by Kaje Harper
He took it as the peace offering it was and opened it on his knees. His mother’s stunning photographs of wild places and endangered birds filled the pages. Theresa hovered protectively beside Mom, like she thought he might— what? Make fun of Mom’s work? Insult the charity it was for? When had he ever done that?
His father leaned back in his armchair. “We’re thinking of endowing a foundation. To free your mother up from administering the charity side of things, so she can have more time in the field as the rainforest fauna vanishes.”
“Good idea,” he said calmly.
“We’ll put most of your grandfather’s money into the foundation. Keep out enough to live on. So if you’ve come here looking for cash, you should speak up now.”
Mom said, “Or if you want a new job, we could help you find something with the foundation, something without guns.”
Casey closed the book carefully and set it on the coffee table. This was futile, pretending they might ever understand who he was. He desperately wanted to throw his father’s assumption in his face. It would be enormous satisfaction to deny any interest in the money and walk out.
He’d done that at eighteen, still hurting from Robert’s death and on his way to join Rob’s beloved Marine Corps. He’d done it again four and a half years ago, when they’d tried to bribe him away from his first run for sheriff with a promise of freeing up his inheritance. He’d thrown the money back at them then. But for Will’s sake, he wouldn’t do it now.
Will had called him last night, his voice over the phone strained. “I’m pretty tied up. Brandy has colic, and we’re walking her, and the pole barn roof has a leak. But the appraiser came by and the price for Landon’s half of the ranch will be one point nine million dollars. I could mortgage the part I’ll get to the hilt, and still be hundreds of thousands in the hole, and Landon told the lawyer he has a buyer waiting in the wings. We’re basically screwed.”
Casey had tried to be reassuring, but without details, Will had taken it for comforting bullshit.
He’d never told either Will or Scott about his family money. Scott would’ve wanted him to spend it on his campaign. Even now, he held back a laugh at the thought of how that would’ve gone over. “Mom, Dad, I need money to get reelected to my position as right-wing fascist.”
“I want to buy a ranch,” he said. “Well, half a ranch.”
There was a moment of silence. He met his father’s startled gaze and realized that for all his dad’s cold offer, he hadn’t actually thought Casey’s visit was about money. This time it is, Dad. Since you don’t ever want to hear about anything else. Although hell, they would probably lap up the idea that he was in a gay threesome. They would find it edgy and counterculture. Instead of life-affirming and necessary. No.
“What kind of ranch?” his mom asked. “Like, raising cattle?”
“Yes, and some horses.”
“So, feedlot beef,” Theresa said.
“Not feedlot. The ranch raises free-range, grass-fed beef.” It wasn’t like he could grow up in this house and not absorb some of the tenets. He believed in living lightly upon the planet too. Just, not the way they did. He’d been more in tune with the Slaters’ practical brand of stewardship.
His mom turned to his dad. “That’s not so bad, is it?”
“It’s still beef cattle,” Theresa grumbled.
“They pay for maintaining the ranch, which also has a lot of wild acreage and wildlife habitat, almost five miles of creeks and streams.” Casey sighed, and pulled out the big gun. “If I don’t buy it, it’s likely that half the ranch will be sold for fracking natural gas.”
“Ah.” His father straightened. “Not good. Where is this place?”
Casey hesitated. In a perfect world, his dad would hand him two million dollars, say, “I trust you to use it well, son,” and keep the hell out of Casey’s personal life. In the real world, his father might be a left-wing liberal, but Grandfather’s money-sense that had built the family fortune was alive and well in him.
“The Tri-Cross ranch. The owners died and the ranch is split between two heirs. One is going to keep his half of the place, but the other wants a fast sale and money. It’s a nice piece of land, lots of open range and the current manager has been careful about not overgrazing. It’s worth preserving.”
Theresa looked at him suspiciously. “What will you do with your half?”
“Live on it.”
His mother smiled. “Really? You’re giving up law enforcement for ranching?”
“I guess so.”
“Oh, that’s good news! Maybe you can do something different on your half. Raise alpacas for wool. Or go to a wild stewardship. We could give you enough money that the land didn’t have to earn.”
“I don’t want to be just sitting there.” He closed his eyes. The money was a curse, in a way, because he could imagine that. Just playing all day, no responsibilities, no work. He’d go crazy. “I’ll think about alpacas.”
“When can you get me the details?” his dad asked.
“I have them here.” He reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and handed over a couple of folded sheets. “I can email you some links too.”
His father set down the paper. “I trust my own sources. How much money do you need?”
“One point nine mil.” The valuation for the ranch had come out to three point eight million dollars. Will had sounded ill, reporting that. Casey could understand the feeling; the amount of money was enough to be almost unreal. He’d lived on his own paycheck since he enlisted. It sounded obscene. But it was a small fraction of what his grandfather had left to his father.
“Right.” His father nodded slowly. “If the facts match, I’ll give it to you. An even two million, if you like. For expenses.”
“I only need one point nine.” He didn’t want to take one penny for himself.
“As you like. I will want some assurances in return, though.”
“Like what?”
“Sign an affidavit that you will not seek any employment from here on that requires you to carry a gun. Ever again.”
“What?”
His father rose to his feet, expression intense. “You heard me. You knew how I felt, how we all felt about it. You were there when your brother died. But you defied us, you stabbed us in that painful place over and over, with your selfish insistence on doing whatever you pleased, whatever would make us suffer. No more. You want a share of the family money? You need to live by the family rules.”
Casey felt like he’d been punched in the chest. He couldn’t get his breath. “I didn’t do that.”
“You damned well did.”
“It wasn’t Rob’s fault that Toby died. It wasn’t the gun’s fault. It was an accident.”
“An accident that would never have happened if Rob Carpenter hadn’t liked the way he looked in uniform. If you hadn’t hero-worshiped a man with a gun who was too careless to keep it safe. If this country didn’t hand a weapon to any nineteen-year-old idiot and let him think that makes him a hero.”
“Christ!”
His father said, “Robert Carpenter killed your brother, as surely as if he held that gun to Toby’s head, and I told him so. His carelessness, his failure, and a little boy died.”
“Damn you!” Casey leaped up, paced to the window and back. “Do you have any idea how bad Rob felt about that? Any idea at all? It was his parents’ house. There was no gun safe, so he put it up on a shelf, out of reach. Toby climbed on a chair to get it!”
“And where were you, when you were supposed to be watching him? Tell me that? Where were you?”
Kissing Rob. Kissing him and trying not to cry, because he’d got orders to deploy overseas and there was no more time, and I was just fifteen and couldn’t go with him. “Then blame me, not Rob. You’re right, I was babysitting. I didn’t keep Toby safe. My fault, not Rob’s.”
“He was the adult. He owned the gun.”
“Maybe if you hadn’t hated guns so much, you’d ha
ve given Toby some basic rules like never point one at yourself. Maybe if he’d seen a gun that wasn’t on TV…” He broke off, seeing the pain and fury on his father’s face. He felt ashamed to have voiced that old, stale rationalization aloud.
His father slammed a hand on the wall. “The big hero Marine killed my child. And three years later, what did you go and do, but become another Marine!”
Shame dissolved in anger. “Rob didn’t kill Toby!”
“Then why did he feel guilty enough to kill himself afterward?”
Casey lurched forward, hard enough to knock the book off the table. “Fuck you! Rob died doing his job. He went over to Afghanistan to fight for our safety, against the worst kind of fanatic bastards, and he was killed. You know what? You can keep the damned money. And you can go to hell!” He strode out of the room, buttoning his jacket with shaking fingers.
His father called after him, “Don’t think we’ll save this ranch if you leave. We can’t stop fracking everywhere. If you want to save this one, you have to ask me.”
He paused, turned.
His father said, “Ask me for it.”
For Will, for that pretty future where you own the ranch together and everything is perfect. He couldn’t do it. “Rob Carpenter was a hero. And you can go fuck yourself.”
He had a moment of satisfaction at the look on his father’s face, before he whirled and left his parents’ home.
He had time to regret his outburst a hundred times on the drive home. So what if his parents hated Rob and the Marines and everything else that had been true and good in Casey’s life? So what if he had to promise never to carry a gun again? It wasn’t like he’d planned to find another job as a cop. He’d be a rancher soon, and he was looking forward to it. He loved the life, loved Will, wanted to share that with him. Why the hell had he let his temper get the better of him again?
By the time he got home he was as sick of himself as he’d ever been in his life. He took off his jacket, turned up the heat, and pulled out his phone.
Scott answered, sounding breathless. “Yeah?”
“Can you talk.”
“Um, five minutes. I’m almost late.”
“Oh. I won’t keep you then.”
“I have five minutes. What’s up?”
“Nothing.”
“I call bullshit. What’s wrong?”
Casey sighed. “I had a chance at some money for the ranch, and I lost my temper and blew it.”
“Oh.” There was a moment’s silence. “Blew it badly, like no hope?”
“Yeah.” His father wouldn’t forget those words. Or forgive them.
“Damn. Well, however much it was, we’re not near having enough anyway. Will told me almost two million. There’s no hope. Anyway, half the ranch is still good, right?”
Casey hesitated, then admitted, “I almost had it all. Enough for the whole thing.”
“Two million dollars!”
“Yeah. Fuck. I fucked it up so bad!” He pounded the heel of his hand on the counter. “Shit. I’m such a loser.”
“Damn it.” There was a muffle of sound over the phone. “Listen, I have to get to practice. Hang in there. Call Will, okay?”
Casey said, “Okay,” but he knew he wouldn’t. This was Will’s dream he’d destroyed, just because he couldn’t say please to his own father. He was such a loser. Even the hit-and-run case was stalled out, with the warrant on the truck driver hanging in the breeze. They’d get the guy sometime— they had his name and license info— but right now he couldn’t even tell Will they had that much. He’d be lucky if Will wanted to talk to him.
Scott said, “I mean it, Casey Barlow. Are you listening to me?”
“Fuck you! Go play your fucking hockey and don’t order me around!”
After a short pause, Scott said, “Wow. I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that, because I refuse to fight over the phone when there’s no hope of make-up sex.”
“All you think about is sex. I totally fucked up Will’s life, and I probably destroyed Rob’s too, and all you think about is the sex.”
“Who’s Rob?”
Casey hadn’t realized he’d said Rob’s name. Fifteen years without mentioning him, and now he’d talked about Rob twice in two hours. He couldn’t explain it, didn’t have the words to try. He quit the call. Scott would forgive him. Probably.
Scott was better than he deserved.
He decided to clean house. Once upon a time, he’d kept the place to a high standard. Rob had liked things clean and stowed in their places. Rob’s dad had been a Marine, too, and before his heart attack he’d run a tight household. Afterward, well, Casey had helped Rob keep up his dad’s standards, and then he’d made that a lifelong habit. But somewhere along the line he’d slacked off here. This was as good a time as any to fix that.
He was on his second pair of rubber gloves, scrubbing the grout of the bathroom tile, when he heard the front door open. For a moment he stayed silent, embarrassed to have Will see him playing mad housewife. But Will wouldn’t make him explain. Will had his own quirks and he’d always accepted Casey’s. He wouldn’t make Casey talk at all, probably.
He called, “In the bathroom. I’ll be out in a second.”
Instead, Scott’s voice said, “This place smells like a tanker-truck full of bleach had a collision with an artificial pine tree.”
Casey turned fast enough to slip on the newly scrubbed floor and land on his ass. He blinked up at the guy who was undeniably Scotty, standing in the bathroom doorway. “What the hell are you doing here? We just talked on the phone. You’re in Toronto.”
“Then so are you.” Scott held a hand down to him. “Come on. That was ten hours ago. It’s past midnight and time for the cleaning fairy to knock it off for the night.”
Casey held out a gloved hand, then thought better of it and levered himself up solo. “It’s that late?”
“Yeah. It is.”
“Huh.” He was suddenly aware his hands were cramped and sore, his knees ached viciously, and his eyes stung. He blinked hard. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Oh, that’s nice. I puke on my coach to get out of practice— and peroxide tastes even worse coming back up than going down— I call in every favor and dollar I own to get on a plane, to get here to my boyfriend who sounded totally wrecked over the phone, and he’s sooooo glad to see me.”
Casey peeled off his gloves with shaking hands and dropped them in the trash bin. “I am glad. But still, what the fuck?”
“Miss me?” Scott spread his arms.
“Hell, yeah.” Casey went to him, startled all over again by the size and strength of his man. “God.” His eyes smarted from the cleaners and he rubbed them against Scott’s shoulder. “You should tell Will you’re here.”
“I did. He’ll be here soon. I asked him to wait for me.”
If Casey hadn’t suddenly felt too tired to move, he might’ve commented on Scotty stage-managing them. As it was, he just hugged him back.
After a minute, Scott said, “Can we sit on the couch? I think I’m getting chlorine poisoning.”
“Sure.” Walking down the hall helped Casey get his balance back, and by the time they sat he felt better. “Did you really puke on your coach?”
“He what?” Will asked, coming in the front door. “Hey, Scott.”
Scott bounced up and Casey watched them kiss with a wash of mellow pleasure. Two beautiful men, who’d never fucked up as bad as he had. He didn’t deserve them, but they were pretty to look at. Then they sat on either side of him and he winced. They would want explanations and he wasn’t sure he could give them.
“So,” Will said quietly. “What the hell did you do that scared our Scott bad enough to make him run home to see us?”
“I don’t know,” Casey admitted. He thought he’d held it together on the phone.
“It wasn’t so much the words as the tone,” Scott said. “And the hanging up on me. After mentioning another man that way.”
&n
bsp; Casey growled, “I’m not cheating on you guys.”
“I didn’t think you were.” Scott gave his arm a smack but then leaned against him. “You said you fucked up Will’s life and someone else’s, in a voice I never heard from you, and then you hung up and wouldn’t answer when I called. Five times.”
“Oh.” He blinked. “I must have turned the phone off.”
“It was ringing, every time.”
“I must’ve dropped it. I think I started vacuuming.”
“Whatever. I couldn’t get hold of Will and I didn’t know anyone else I trusted to check up on you. I hate being so far away when you two are dealing with this shit. So here I am.”
Will reached behind Casey to rub Scott’s shoulder. “How long can you stay?”
“There’s a puke bug going around the team. I can get away with a day, maybe two at most. That’s how long it’s been lasting.”
“Better than nothing.”
“Yeah. But it means I don’t have time to dance around Casey’s issues. So talk, Mr. Sheriff. You said you almost had two million dollars. I’m assuming you weren’t planning to rob a bank?”
“Nope. It’s complicated.” He paused, trying to decide where to begin. “It’s family.”
“You never talk about your family. I do. You and Will don’t.”
“They’re ashamed of me.” It was harder than he expected to say that out loud.
“For being gay? That really sucks. Although my dad would be too, if he had a clue.”
“No. They’d be okay with the gay, if they knew, although they don’t. I didn’t tell them when I first figured out I like cock, because I was sleeping with a guy who was nineteen, when I was fifteen.”
“Mm, yeah, parents don’t like that kind of thing. Was he a good guy?”
“Very. I chased him, not the reverse.” Caught him, fell in love with him. “That guy was Rob. He was a Marine. Then… things happened. My parents hate the military and Marines and cops and guns, and I was determined to join up. That’s what they hated about me. It was a clusterfuck.”