Nowhere to Ride

by Andrew Grey

  Ky shivered in the air-conditioning as he kept his eyes closed, even though it was tempting to just close off the memories the way he had for so long. There was nothing good that could come from those words. Ky had been forced to leave, and he’d tried to get Mason to come along with him, but Jacob refused to let his son out of his sight.

  “You’re shaking,” Brodie said as his weight settled next to him. “Are you sick?”

  “Jacob said I was,” Ky responded, his mind still deep in what had happened, and he couldn’t seem to shake it off. “He said a lot of things.”

  “When?” Brodie asked quietly as the happy, playful music came from the television. It was in such contrast to his thoughts that Ky almost laughed at the dichotomy, but pushed it aside.

  “I don’t want to talk about this,” Ky said, pulling strength from deep inside him. “Nothing can come from it. Certainly nothing good. Mason is gone, and I was accused of killing him. But I didn’t do it.”

  Brodie gently stroked his arm. “Maybe you need to talk about it.”

  “No!” Ky snapped.

  Emily whined, and Ky felt Brodie lean closer.

  “Now look, Ky Archer. You’ve been good to us, I know that. But don’t you raise your voice and act like an ass to me. I only want to help, and you know it.” He continued to stroke his arm. “You need to open those boxes in your mind, the ones you want to keep closed just so the pain will stop.” His honey-velvet voice wrapped around Ky’s heart and spirit, soothing both of them. “You have to.”

  “But I can’t bring Mason back. All I can do is hold on to what I have of him,” Ky whispered, his throat aching. Emily patted his leg, and Ky lifted her onto his lap without really thinking about it. She was warm and gentle, and Ky needed that right now.

  “Talking about him isn’t letting him go. It’s sharing what you had.” Brodie continued his gentle stroking, and Ky’s will and hold on the past began to crumble.

  “I already told you.”

  “No. What you said was the rehearsed version. The one I bet you’ve told others before. What really happened?” Brodie asked.

  Almost instantly Ky was back in that barn. The air outside was cold—a winter night—but the barn was warm and barely lit by a lantern. He and Mason had been out for a ride and had just finished brushing down the horses and getting them settled in their stalls.

  “There was only a single light, and Mason and I had spent the afternoon taking advantage of the fact that we were alone. It had been too cold to do anything physical, but it had been good to be away and to have a chance to be together, out riding. The touches….” Brodie placed one hand on top of Ky’s. “The looks, the whispered words… all of it had built us up all day. Then about half an hour before we got back, Mason had told me that he was going to leave the ranch and that he and I could leave town and find a place where we could work together. It would be hard, but we would have each other.” Ky pulled in a deep breath. “He was going to go with me.”

  Brodie gripped his fingers. “That’s so good. He really loved you.”

  Ky nodded. “And I loved him.” Ky’s chest ached, and he wondered how he could get the words out. He’d held them inside for so very long that he had no idea if it was possible to even say them any longer. But he’d try. “I really did. I pulled him into an empty stall, and it felt so good to hold him in my arms. I never wanted to let him go. I could actually see hope for the first time. A hope that I wish I had been able to hold in check.”

  He leaned closer, Brodie’s face sad, biting his lower lip.

  “Mason had these incredible brown eyes, and they shone in the flickering lantern light in the barn. All I could think about was the taste of his lips, and then there they were, mine on his, the rich flavor of him bursting in my mouth.” Ky pulled himself back. Brodie didn’t need to hear about that kind of thing. But Brodie said nothing and held his hand tighter. “That’s when I heard it. A footstep, and then Mason was yanked away as though he weighed nothing. Jacob held him by the collar like some errant child. And the yelling, the words….” Ky sighed. “No man should ever say anything like that to his own son. But what hurt the most was the way the light dimmed and went out in Mason’s eyes. The happiness that had been there was gone, replaced by pain and shame. I tried to get him to come with me, but Jacob had a hold on him.” Ky swallowed really hard to try to force away the lump in his throat. “I left. I actually left him there alone to face that.”

  “Where did you go?” Brodie asked.

  “To be alone. The thought of anyone seeing me was too much. I went back to the ranch, found a bottle, and disappeared into the barn to drink away the pain. But that didn’t help either. Mom found me, and then the police were there to take me away. No one would listen to me about what happened. They seemed to have the full story from Jacob and that was all they wanted. I found out from the police that Jacob’s barn had been set on fire and that Mason had been caught in it and died. I was being accused of setting the fire as part of a fight between myself and Mason.” Ky felt like he had been through a meat grinder. “The worst part is that Mason is dead, and no one is looking for who really set that fire.”

  Brodie continued stroking his shoulder. “Maybe because they already know who started it.”

  Ky opened his eyes as the room spun.

  “Maybe Jacob and the sheriff already know who the guilty person is, but the answer isn’t something that my cousin can live with, and the sheriff is in Jacob’s pocket. The town largely thinks you did it and got off somehow, because my cousin won’t relent in his persecution of you.”

  “What are you saying?” Ky asked.

  “That the reason my cousin can’t let go of saying you killed Mason is because he did. There were only two people in that barn that night. Three, if you count yourself. But you had left. So either Mason started the fire himself and got caught up in it, or Jacob did, and it cost him Mason.”

  It sounded so reasonable, and Ky wondered why he had never thought of it before.

  “Of course my cousin would claim that you did it, or that someone else set the fire and Mason died trying to save the horses. Jacob would never admit that Mason was gay or that he started the fire himself. And who knows—maybe it was an accident and Jacob saw a chance to make you pay for corrupting Mason. Because, knowing my cousin, that’s how he thinks of it. Whatever happened is your fault… or anyone else’s. That way he can live with the memory of his son.”

  “Am I that stupid not to have seen it?” Ky asked as Emily patted his cheek as though to comfort him.

  “No. Just lost in your own hurt. It happens. That’s why doctors don’t treat themselves or their own families. They’re too close to the subject. You’re just too close, and you’re the one who had to deal with the pain.”

  “Do you really think Jacob would do that sort of thing?” Ky asked, already knowing the answer. It was his experience that Jacob Tyler would do whatever he thought was best for him.

  Brodie scoffed, and Emily giggled at the sound. “You like that?” Brodie did it a few more times. “Yeah, you know that Jacob is a mean douchebag. After all, he and Chandra tried to separate me and Emily. From what I understood from the hands, who gossip over there like old men with nothing better to do, Chandra wants a baby, but Jacob….” He stuck up a finger and then let it dangle limply, giving Ky the message pretty clearly. “Anyway, he and Chandra decided that they could raise Emily better than I could, and if I went along with it, then I’d have a job and could be nearby.” He shook his head. “That kind of shit isn’t normal. Emily hated Chandra and was scared of Jacob.” Brodie tickled her belly. “You have good taste, don’t you?” Brodie met Ky’s gaze, all the humor gone as soon as he turned from his sister. “I swear that man is capable of anything.”

  “But how do we prove it?” Ky asked. “I want my life back, and I want people to stop hating me.”

  Brodie shrugged. “I can guess at what happened, but I don’t know for sure, and I have no clue how we can actually say
that’s what happened. Jacob isn’t going to tell anyone, and the sheriff, if he’s in league with Jacob, has drunk the Kool-Aid and isn’t going to talk either. The hands on the ranch aren’t going to say shit because they don’t want to get on Jacob’s bad side and have to find another job.”

  Ky nodded. “It seems that Jacob Tyler has everyone afraid of him. But Mason died and….” Ky’s voice trailed off because he didn’t know what else to say. “I suppose he’s the one who will have to deal with his guilt. As much as I hate the man, I refuse to believe that he killed Mason on purpose.” It was the one thing he held on to for Mason’s sake. No one should be hated that much, especially not by their own father. “I just want to be able to go on with my own life without him always in my face.”

  Brodie scratched his chin. “Maybe that we can do.” He shifted on the seat. “We can’t prove that he set the fire or that it was an accident. But Jacob doesn’t know that. He has to live in fear that someone will figure it out. I mean, not everyone listens to his crap.”

  Ky nodded. “What do you have in mind?”

  C hapter Ten

  “Come on in,” Ky said to Aunt Rita.

  Brodie took a pan of chicken casserole out of the oven. He had been using Ky’s computer to look up recipes so they could have different things to eat. He had never been much of a cook, but over the past few days, Ky sure seemed to like the things he’d come up with. And Brodie was pleased that he could contribute to life at the ranch.

  “What smells so good?” she asked as she set down her purse and came over to the casserole dish. “Nice.” She stroked Brodie’s cheek and immediately went to play with Emily, who sat in her chair, all ready for her dinner. “How’s the little princess?”

  “Teething,” Brodie answered with a yawn. “She had one come in last night, and I think there’s another on the way. Hopefully that will be it for a little while.” He placed the casserole dish on the hot pad on the table and added a bowl of salad and dressings. “Where’s Ben?” Brodie put some of the macaroni in a dish, spread it out, and set it aside to cool for Emily.

  “It seems that Ben isn’t eating with us. He has a date,” Ky told them.

  “Who?” Brodie asked. “Is she cute?”

  “You know Lilly, and yeah, she’s cute, if you like that sort of thing, I guess.” Ky sat down and dodged his aunt’s lighthearted swipe.

  Aunt Rita shook her head and sighed. “That girl is sweet and as kindhearted as they come. Ben has been making eyes at her at church events for months. I was afraid he was never going to get up the guts to actually try to talk to her. I swore I was going to have to contrive some sort of situation to get him to actually say something. But it seems he found his courage.” Aunt Rita smiled.

  It was Ky who snorted. “Apparently she asked him out.”

  “I hope someone made conversational cheat sheets for the two of them. They’re both so quiet,” Aunt Rita said.

  “That’s because Ben is shy around people he doesn’t know very well. He tells me plenty, and I’m sure he and Lilly will get along without any help from the rest of us.” Ky set the plates on the table while Brodie got the rest of the table set. Then the three of them sat down to eat.

  “So what was it you all asked me over for?” Aunt Rita asked, and Brodie figured it had taken all her restraint to wait as long as she had to ask.

  Ky explained what they had spoken about, and Aunt Rita agreed.

  “I always wondered, but I figured the sheriff would do his job. Apparently I was mistaken on both counts. So what do you want me to do?”

  “We need to make sure that a rumor gets back to Jacob that someone saw what happened that night in the barn. That he and Mason weren’t alone. There have been hands who have left his employ, and people move around, so that sort of thing is going to be hard for him to nail down.”

  “Oh, I get it. You want to scare the hell out of him,” Aunt Rita said with a gleam in her eyes.

  Brodie handed Emily her dish, and she dug right in to her dinner. You’d think she was starving. He also gave her a sippy cup, and she was plenty happy. “What we want is to sow some doubt in him. Let Jacob think that his position isn’t as strong as he would like to think it is. If he can hear it from more than one person, that should unsettle him.”

  Aunt Rita took a few bites and then set down her fork. “What is it you’re hoping to accomplish? Are you going to confront him?”

  Ky shook his head. “Nope. But if there’s any truth to it, then he’ll be over here with the sweetest deal possible to get me to sell just to get me out of town. If there’s no truth in it and he feels secure, then nothing will happen and the insinuation will simply roll off his back because he’ll know that no such evidence exists.” Brodie and Ky had talked it over pretty well.

  “That’s pretty slick, and either way, it takes some of the heat off you and puts it back on him. I like it.” She picked up her fork once again. “Okay. Let me think about how I can pull this off without giving too much away and without letting anyone know where it came from.”

  Aunt Rita stayed until she could put Emily to bed, then said good night and that she’d call when her part was done. Brodie convinced Ky to work in the office for a little while to try to explain more about his record-keeping system. Things were a mess, but Brodie had taken the first steps in order to get it straightened out. It wasn’t like the records were inaccurate or incomplete, just that there was paper everywhere, and in Brodie’s mind, it all needed to be filed so it could be retrieved later if needed.

  “You really know how to sweet talk a guy, don’t you?” Ky told him.

  Brodie grinned and drew close. “I’ll make it up to you, cowboy, I promise.” He drew back before Ky could attempt to make him forget what needed to be done and just take him to bed. Not that Brodie was totally opposed to the idea, but he needed to get things under control in the office if he was going to make progress. “But after….”

  Ky growled, and Brodie smiled.

  “Come into my lair.” He headed right to the office and sat in the desk chair. “I managed to get the paid invoices filed, and the others are here ready to be processed and paid. The herd records are something you’re going to need to go over with me so I can understand what I’m supposed to do.” He wheeled himself over to the files. “Everything has been organized, and it should be easy to find. And these are the bank statements that I need to reconcile tomorrow.” Brodie handed a letter to Ky. “I’m not sure what this is, so I put it aside for you.” He then pulled out a file folder.

  “What’s that?”

  “Something I found in the back of one of the drawers. I think it’s the legal papers to the ranch. It looks like they were put in there and then, over time, other things got added and pushed them to the back. I wasn’t sure what you wanted me to do with them. I peeked through the documents, and some of them are pretty old.” Brodie gently opened the file and set out the documents. “They’re all hand-typed, and look at the seals. Someone impressed them by hand.” He liked that sort of thing. Everything today was done on computer and stuff.

  “Yup. This is my great-grandpa’s deed. I remember my dad showing it to me a long time ago. There should be paperwork in here somewhere….” Ky gently sifted through the papers and smiled. “Republic of Texas. This dates to when Texas was an independent country, before it became a state. This is the original person who got the land back then. An ancestor bought some of the land from him, and then my great-grandpa bought some more and had the entire ranch put on one deed.” Pride washed off Ky, and Brodie loved that look on him. The way his eyes shone, and his lips curled upward just so. Some of the constant pain that seemed present in Ky’s eyes had dissipated as well. Ky looked over the document, and then Brodie felt his gaze shift to him. Ky’s smile widened and the glow in his eyes grew warmer.

  Brodie couldn’t look away. “What?” He started to wonder of there was something wrong. He looked down at his shirt and realized that the fabric had opened up down the side. “
Jesus, I’m a mess.” He slid away and figured he should go change his shirt.

  “No.” Ky drew him back close. “I was just watching you.” He shrugged, but his gaze didn’t shift.

  Brodie swallowed hard. “Ummm… what about the documents? Do you have a safe-deposit box or something? I’m sure there are records and things are recorded, but these are the original deeds and stuff to the ranch. They prove ownership, I guess.” The room was getting warmer by the second.

  Ky put them back into the file folder and left it on the desk. He drew closer, the temperature in the small room zipping upward. “I think that’s enough paperwork for tonight.”

  “Ky,” Brodie said, pulling back. “We have herd records that we need to go over, and just pushing the deeds aside isn’t dealing with them.” There was work to be done, and Brodie had to keep his mind on the task at hand.

  “Isn’t there something much more interesting than herd records that we could talk about?” Damn, Ky smelled good, but Brodie held himself back.

  “Yes. But is that why you want me here? I have to be useful, and not just as the guy who’s warming your bed.” Maybe he was jumping to conclusions, but Brodie needed a function on the ranch, and he had to have something to do besides just watch Emily all day long. After all, there was only so much children’s television and kids’ games that a person could take before they climbed the walls and willed the men in white coats to take them away.

  “Of course not.” Ky backed away like he’d been burned. “You don’t have to…. Is that what you think? I…,” Ky stammered in half-thoughts and fractions. “No.”

  “Okay. I didn’t mean to get you angry. But I have to do something constructive around here. I can’t be out there with you because I have to watch Emily and I can’t leave her alone. I can do this to help, but not if you don’t explain things.”

  “You have your own room that you can use any time you want. You don’t have to….” Ky turned away with a sigh.