Three Brothers

by Nicole Williams

  Conn laughed behind us, every footstep kicking up gravel as he barely managed to stay upright. “To the Batmobile.”

  The streets were quiet. While Chance still took the time to triple-check every crosswalk before guiding me into it, the return trip to the truck passed in a flash. It had seemed to take us forever to get to the bar.

  Chance pulled open the passenger door for me and gave me a hand inside. “You’re not getting in the truck with that bottle, Conn.”

  “Then I guess I’m not getting in the truck.” Conn stumbled the last few steps toward us, smirking the whole way.

  As he unscrewed the lid of the bottle, whatever patience I’d been running on fumes gave out. “Get the fuck in the truck.” I scooted to the middle of the bench. When Conn stayed on the sidewalk for another second, my glare landed on him. “Now.”

  Conn laughed, making his way toward the open door. “I like it when you go all dominant on me. How can I say no to you when you’re like this?” Conn waved at me then lobbed the whiskey bottle over the truck. It shattered in the middle of the street, the light gold liquid seeming to turn black on the asphalt.

  Chance shook his head, but once Conn had crawled in beside me, he slammed the door as if he was anticipating his brother trying to escape. While Chance ran around the front of the truck, Conn settled into his seat, still chuckling as he hung his head over the back of the bench. The cab smelt like it had been drenched in whiskey and tequila by the time Chance had thrown open his door.

  “Good thing I like fresh air.” The first thing he did was roll down his window then he made sure my lap belt was on before starting the truck.

  “The seat belt rule applies to everyone,” I hinted as Chance pulled out of the parking spot.

  I could just make out the sound of sirens in the distance. We’d barely gotten him out in time. Chance had his seat belt fastened before we’d made it to the end of the block, but Conn was giving me the proverbial middle finger with his whole slouched, suddenly-gone-deaf act.

  “Asshole,” I muttered before leaning across him. I grabbed his seat belt and pulled it across his lap.

  When I clicked it into place, Conn looked at me with that crooked smile of his, his dark hair falling into his glazed eyes. “Why fasten your own belt when someone else will do it for you?”

  “Because someone won’t always be there to take care of you. One of these days, you have to learn how to take care of yourself.” I leaned back in my seat and took a breath.

  I was sandwiched between Chance and Conn in the close confines of a truck that I couldn’t launch myself out of if I needed to get away. This was like one of my worst nightmares—being caught between the brother I’d spent the first part of my life mistakenly loving and the brother I wanted to spent the last part of my life with, who actually deserved, wanted, and reciprocated my love. It was like some messed-up love triangle.

  So instead of focusing on that, I turned my attention to something else.

  “Why did you hit him, Conn?” I asked, holding back adding, “Why do you always have to attack someone with your fists instead of your words first?”

  Conn rolled down his window. When it was open, he leaned his head against the door and let the air break across his face. “Because I wanted to rough up that pretty face of his.”

  Like with the crosswalks, Chance wasn’t taking quite so long at the intersections, but it would still be a long ride home. When I crossed my arms and blew out a frustrated breath, Conn twisted in his seat some.

  “If you’re not satisfied with my answer, you’re welcome to fabricate one of your own,” he said.

  “You hit him because you’re drunk. You kept hitting him because you’re really drunk.” I glared at the window, knowing that was only half true. I’d seen Conn whale on plenty of people when he was sober, but sometimes it was easier to believe a person could only behave the way he did because of the influence of alcohol. It was hard to accept that such rage could so suddenly go off in a person all on its own.

  “Yeah, that’s the difference.” Conn snorted. “If I’d been sober and he’d put his hands on you, I would have just shook his hand.” He snorted again, shaking his head against the window frame.

  From the rearview mirror, I saw Chance glancing at us every few moments, his expression not quite but almost tense.

  “So you hit him again because . . .?” I still didn’t have a satisfactory answer—other than Conn being an impulsive asshole who had such a short fuse that if you blinked, it was gone.

  “Because someone had to.” Conn’s eyes sliced in Chance’s direction as if he was accusing him of something.

  I focused on staying calm. On the outside, I thought I was pretty convincing, but the inside told another story. “Why?”

  I waited a minute then another. Chance’s hand lowered from the steering wheel, found one of mine, and twined his fingers through mine. Conn didn’t miss Chance reaching for me and me reaching back. Just as I was about to repeat my one-word question, Conn’s eyes closed as he twisted away from me.

  He hunkered down in his seat, looking small, almost like a young boy. “If you really don’t know the answer to that, I’m not going to spend the time recapping the last twelve years for you.”

  TECHNICALLY, ONLY TWENTY-FOUR hours had passed, but I was fairly sure time was messing with me. In that amount of time, my life had changed so much it didn’t seem possible that only one day could have passed.

  After dragging a passed-out Conn to his room, Chance and I had experienced a seriously awkward moment outside my room. The unsaid question passed between us so intensely I was just about to pull him inside when he pressed his lips to my forehead, told me goodnight, and disappeared down the stairs.

  He hadn’t been at breakfast, and though it was rare for him to be at lunch, I couldn’t keep myself from staring at the doorway the whole time I nibbled my chicken salad sandwich, hoping he’d rush through it. He never did though. So instead of obsessing and overanalyzing everything that had been said and unsaid, I took a page out of Chance’s book and threw myself into as many tasks as I could find to keep my head and hands busy.

  First thing on the docket had been checking on the wolf pup . . . or rather Wolf—what an original name. When I didn’t find him in his enclosure or in the library, I went off a hunch. After knocking, I found him racked out in bed with a snoring Chase. So much for the wild wolf not acting like a lap dog. He’d barely lifted his head from the pillow to acknowledge me before closing his eyes and getting back to snoring too.

  After that, I helped Mrs. Baker with some of the household chores—she couldn’t stop thanking me for profusely—and after all the outside windows on the first floor had been hand washed, I’d meandered into the garden to tackle the strawberries. I picked a healthy-sized basket and moved over to the herb garden to trim a few pieces of rosemary, basil, and sage. I wasn’t sure what Chance had planned tonight for dinner, and really, what was on the menu was what I was least concerned with, but fresh herbs could make any dinner better. Plus they kept my hands busy and my mind somewhat empty.

  Dinner at the main house was on the table every night at six thirty, but I’d mentioned to John and Chase at lunch that I’d be having dinner at Chance’s house that night. Both of them had given me looks that made me want to squirm in my seat. I hadn’t brought up anything about last night or what we’d, in so many words, confessed to each other, but from the looks they gave me, it was like Chase and John had been there.

  I didn’t see Conn all day either. He might have been holed up in his room nursing a hangover, or maybe he was already a bottle deep into creating his next one. Despite the abundance of energy I had, I didn’t seem to have enough to go knock on his door. Conn drained me of so much more than energy, and even though I would always care for him, I had to care for him from a distance. I couldn’t let him pull me under again, not when I’d finally found what I’d been looking for at the surface. The whole time, I’d been searching in the wrong place. What I
wanted to give and wanted to feel wasn’t hiding in the darkness I’d followed Conn into; it had been in plain sight the whole time.

  When eight o’clock rolled around, I’d run out of chores to do, and I’d already been showered, dressed, and ready for a half hour. If I paced the foyer one more time, I would start putting wear marks into the wood floor. So after grabbing my jacket and a set of keys for one of the ranch trucks, I set the basket of strawberries and herbs on the floor of the passenger seat, fired up the truck, and was about to hit the gas when I realized I wasn’t sure where Chance’s place was.

  I knew it was on the Armstrong property, but that covered miles and miles of wide-open space and just as many miles of dirt roads, any of which could lead to Chance’s. I’d kept myself so busy I hadn’t stopped to realize I didn’t know how to get to him. Reaching into my jacket pocket for my cell phone, I pulled it out, and a small piece of paper tumbled out with it. On the scrap of yellow legal paper were a few words in familiar handwriting. Follow the GPS to the destination “home.”

  I reread the note a few times, puzzling over how he’d known which coat I’d pull on or which truck I’d pick or that I wouldn’t have realized before I was on my way that I didn’t know which way that was. But I realized that those questions might be puzzling through the lens of our new relationship—the romantic one—but they weren’t puzzling at all when I thought of it from the perspective of our old one. We’d been such good friends for so long it wasn’t so hard to believe that Chance would know what coat or what car I’d pick. I could have done the same with him.

  The friend part we had down pat—it was the other part I was hoping to get better acquainted with.

  After fiddling with the GPS, I managed to get the directions to “Home, Chance Armstong” pulled up, and I let the creepy female voice guide me down so many winding roads there was no way I could have found my way there or back without said creepy voice. The GPS showed Chance’s place as almost four miles away from the main home, but the going was so slow it took me almost twenty minutes to get there. I was still a half hour early for our date. Or our dinner. Or our dinner date. Or whatever this night would turn into.

  It was pitch black so far out, and there were no streetlamps lining the driveway to Chance’s place like there were back at John’s, so the porch lights served as a beacon. I slowed as I got closer to take a good look at Chance’s place. Like the home he’d grown up in, his was built from giant, butterscotch stained logs, but it was less than a quarter of the size of John’s sprawling home. More windows were cut into Chance’s home though, and there was something more inviting about it. It was in the middle of nowhere, and it didn’t exactly have a white picket fence around it, but when I drove up to Chance’s place for the first time, I felt none of the same uncertainty or unease I’d had pulling up to John’s my first night.

  Chance’s truck was nowhere to be seen, but maybe he had it parked around back. Other than a couple lights glowing from one side of the first floor, the house was dark.

  “You have arrived at your destination,” the voice confirmed as I pulled to a stop and turned off the ignition.

  Maybe he wasn’t back yet. Maybe he’d gotten held up with something as he did most nights. Maybe he was at the grocery store grabbing what he needed for dinner, or maybe he was grabbing take-out from town. Maybe a million different things, but I could keep on maybe-ing the night away or I could go find out.

  Once I was out of the truck, I stepped onto his porch and took a closer look. The porch was wide and covered and ran the whole length of the front of the house. At one end was a pair of rocking chairs. That seemed odd since Chance was the only one who lived there, but I supposed when and if he had company, a person needed an extra chair. Plus, one rocking chair would have looked strange. Too lonesome.

  Pulling open the screen door, I rapped lightly on the door. No answer. I listened for a minute, but I couldn’t hear anything that would indicate pots and pans were flying around in the kitchen or boot steps were moving about inside. Knowing that if anyone still kept their front door unlocked, Chance would be the one, I twisted the doorknob. Lo and behold, it opened. I supposed living in the middle of nowhere on private property gave a person a bit more freedom to be forgetful with their locks.

  Unlike John’s foyer, the wood floors in Chance’s house didn’t creak or protest as I passed over them. I moved silently inside the dark entryway. I caught sight of a table lamp off to the side, so I switched it on. The place was as inviting on the inside as it had been on the outside. It wasn’t cluttered with furniture or knickknacks, but spaces were filled and walls weren’t empty.

  As much as I wanted to inspect each room, I wanted to find Chance or a hint at where he might be more. I followed the light to find the kitchen, but it was empty. The stove was turned off, the counters clean and empty, and no grocery bags waited to be unloaded. I was just reaching for my phone, hoping I’d get reception out in the middle of nowhere, when I noticed Chance’s boots resting just to the side of the back door. They were his everyday work boots and still looked wet with mud, so he had to be here. Or have just been here.

  “Chance?” I called, looking in the laundry room and out on the back porch. Other than the muddy boot prints leading up the stairs, I saw no sign of him.

  Retracing my steps, I went to the bottom of the stairs and looked up them. There didn’t seem to be any lights on or sounds coming from the second floor, but I felt the need to go up there. Climbing the dark steps to a dark second floor inside a dark house when the only sign of the person I was looking for was a pair of muddy boots might have been unwise, and I could probably have nailed the lead in some slasher movie, but I kept going. I had no reason other than a gut feeling to believe he was up there, but if I’d gone on more gut feelings in my life, I wouldn’t have wound up chasing some boy who never wanted to be caught.

  “Chance?” I repeated when I reached the top step.

  At the end of the hallway, light streamed from beneath a closed door. I headed toward the door, feeling my throat run dry and my knees weaken. Not because I knew that door led to Chance’s bedroom and that realization brought with it images of us tangled beneath the sheets . . . but because it raised a memory I’d tried to repress into a grave years ago. The memory of walking into another Armstrong brother’s bedroom when he’d supposedly been expecting me. I’d found Conn holding himself above another woman, both naked save for the sheet twisted around them.

  It had been another cruel game of his. I’d gotten too close, and his counter push was inviting me to his bedroom late one night knowing I’d come . . . only so I could find him doing with one of my friends what I’d been led to believe he and I would do that night. It was my least favorite memory of Conn, and it had left a scar so deep even years of repression couldn’t begin to heal it.

  That was the night I’d fled Red Mountain, swearing I’d never return, and headed to Pullman a month before class started.

  And there I was, seven years later almost to the date, standing outside another Armstrong brother’s bedroom door, waiting to have my fate revealed to me. My hand wrapped around the knob, but I froze. If I stayed on that side, I wouldn’t have to accept what was waiting for me behind the door. If I opened the door, my fears of history repeating itself would either be confirmed or denied, but there’d be no going back.

  One of the few constants in my life had been the knowledge that Chance Armstrong would never hurt me, and he’d proved that again and again, year after year. But up until that night I’d found Conn screwing one of my high school friends, I never would have guessed that Conn’s cruelty stretched that far. I’d been wrong about him.

  I didn’t want to discover I’d been wrong about Chance too.

  A moment or a minute later, I heard a sound that gave some indication that there was life on the other side of the door, but it wasn’t a sound I wanted to hear. It was Chance, I knew that, but it was a moan, as low as it was long. God, if I’d stopped long enough to notice
the sounds before I threw myself into Conn’s room, I’m sure I would have heard the same ones.

  When I heard a second moan, this one more anguished sounding than the first, I found the courage to twist that doorknob and step inside the room. I was right—it was his bedroom. My gaze instantly went to his bed . . . but instead of a tangle of sheets and limbs, I found it still made, nothing but a couple pillows resting on top of it.

  My relief was so palpable, I could have fallen to the ground and wept, but instead, I called out, “Chance?”

  There was a second or two of quiet then I got my reply.

  “Scout?” His voice came from the room adjoining his bedroom, what I guessed was his bathroom. “You’re early.”

  His voice didn’t sound right. Strained, like it was too much work to talk.

  “Are you okay?” I hurried across the bedroom, going toward the sound of his voice.

  “Yeah, just give me a—”

  Just as he was about to close the bathroom door, I lunged inside it. When I saw him, my eyes went wide.

  “Minute,” he finished with a sigh.

  “What happened?” I cried, frozen as I gaped at him. He was still in his jeans, but everything else he’d shed. Under normal conditions, I would have been gaping at him in a different way, but what I saw was not normal conditions.

  Chance held out his arm—the arm he wasn’t cradling to his stomach. “I got thrown from the colt I’d been working on breaking.”

  Half of his head and jeans were coated in dried mud. On the same side, his torso and chest were already showing signs of serious bruising, but that seemed to be the least of the damage. Judging by the way he was cradling that arm, he’d either broken it, dislocated it, or severely sprained it. I’d seen him hold that arm or the other like that, and it had always been for one of those reasons, not just because it hurt.