by D. L. Roan
“Ugh, no I haven’t.”
The frustration and exhaustion in Dani’s voice wilted both Clay’s grin and his hard-on. The memory of the stupefied look on her face when he’d told her about the house made him laugh every time he thought about it. But while her dads’ advice to tell her about it had been spot on—thank God he hadn’t put a deposit on the kitchen cabinets he’d picked out—she’d been immediately overwhelmed, the enormous number of decisions only adding to her stress.
“I narrowed it down to the two I texted you. Why don’t you choose?”
“Okay,” he quickly offered.
“I’m sorry,” she sighed into the phone. “I just don’t have the bandwidth to deal with all these decisions right now.”
“Don’t worry,” he assured her. “I’ve got it. You’ll love it. I promise.”
The cabin door opened and Beau stepped out onto the porch. Clay held up a finger to let him know he’d be another minute. He’d rather have a root canal than spend the weekend hiking in the wilderness with his brothers, but Beau had insisted. His added threat of kidnapping had sealed the deal, and he had no doubt Beau would follow through. There was no way he was getting gunny-sacked in the middle of the night and thrown over the back of his horse like he’d done the weekend before he’d left for basic training.
“I gotta go, beautiful. Beau’s waiting on me.”
“Okay.” The smile in her hum eased his worry. “Be careful.”
“I will.” He grabbed his bag. “And remember, I probably won’t have a phone signal until I get back.”
“Love you.”
“Love you, too. And don’t worry about the house stuff. I’ve got it, okay?”
“Thank you,” she said. “Oh! Mom wants to know if your dad got his invitation.”
“He did.” Clay nodded at Beau when he motioned for him to get out. One minute, he mouthed. “But I don’t think Nann’s coming with him.”
“What? Why not?”
Clay sighed. “I don’t know. Pops says she’s leaving town to visit her daughter, but I think they had a fight.”
“Oh no! What happened? Should I call her?”
Clay shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.” No one could ever accuse his dad of being the chatty type, but he’d been especially tightlipped lately. “Call her if you want, but don’t bring me into it.” The last thing he needed was to get caught meddling in his dad’s personal life. “I really gotta go.”
“Have fun.”
Clay snorted. “Trust me. I’d rather be there with you.”
After another round of I love yous, he reluctantly hung up and opened the door to greet his brother but paused when another figure stepped out of the cabin onto the porch. “Patchy?”
The man’s familiar shit-eating grin split his dark face. “I haven’t been called that since I left this godforsaken ranch,” Patchy said as he ambled down the steps.
Clay slid out of his truck and met Beau’s childhood friend at the base of the steps, jerking him into a backslapping hug. “Holy shit! It is you!”
A flood of memories he hadn’t thought of in forever bombarded him all at once. As kids, Beau and John ‘Patch’ Valenzuela, had been inseparable. From the day Patchy’s dad came to work on the ranch, his brother and Patchy had been joined at the hip. They’d learned to ride and rope together, and how to shoot and hunt. Two years older than Beau, and a direct descendant of an Apache tribal chief that once ruled the land their ranch now sat on, Patchy had been like an idol to Clay. He’d known everything about ranching. At the time, Clay’d thought he knew everything about everything.
Damn. The two of them had gotten Clay grounded or worse, more times than he could count, but he never complained or ratted them out. He’d have done almost anything to be able to hang out with them. And then, one day, Patchy wasn’t there anymore. No goodbyes. No letters or phone calls. He and his dad were just…gone.
“Christ, Patchy, it’s damn good to see you!”
“It’s just Patch, now,” their friend corrected him with a chuckle.
“How the hell have you been? Where have you been?”
Patch let him go, shrugging as he took a step back. “I’m good, man. Been lots of places over the years, but I’ve been in New Mexico the last few working with the state on tribal stuff.”
“Tribal stuff?” Clay looked him over, taking in all the changes that contradicted the memories of the skinny boy he once knew. “Looks like you’ve been wrestling a tattoo gun wielding grizzly bear or something. Shit, man.” He was taller than Beau now, and twice as broad. The tatts that covered his neck and forearms only added to his menacing look.
“Oh, yeah?” Patch laughed as he flexed his bicep, then snapped his arm out like a striking cobra and landed a sharp jab to Clay’s abs. “You don’t look like you’ve missed too many wrestling matches yourself. The Air Force did you good.”
Clay glanced between him and Beau. “How long have you been here?” What else had Beau told him?
“I ran into him at a gun shop in El Paso a few weeks back,” Beau said.
“Yeah,” Patch jostled his arm again. “Heard you were gettin’ hitched. Thought I’d come try to talk you off the ledge.”
“Good luck with that,” Beau scoffed behind them.
Clay slanted his brother a threatening glance, then reached into his truck cab to retrieve his backpack. “Nice try, but it’s not gonna happen. How about you? You married?”
“Nope.” Patch took his bag from him and set it on the porch. “God didn’t give me a cock like this to be stingy with it.”
Clay shook his head. Some things never changed. He was reaching into the bed of his truck for his saddle when Levi drove up and parked on the other side of him, another unexpected guest riding in the passenger seat.
Jackson stepped out of the truck and joined Levi at the tailgate to unload their saddles and packs. The high of seeing Patchy again fizzled out as fast as a can of soda left out in the desert sun. Clay’d expected his brothers to invite him, but there was a not-so-small part of him that had hoped Jackson would decline, especially after he’d showed up drunk with a random buckle bunny while Dani’s dads were visiting. But, as hard as he’d tried, he couldn’t hold a grudge about it after Mason McLendon socked him in the mouth, even if Mason had thought he was punching him. A grin tugged at the corner of Clay’s lips as he remembered the shocked look on Jackson’s swelling face.
“Hey, Jax.” Patch ambled past them to greet his baby brother. “That was one hell of a ride the other night.”
Jackson’s cautious gaze darted to Clay before he bumped fists with Patch. “Thanks.”
“Missed you at the bar afterward.” Patch took Jackson’s saddle from him, flicking it over his shoulder like it was nothing but a windbreaker. “I owe you a drink. You made me a lot of money with that ride.”
Clay’s grin faded. Apparently, Beau hadn’t filled Patch in on too much. The last thing Jackson needed was someone like Patch feeding his addictions, or his ego.
“Oh yeah?” Jackson said, squinting against the morning sun, reaching into his backpack. “Well, we can settle up this weekend.” He held up a bottle of whiskey. “If you’ve got a deck of cards to go with this, I’ll be glad to take some of that money off your hands.”
Patch laughed. “You’re on.”
Clay closed his eyes on a heavy sigh. This is a train wreck waiting to happen. Why had he let Beau talk him into this?
“Don’t ruin this weekend,” Levi said in a hushed whisper, draping his arm over Clay’s shoulders.
Clay shrugged him off. “Then you shouldn’t have brought him.”
“Get the fuck over it.” Levi squared off in front of him. “He’s trying, and this weekend isn’t about him or you. It’s about us, a last chance for us to be brothers before you go off and get married.”
“I’m moving ten miles down the road,” Clay argued.
“He’s our brother,” Levi insisted.
Clay’s jaw popped as
he ground his teeth. Levi had been trying to broker a truce between him and Jackson for months now, though he didn’t know why. Jackson would screw it all up sooner or later. He just hoped to hell Levi didn’t get burned the way he had, when Jackson inevitably set the next fire.
“You’re getting married, moving on,” Levi pushed. “Let this go.”
“Fine.” He clenched his teeth together to keep from saying more. Whatever it took to get this weekend over.
Reluctantly, he stepped up onto the porch and gave Jackson a perfunctory nod. “Glad you could come.” The look of surprise in Jackson’s eyes gave him a brief sense of satisfaction, followed by both unwelcomed guilt and trepidation. He hoped to hell he wouldn’t regret this. “Just keep your boot-rotted feet out of my tent,” he joked in a halfhearted attempt to break the tension.
Beau snorted. “Tents? Who said we’re sleeping in tents?”
Clay toed his backpack sitting against the railing. “Y’all can sleep in the dirt with the mountain goats and rattle snakes if you want, but I’m sleeping in my tent.
After a full day of riding the rocky terrain that skirted between the ranch and the Rio Grande, Clay’s ass ached. His whole body screamed in rebellion every time he moved. How the hell did Beau live like this? He picked up the bottle of whiskey Jackson had opened earlier in the night when they’d made camp, taking a long swig before he laid back and stared up at the stars strewn across the black velvet sky.
Propped against a stray boulder on the other side of the crackling campfire, Patch chuckled. “You look like you’ve been ridden harder than a pack mule lost in the desert for a year.”
Clay grimaced, shifting onto his other hip. “It’s been a while,” he grunted.
Beau snickered, tossing his hound, Thor, some leftover scraps from their spit-fired steak dinner. “That new thoroughbred of his has spoiled him,” he said around a wad of chewing tobacco, his latest vice to quit smoking.
“Thoroughbred, huh?” Patch raised a curious brow. “Got any pictures?”
Clay pulled his phone from his backpack and flipped it on, checking the signal before passing it to him. Still nothing.
“Hot damn!” Patch clicked his tongue as he looked at Clay’s favorite picture of Dani on his home screen, grinning as he passed the phone back. “Bet she is a smooth ride.”
Clay ignored the typical locker room comment as he stuffed the phone back into his pack, after checking the signal again. Beau was right. He was acting like a lovesick puppy, but he didn’t care. Dani was like a love song with an addictive melody he couldn’t stop singing. He woke with her on his mind and went to sleep hoping to find her in his dreams. Hell, he even thought about her when he was with her. Not being able to hear her voice before he went to sleep sucked. The first thing he was going to do when he got even a hint of a signal, after he called Dani, was buy that satellite phone he’d been considering.
“Are you sure you want to permanently hitch your stallion to that filly, though?” Patch asked, snatching him from his pining thoughts. “A lifetime can be a long damn time.”
“Never been surer of anything,” he said curtly, shifting back onto his other hip, cursing the pebbles beneath his horse blanket that kept digging into his tailbone.
Patch shook his head in disapproval and pointed a finger at his brothers. “You know this is the beginning of the end for you guys, right?”
A chorus of scoffs circled the campfire.
“No joke,” Patch protested. “Once the first domino falls… It won’t be long before he takes the rest of you down with him.”
“Bullshit,” Beau said. “Ain’t happenin’.”
“Famous last words,” Levi countered.
“Oh yeah? What about you?” Patch tipped his chin at the bottle of whiskey, and Levi passed it to him.
Beau’s chuckle turned into a side-splitting cackle. “If Levi ever got his hands on a real woman, he’d have her tied up in the lab running DNA sequences on her.”
“Fuck you,” Levi spat and kicked a divot of sand onto Beau’s boots.
“Sounds kinky.” Patch chuckled.
“Seriously, bro.” Beau grabbed the whiskey bottle from Patch. “You’re surrounded by young, hot chicks all day every day at the university, and yet I haven’t seen you with someone of the opposite sex since you took that filly to her high school prom. What was her name? Rachel? Robin?”
“Rainy,” Clay supplied.
“Rainy!” Beau snapped his fingers. “I knew it was an R name.”
Levi shook his head. “I don’t fuck around with my students. Besides, I have an apartment in San Antonio for that.”
“Stocked with plenty of rope I hope,” Beau mocked.
Clay shot up from his prone position, the alcohol having eaten away at the edges of his aches and pains. “You have an apartment in the city?” Why hadn’t he heard about this?
Levi shrugged. “I sure as hell ain’t bringin’ a woman home, not with as fucked up as the three of you are.”
Clay rolled his eyes as he collapsed back onto the ground. They weren’t as bad as all that, though he did have a point. Still… “It worked out just fine for me.”
“Whatever,” Beau said. “Just because you found the last unicorn.”
Whiskey spewed over the campfire as Patch coughed up his last swig. “She’s a virgin?” he choked out.
“Was,” Levi clarified, giving Clay a shove.
“Shut the fuck up.” Clay punched Levi’s arm, then glared at Beau. “You had to tell him, didn’t you?”
Beau’s shoulders rose to his ears as he lifted his hands in feigned shock.
“I knew better than to tell you,” Clay groused as he laid back down. “Asshole.”
“What about you?” Patch asked Jackson, passing him the bottle of whiskey. “You’re awfully quiet over there. Think you’ll ever get married?”
Jackson’s eyes cut to Clay, holding his gaze with a silent plea before he looked back into the flames.
“Jax, here, has a son,” Levi said, clamping his hand on Jackson’s shoulder and giving him a shake.
Patch’s eyes widened in surprise. “No shit?”
Jackson’s nervous gaze cut to Clay again. “Paxton is eight,” he finally said, his uneasy grin widening into a prideful smile. “Smart as a whip, too.”
“Damn.” Patch rested his arms over his knees, the bottle of whiskey dangling from his fingers as he stared into the fire. “You were barely that old the last time I saw you.”
“Time flies,” Jackson said with an unusual longing in his voice, his gaze cutting back to Clay.
“Sure as hell does,” Beau concurred with a grunt as he shifted to stretch out his legs. “You missed a lot around here.”
Clay’s stomach tightened as the conversation drifted dangerously close to the past he was supposed to be forgetting on this trip. Desperate, for both him and Jackson, not to see the pitying look in Patch’s eyes when he heard the truth about Jackson and Shannon, he rolled to his feet and snatched the bottle from Patch, holding it up to the fire.
“To Pax and Jax,” he offered as he sat back down, then took a swig before handing the bottle to Jackson, hopefully cutting the lit fuse on that keg of dynamite before it exploded in their faces.
Jackson took the bottle and stared at it a moment before he raised it back in Clay’s direction. “To you and Dani,” he said, his eyes reflecting a rare glint of sincerity. “I’m glad you finally found what you were lookin’ for. You deserve it.”
Maybe he was a bit drunker than he thought, but something passed between them in the quiet seconds that followed his brother’s toast. Jackson finally looked away and took a swig from the bottle, passing it to Levi, the moment gone as quick as it had come, leaving Clay feeling raw and bone-tired.
“So, what about this right-of-passage ceremonial hoodoo shit we’re supposed to be doing?” Levi asked Beau, breaking the tension.
“Yeah.” Clay sat up with a tired sigh, grateful for the subject change. “Whatever i
t is, we’d better do it quick,” he warned, pressing the heel of his hand against his spinning head. “Before I’m too drunk to walk.”
“You’re already too drunk to walk,” Jackson ribbed. “You always were a lightweight.”
Clay raised a challenging brow, along with his middle finger.
“Seriously, man.” Levi nodded at Patch. “What’s the plan?”
“What are you looking at me for?” Patch asked with a confused smirk.
“Aren’t you going to perform some sort of religious tribal ritual for the groom-to-be?” Levi asked. “I thought that’s why we were here.”
Patch’s head fell back with his roaring laugh. “I’m Catholic, asshole.” He gave Beau’s shoulder a shove. “What kind of bullshit you tellin’ your brothers, man?”
“I didn’t tell’em jack shit.”
“Aww, man.” Jackson whined, digging his heel into the dirt. “Kiss my ass, you old bucket of cheese. You told me he was gonna make Clay walk on a hot bed of coals or some shit. I came all the way out here for nothin’.”
“It wasn’t for nothin’,” Beau argued. “It got y’all out here, didn’t it?” He caught Clay’s gaze and lifted the bottle of whiskey to him with an approving wink. “I’m proud of you, man. You landed a good one.”
Each of his brothers gave him a nod before they took a drink from the bottle, passing it to Clay finally, an inch of amber fire left in the bottom. He took the bottle and held it up, looking at each of his brothers. Despite their differences, and the shit they’d done to each other over the years, they were his brothers, his blood. He wouldn’t be the man he was, or deserve a woman like Dani, if it weren’t for them.
“Y’all may be a pain in the ass,” he said, quoting their Pops’ finale to every scolding speech they’d ever endured.
“But you’re my pain in the ass,” they all finished together before Clay tipped the bottle back and chugged until it was empty.
The campfire had dwindled to a few weak flames licking up from a pile of glowing embers by the time Clay left his brothers to their fresh bottle of whiskey and stumbled into his tent.
“Careful,” Beau snickered. “Drinking and glamping is dangerous.”