Redeeming the Rancher (Meier Ranch Brothers 2)

It was only when she backed away that he realized they were letters.

Fuck me.

Wes remembered a long-ago conversation with Daniel.

“Why you fucking write longhand?” Wes asked. “Email’s faster.”

Daniel had looked at him with that stupid charismatic grin and said, “She’s got no photos, nothing left to save. Girls like that stuff.”

Until now, until he knew about the fire, Wes had no idea what Daniel meant. Probably didn’t give a half-second thought one way or the other past teasing his buddy about how dedicated he was to writing his sister like she was his girlfriend back home. Another of Wes’s prick moments to add to the lot.

“You should keep them.”

“And you should read them.”

No…no, he didn’t want to read them. They were back to the same place—her pushing, him pretending he was tough guy enough to handle whatever mind-fuck was inside those envelopes she felt like he needed. Ooh-rah and G.I. Joe and all that shit.

“Is that all?”

This time, he nailed dismissive. Her features crumbled behind her wall of glass, so beautiful, so withdrawn inside hers

elf and her world, that eye contact became an open wound for them both.

Olive nodded.

Heart-shaped lips that he once believed his duty to cherish pressed together as if she longed to say more, but her stone-like, statuesque exterior would not allow such a crack.

“Goodbye, Wes.”

She didn’t wait for a response. Her white and black ribbon-laced combat boots tracked across the garage floor, the gravel outside, at a clip faster than his heart could combat his determination to let her go. She climbed into her car, a rental by look of the front plate, and backed away. Around the tires, dust rose, suspended, waiting to push her out onto the highway, the reflection of the sun a small fire on her windshield.

Wes put down his rag. His feet itched inside his boots. Nat’s voice roared back against his eardrums: Until you can get inside the pen of that memory, ask her to stay. He felt like fucking crying, nothing close to the hero she believed him to be.

Her engine sounded. Tires punched. Before the dust cleared, she was gone.

Wes doubled over. He reached for a grip, something to stabilize him while his stomach battled his heart for chest space and his ribs separated as collateral damage. He glanced at the roof’s underside, remembering the time he filled the conversation with words so he wouldn’t kiss her.

Used to have handles here for the farm workers to hold onto.

So, it’ll have handles again.

Right.

Wes had forgotten the handles, part of what drew him in all along, a not-so-distant reminder of the way it used to be. And that would be it. The only other blemish he would allow, save one. Wes reached for the three-quarter wrench and a rag to unfasten the chrome bumper.

By nightfall, he was on the road to Maryland.

13

Wes didn’t read the letters until the horizon met the ocean. He found a place along the beach, counted two bonfires in the distance, and lay in the back of the truck. Just enough light stretched the sky for him to make out the words on the page.

Daniel’s early letters might as well have been Wes: trying to be strong, chronicling other young men so different from those he was used to, going on about new experiences while the subtext read what the fuck have I gotten myself into?

The middle of the stack was his summer in Close Call. Wes laughed until tears sprouted at the stories Daniel told his sister, stories Wes had forgotten. He drank a cold soda from the cooler he had filled on his drive in and toasted the crashing waves, an ever-present reminder of how life cycled and how each day, each moment, was a carbon copy, if allowed.

In the later letters, Daniel fought his inner demons—hiding his sexuality, wrestling with the purest form of love Wes could imagine. Not one of stolen glances or incidental touch—those were there, too, though it was like reading about someone else being the subject of an infatuation, not him—but a connection so powerful, Daniel confessed that, for the first time since he started spouting the military ooh-rah about brotherhood and sacrifice, he felt like he would gladly lay down his life for another human being. Wes.

I know he loves, but not in the same way. He’d be good for you, Liv. His strength comes from his past, where he came from, who he loves. Not all of life should be lived in sadness.