by Taylor Hart
Beau glared at him. “I guess it’s not the homecoming you dreamed about, but here’s an important lesson for you—time doesn’t heal all wounds.”
Ryan clenched his fists and sniffed out a breath. “You better leave while you're ahead."
Beau brushed his jeans and scoffed. “This is my land. I think you’re the one that needs to leave.”
“Stop it!”
Ryan looked past Beau.
His other brother, the youngest, but definitely no longer the smallest, jogged toward them.
“Stop!" Sean called out. He was decked out in a police uniform. He held some type of fast food bag in one hand.
Ryan noted that he’d grown taller than both he and Beau, probably somewhere around six foot, three. He was thicker than both of them, too. Not fat. No, he would be a force to reckon with, Ryan imagined. His mom had always called Sean her tank.
Sean stopped next to Beau. His brown hair fell into his eyes, and he pushed it away from his glasses. “A reunion of sorts?”
Beau spit on the ground. “I was just welcoming Ryan home.”
The side of Sean’s lip tilted up. "Uh-huh." He glanced back at Ryan. “The Neanderthal giving you grief?"
Ryan’s heart stilled, not what he’d been expecting. “Hey.”
After nodding to the grave, Sean pointed to the bench. “Take a seat, brother. I have something for you." He turned for the house.
Ryan’s eyes flitted back to Beau.
Beau threw up his hands and yelled to Sean. “Where are you going? He’s not—he’s not staying . . .”
The wood screen door banged into place.
Ryan moved to the bench and sat, partly to defy Beau, but mostly because Sean was so . . . different now. Grown up. He’d said the word “neanderthal” like he was in a Shakespeare play.
“You need to leave.”
“I was invited to stay.” Ryan scoffed.
“This is my land.”
“Seems like the deed I signed put it in both of your names.”
Beau gave him a look like he’d smelled something rotten.
Sean rushed out of the house. He held a small box.
“Great.” Beau rolled his eyes.
Sean got to them and opened the box.
Ryan could barely breathe. “No.”
It couldn’t be. Not his mother’s ring—the one their father had given her for their 25th wedding anniversary. They’d all pitched in to help earn the money for that ring, and she had been so happy that day.
Sean smiled slowly and held it out to Ryan. "Mom thought you should have it. You worked the hardest to earn the money for it, and she said she wanted to be buried with the ring dad proposed with.”
A dull ache cracked the wall around Ryan's heart. “What about Kent? He worked hard.” He threw a hand at them, feeling emotion hit him square in the chest. “What about you guys.” He blinked. “We all worked hard.”
Beau took off toward the barn. “This is unbelievable.”
Sean picked up Ryan’s hand and dropped the box into it.
Ryan didn’t move.
Sean grabbed the fast food bag and plunked down next to him on the bench. “Should have told me you were coming, bro. I would have gotten you some.” He lifted his eyebrows and glanced back at Beau. “I guess I could give you Beau’s, doesn’t look like he’s going to eat it.” He held the hamburger out to him.
Bro. That connection meant so much more than he could have ever realized until he'd lost it.
Sean threw one arm across Ryan's shoulders.
The shock and remembrance of this familial love brought back something he couldn't explain. It was something that had been unequivocally, or so he’d thought, changed inside of him. He looked into Sean's brown eyes and saw the younger brother he'd helped, tortured, and hung out with. He took the burger. "Thanks."
Sean removed his arm and took a bite of his own. “I’m glad you’re back.”
“I’m not back.” It came out faster than he’d meant it to.
Sean studied his face then leaned into the bench, pushing back his glasses. “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood and sorry I could not travel both . . .”
Ryan frowned.
Sean let out a hearty chuckle. “Robert Frost. What? You don’t know that I have suffered poetic? Just ask Beau, he’ll tell you all about the suffering when he has to listen to me quote lines.” A larger grin washed over his face. “Ask Kent, too. He told me he had to leave to get away from my poetry.”
Ryan tried to smile, but his lips felt painfully stretched. Sean was so different, not in a bad way, but much different than Ryan had imagined. A pang of regret washed through him that he’d missed seeing him grow up.
Sean let out a sigh. “I hope there’s a little time for the road less traveled.”
Ryan stared back at the grave. “Just a day or two.”
Sean grimaced. “I heard Sara is selling?” He said it as a question.
The fact the whole town already knew did not surprise him. “Looks that way.”
Sean sat straighter. “Well, I’m glad I got to share a burger, then.”
“I don’t think Beau’s as happy about my visit.”
Sean lifted one shoulder. “Beau has a different way of showing his affection.”
Ryan sighed. “Guess so.”
“I don’t think Mom would be surprised you guys got into it, do you?”
Ryan unwrapped the burger, a smile on his lips. “I guess you’re right.” He stood and went to the grave, bending over and wiping the stone off. He cleared the dust around the front and edges. The sound of a truck crunching against gravel distracted him.
A large, diesel truck moved past them toward the new barn. Ryan noted it was three times the size of the old one.
Beau guided the truck in.
“New bronc?”
Sean stepped next to Ryan. “Yep, this should do a lot for his mood. Been saving and scraping for this one. This one is going to be the money train.”
Ryan watched as the back swung open and a large, black bronc trotted out. He thought about working with Beau and his dad and learning how to ride broncs.
Ryan clutched the small box for a second, then took Sean’s hand and pressed it into it.
The way Sean simply looked down at it and then back to Ryan said a lot about the fact he hadn’t expected Ryan to accept it. Casually, he took another bite of burger. “So that’s how it is?”
Ryan gave him a pat on the shoulder and focused on his rental car. “I wish things were different, but they’re not.”
“It is not in the stars to hold our destiny, but in ourselves,” Sean called out behind him.
Ryan walked fast. He needed to get out of this place.
Sean appeared beside him. “That one’s by Shakespeare.”
Ryan paused. “It’s not that simple.”
“If there’s anything that working with criminals has taught me, it’s that it really is that simple. It only takes one choice, one time, one action, and you can change everything.”
Ryan opened the car door. “But you can’t change the past.”
Chapter 13
The next morning, Ryan pounded the pavement. When he got to Main Street, he purposefully ran down the hill. He was later than his usual early run, but he hadn’t slept well, and he’d run late last night. His dreams had been filled with the cave. With the men. With things he would rather not remember.
The smell of coffee and maple syrup filled his senses as he passed Top’s Cafe. It was the only store open at eight-thirty on a Saturday morning. He paused in front of The Do Over. The blinds were down. Ryan quirked the side of his lip up. The Do Over. Charlotte had always had a sense of humor. He smiled as he thought how Nathan must cringe every time he went past the bookstore. He put the telescope he’d bought next to the door and took off.
He continued down Main, pushing harder. He tried not to think, but his thoughts wouldn’t clear. His mind flitted to that dirty, grimy cave. He thought of PJ Hooker,
a guy that had always cracked the worst jokes. PJ had been one of his men. He’d been fresh and green and still wrapped up in the ideals of honor, sacrifice, and victory. Ryan stumbled off the sidewalk and onto the pavement, but didn’t fall.
He pushed harder. The terrorist group that had captured his men had broken him. The php, the no sleeping, the physical torture of cutting and releasing or making them kneel all day on those planks of wood with their hands tied back. The terrorists had killed PJ—sliced his neck clean through and waited for the rest of them to break.
Ryan squeezed his eyes shut and tried not to remember. The look Alan had given him. The look that said come hell or high water the guards would pay for that.
Ryan and Alan and Richard had been the only ones left at the end. They’d made them pay.
They’d made so many pay.
Ryan turned at the end of the city park and headed out toward the cemetery.
He forced himself to think of something else. Which meant his mind would always go back to her.
Charlotte. How could he be here and not think of her? He thought of the way she’d been when she was young—a pain in the butt. A big one. She hadn’t known how to do anything useful when he’d first met her, and she’d been the owner’s daughter, which was always a strike against someone. And, even though, according to her, she’d had that horrible red hair and freckles, he’d found her cute.
If truth be told, she was probably the first girl he’d ever been friends with. They’d talked about everything. Well, at first it’d been her doing most of the talking. About books. Books that she had read, that she was reading, that she wanted to read. She talked so much he’d threatened he wouldn’t let her follow him around if she didn’t shut up.
Then he’d gotten pulled into her worlds, and he often found himself so engrossed in them that when it was time to be done for the day he’d felt like it had only just started.
He found himself opening up to her. He’d told her about his fights with his father. His mother’s cancer. The funny things his brothers did. He told her about what it had been like to grow up on a ranch. He told her about lighting the barn on fire with Beau when they’d been playing with matches in the loft. Stuff he’d never, ever told anybody else. Then he’d wanted to show her all the things he knew how to do—gut a fish, shoot a twenty-two, track an animal.
She’d been fascinated, completely and utterly fascinated by him. He could tell. He liked it, but she’d been more like a little sister.
Until that dance. He’d been lucky Nathan got sick that night, and he’d also been terrified when he’d realized that he loved her.
She could have broken him.
The cast iron gates of the Hidden Falls Cemetery jeered back at him. He hadn’t been here in a long time. In fact, he hadn’t been here since high school. Coach had made them come here to run sprints up and down the hills.
He cruised to the end of the cemetery and started up the first column. He didn’t look at the markers. He never had before, and he didn’t need to. He’d had enough of that yesterday, enough to last him a lifetime. Instead, he focused on the large trees that had been planted by Hidden Falls’ early settlers.
He got to the top and turned down the next row, his feet slapping against the crooked cobblestone edges of the old pavement.
Running had been something he’d kept from his military training. It was something Alan said “calmed his demons.” If Ryan couldn’t focus at work, Alan sent him for a run. He would say “go do your thing” and then come back.
Ryan got to the end and started up the next column. He saw a mound of dirt. Fresh dirt. Dirt that meant someone had been buried recently. His mind flitted to the mounds in the cave—the mounds that he, Alan, and Richard had worked hard to give a proper burial. He squeezed his eyes closed for a second and tried to block it out. This, he found, had been the best way to deal with it.
Vince flashed into his mind.
Lieutenant Vince McCrowder, newly married and from Atlanta, came from a hard-core military family. He thought of Josh. Private Josh Hamblin had only been sent on the mission with them because of his language skills. It was too bad he’d never been given a chance to use them.
He’d failed them. Every. Single. One.
He’d been their captain. He should have seen the trap.
Ryan got to the top and stopped. He went to the tall chain-link fence that separated the football field from the cemetery. He peered down at the field.
That time in his life felt so far away. It felt like a different person had lived that life. Ryan tried hard to focus on the field, on the memories of playing there.
It all felt like a dream.
He didn’t know that guilt over one life didn’t even come close to guilt over countless more. He’d been responsible for those men that died, in charge of them. And he’d failed them all. He’d failed their families, friends, girlfriends, spouses. It made him sick—literally sick.
The wire from the fence dug into his hands, and he let go too late. He stared down at his fingers. Wire blood marks. He had to get out of this town. He wasn't meant to be back in this town. He let the blood run and stared down at the field. No matter how much he wanted to be that eighteen-year-old kid on the football field, he wasn't.
His phone buzzed in the lycra ankle compartment Alan had given him for Christmas last year.
Ryan gripped his t-shirt to stop the bleeding and then whipped out his phone. “Ryan Hardman.”
“I know who you are.” Alan’s voice was calm. “Got the deal done, yet?”
Ryan ran down the hill. “Working on it.”
“What does that mean?”
Ryan thought about Alan’s need to always control everything. “It means I’m working on it.”
Silence.
Ryan did an elaborate sigh as he flew out the gates and back toward Main Street. “I’ll get Mrs. Talon to sign the contract tonight. I should be back there in a day or two.”
Alan was quiet. “Okay, good. And everything else . . .”
Ryan knew he couldn’t stand it. Alan was a meddler. He couldn’t help himself, and this—getting Ryan to come back to Hidden Falls—had been his biggest meddling job ever.
“She slapped me.”
Wheezy breath filled the phone. There was more wheezy breath and then a giant laugh. “What?”
Ryan quit jogging when he hit Main Street, but he stayed on the opposite side of her store. “She—she has some complications in her life and she’s not too happy about the land being sold.”
“Really?” Alan was clearly interested in this part of the Hidden Falls deal. Ryan knew he was. He knew the only reason Alan had called was for details. He was such a girl that way. Ryan had even caught him a couple of times catching up on his chick shows while he sat at his desk and ate lunch with his ear buds in.
Alan snorted. “Does she know about the back taxes?”
Ryan stared at her shop. He noticed the telescope was gone. He had no idea why his palms suddenly went clammy. “I don’t know what she knows.”
“Well, she needs to understand that we are the best option.”
Ryan stopped. There she was—sitting on a couch, staring out the front window, holding the telescope on her lap.
Her eyes met his. She jumped to her feet.
“I gotta go.”
“Wait—I have to tell you something.”
“Talk to you later.” He pressed end.
The door to the bookstore burst open.
Ryan knew by the look on her face that today was about to get a whole lot bloodier.
Chapter 14
Charlotte knew it. She just did. By the way Ryan stood there. By the dumbfounded look on his face. By the way her hangover was forgotten and her blood yearned to rip out of her skin. “You!”
Before she knew what she was doing, she crossed the street—the very empty Saturday morning Hidden Falls Main Street. It just needed a tumbleweed to complete the scene. Western music filled her mind—the kind that
always plays when the hero finally meets the villain in the open. She felt compelled by the same climactic expectation that comes when the hero knows it’s time to put the villain down. Caught up in the moment, Charlotte didn’t pay attention to the knife-gouging pain inside her head or the fact that there was blood all over him. She refused to be distracted by the way his black hair, all sweaty and clinging to his head, ignited something inside of her. No. She pushed all of that away and focused on the facts.
She knew he’d done it. He had left that telescope for her son. Charlotte didn’t know if it was the murderous look in her eye or the way things had ended between them yesterday, but a slow smile played across his lips
Ryan put his hands into the air. “I surrender, whatever it is—I give up.”
This stopped her. A foot from the curb, from—what? Slapping him again? She didn’t know. She stumbled back, the pit of her stomach in rebellion.
“Are you okay?”
Charlotte closed her eyes and forced back the nausea. “I’m fine.”
Ryan cleared his throat. “You don’t look fine.”
She clutched her hands into fists.
“You want to hit me again, don’t you?”
The pain was back in her gut, welling up. She nodded. “Yeah, I do. And you know what’s funny? Not one time, not one time in my whole marriage to Nathan did I ever hit him.” She suddenly found this so funny, hysterical. She started to laugh, but stopped to settle her stomach.
Ryan snorted. “I guess ya hurt the ones you love.”
She stared up at him. “I guess you’d be the expert on that.” Right after the words came out of her mouth, she knew she didn’t mean them. She didn’t, and she didn’t know why she’d said them.
Ryan’s eyes held hers. “You’re not telling me anything I don’t know.”
Instantly, she felt disoriented and confused. “No. No. You don’t get to stand there looking all . . . all . . .” She stumbled away from him. The coffee wanted to come back up.
“Whoa.” Ryan slid closer to her. “Charlotte, are you okay? You look like you’re—”
She focused on him beside her, on his warmth, on the way his sticky skin burned her with its touch. She wanted to cry. “I don’t know why I slapped you before. I don’t know—”
