Dearest Cowboys Box Set

by Mia Brown

  For once in my life, I wanted to be able to feel like I could make my own decisions. I was tired of my life being planned out for me by someone who only cared about appearances.

  I groaned out loud, trying to get out my frustration before going back to the room where Andrew and Ace were waiting with their mom. When I got back, I wanted to be in the best frame of mind again, to be there for them. I closed my eyes. I couldn’t believe my mom was blaming Ace for wanting to break away from the life they’d forced me into. It was so typical for my mom to blame someone else, something that I might have done rather than taking the blame herself. It was what she had done for as long as I could remember.

  Well, it wasn’t true. I had always known it, but now that I had been away from home for a long time, it had become easier for me to realize what had been happening. I had started to realize that I wanted a life of my own away from them, and what was more, that I could make it happen for myself.

  It was thanks to Ace, rather than because of him that I was here making a life of my own, now.

  When I turned around, Ace stood in the doorway. His face had fallen, and his eyes welled with tears, and I knew right away what had happened.

  “She’s gone,” he said, confirming my worst fear with a hoarse voice. “She just passed.”

  He swallowed hard, and he looked like he was going to fall apart. I walked to him, wrapping my arms around him and holding onto him. Ace’s body shuddered, and he cried into my shoulder. There was something so raw and vulnerable about him falling apart like this. I held onto him, and he cried.

  My eyes welled up with tears, too. I hadn’t even been there to say goodbye to her. Instead, I had been here in the lobby, fighting with the woman I was supposed to call my mother when what I had come to think of as my real mother had died without me being there. I hadn’t been there, and I had been taking care of shit that shouldn’t have mattered.

  “It’s okay,” I said to Ace, stroking his back while he cried it all out. “We’ll get through it.” We had been telling each other this every time one of us had fallen apart, and it was as true now as it had been every other time.

  Finally, he lifted his head. He looked broken. I lifted my hand and touched his cheek.

  “Will you come to the room with me?” he asked. “Andrew went to the cafeteria to get food. He doesn’t know yet, and I can’t face him alone.”

  I nodded. Andrew didn’t deal very well with loss, and this was going to be harder on him, still, because he hadn’t been there, either.

  We walked together to the room. I hesitated at the door. I wasn’t sure if this was what I wanted to do. Did I want to go in there? Yes. I had to see Jaclyn one last time. I had to say goodbye.

  When we walked into the room, it seemed colder than before, as if death had a temperature. I shivered and walked toward the bed.

  Jaclyn’s eyes were closed, as they had been since she’d fallen into her coma, but everything was different. Her skin was sallow and pasty now, even more sunken in than before. Her body was a shell now, the woman I had come to love, absent. This body had once belonged to Jaclyn, but she wasn’t in it anymore. In a way, it made it easier to accept. It was horrible that she was gone; I would mourn her more than I had ever thought I would mourn anyone. But the pain and the suffering was over.

  I walked slowly toward the bed as if I was worried the smallest sound might startle her. The room was eerily quiet, and I realized that the machines had all been switched off. In the time Ace had come to get me, they must have switched it all off to make saying goodbye to her a little better.

  When I reached her, I touched her hand. She was cold to the touch, now, the heat slowly draining out of her. I leaned over her and dropped a kiss on her forehead.

  “Thank you for teaching me what motherly love should be like,” I whispered. Tears rolled over my cheeks as I said my last goodbye. I squeezed her hand one more time and stepped back.

  Ace was watching me. When I looked up at him, he looked like he was going to cry again. I swallowed hard, trying to bite back my own tears.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said to Ace.

  He nodded. We were waiting for Andrew to come back. The storm would hit the moment Andrew walked in the door and realized that his mother had gone while he wasn’t here.

  “What do I say to him?” Ace asked.

  “Just be there for him,” I said. “He’s lost as much as you have. The only thing the two of you can do is be there for each other.” I wished I could give him more of an answer. I had nothing else to say.

  The door opened slowly, and Andrew stepped in. He had a bag of food in his hand. He looked up at Ace and frowned.

  “What…” He put two and two together before completing his sentence and looked toward Jaclyn’s bed.

  “She’s gone, Andy,” Ace said.

  I had never heard him call his brother Andy before. Maybe it had been a childhood thing. Andrew’s face paled, and he took a hesitant step toward Jaclyn’s bed. He blinked at the body, taking another step forward.

  “She’s gone,” he said in a dull voice. I nodded when his eyes flicked toward me.

  He swallowed hard. So far, he was okay. I didn’t know what to expect.

  “This is fucking bullshit!” Andrew suddenly screamed. He grabbed a chair and threw it across the room.

  “Andrew, stop!” Ace cried out.

  Andrew spun around and grabbed Ace by the collar.

  “You were here, weren’t you? You were here, and I wasn’t. You run away, ditch all of us, and I stick around, and then the moment she dies you’re the one that’s here, and I’m not. Fuck you, Ace.”

  He yanked Ace to the side and ran out of the hospital room, leaving chaos in his wake. My fingers trembled when he was gone. I looked at Ace, who didn’t seem nearly as shaken as I felt.

  “Oh my God. Are you alright?” I asked.

  Ace nodded. “He’ll be okay. He’s angry. She died, and he’s right. He’d always been there for her.”

  “It’s not your fault,” I said.

  Ace nodded. “I know that. I feel guilty, anyway. But I know that. Andrew was angry when my dad passed away, too. It’s how he deals with grief. We’ll be okay.”

  I nodded, believing Ace because there was nothing else I could do. I felt so helpless. I couldn’t make their pain go away. The last few days I had run back and forth between the hospital and the ranch for the boys, trying everything in my power to do what I could do for them. I tried to make it as easy as possible for them to stay at Jaclyn’s side.

  Now that she was dead, there was nothing I could for them. I couldn’t help them in any way, make any of this easier. All I could do was stand by helplessly and watch as their world fell apart.

  I knew how they felt, too. I felt a bit of their pain. I had lost Jaclyn, too, although it was so much bigger to them. She was their mother. But I had enough of a taste of their pain to know what they were going through.

  And I could do nothing to help. It tore me apart.

  “What now?” I asked.

  Ace sighed. “We wait until he comes back. He will, eventually. Running around to find him will be pointless. He wants to be alone. When he comes back, we’ll take the next step.”

  I nodded. It was the only way we were going to get through this—taking one step, and then the next and the next. We had to focus on what was right in front of us.

  It was one thing I was good at, better than most, in fact. I could compartmentalize, push it all aside and look at it from an objective point of view. I could make it work. I could do what needed to be done. After they were all taken care of, I would allow myself to feel the emotions.

  Right now, they came first.

  Twenty-Three

  Ace

  I was back at the ranch for the first time in almost a week, and I felt out of place and disoriented. I’d grown up here, but suddenly, everything was different. I had lost them both now. My mom and dad were both gone, and it was just us left—my brother and me. How
had this happened?

  Of course, I knew how it had happened. They’d both gotten sick. But how the hell had this happened?

  When I got home, I walked to the barn and saddled one of the horses. I rode away from the ranch house where my mom had taken care of the cooking and the vegetables, away from everything that reminded me of her. There were so many things that needed to be done, but I was listless and dazed. I couldn’t imagine going back to life as usual when everything I knew had changed completely.

  My brother hadn’t come home with us. When he’d finally come back after his fit of rage that life was so fucking unfair, he had been calm and collected, as if his freakout in the hospital room hadn’t happened at all. This was what happened when he struggled with grief. When my dad had died, he’d been just as furious. And when he’d come back he’d also looked calm.

  But when my dad had died, my mom had been there to take care of funeral arrangements, to make sure that everything carried on after. Now, there was no one left but us.

  Andrew had taken it upon himself to organize everything. He was at the funeral home now, when I was riding around the ranch. We each had our ways to take care of things, I guess. But where I was trying my best to wrap my mind around what had happened, riding to all the places I had grown up around the ranch to remember, Andrew was tying all the loose ends so that he could move on and forget.

  I tried my best not to be upset by it. I tried to accept that this was who he was. I had to understand that Andrew had to deal with things this way. He hadn’t once reprimanded me for responding the way I did, and there was no reason for me to, either. Andrew let me deal with my grief in my way, and I would do the same for him.

  I was glad that I wasn’t the one that had to make the arrangements. I couldn’t imagine standing there, talking to the funeral director, deciding what coffin to use and what to dress her body in and what to do on the day of the funeral. That would kill me more than anything else we’d been through. It had been enough that I had watched her decline, that I had seen her wither away and die before my eyes, and I had been unable to stop it. I didn’t need to make the final arrangements on top of it all.

  I didn’t know how I was going to get through it this time. The first time, I had disappeared. I had run away to study. Now? I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t leave Andrew alone, and I couldn’t leave the ranch to go to shit when I could be here and make something of it.

  At some point, I had to be a man and take charge of my life.

  When we’d arrived back at the ranch, Vanessa had gone to shower. She deserved a bit of a break. She had been on duty since the moment my mom had collapsed, being there for us when Andrew and I were falling apart. But without her now, I felt lost.

  After I’d ridden around, I went back to the barn. I looked at the stall I was supposed to muck, and I couldn’t get myself to do it. I looked at the dirty hay and the shit, and I couldn’t.

  I had other chores I needed to do, too. I had to get the cattle from one field into another, the weaners had to be checked, and I had to get around to the feed order. I managed to handle the cattle and the weaners, but when I walked into the feed storage room, I couldn’t do that, either.

  This time, it was because it was something my mom had done. And now I had to do it—not because I was taking it over for her because she had become too sick, but because she was no longer here. I knew I had to do it at some point. If I didn’t, the cattle and horses wouldn’t get the nourishment they needed, and they were our livelihood. But I couldn’t do it today.

  I walked back to the house feeling like a mess. My mood was blacker than black even though it was a beautiful day. When I looked up, I was surprised to notice how bright and sunny it was outside when it felt to me like everything was overcast.

  When I reached the main house, I walked into the kitchen. It still smelled like my mom. All that was missing was the pots of food cooking on the stove or the vegetables she was getting ready to can. Everything was so normal, so the same, I didn’t know what to do. She could walk through that door right now, I told myself, and it wouldn’t even surprise me.

  Except, she would never walk through that door again.

  God, I needed a drink.

  I walked to the fridge and opened it, fetching myself a beer. I opened it with a hiss and sat down at the wooden table. I sipped the beer, barely tasting it, wondering how many of them I would have to drink before I would stop feeling anything.

  Someone cleared their throat in the door, and when I looked up, Lance walked in. He fetched himself a beer from the fridge, too before sitting down with me at the table.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what to say.”

  I shook my head. “You don’t have to say anything. I’m not the only one that lost her. Andrew, you, Alana, Vanessa, you all lost her, too.”

  Lance nodded. “I know. I’m still sorry. She was an amazing woman.”

  I nodded. That, she was. My mom had been one of the most amazing, determined, resourceful women I’d ever known.

  Lance and I sat together for a while, drinking in silence, remembering my mom. It was hard to see her face in front of me when I tried, to see her smiling eyes or the twist of her dark hair pulled into a bun. But when I thought of things that had happened—memories—I could see her perfectly.

  And she was beautiful.

  I remembered Lance was with me and that he had done so much for us.

  “Thanks for sticking around, man. It means a lot,” I said. “I don’t know how the ranch would have functioned without you here.”

  Lance nodded. “Of course. You guys are my family.”

  “How did you postpone your job in Cali? I remember you saying you had to leave.”

  Lance shook his head, taking a deep breath.

  “I’m not working with Jupiter Enterprises anymore,” he said.

  “What happened?”

  “They retrenched me.” He chuckled without emotion. “They said my ‘aura’ was all wrong, that I didn’t have the right energies. Whatever the fuck that means. So, I’m back here.”

  I frowned. “That’s hectic, bro. I’m sorry I never asked.”

  He shook his head, looking at me. “You had a lot going on.”

  I nodded. That was true. “What are you going to do, now?”

  Lance took a sip of his beer. “Well, they offered me a payment package, so I have a bit of money to take my time and find something I love. The truth is, I love being back here. This is my home, you know? I want to pick up ranching again, make a career of it this time.”

  “Do you want to find a similar job on a ranch nearby or do you want to work here, specifically?” I asked.

  “I was hoping I could be here,” Lance said. “You know my work ethic; you know I can do this.”

  I nodded. I did know. And since my mom had died, a gap had opened at the ranch. She had done so much we needed more than just one person to handle the workload. And Lance was family. We had grown up together, after all.

  “I’ll talk to Andrew about it, so no promises, but I’ll see what I can do. You belong here.”

  Lance reached over and clapped me on the shoulder. “Thanks, bro,” he said.

  I nodded. It would work if Lance worked here. He was right; I did know his work ethic, and he was one of the best ranchers I knew. He knew how to handle the cattle. He had no fear when it came to the wild ones. And if Andrew or I stepped into my mom’s position—a lot of admin—we could use another pair of hands in the field.

  We drank together again in silence. After a while, I saw Vanessa through the window. She had finished her shower, her blonde hair wet and soaking in the light yellow blouse she was wearing. She walked to the vegetable garden, and I watched her until she moved out of the frame of the window.

  “You’re serious about her, aren’t you?” Lance asked.

  “Yeah,” I said without thinking. I glanced at Lance, who drank his beer with a knowing look. I thought about my mom’s words again, about findi
ng a good one and not letting her go.

  “I don’t know if I can do a relationship,” I said.

  “Why the hell not? She’s great. If she wasn’t so obviously into you, I would have gone for her. She’s the whole package.”

  I shook my head. “How do you know she’s into me?” I asked.

  Lance snorted. “I have eyes, Ace. I’m not blind.”

  “I don’t know if this is a good time for me. I just lost my mom.”

  “And Vanessa was there through it all.”

  He had a point, but I didn’t know if I could put myself into a relationship. I didn’t know if it was what she wanted. I felt like it was the right thing at the wrong time, and I didn’t want to push either of us to do something that we weren’t comfortable with.

  I had so much to take care of, to sort out emotionally, I was a wreck on wheels. There was the ranch to think about, the extra chores that needed to be divided, the admin that I had to figure out and everything else on top of it. Was it fair to Vanessa if I went into a relationship with emotions all over the place, an absent mind and so much work we might all be drowning?

  “Look, Ace. You might not think now is the right time and that’s up to you. But she’s a good woman. Better than the women you’ve been screwing until now. A woman like that is gold, and you can’t make her wait forever. Take your time to sort yourself out, but then come back and claim what’s yours.”

  I looked at Lance. He was serious about it, and I knew where he was coming from. Would he take Vanessa if I didn’t do something? Probably not. We were friends, and he wouldn’t do that to me. But I understood what he was saying. If I didn’t make her mine, someone else might.

  God, the timing was a bitch, though.

  Twenty-Four

  Vanessa

  Being back at the ranch was bittersweet in the full sense of the word. I had fallen in love with the ranch, with the rolling hills and the waist-high grass and the cattle and the vegetables. I felt at home on the ranch in a way I had never felt at home where I’d lived with my parents. Coming back to the ranch every time—for whatever reason—made me happy.