Chapter Twenty-One
Heart dropped her tank top back over her arms as she led him across the gravel road to the tree line on the other side, hips swaying. He watched the dip of her hips meeting her rib cage as the soft fabric stretched down to hide her skin.
Yet a shiver washed through Tyler as they approached the cluster of monarchs still working the milkweed, because she wasn’t stopping at the butterflies but heading onto a trail. The last of the lust in his system wove with something else. Anticipation. The trail upon which she was leading him was an old, familiar one, more overgrown than it used to be. The new growth trees were taller than they’d once been, and as a boy, they’d always seemed tall.
Heather linked her fingers in his.
“Did you know, the slump rolls down not far from here?” She guided him along the trail, a few paces in front of him. He stared at their mingling fingers, yet his mind lingering on her words. “You mentioned that the fossils fall out of the hills.”
“Yup. Every rain, any little disturbance, I was sure to find a bunch. Each summer, it was a race between my bros, and my cousin Faith and me to see what all had washed out over the winter. Stevie likes to collect them, too. He’s got a knack for finding them near the dirt track.”
“Stevie sounds like a kid after my own heart,” Heather laughed. “Does he ever look around back here?”
“No.” Stevie didn’t explore beyond the escarpment. “I’ve got strict rules about my boys being back here around the pump-jacks unattended. Seen too many accidents happen.”
Why did Heather want him to come out here as a prerequisite for a date? Was that little hideout from so long ago still here? Would they pass it on the way to the base of the slump?
The trail wound onward, late-afternoon light blinking through the branches from the relentless Texas sun. The tingling erupted into goose bumps as she parted a pine bough.
“This place look familiar?” Heart asked.
His eyes landed on four deteriorating fence posts, a makeshift roof made of branches. He ducked past the spindly pine needles, stepping into the space, crunching detritus beneath his boots.
“Would you look at that…” He exhaled and shook his head, not knowing what to say as he walked a slow revolution around it. It was shorter than he remembered, but then again, he was a couple feet taller. “Those old lashin’ knots still tight as ever.” He traced a finger on one. “I used to race my daddy in knot tying. He trained me to make all kinds of ’em. He’d time my Honda knots, time how long it took for me to make the lasso and rope a calf.” His mouth quirked up at the corner. “He’d make me try to beat him until I finally did, and it was like I’d passed some ranchers’ rite of passage.”
He huffed a reminiscent laugh. Eyed Heather who was watching him. Then went back to examining his old construction technique. But he let that memory float around in the air. Not all memories of Harold were bad ones. Those times had been fun. A game. A challenge. He’d sensed his dad’s approval, even if Harold had never put it into words. That memory gave way to others. Calf roping at the regional rodeo and coming out the winner every time. Working under the hood of a ranch truck beside his pops, Harold passing him tools, him passing them back, as if of one mind.
Maybe he’d been too quick to judge Harold as he’d gotten older, as he’d fought for just one word of encouragement, that Pops was proud of him. Maybe all those silent moments—when Harold, an old cowboy who didn’t talk about feelings, had wordlessly trusted him, or silently watched him compete in 4H, or nodded those single nods when he presented a perfect report card—had been Pops’s way of saying good job. For all his faults, Harold had been at every football game, every debate championship, every Scout camp out. Maybe those silences had been praise, because now that Tyler had kids, he supposed he could appreciate standing back and watching his progeny succeed on their own, watch Seth teach Stevie how to bait his fishing line, tiny moments of sibling harmony that proved the lessons Tyler was trying to teach them were taking root. There was pride in those moments of silence.
“Where’d your mind go?” Heather prodded, eyes on him as he glanced up from his reverie. “You’ve been staring at that particular rope for over a minute.”
He shrugged. “Just thinking.”
“When was the last time you were here?”
“Thirteen.”
She raised a brow at his exact response. “You own this land and you haven’t once come back to find it since then?”
He shrugged again and this time, jammed his hands in his pockets. “A lot of good memories out here, but I grew up and my dad didn’t make it easy to just be a kid.”
His bros used to give him shit, say he was just like their dad. At the time, he’d worn it as a badge of honor even though they’d meant it as an insult. Harold Dixon had seemed like a presence larger than life and his brothers calling him Dad’s clone? Shoot. It was memories like that that made Tyler regret his anger over the years, made him regret rejecting his inheritance and disappointing his dad, who’d tried to pass on every lesson, every skill that he’d been taught, to continue Dixon Cattle Co. into the next generation, as had been happening for generations already. It was just…Tyler’d had dreams, too. And he’d given up the Legacy, his legacy, as a silent, obstinate fuck you to the man he’d seen as controlling and withholding of love and praise.
It made him miss his dad. There hadn’t been time to mourn Harold’s passing. When Pops had died, Tyler had known to focus on his momma. Harold wouldn’t have had it any other way. Tyler’d once felt unfairly burdened by her diagnosis, shouldering the weight of it in the beginning years to shield Travis, who was barely put together after that bombing in Afghanistan, and Toby, who’d been a momma’s boy and would take the news hard. Maybe it had been an honor, to be trusted by his pops about her big C diagnosis. Harold had been determined to ensure she’d be taken care of and angry at the universe for dying before his wife, leaving her unprotected. Tyler had assured his dad, time and again, that he’d drop whatever he had to, that he had her affairs in order, that he’d look out for his brothers when the time came that the cancer won the battle, and he’d been met with that silence. Perhaps that silence, like all the other silences, had been Harold knowing he could trust him and had brought him peace.
“Is this where you planned on bringing me all along?” He’d thought they were on their way to the slump.
Heather grinned and nodded.
“How’d you find it?”
She looked around and ducked under the roof to pick up one of those old Folgers cans, sifting through the fossils he and Faith had sorted. “I didn’t, not on purpose. The butterflies led me here—” She rolled her eyes at herself and smiled at his furrow of the brow. “That sounded so weird. I just mean, I saw them right by this path, so on a whim, I took it. Have you ever thought about trying to find it again?”
The damn butterflies. He had to get to the bottom of them.
He shrugged again, shaking off the thoughts. “I was a kid when I built this. I spent summers roaming back here. It was my refuge. Grades didn’t matter out here. Responsibilities didn’t matter. My parents would go for a week or more at a time, and never know a lick of what my bros and I got into.”
Here, he’d found the best connection with the world, dreamed of being a famous country guitarist or a famous football quarterback, unencumbered by his dad quashing his dreams to remind him that he’d be a rancher instead. He’d tested his building skills out here, climbed up things that were far too dangerous to ever let his boys climb. He’d almost forgotten about this trail. And yet, when he’d first gone to court to fight for the farm, this place, the memories he hoped to pass along to his boys, had been fresh on his mind. He’d once wanted to pass this all to his kids. Toby had gotten the Legacy out west. But here? Yeah, he’d hoped to gain back a little of what he’d lost when he turned his back on Dixon Cattle. Redemption.