by Dakota Flint
Table of Contents
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
About the Author
Love can be found among the pieces of a broken heart.
The night his brother, Simon, was killed in an accident, Dylan took on a double load of guilt. Guilt for walking away unscathed…and for secretly loving Simon’s partner, Wade. Unable to bear the pain, Dylan left the Lazy G ranch to rebuild his life elsewhere.
A year later he reluctantly responds to his sister’s plea to come home, where he finds the Lazy G falling apart. And so is Wade. Wade has stopped caring about the ranch, about everything that should matter most to him.
Though there’s more ranch work than one man can possibly handle, Dylan throws himself into the task. Wondering how he’s going to find the strength to pull Wade out of the fog of grief when his own is still as raw as a fresh wound. Wondering when Wade will finally see that his second chance for happiness is standing right in front of him.
Warning: Contains explicit, emotionally charged m/m sex. Extra box of tissues required. You could use your sleeve, of course, but we don’t recommend it.
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
577 Mulberry Street, Suite 1520
Macon GA 31201
Seeing You
Copyright © 2010 by Dakota Flint
ISBN: 978-1-60504-882-6
Edited by Linda Ingmanson
Cover by Natalie Winters
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: January 2010
www.samhainpublishing.com
Seeing You
Dakota Flint
Dedication
For anyone who has lost a loved one and managed to find happiness again.
Prologue
“It’s time for you to come home, Dylan.” The strain in my sister’s voice came across loud and clear over the connection, a palpable feeling despite being almost three thousand miles away.
“Why, Erin? What’s wrong?”
“You’ve been gone too long. Wade… I’m worried about him.” She didn’t continue.
“Why’s that?” I closed my eyes, trying to block out the image of the last time I’d seen Wade, standing silent by Simon’s graveside, his face a hardened mask, no emotion showing through except the emptiness in his eyes.
“Every time I call to say the girls and I are going to come out for a visit, he makes some excuse. The few times I’ve just driven out there, he wasn’t around. And the ranch… well, it looks like it’s falling apart.”
“What?” I couldn’t keep the surprise out of my voice. The only thing Wade had loved more than that ranch was Simon.
“Yeah, I couldn’t get over how many repairs need to be made and how much needs to be done, and I couldn’t find Wade or Mack. You…you just need to come home now, Dylan. It’s time to stop running.” The last part was said hesitantly.
“I’m not running.” I bit off the words that tried to force their way out after that. Did I even believe that anymore?
“The girls miss their uncle,” Erin said. I didn’t think the pain would be so acute, not after all this time, but thinking of eight-year-old Amelia and six-year-old Molly crying for their Uncle Simon made my stomach clench.
I gripped the phone tight and tried unsuccessfully to swallow. I said, “We all miss him, Erin.”
I heard her heave a tired sigh. “No, you idiot, their Uncle Dylan. They miss you.” Another sigh. “Just come home, Lynnie. We need you.”
At the use of that silly childhood nickname, my throat closed up and I couldn’t speak. I thought for sure I was going to lose it right there on 23rd Street, surrounded by a blur of navy blue suits swarming into the State Department buildings and an army of tourists clicking away on their cameras. Continuing my walk, I stared out at the Potomac and wondered what a dumb cowboy like me was doing busing tables in a city like this. I ignored the voice that whispered something about running. It sounded suspiciously like my brother Simon.
I stood staring at the water for a long time, watching it turn blood red as the horizon swallowed the sun. I shuddered. Erin was right.
It was time to go home.
Chapter One
Turning onto the private road that would lead me to the ranch buildings, I took a deep breath. It had been two weeks since that phone call from Erin. I didn’t exactly drag my feet, but I probably could have made it back last week.
The dread ate at me on the drive back to Montana, through big cities offering nothing but traffic and problems, through the small abandoned towns that offered a skeleton of the past, through mountains and rolling hills and flat plains. Over the river and through the woods, to Wade’s house I go.
My smile faded as I pulled my beat-up blue Chevy to the front of the bunkhouse. I hopped out of the truck and stood still as I tried to figure out why this place felt so…off. Not even the day after Simon’s funeral had felt like this.
I walked around a pick-up truck, its mouth gaping open and the intestines abandoned on a blanket on the ground, and made my way over to the corral, hooking my boot on the bottom rung of the fence. And then it hit me.
Where was all the life?
I did a three-sixty, scouring the meadow and the foothills, the ranch house, the bunkhouse, the pond, the road winding out of sight leading back to civilization, the stables and the barn, the clumps of trees lining Sweet Grass creek, the trails leading into the mountains. Nothing.
Where the hell was everyone? The hands? Mack? Wade? More puzzling, where the hell were the animals?
A breeze brushed past my neck and rustled the leaves on the aspen trees, which until that moment had stood silently at attention around the outbuildings. I stood still and listened, but I didn’t hear anything other than the occasional songbird and the gurgle of creek water.
Shaking my head, I made my way over to the stables. Opening the sagging door, I walked inside and couldn’t help wrinkling my nose. The stalls needed to be mucked out, despite most of them standing empty.
I walked down the aisle and then paused when I realized Simon’s horse, Donner, wasn’t there. I stood looking at the empty stall for a moment, but forced myself to keep looking for the other horses. I didn’t see Rudy, Wade’s horse, either, but my heart clenched when I spotted my Blitzen. Man, it had been hard leaving my girl behind when I left the Lazy G.
“Hey, girl. How’s my pretty lady been?” I rubbed her nose, fiercely glad all of sudden that I had come home. It had been too long since I’d been on a horse. The unconditional love didn’t hurt either.
I gave in to the little boy inside of me and hugged Blitzen’s neck tight until she nudged my head and I let go, laughing. “All right. I was getting sappy, huh? Missed you, though.” She lipped my pocket and looked at me with what I would have assumed was a d
esperate eye if I didn’t know any better. Had anybody been bringing my baby any treats?
“I’ll see if I can scare up an apple or two later, but first I need to find out where everyone is. And where the rest of the horses are.” Blitzen whickered softly, and I gave her one good rub before heading out of the barn and over to the bunkhouse. I stepped onto the sagging front step and knocked on the door before walking in.
“Hello? Anybody here?” It was the middle of the day, so I didn’t really expect anyone to answer.
“Yeah? Who’s that?” The voice bellowing from the belly of the house had to be Mack, the foreman of the Lazy G since before I started working here back in high school.
“It’s Dylan,” I said, walking down the hallway. I met up with Mack as he came out of his bedroom wearing sweatpants and an old T-shirt. His hair was rumpled as if he had been asleep, and his bushy gray eyebrows climbed in surprise toward what used to be his hairline.
“Dylan! I didn’t know you were coming back. Wade didn’t mention it. Sure am glad to see you.” Mack pulled me into a bruising, back-slapping hug, and I was ashamed to feel my eyes burning. I had a good excuse for it a second later, though, when Mack pulled back and smacked me on the side of my head.
“Ow, what was that for?” Guess they weren’t going to slaughter the fatted calf for me.
“Boy, we’re gonna talk ’bout this whole keepin’ in touch thing. Twice in fourteen months don’t count, and I oughta take you outside and teach you a lesson that will have you checkin’ in at least monthly next time you leave.”
Rubbing the side of my head, I said, “Sorry, Mack. I meant to call more, but… I just needed time.”
I didn’t need to say any more; we both knew why. Mack looked at me, ran his hand through what was left of his gray hair, and it struck me that Mack might have been napping. In the middle of the afternoon. That was odd. I couldn’t remember Mack taking a nap in the seventeen years I’d known him.
I caught a flash of an unmade bed and bedside table sporting an array of pill bottles before Mack shut the bedroom door and turned toward the kitchen. Accepting the cold beer he offered me, I joined him at the kitchen table and tried to tell myself there was no reason to be nervous.
“So, why’d you come back? You talk to Wade?”
“No, not yet. I wasn’t sure exactly when I’d get in so I thought I’d…surprise him.” I smiled, but Mack leveled a look at me and I knew he wasn’t fooled. “Actually, I talked to Erin and she thought I should come home. Now that I’m here, I can see why. Where is everyone? The horses? Wade? The hands?”
Mack fiddled with the label on the bottle, not looking at me anymore. “You talk to Wade at all since…well, since you left?”
“Not exactly.” I forced myself to keep my expression blank.
Mack looked up at me and sighed, and I realized that somewhere along the way, the man who had always seemed larger than life to me had gotten old. Old and tired. How did that happen?
I was afraid I knew.
“What does ‘not exactly’ mean?”
“It means…well, no.”
“Shit. Shit. What the hell is wrong with you, Dylan?”
“I just needed time.” Damn, that sounded lame. “And Wade didn’t call me either.” Oh, that was better. Damn.
“Christ.” Mack just shook his head. “Shit.”
“I’m sure He did. Funny, gives new meaning to the term ‘holy shit’.’” I knew as soon as the words left my mouth that this was not the time for jokes. Mack looked at me like he had the time he found Simon and me drunk behind a couple bales of hay in the barn when we were sixteen, and I was supposed to be mucking stalls. I’d tried to brazen it out, asking Mack to join us, and he stared at me with a mix of anger and disappointment. Then he hauled me up and tossed me in the freezing cold pond not five minutes later. It had been…sobering. “Sorry, Mack. Will you tell me what’s going on?”
Mack sighed and said, “Wade ain’t been around much since… Well, I rarely see him, so he don’t talk to me. I try to hunt him down to remind him to pay stuff, but he… Shit, I don’t know where he goes. Just out riding with Rudy, I think.”
“Pay stuff? Why would you need to remind him? And where are all the horses?”
“Yeah, Wade ain’t been very timely with the bills lately. The feed store needs a payment before they’ll fill the next order. Had to sell most of the stock.”
“What? Why? What’s everybody riding? How’re you moving cattle? Riding fence?” Why did it feel like pulling teeth trying to get answers out of Mack?
“There ain’t no ‘everybody’,’ boy. Just two hands left ‘sides myself. Can’t take care of an outfit the size of the Lazy G with just three people. Had to do somethin’. And if Wade don’t pay the two hands we got left this Friday, Billy and Joe aren’t goin’ to stick around any longer either.”
“What the hell is Wade thinking?” I tried to swallow down my disbelief, but it was a funny taste.
“Don’t think he is.”
“He drinking?” He hadn’t been, not when I’d left, but I couldn’t say as I’d be surprised if he was taking some comfort from staring at the bottom of a fifth of JD every now and again.
“Not that I can tell,” Mack said, sounding certain. I forced my fingers to unclench from around my sweating bottle.
“Well then, what the fuck is he doing?”
“Grieving. Hiding. S’my guess, anyways.” Mack’s faded hazel eyes looked just about as sad as I felt.
“You talk to him?” That wouldn’t have been easy for Mack, forcing Wade to talk about his grief, but Mack had been there for Wade since his father died, and whatever needed doing, Mack always stepped right up to the plate.
“Won’t stand still to listen to me. That is, if I can smoke him out to begin with.”
“Shit.” I sat back in the chair, ignoring the creaking sound, and thought about this. I should have come home months ago. “Why didn’t you call me? I would have come home.”
“Figured if you needed the reminder, be best if no one forced you back before you were ready to quit your wanderin’. I wasn’t goin’ to call you ’til things got desperate.” Funny, Mack didn’t look like he was kidding. I barked out a laugh anyways.
“When did this start? He seemed to be taking care of everything the first month after Simon died.” Fact was, the ranch had looked like all Wade had to hold onto then, throwing himself into running it every minute of the day.
“Oh, ’bout the time you left.” Mack just looked at me for a moment, and I dropped my eyes, afraid of what he might see. “You left, and what little life he seemed to have just drained right out, far as I could tell.”
And just like that, I could feel the guilt pressing down on my shoulders. I mumbled some excuse to Mack and bolted outside, gulping fresh air as fast as my lungs could take it.
Instead of coming home months ago, I never should have left in the first place.
Chapter Two
Walking into the ranch house, I was struck by the smell. Not the fresh apple pie smell of yesteryear, but something a little more rank. Garbage. Ugh.
Not surprising, since the kitchen sink was full of dishes, and the smell got decidedly more funky as I walked closer to the spot where the garbage was kept. Realizing my mouth was hanging open, I shut it quick. Where there was garbage like that, there were sure to be flies.
The muscles in my stomach wound tight as I surveyed the mess. Wade had never been a neat freak by any means, but he’d always cleaned up after himself. Simon had been the slob. My stomach started cramping.
The door to Wade’s office stood ajar, so I didn’t bother knocking. Holy crap. His desk looked like a twister had blown through. The one place Wade freaked out about mess was in his office.
Starting to feel like I’d walked into the wrong house, I called out, “Wade?” No answer.
Climbing the stairs, careful not to touch the two inches of dust on the banister, I made my way down to Wade and Si—Wade’s room. I kn
ocked softly and then louder when there was no answer. Deciding Wade wasn’t in there, unless he was asleep—and hey, maybe in this weird alternate Lazy G world everyone napped at three o’clock in the afternoon—I turned the door handle.
No Wade in sight, just a bed that looked like it hadn’t been made after a wrestling match and a previously wooden floor that was now sporting a new rug I’d call “dirty laundry.” I lifted my foot to step inside and halted it mid-air as my gaze swept over the coffee-colored wall and spotted a rectangle of wall that was darker than the surrounding area.
I swallowed hard and knew that if I walked into the room there would be another two naked rectangles to match the first. Wondering where Wade had put the paintings, I listened to this weird whooshing sound for a minute before I realized it was the sound of my own breathing.
I turned around and didn’t stop moving until I had Blitzen saddled and was urging her faster and faster toward the mountains, heedless of the danger, of when I must have lost my hat, and of the wetness blurring my vision.
When I returned to the stables a few hours later, my steps faltered as I noticed Rudy was back in his stall. I took my time brushing Blitzen, telling myself it was because she liked it and not because I was putting off this first meeting.
Finally, I took a deep breath and walked to the house in search of Wade. I found him sitting at the kitchen table, bent over what must have been a microwave dinner. He didn’t look up, and I wondered how he could have missed the slamming of the screen door when I walked in.
“Hello, Wade.”
His head shot up, and he stared at me for moment like he didn’t recognize me. Then his eyes focused, and he continued to stare at me, saying nothing.
“Sorry I didn’t call to tell you when I’d be showin’ up, but I wasn’t really sure.” Still, he didn’t say anything. I slid into the chair across from him. “How are you, Wade?” I clenched my hands under the table and willed him to stop looking at me like that and just say something.