The Last Real Cowboy

by Caitlin Crews

  But Abby, on the other hand, still looked stunned.

  And worse, horrified.

  Amanda was staring at all of them, then turning to look at him, back and forth like she couldn’t decide who she was angriest with. Becca stayed where she was, standing in the entrance to the hallway behind him, her hands over her mouth and her eyes wide.

  Brady had the deeply ungallant and cowardly thought that if he really wanted, he could dive out one of the front windows and be done with this. He could ride off into the fields and let the land have its say as fall rolled in hard behind him and swallowed him whole.

  If Amanda hadn’t been here, he might have.

  But she was, and he couldn’t leave her to deal with the fallout on her own, so he stood there. And took it.

  Because he always took it. Because Gray brooded, Ty laughed, and it never much mattered what Brady felt about anything.

  He’d been sick of that all year. Today, he found it intolerable.

  He was working his way up to announcing that, no matter how disappointed Gray and Abby looked, when Amanda jumped in.

  “What is the matter with you?” she demanded, and Brady was surprised to note that she was directing her ire toward the kitchen, not toward him. And her voice was loud and clear, no doubt honed from two months of shouting down the drunken masses at the Coyote. “That’s your brother. You’d treat a random stranger off the street better than this. Can’t you see he’s hurting?”

  “Amanda,” Abby said, sounding … careful. Too careful. “I don’t think you understand—”

  “Of course I understand, Abby. I’m in love with him.”

  “Are you knocked up?” asked Ty, still laughing.

  Or at least, until Hannah punched him in the arm, at which point he stopped laughing and scowled at his wife instead.

  “No, I am not pregnant.” Amanda’s voice shook a little, but not with any kind of weakness. That was clear. “Not that there would be anything wrong with it if I were. Given that neither Brady nor I are children ourselves.”

  Brady might have been amused at the way they all looked at one another then, like that was a confronting thought. If things had been different, that was. If he hadn’t actually defiled an innocent, the way they all thought he had. It was hard to work up any righteous indignation.

  “I have to hand it to you,” Gray said, in that leathery, well-worn way of his that made Brady want to curl up inside and die. The way it always had. “I didn’t think that when you talked about diversification, you meant … the Kittredge family.”

  Brady wanted to punch something, but he didn’t particularly want his knuckles to hurt as much as the side of his face did. “Very funny.”

  “I’m not surprised Riley took a swing at you,” Gray continued, and there it was. That patented Gray Everett disapproval. “I’d have similarly murderous thoughts if some man ten years older was panting after Becca.”

  Brady reconsidered taking that swing at his older brother, then, but he was already too much like Amos. That would make it even worse. He bit back the angry words that crowded his tongue, and if that was how it tasted to be so small a man, no wonder Amos had chased it down with whiskey.

  But Amanda was glaring at Gray, and she didn’t appear similarly afflicted.

  “You should be ashamed of yourself,” she snapped.

  To Gray.

  It shocked him and the rest of the Everett family into silence.

  “Maybe instead of standing around, congratulating yourself on your own virtue, you could spend one second taking care of Brady,” she said, every word like a bullet. A hail of bullets.

  Brady didn’t know where to look. At his brothers? At their astonished wives? Or at fearless, impetuous Amanda—who was standing up for him … again?

  “My brothers treat me like a child,” she continued in the same fierce, furious tone. “They make me want to tear my hair out regularly, but when my older brother thought something was going on with me that shouldn’t have been, he took a swing at the problem. But not you, Gray.”

  For the first time that Brady could recall, a person who was not Ty or Brady himself was actually looking at Gray in grave disappointment. It was certainly new. He hardly knew where to put it.

  “You’d rather take a swing at Brady,” Amanda was saying, shaking her head. “Does that make you feel better about the fact that you could have stepped in years ago and helped instead? He’s been looking up to you his whole life. Would it kill you to be nice to him for a change?”

  There was another stunned silence, and Brady thought that someday he might look back on this moment and find it amusing. He didn’t think he’d ever seen Gray look so … thunderstruck.

  But at the moment, he didn’t really see how he’d ever find anything amusing again.

  “Amanda,” he said in a low voice, as if her name didn’t hurt. When it did. “You need to tone it down, killer.”

  The only sound from the kitchen was Ty, laughing again.

  Amanda glared at him, then. Because she was apparently the only person in Cold River unfazed by Ty Everett, the rodeo star. “I’m glad you think it’s so funny. Meanwhile, your younger brother is so tied up in knots, he thinks that of all the people standing in this room, he’s the most like your father.”

  “None of the people standing in this room are anything like Amos, Amanda,” Abby said then, and it was about the closest to a temper that Brady had ever seen on her.

  “Grandpa always yelled a whole lot more,” Becca said from the hallway, her voice matter-of-fact, and wasn’t that another kick in the gut? “And he used way more bad words. Amanda just thinks you all should be nicer to Uncle Brady.” She sniffed. “I agree. You should.”

  “I’m nice to everyone,” Ty drawled, but there was an arrested sort of light in his gaze. “It’s part of my charm. Ask around, peanut.”

  “And while you’re at it, maybe you could all stop confusing Becca and me,” Amanda said, in a dangerous sort of tone.

  Brady didn’t know what the danger was, precisely, but he could feel it ignite. As if she’d lit a match too close to him and the hairs on the back of his neck were standing up in protest. He started toward her, determined to contain the damage, at the very least.

  Though he wasn’t sure, at this point, if he was protecting her from his family or if it was the other way around.

  “I love Becca myself,” Amanda said. “But she’s your daughter, Gray. She’s an honest-to-God teenager. I’m not. You’re aware of that, right? If I recall correctly, I’m the same age Becca’s mother was when you married her.”

  “Seriously, Dad,” Becca chimed in.

  “Okay,” Gray said then, his voice stern and his eyes on Amanda. “You’ve said your piece.”

  “I’m just getting started,” she replied hotly.

  Brady reached her then and snaked an arm around her waist, pulling her up against him because he wasn’t entirely sure she wouldn’t launch herself across the room at one or both of his brothers. She was a Kittredge, after all. They weren’t afraid to swing first and ask questions later.

  “What’s gotten into you, Amanda?” Abby asked quietly, then, one hand on little Bart in his carrier and another on Gray’s arm.

  She looked a lot as if she was the one who’d gotten sucker punched. And by Amanda.

  “I think it’s real clear what got into her, Abby,” Ty drawled. “He’s standing right there.”

  That got him another punch from his wife.

  Everyone started talking at once. At Brady, at Amanda, at one another. Amanda shook Brady’s arm off and stepped forward, obviously perfectly happy to dive straight into the fray.

  But all Brady could think was how happy this would have made his father. How delighted Amos would have been to see them all at one another’s throats. And if he looked through the archway into the kitchen, he could see that damned table sitting there. The barn door they’d put into place because they were so tired of picking up the splinters every time Amos broke it.


  If he squinted, he could see the old man sitting there the way he always had. A half-drunk bottle of whiskey at his elbow and that bitter scowl in place, muttering to himself—but loud enough to be heard—about who he was adding to his will and who he was crossing out. If he listened, he could hear the sound of the whiskey bottle thunking against the table top, and worse, the sound of Amos’s angry scribbling.

  Amos would have loved to know that a year later, there was still all this animosity. He would have fed on it.

  Brady made a decision then. He ignored all the sniping and headed for the door at the back of the kitchen.

  “What a surprise,” Gray growled as he moved. “You talk a big game, Denver, but anytime it gets hard, you’re out the door.”

  “Why would he stay here when you think so little of him?” Amanda demanded, surprising Brady once again with her fierceness. Like she would fight Gray all night if she had to. For him. And something shifted in him at that, but he didn’t stop. Neither did she. “I’m not at all surprised that he left for college and had no intention of coming back here. The only thing that surprises me is that he actually did come back anyway. And spent a year here because you asked him to.”

  “I’m not going to have an argument with you,” Gray gritted out.

  “What could you possibly argue? That when you call Brady names and say snide things you’re somehow supporting him?” Amanda made a noise. “Because you’re not.”

  “She’s got you there, big brother,” Ty drawled, sounding like that laughter of his was brewing right beneath the surface.

  “Like you’re any better,” Hannah said then, surprising Brady enough that he stopped by the door. And stared. Everyone else did too, if that astonished silence was any guide. “The two of you are relentless. It was clear to me the day I arrived here that Brady is a powerful man in his own right who locks it up around the two of you because you refuse to see it. And don’t think it’s not perfectly clear that you two letting him do what he likes with his diversification idea is because you think he’s going to fall on his face.” She smiled then, big and bright, which was Hannah at her most lethal. “Meanwhile, sugar, you know I love you, but there are other forms of success besides the rodeo and a herd of Angus.”

  “Way to knife me in the back, Hannah Leigh.” Ty didn’t look angry, though there was an edge to his usually lazy voice. “You can’t resist a crowd, can you?”

  “Never have,” Hannah said softly. “Never will.”

  Brady couldn’t take any more of this. Next Abby would turn on Gray and that would mean the world was ending. He wanted no part of this. He pushed out through the door.

  It took him two steps out the back to the woodpile, where he ignored the carefully stacked wood, most of which he’d put there himself, and grabbed the axe. Then he wheeled around and came back inside the kitchen.

  “Whoa now, little brother,” Ty said, turning that edgy drawl on him. “No need to introduce a weapon. Everetts have always been capable of grievous bodily harm with their words alone.”

  Brady ignored him. He ignored all of them and stalked directly toward that damn barn-door table.

  Then he swung the axe down, hard.

  Because it was his turn to make a table into splinters, and he was going to do it right.

  He chopped and he chopped, glad he’d spent so much time contributing to that woodpile out back. Because each time the blade met wood, it was satisfying. It was right.

  And he said goodbye to Amos and his poison with every swing.

  Enough of the lies. Enough of his nasty, insinuating stories about each and every one of them. Enough of Gray, the martyr. Ty, the drunk.

  And Brady, the smart ass, unwanted kid.

  Enough.

  He was sweating like a wild man, the whole side of his face ached, and Brady didn’t care at all.

  In fact, he wasn’t sure he’d ever felt more free.

  Only when that old barn door was completely reduced to splinters that no one could ever put back together did he lay down the axe. And only then did he turn to face his family once again.

  His family and Amanda. His beautiful, fierce, and innocent Amanda. She was covering her mouth with her hands. Tears flowed freely down her cheeks.

  But still Brady looked at her and saw nothing but sunshine.

  He understood, finally, the ache in his bones. The pressure in his chest. The panic and fear that had been riding him this whole time.

  Brady was going to have to bronze that tank top. Because without it, he might never have truly seen her. And if he’d never seen her, none of this would have happened.

  He couldn’t think of anything worse.

  But this wasn’t the time to get into all that. Brady met Gray’s gaze. Then Ty’s. He looked at each one of his sisters-in-law, and then at Becca.

  He made sure he had everyone’s attention.

  “Dad has been dead for a year,” he said, and he’d meant to speak quietly, the way he always did around his brothers. But instead, he sounded a lot more like the other version of himself. The one who commanded board rooms and led high-powered meetings without thinking twice. “But he never really dies.”

  Hannah had met this version of him before. She didn’t look as surprised as Abby and Becca did. He saw Gray and Ty exchange a longer look.

  But Amanda only smiled.

  “And he never goes anywhere.” Brady wiped his face with his sleeve, then nodded toward the pile of wood chips he’d made. “Because we all keep carrying him around. And every night we come into this house and we sit at that table where he spent years upon years scratching his poison into that will of his.”

  He could still see Amos there. Maybe he always would. But Brady didn’t need to keep taking part in this sick little vigil.

  “All the games he played, with all of us. All his schemes, all his lies.” Brady shook his head. “He poured them into that table and we eat off it. We keep it here like a monument to a dead man every one of us is afraid of becoming. I don’t want to become him. I’m afraid I already am him, if I’m honest. I’m staying on this ranch, and I guess that means I have to face up to what it means to be an Everett. I can handle that. But I’m not sitting down at that table ever again.”

  Brady waited for someone to speak. But everyone was staring back at him, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to see if he could make sense of their various expressions.

  “I want to start something new,” he said in the same tone, the one that sounded like he expected agreement and approval, which typically led straight to it. He’d always been a closer—everywhere but here. “We tried it Gray’s way. It’s kept this ranch going all this time. But the future can’t be surrendering to the past.”

  Someone made a noise, though he didn’t look to see who. He forged ahead, words pouring out of him that he hadn’t known were in there.

  “It can’t be pretending to get along until something happens, one tiny little thing, and then it’s back to name-calling and sandbagging one another. If we’re not Dad, we need to stop acting like him.”

  “Agreed,” Ty said.

  With remarkably little rodeo drawl.

  “It’s not even the three of us anymore,” Brady said, looking around at all of them. The crowd they made, here at the end of this long, strange year. “It’s all of us. We’re all Everetts. We’re all a part of this land. We’ve all committed ourselves to it in one way or another. But we get to decide how we do that. And we get to decide what it takes from us in return.”

  Gray was staring back at him, a look Brady couldn’t decipher on his face.

  It took him another moment to understand it was respect. And still another moment to know that Amanda had been right about this too. Amos was the demon on all their backs. Gray had been more of a father to Brady than Amos ever had.

  He’d never imagined that Gray might respect him in return. And he’d never understood fully, not until today, how deeply he’d craved it.

  “This is a new dawn o
f a new day,” Brady said, and he believed it. He truly did. His brothers were already further along this road than he was, but it was going to take all of them to stay on course. It was going to take them all working together. It was going to take … a family. And for once, he found he liked that word. “The beginning of a brand new year. Dad is gone. I have to hope all that darkness is gone with him, for good. And I don’t know about you all, but I’m ready for some light.”

  19

  Everything in the Everett ranch house was silent. Even Bart and Jack, who’d made some noise during the destruction of the table, were quiet now.

  Amanda held her breath, not sure if it was tension before another explosion, or—

  “Well, Denver,” Gray said, his face like granite. “Trouble is, we’re running out of barn doors.”

  Amanda was so primed for battle that she almost leapt at him, then, physically, not caring at all that this was Brady’s older brother. The one she knew he loved and looked up to, as she’d yelled like a banshee not long ago. And not caring that she had liked Gray Everett fine until today. Well, maybe not today. She’d been fine with him until she started thinking about how he could have helped Brady at any point, and hadn’t.

  She was so tired of everyone dumping all over Brady that she actually felt sick with it, and she opened her mouth to yell about it some more—

  But everybody laughed.

  Including Brady.

  They laughed and they laughed, and even Gray smiled. Amanda realized belatedly that there’d been a storm all right, and she’d been standing in the middle of it, but it was past now. Over.

  She didn’t know if she wanted to laugh along with the rest of the Everetts or slink off in shame. Because the truth of the matter was that she wasn’t family. The lovely words Brady had said weren’t for her. He’d broken things off with her very decisively this morning, which likely meant she was a part of the darkness he wanted to leave behind.

  She could feel the sting of tears again, then. There at the back of her eyes. And all the righteous indignation that had carried her along all day—that had allowed her to deal with her own family and then drive out this way to argue her case—drained away.