by Amy Vastine
“Ah-hem!”
They broke apart. At the stair’s base, Doreen waved frantically then pointed at the kitchen doorway. Chatting residents began filing out. Luckily, none peered upward.
Justin’s hands itched to hold Brielle, but he forced them in his pockets instead and followed her down the stairs, past a grinning Doreen and out into the crisp fall day.
A couple of hours later, he stood by the two-story hearth in his family’s ranch house, Brielle by his side, feeling at home for the first time since Jesse’s passing. He wasn’t on the outside looking in anymore, a squeaky, busted-up third wheel.
He’d been broken, and Brielle was the only one who could have fixed him.
“Come on, Justin, let someone else hold her,” Jewel pleaded. In a concession to the formal occasion, his tomboy sister had worn a denim skirt and polished her battered cowgirl boots. Behind her, red-orange flames engulfed a large log pile in the fireplace, their cedar scent wafting through the crowded, festive room.
“You’ll have to put her down sometime, at least to eat. Want me to fix you a plate?” Brielle offered.
Justin shook his head and cradled the baby closer. Now that he’d embraced sweet Jesse, he never wanted to let her go.
“You planning on keeping Jesse all night?” demanded James.
Justin peered down at the sleeping infant, and warm tenderness filled his heart. “Probably. She didn’t cry once in the church.”
“Oh, she’s the most well-behaved baby that ever was,” gushed his ma. She’d gussied up in a cream suit, and her rose-and-lavender corsage matched her shoes and a beaded necklace. “Quite the little lady.”
Jewel lifted one of Jesse’s limp, pudgy arms. “Sumo wrestler, Ma.”
“Then she’s a lady sumo wrestler, yes, she is,” Joy cooed before deftly scooping Jesse out of Justin’s arms and wandering away.
“Hey,” Justin protested, earning him a chuckle from his older brother and Brielle.
“Looks like someone’s getting attached,” Jewel teased before she threw her arms around him and squeezed hard. “You look good, Justin. And you’ve never brought a girl home before. Brielle must be special…”
Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed Brielle’s face flame with color. A log popped in the sudden, uncomfortable hush.
“Justin couldn’t drive himself here,” his practical brother proclaimed, easing them past the awkward moment. “Not with his license still suspended. Lucky you don’t need one to compete in the motor cross race tomorrow.”
“What motor cross race?” Brielle’s voice rose half an octave.
Justin swore beneath his breath.
“You didn’t tell her, Justin?” Jewel’s nose curled like she smelled something rotten.
“I was planning on telling you after the christening,” he hurried to explain, unsettled by Brielle’s dilated pupils and the rapid rise and fall of her chest. “It’s a fund-raiser I participate in every year. Nothing ever happens.”
“Except that year you broke your arm,” Jewel supplied, not helping one bit. Whatever happened to family loyalty?
“If you don’t want me to participate, I won’t,” he offered then held his breath, hoping she wouldn’t try to clip his wings. He already felt like a fallen angel.
Brielle’s eyes darted from one Cade to the other, then she nodded slowly. “I think Sofia needs help with the cake.” She hurried off.
Justin started after her then jerked to a stop when the kitchen door opened and a tall man ducked inside. “What’s he doing here?”
James turned and Jewel eased away as Boyd Loveland doffed his hat and strode across the room to Joy. “We invited him.”
“No one told me.”
“We didn’t even know you were coming until yesterday,” Jared said as he wandered over. He adjusted Justin’s tie and smoothed down one side of his collar.
Justin shoved his fussing brother’s hand away. He was no peacock. Besides, there were more pressing matters than his appearance. An archenemy had just crossed their threshold. A Loveland on Cade turf. Dad would be turning over in his grave…especially at the way Ma was smiling up at Boyd, wide-eyed and twinkly, in a way Justin had never seen her smile at their stern, sober father.
“Better get used to it.” James accepted a slice of cake from Sofia with a thank-you then cut into it with the side of his fork. “He’s close to being our stepfather.”
Justin’s body went hot then cold then numb. “He promised he wouldn’t propose without all of our support.”
Jared shrugged. “Boyd’s nearly got everyone on board.”
“Jewel won’t ever say yes,” Justin insisted, eyeing his sister as she sat cross-legged on the floor with Javi beside a large train set, his brother Jack’s eight-month-old son on her lap.
“She already has,” Amberley surprised him by saying as she approached, Petey leading the way.
The black-and-white rescue dog butted his wet nose against Justin’s clenched hand.
“What? How?” Justin scratched behind Petey’s ears, a hard heaviness roiling his gut.
Amberley leaned in and lowered her voice. “No one knows for sure since she’s not saying…but it happened after Heath talked to her between sets during his performance last weekend.”
“Heath?” Justin and his brothers chorused.
“She likes him the least of all the Lovelands,” Justin added.
James nodded. “Remember how she used to tease him in school?”
“And she always gets upset whenever we joke about her liking him. Unless…” Jared tapped his chin. “Unless we’re too close to the truth.”
“Have all the women in our family lost their minds?” Justin exploded, and Petey woofed at his frustrated tone.
“Hey,” protested Amberley. “I take exception to that, considering I’ll be a Cade woman this summer.”
Jared nuzzled her neck. “The wedding can’t come soon enough.”
“Looks like you’re alone, Justin,” James mumbled around a mouthful of cake, his lips purple from the frosting roses.
Justin’s shoulders hunched and the old, familiar isolation of the past returned. “What else is new?”
“You could change your mind,” Jared said, nonchalant, like people did that every day. Like it was easy.
“Never.”
“You’d stand in the way of Ma’s happiness?” James demanded, his features tight, the ends of his cropped hair practically crackling with electricity. “You’ve done some wrong things, made some bad choices, brother, but this might be the most low-down, meanest thing you’ve ever—”
James cut off and stared at someone behind Justin’s back.
“Your brother has a right to his own mind,” Boyd Loveland said, coming to Justin’s defense.
Justin spared the older man a brief, grudgingly appreciative look then strode out onto the back porch. He leaned against the railing and stared up at white-capped Mount Sopris. In a flash, he was eleven years old again, standing with his dying father in this very spot.
“You see the top of that mountain?” his pa said through a long, rattling cough. “Any time you want to talk to me, I’ll be up there, watching over you.”
“That’s not heaven,” Justin had protested, fighting with his parent even then, frustrated and disbelieving his larger-than-life, tougher-than-boot-leather father couldn’t lick his illness.
“It’s heaven to me,” his pa countered. “Every blade of grass, every tree, hill, stream and mountain, they’re all God’s creations, just like us. I believe when we pass, we become a part of that miracle. I’m not afraid to die.”
“I’m not, either,” Justin had vowed, though he was frightened, scared to death, to lose his father. Not that he’d show it.
“Good,” his pa had said, clapping him on the back. “Because I want your promise to look out
for Jesse.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re the stronger twin. I’ll rest easier knowing you’ll watch over your brother when I’m gone.”
A burst of laughter erupted inside the house, dragging Justin back to the present.
“Sorry, Pa.” White clouds punctuated his words as he spoke to the mountain. “But that was too big of a promise for an eleven-year-old to make. I did my best, and I hope, somehow, you might still be proud of me…proud of what I’m doing now to turn things around, to do right.”
“If you were my son, I’d be proud,” Boyd said, joining him at the railing. He handed Justin his leather jacket.
Justin stared at the coat, grabbed it then shoved his cold arms through its sleeves before zipping it up. “I’m not your son. And you’re not my father.”
“I’d never want to take your dad’s place.”
“But you want to marry Ma.”
“That’s different.”
“You’d be replacing my father as her husband.”
“I don’t see it that way. Joy and I had our own relationship before your pa came into the picture.”
“I already heard about how a mix-up separated the two of you, then Pa stepped in.” Justin flicked his hand impatiently, wishing he could shove Boyd off the porch and out of their lives. He sucked in a deep breath to calm down before he said anything else. His temper cooled, just like Dr. Sheldon promised.
“Have you heard about how your ma and I first got together?”
“No.”
“Wanted nothing to do with her at first.” Boyd’s voice lowered and grew fainter, as if he’d jumped back in time and spoke from the past. “She was a tiny thing. Scrawny. A couple years younger than me. Big eyes and a nervous smile. My friends called her my shadow because she trailed me around everywhere I went, especially after she kissed me when we got stuck in a closet playing seven minutes in heaven.”
“Ma chased you?” Justin scoffed.
“She was terribly persistent.” Boyd let out a long, suffering sigh, a hint of amusement running through the white plume of air.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Have you ever known your ma to take no for an answer?”
Justin turned and studied the merry group through the porch window. Ma still held baby Jesse while she cut slices of cake with her free hand. “No,” he admitted.
“I knew, straight off, to keep my distance. She wasn’t a casual dating kind of gal, and I was too young to get tied down. Some people called me wild back in the day.” Boyd leaned against a pole and stared at the lowering sun riding through swells of clouds.
“What happened?” Justin asked when the silence stretched too long, curious now, despite himself.
“Homecoming dance my senior year. I’d been crowned homecoming king and scored the winning touchdown against our rivals. I felt invincible. Untouchable. Then your ma asked me to dance.”
“You turned her down,” Justin guessed, bristling on his mother’s behalf.
“First time.” Boyd rubbed his hands together then blew on his fingers. “Second and third time, too.”
“You made a fool of her!”
“When I saw some gals laughing at her, I got angry, so I asked her.”
“You took pity on her?”
“It was more complicated than that.” A smile curled Boyd’s mouth, and his eyes took on a faraway look. “She was real pretty that night. I still remember her dress. Yellow with beaded straps. It kind of floated around her like a cloud. She’d done her hair different, too. Usually she wore it long and straight, but that night, she’d pulled it up on the sides and curled it. I remembered thinking how pretty her ears were.” Boyd laughed to himself. “Funny the things you remember.”
Justin nodded, thinking about the first time he’d seen Brielle, how’d he’d thought her an angel ready to usher him into the afterlife.
“When we hit the floor, the band swung into a slow tune. She put her arms around my neck and smiled up at me, her eyes big and dreamy, and I said to her, ‘I’m not falling in love with you.’ She just kept smiling.”
Boyd scrubbed a hand over his eyes, and a short laugh escaped him. “But I did. As soon as I held her, I knew she was the one.”
“You knew that quick?”
“It was more a feeling than a knowing.”
Justin stopped breathing, his love for Brielle pounding through him.
Boyd was right. Love had no rhyme or reason. It didn’t care about timing or convenience. And once created, it could never be destroyed. Events might pull them apart, but his feelings for Brielle would remain, just as Boyd and Joy had never stopped loving each other all these years.
He would not be another obstacle to their happiness. His chest inflated as he gulped the fortifying cold air. “I support you proposing to Ma.” Justin stuck out his hand.
Boyd stared at him, hardly seeming to breathe, then he gripped Justin’s hand and pumped it, a firm handshake, communicating strength, steadiness, commitment. “Thank you. It means more than I can say. I won’t ever try to replace your pa, but I hope you don’t mind me saying I’m proud of you, son.”
Boyd pivoted and disappeared into the house, his broad smile nearly splitting his face in two. Justin peered through the window and spotted Brielle surrounded by his ma, Amberley, Sofia and Jack’s wife, Dani. She’d somehow wrangled the baby from his mother, and the sight of her holding a child, his kin, turned his heart to pulp.
Then the mountain drew his eye again, and he pictured Jesse’s globe, the pins marking the spots they’d planned to see.
Healing untethered him from Carbondale, and the distant horizon beckoned. His old, dark need to challenge life was replaced with the desire to explore it, to enjoy it and live it to its fullest.
Yet he wanted a life, a family with Brielle, too.
Could cautious Brielle love a man with an adventurous side? He recalled her unsettled reaction to tomorrow’s motor cross race. She feared risks, injury, the unknown, and wanted a more secure, predictable life. Did that extend to a partner, too?
Pain brought them together; would his healing now drive them apart?
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
BRIELLE PULLED THE staple gun’s trigger, embedding an open-house flyer on the bulletin board beside the motor cross’s covered ticket booth. She stepped back and swiped at the icy rain pelting her face as a steady drizzle fell from a dark gray sky. In the distance, engines whined as racers completed practice runs, the noise more chilling than the freezing water dripping down her collar.
Shouldn’t they cancel the race? Cold dread shivered through her as she imagined Justin among the pack. What if he got hurt or worse? Justin’s brother had offered to drive him, but she’d wanted to come and support him, despite her fears. Somewhere along the way, she’d fallen head over heels for him and needed to demonstrate those feelings, even if she didn’t dare voice them yet.
Accepting his mother’s impending engagement last night showed his progress in therapy, healing old wounds and breaking negative habits. She wanted to meet him halfway and prove she’d changed, too. If she couldn’t handle his risky, adventurous lifestyle, the future she envisioned for them might disappear. She shoved down the terrifying thought. She loved Justin and had to make this work.
A whistle shrilled behind her.
“Maverick Loveland’s competing? In Carbondale?” asked a teenage boy, eyeing the flyer advertising the matchup between the PBR world champion and Justin.
At her nod, the boy whipped around to face his frowning father. “Can we go?”
His parent yanked money from his pocket and slid it across the ticket booth counter. “Too expensive.”
“No, it’s not, it’s free. See!” The teenager pointed to the flyer and shook his dripping bangs back from his eyes. “Says right here. Free. Plus, there’s food. Ropi
ng, barrel racing. Please, Pa!”
Brielle scanned the parking lot, watching the streaming race goers splash through puddles as they hurried to the first heat. Was Justin finished with his practice run? He’d promised to meet her here, but waiting for him while this family argued was making her all kinds of uncomfortable.
“There’s other stuff there I don’t want you around.” The man pocketed his change and tickets, avoiding Brielle’s eye. Fine by her. She didn’t want intolerant people at her open house…but what if no one came? What if the town shunned the event and voted against keeping Fresh Start’s charter?
“There’s kids in school that do drugs,” challenged the boy, his red-marked chin jutting. “Lots get counseling. You don’t stop me from going to school.”
“He’s got a point, Jeb.” A woman arrived holding a ladybug-print umbrella, her young daughter planted on her hip. “We can’t protect him from everything.”
“Who’s doing drugs?” Jeb demanded, but his son clamped his mouth and shook his head, mutinous.
“Fine,” Jeb relented then whirled to face Brielle and jabbed a finger in her face. “But if any of them weirdos pull a stunt like on Halloween, I’ll ride you out of town personally.”
“The heck you will,” growled Justin, shoving between them. His aggressive advance backed the other man up fast, his face blanching. “You ever threaten Ms. Thompson, or any of the fine people at Fresh Start, I won’t be riding you out of town, I’ll be throwing you out on your—”
“Justin,” Brielle interrupted, pulling down his raised fist. “Everyone’s entitled to their opinion. I hope we can change yours at the open house tomorrow,” she said to the man and his family, mustering a half smile. It was the best she could do with her nerves scraped and raw, a painful sensation intensifying as Justin’s race time neared.
“Well, now.” The man spat a brown stream at the ground. “At least someone knows how to be civil.”
“Any time you want a lesson in manners, I’d be glad to teach you,” snarled Justin as the family beat a hasty retreat.