Cold Heart, Warm Cowboy

by Caitlin Crews

  “You’re going to be amazing,” Becca told him excitedly, after they’d all demolished one of Abby’s pies. “And we’re all going to come cheer you on.”

  Ty went cold at that. He looked over at Gray. “What? No. Your dad doesn’t like the rodeo.”

  “Of course Gray loves the rodeo,” Abby said placidly. Too placidly. “Because what reason would he have not to love it?”

  Given that the reason had been Cristina, Ty figured Abby had suggested to her husband that he find a way to overcome his issues.

  “I love the rodeo,” Gray retorted, though his eyes gleamed when he looked at his wife. “It’s a passion of mine.”

  “No one wants to miss your ride to glory, Ty,” Brady said from beside him.

  Something in Ty turned over at that, but he stamped it back down. It didn’t matter if they were there. It didn’t matter if they weren’t.

  Nothing mattered. Wasn’t that the point?

  It was what he’d wanted.

  “Terrific,” he said. He pushed back from the table, doing his best to grin at Abby and Becca, lazy and at his ease, as always. “Thank you both for the victory meal. I sure do appreciate it.”

  It was a relief to push his way outside. To feel the dark and the land envelop him again.

  Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.

  One way or another.

  “Hey, jackhole,” came Brady’s voice. “If I could have a minute before you waft off into the darkness again?”

  Because of course he couldn’t let well enough alone. Ever.

  “I don’t have time for this,” Ty said without turning back around. “I have to head out early tomorrow morning.”

  “What’s your plan, exactly?”

  Ty sighed. “Same plan as it always is, baby brother. Get on the bull. Stay on the bull. Jump off the bull when the buzzer sounds and try not to get trampled. The end. Bull riding is real simple.”

  “See that, Brady,” came Gray’s irritatingly mild drawl. “No need to worry. He might have busted himself up the last time around, but I’m sure it’s fine that he figures he can reclaim his reputation on the business side of a pissed-off, two-thousand-pound bull. That’s bound to end well.”

  Ty took his time turning back around. Once again, he was standing in the yard of the ranch house, forced into a conversation he didn’t want to have. It was a good thing he’d come to terms with this land, because it sure seemed to insinuate itself into every part of his life. Hannah. Jack. His irritating brothers, standing shoulder to shoulder like a wall of spare me.

  Behind them, the lights were on in the ranch house. Abby and Becca were still in the kitchen, either cleaning up or making something for the morning. Becca was talking animatedly, waving her hands in the air for emphasis. Abby kept looking up and laughing as she responded, one hand drifting to her belly.

  All smiles. All love. All that family crap Ty knew, deep in his blackened soul, he would destroy if he got too close.

  “What is this?” he asked, laughing at his brothers. Not nicely. “An intervention? For bull riding?”

  “I was considering an intervention for your drinking,” Brady said. “But then I watched you tonight. And you acted drunk the way you always do, but you didn’t actually drink much. Why would anybody pretend to be drunk when they’re not?”

  “You’re the one who needs me to be drunk, Brady.” Ty didn’t know where that came from, but he didn’t take it back. “And you know me. Always happy to oblige.”

  “I don’t really care if you’re drunk at the dinner table,” Gray said. “As long as you don’t start flipping it, we’re good. But what’s fake drunk all about?”

  “I never faked being drunk,” Ty managed to say without shouting. He deserved a medal. “You decided I was drunk, and I didn’t do anything to disabuse you of the notion. It’s not the same thing.”

  “Ty,” Brady said, in a very careful, extraordinarily placating tone of voice.

  Speaking of jackholes.

  “Just stop,” Ty told him. “Whatever this is. I don’t need to talk. I don’t want to talk. I have nothing to talk about.” He looked from Brady to Gray, then back again. “Okay?”

  “I told you,” Gray said, ostensibly to Brady, though his gaze was steady on Ty. “He doesn’t want to do anything but storm around, telling himself what a martyr he is, when I’m pretty sure that’s not the word most people would use for a man who walks away from his own kid.”

  Ty lurched forward, something he hadn’t known he was holding tight snapping. And filling him with sheer, pure fury, bright and hot.

  “I didn’t walk away from my kid,” he threw at Gray.

  Brady let out a laugh Ty found hostile. “You literally turned around and walked off into the night.”

  “You have no idea what you’re talking about.” He shook his head, but that didn’t clear it. Nothing had in months. And that pulsing ache was back. “I’m protecting him.”

  “From what?” Gray asked. “A father? He’s not going to thank you for that.”

  Ty fought to put all that fury back where it belonged, deep inside him and locked up tight. “If we could go back in time and have someone protect us from ours, I’d do it in a heartbeat.”

  “Like Mom?” Brady asked mildly. And not for the first time, Ty had to reassess his baby brother. Who didn’t sound anything like a baby then. “Who you’ve apparently forgiven for leaving us with him.”

  Ty shook his head while the fury—and worse, the sadness—that he’d locked away since the night everything had fallen apart, again, roared through him. It made him unsteady. It made him feel like someone else. “I haven’t forgiven anybody.”

  “And why would you?” But the way Gray was looking at him, with a kind of grim understanding that boded only ill, made Ty more unsteady. “Start forgiving people and you might have to get around to forgiving yourself. And then what?”

  “Why would I need to forgive myself?” Ty gritted out.

  But Gray only shook his head. “I can’t answer that.”

  Ty rubbed at his jaw, appalled to find his hand was shaking. Great. That was what every bull rider wanted most—a lack of control over his own body. “I really appreciate the two of you ganging up on me tonight. It’s exactly the kind of Everett family send-off I should have been expecting. What a treat to relive ancient history.”

  “You’re not Dad.”

  Brady threw that out like a bomb.

  It exploded like one.

  Everything shuddered to a stop. The world. Ty’s heart.

  When he’d been positive he’d gotten rid of that thing a long time ago.

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” he told Brady, biting off the words. “I had a chance to prove that I was nothing like him, and I failed it. Spectacularly.”

  “Oh yeah? What did you do?” Brady challenged him. “I assume you’re talking about Hannah. Did you beat her up? Call her names? Treat her so badly she packed up and took off in the middle of the night?”

  “Of course not.” Ty’s head was pounding. “But I can’t really say that. I can’t remember.”

  His confession didn’t have the effect he was going for. Brady rolled his eyes. Gray looked … the way Gray always looked. Stern. Steady.

  “Whiskey?” Brady asked.

  “I wish it were whiskey,” Ty threw at them. “A man who drinks too much whiskey can always stop. But no. I can’t remember what happened the night I got stomped.” He pulled in a long, deep breath. “Or anything that happened for two years or so before that.”

  Both of his brothers were silent.

  Brady blinked. “You mean…?”

  “You don’t mean you can’t remember something.” Gray frowned. “You’re talking about actual, medical memory loss.”

  “It’s not unusual after an accident like mine,” Ty said stiffly. “But there’s no medical reason for me not being able to remember. The actual accident, sure. That’s probably gone forever, and God bless. But the two years before that? My mind h
as taken it upon itself to basically erase my entire relationship with Hannah. Why would it do that?”

  Both of his brothers stared back at him.

  “I’ll tell you,” Ty said, because he didn’t want them to throw out excuses when he knew the truth. “Because I don’t want to remember what I said. What I did. Because I turned into Dad.”

  “You’re not Dad,” Brady said. Again.

  And with more force this time.

  “Even he knew I was.” Something was cracking open inside of Ty. Huge and terrible. “He always knew. He could see himself in me.”

  “He could see himself everywhere he looked,” Gray retorted. “Because the only thing he ever thought about was himself. Not because he was right.”

  “There is a poison in me,” Ty told them, matter-of-factly. “There’s no getting it out. You want to talk about the Everett family legacy? Well. It’s a disease. And I have it.”

  There were too many stars. He could feel the mountains, brooding out there. Waiting. And the land. Always the land, stretching out so far it should have felt wide open, but Ty knew better now. It was a chokehold.

  But he didn’t mind anymore. He’d surrendered. He’d accepted what he couldn’t change. Wasn’t that supposed to be a good thing?

  “You don’t wake up one day and become Dad,” Brady argued. “It’s not a disease. There’s no Dad virus. It’s a choice he made, every single day of his life. That’s not poison, Ty. That’s a preference.”

  Gray’s gaze was hard on Ty’s. But in a way that made Ty want to meet it. Rise up to it, maybe. He didn’t. He couldn’t.

  “If you don’t want to be like Dad, it’s real simple,” Gray said. “Don’t be like him.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “It really is,” Brady retorted. “Why are you letting dead men tell you who you are?”

  Ty about staggered back at that one. But he held his ground. Somehow.

  “I appreciate this,” he told them, when he could speak. “I really do. Go Team Brothers. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get my stuff together. Because I’m still leaving early in the morning, despite this charming conversation.”

  He turned and started across the yard.

  “Ty.” Gray’s voice stopped him. But Ty didn’t turn back around this time. “One way or another, you’re going to get off that bull.”

  “That’s the plan,” Ty said. To the night as much as his brothers.

  “And when you do, you’re still going to be the man who walked away from his own son,” Gray said. A pitiless sucker punch.

  “Thanks, Gray.” Ty even grinned, though there was no one to see it. “I appreciate that.”

  “You’ll be no different from Dad,” Gray continued. “And not because you’re poisoned. But because you’re afraid.”

  Ty couldn’t speak. He couldn’t come up with a response to that, mostly because he couldn’t argue the point. He shook his head and kept walking.

  “When you decide to be like Dad, that’s not his fault,” Brady said, his voice following along no matter how Ty tried to get away from it. No matter how he tried to pretend he couldn’t hear it. “He’s dead. You choose to follow in his footsteps and that’s all on you.”

  21

  Hannah sauntered on into the rodeo like it was runway.

  Her own, personal runway, to be more precise.

  She’d outdone herself. Her dress boots were vintage and gleamed from beneath the perfect hem of her jeans. Her blinged-out western style shirt was tucked into a simple belt with a buckle that could blind a man at ten paces. Her earrings matched the bling on her neckline. She hadn’t kitted herself out like she was heading into a competition with the rest of the girls in the queen’s program. Hannah had dressed herself like she’d already won.

  Because, of course, she had.

  This particular rodeo’s crown, in fact. Twice.

  When she’d run off from the rodeo instead of waiting to be kicked out, she’d naturally taken her crowns with her. It was possible there were girls who would find it tacky to walk into a job arena they’d already left, wearing the uniform of their disgrace, but it turned out, Hannah wasn’t one of them. She’d attached her glorious Miss Rodeo Forever crown to her black felt hat, bobby pinned her hat to her hair, and was prepared to fight anyone who tried to come for it.

  Well. A rodeo queen didn’t fight. Not with her hands, anyway.

  Hannah smiled wider and adjusted Jack on her hip.

  Not content to merely outdo herself, from crown to curls and all the way down to her favorite pair of boots, Hannah had made certain that Jack was all dolled up like a miniature cowboy. Just like his daddy.

  And like every other rodeo she’d ever walked into, Hannah’s nerves took her over while she was still outside. Her stomach twisted. Her heart rate soared. But the moment she walked toward the private competitors’ entrance, she felt her usual cool settle down over her.

  The wider she smiled, the calmer she got.

  Tonight, she couldn’t help but call that a blessing.

  Because Ty might have come here to reclaim a slice of his former glory. But she was here to claim him. And her family. And while she was at it, the happy life she felt certain they both deserved.

  She moved through the back corridors of the rodeo complex, smiling and waving at all the familiar faces, but not stopping. Members of the rodeo committee who did double takes. The stock contractors who still loved it when she called them sugar. The barrel-racing girls who always stuck together the same way the rodeo queens did, but actually smiled at her tonight. The bronc riders she knew by name and statistics, the steer wrestling partners, the flustered local livestock people … It was as if she were walking some kind of gauntlet.

  But unlike when she’d been pregnant, alone, and afraid, Hannah was ready for this gauntlet tonight. She kept her head up high, the better to flash her crown. She kept her smile in place. And she defied anyone to look at the cute, chubby boy on her hip and not fall instantly and permanently in love.

  “Why, Miss Hannah,” came the deep, Texan drawl Hannah knew well. “I didn’t expect we’d see you around here again.”

  Hannah had almost made it to the corridor that ran back to where the competitors were getting ready. She’d timed her arrival for after the opening and the anthem, hoping she’d avoid something like this. She could hear the announcer out in the ring and the crowd cheering and stamping their feet.

  But there was no shrugging off Buck Stapleton. He was the president of the Rodeo Forever Association and prided himself on his hands-on approach to the running of his national rodeo, from the dirt to the queens’ program to the bull riders’ rankings and back again. He was also the individual most likely to be personally offended by the personal life choices of the girls he crowned queen.

  Unlike other national rodeo queen reigns that stretched over the course of a calendar year, Miss Rodeo Forever won her crown in May, then spent the summer sharing the spotlight with her predecessor, before assuming her full title in the fall and carrying it on through to the end of the following summer. Once a Miss Rodeo Forever, always a Miss Rodeo Forever, Buck liked to say. It’s right there in the name.

  “I guess I’m nothing but a bad penny, Buck,” Hannah replied now, settling Jack—who was thankfully still half asleep from the car ride—more firmly on her hip.

  Both of them stood there smiling at each other, ear to ear.

  Hannah had sauntered straight into a battle. Good thing she’d prepared herself for a war.

  “Now, Hannah, I know you haven’t been here in a while, and it looks like you have an excellent reason for that right there on your hip.” Buck stopped in the middle of his chummy, fatherly performance to chuck Jack under the chin. Jack, already no fool, recoiled into a pout. “Isn’t he a cutie? But you know that when you dropped all your commitments, we had to go ahead and crown another queen.”

  “I had heard that.”

  “The show must go on, darlin’. And it has. Now,
what I can’t figure is what you’re doing backstage tonight, with that crown on your head.”

  “I did win the darn thing,” Hannah replied, and the real contest, it turned out, was to see which one of them could get deeper into their drawl while simultaneously flashing a brighter smile. By her count, they were neck and neck. “In fact, as I recall, you put it right there on my head. Once a Miss Rodeo Forever, always a Miss Rodeo Forever, am I right?”

  Buck let out his trademark booming laugh. Then he sobered. “Please don’t tell me that you’re here to cause trouble.”

  Hannah reached up with her free hand and expertly adjusted her crown, though it needed no adjustment. “That all depends on your definition of trouble.”

  “Now, Hannah,” he began.

  “I sure have enjoyed this chance to catch up with you,” she replied, sweet enough to make her own teeth ache.

  “You know the rules,” he said apologetically. As if he didn’t make all the rules himself.

  “I’m not here to get into a catfight about a crown,” Hannah said, with the rodeo queen laugh she’d perfected. Sparkly and airy. “But you are currently standing between a married woman and her husband. Is that where you want to be, Buck?”

  “Married woman?” He sputtered. “When did you get married? Who did you marry?”

  “That’s the funny thing about rumors. They’re so rarely true. Why don’t you and I start one right now.” She leaned in while Jack sucked on his fingers, his eyes big and dubious on Buck. “What would people say if they found out that you’d suddenly taken to barring family members from seeing each other before a show? When you have so long prided yourself on upholding the kind of family values that our audience holds dear?”

  She tipped her head to one side and smiled sweetly. Buck, his own smile welded to his face to cover his shock, smiled right on back.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said after a moment. He waved a hand to one side, giving her permission to pass him.

  “Thank you so much,” she drawled and carried on down the hallway.

  “But Hannah,” Buck called after her. “While I’m an understanding man, you did break your contract with me.”