not most of the time. Far more often, I had to face the man I knew as my father in the last stretch of time I lived at home. It was a much different experience, but not one I wanted any of my brothers to have. So I kept my mouth shut.
Cassidy looked at me out of the corner of his eye, almost like he was waiting for me to say something else. When I didn’t, he turned toward me a little more.
“Sawyer told me about what happened this morning,” he said.
“Of course, he did,” I said. “I bet he had a good laugh about it, too.”
“It wasn’t like that,” Cassidy said. “It happened to Dad, too, you know?”
That made me pause a little. “What did?” I asked after a beat.
“Post-traumatic stress,” Cassidy said without hesitation, without attempting to sugarcoat it. There wasn’t a single drop of judgment in his voice. “They called it shellshock back then, but it’s pretty much the same thing. From Vietnam.”
I didn’t know that. No one had ever told me that. I sat up and Cassidy did the same. I rubbed my hands together, cracking my knuckles and rubbing deep into my palms just so I had something to do with my hands. I tried to think of something to say, but nothing came. Yet again, I felt paralyzed and lost.
But Cassidy being Cassidy, my brother knew exactly what to say. He always knew what to say.
“When Dad came home, he was a lost man. Mom used to sleep out in the bunkhouse with him because he felt safer in a smaller space than in the house. Some nights, he’d sleep outside in the dirt under the stars because he couldn’t sleep in a bed. He’d wake up screaming. Crying. Cursing the names of a man she never was able to get him to speak about.”
“How did I not know this?” I asked, feeling breathless and almost like I’d run headlong into a brick wall.
“Because he got help,” Cassidy explained. “And he got better. Not perfect, but better. Dad had memories that led to dark places, Jess. But he had good ones, too, and he learned how to use them to balance the darkness out. You don’t have to try to find that balance on your own. You have people who are here for you and who can point you in the right direction. You just have to be willing to let us do it.”
I swallowed hard and turned away from my brother so I didn’t have to look at him. Turning my eyes back up to the sky, I stared at the clouds rolling past and thought for a brief moment they looked like a herd of cattle.
“Thanks, Cassidy,” I said quietly.
That meant more to me than he would ever know.
Chapter 30
Shannon
After the somewhat strained and awkward way Jesse and I parted ways on Saturday, I wanted to give him
some time to calm down and process everything. I expected to hear from him, but the rest of the day, the evening, and then the night went by without a single word.
Dad kept me busy at the shop Sunday morning, catching up on a few projects during hours that were technically supposed to be closed. That way we knew for sure we wouldn’t be getting any new customers while we concentrated on the projects. But the whole day, all I could think about was Jesse and what was going on. When I finally got finished for the evening, I headed straight for the Montgomery ranch to check in on him.
I needed to make sure he was doing all right. Both physically and mentally. I walked up to the front door and knocked, expecting Jesse to open the door. Even if it wasn’t him, one of the other brothers would open it up and let me in to see him. Instead, Wade opened the door and looked out at me with a confused expression on his face.
“Evening, Shannon,” he said, sounding just as confused as he looked. “What are you doing here?”
“I came by to see Jesse,” I said, narrowing my eyes at him slightly. “How’s he doing?”
“Well, to tell you the truth, I don’t know,” Wade said. “At least, not right at this second.” He stepped out of the house onto the porch with me and closed the door behind him.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Jesse isn’t at home,” he said. “He told me he was going to visit you.”
My heart sank when I heard that. It had been way more than twenty-four hours since I even heard from Jesse, much less saw him.
“Visit me?” I asked. “He told you that?”
“Yes,” Wade said. “Quite a bit earlier this evening. He never came by your place?”
I shook my head. I didn’t want to admit it, but it made me nervous to stand there talking to Wade. Of all the Montgomery boys, he had always been the darkest and most mysterious of them.
His Reckless Heart (The Montgomery Boys Book 1) Page 17
