The Ranchers Son (22 page)

Adam’s head spun. He could recall what had
happened, see Justin shaking his head ruefully.

“I should have told you what I wanted,” Justin
said as they climbed out of the lake and dried off.

Adam looked him straight in the eye. “It
wouldn’t have changed how I feel about your brother,” he said with all his fifteen-year-old
bluntness.

Justin stared at him, then broke into a
trademark grin. “Okay, then,” he announced. “I’ll just have to get Cole or Nate
to fall for me if it’s all about the older man.”

“Cole is straight, and unless you’re a
horse or a bull, you’re not getting near Nate.”

They laughed, climbed up on their horses,
and things were okay.

He pulled himself back to the here and now.
Justin had wanted to be with him? “Can we get out?”

Ethan looked momentarily disappointed, as
if he’d been hoping Adam would talk more, but Adam knew one thing, he needed
the hell out of this water.

“Let’s go,” Ethan said, pushing aside the
initial reaction.

Together they made it to the shore, Cole
alongside them. Reaching the shore was a lot harder than getting to the pond,
and he relied on a hell of a lot of help from the other men. His chest ached,
his eye was sore and as for his head? He hurt.

Seemed like Cole was really a superhero
now, coming up next to him and swimming while supporting him, and they reached
the shore in no time at all. Ethan helped him out onto the stones and they
picked their way over to the horses, pulling out towels from bags and drying
off before getting dressed.

“So, we need to go higher,” Adam announced
when they were all on horseback again. “I have a clear idea of where I want to
go.”

He guided Easy away from the lake but,
instead of taking the path back down to the main ranch, he set off around the
lake along another path. Crooked Tree Ranch sat in the near center of its
acres; there was an awful lot of acreage that Adam thought had been unexplored
by them as kids. But, this felt right.

“I remember we decided to ride more. Justin
didn’t want to go home. He was embarrassed that he’d lost his temper that he
and his dad had fought. He said he couldn’t even remember what started the
fight, and I can see his face now.” Adam looked directly at Ethan. “He said
that he started it deliberately just to get some emotion out of his dad.”

Ethan nodded. “Dad wasn’t the most
emotional of men. Still isn’t, despite Sophie being in his life.”

“Why aren’t they married?” Adam asked. He’d
seen them together, and Sophie clearly adored Marcus, and it seemed to him that
Marcus loved her back just as much.

“He said to me once that he’d marry her,
but it never happened. I don’t know, I think my dad has lost his way.”

He opened his mouth to ask another question
about Marcus and Sophie, then thought better of it. What people really wanted
from Adam were his memories. So he concentrated hard on that March day, focused
in on Justin’s gray eyes—just like Ethan’s—and his blond hair. Memories,
scents, tastes, emotions, were slipping back into his head, and he focused in
on how he felt and what they were doing.

His stomach churned; there was a kernel of
grief in there, and it grew worse the higher they climbed, until he had to rein
in Easy and stop. Ethan was at his side in an instant, his expression wary, and
there was something in his eyes.

“Smoke,” Adam murmured. “We went off the
path….” He encouraged Easy to walk on and they skirted the forest, staying on
the path. At that point something was telling Adam that he needed to keep going
until miles separated them from the ranch.

And then he stopped as another memory
slammed into him.

Blue sky, the scents of the forest around them.
Justin laughing at something Adam had just said. They heard a noise that seemed
to come from above them, higher up the mountain.

“Was that a gunshot?” Adam asked.

“I don’t know, but I’m going to go check it
out. Crooked Tree doesn’t allow hunting or shooting on the ranch.” Justin kicked
Easy into a gallop.

“Shit,” Adam swore, and urged Smoke to go
after them, because he was fucked if he was going to let Justin get into
trouble on his own.

And abruptly Adam knew.

He knew it all.

He slid off Easy and fell to his knees.
Ethan was there, and Cole. Ethan holding him, Cole asking him if he was okay.

He would never be okay. Why would Cole even
ask that?

His mind shut down and everything went
black.

Voices pulled him out of the darkness.
Ethan and Cole, calling his name. He didn’t want to come back, not when he
could see what had happened, not when the flames licked at him and burned
Justin. Not when he saw Justin die.

He opened his eyes, and through the tears
he could see Ethan watching him, fear in his expression.

“Meth,” he murmured. “A cabin, not here,
not on Crooked Tree property. We found men… no, they found us… they got Justin,
and he told me to run, I didn’t want to, but I got away to get help.” The words
tumbled out randomly; he probably wasn’t making sense. “I rode Smoke away, but
they were there, and I took him off the path, and he broke his leg.” Tears
overwhelmed him and he clung to Ethan. “They had me. I had to leave Smoke, and
Justin… they put us in the back of a car, we were tied up, I don’t remember how
long… we were at a cabin, there was an explosion. I don’t know what….” He
pressed a hand to his throat. “I was close to it, and I was burned, but Justin,
he was—” Sobs made it hard to speak. “He was burned so bad, Ethan…. He was dead.
Ethan, I’m sorry.”

Ethan didn’t move, didn’t back away, he
just held on to Adam, and he was crying as well, and through all of it, Cole
was on his cell, organizing, planning, getting the sheriff up there, Nate, Jay—whomever
the fuck he could get. He shouted into the phone. And then he crouched down by
Adam and placed a steadying hand on his arm.

“Okay, Adam,” he said. “We got this.”

Night fell before they gave up hope of
finding anything. Adam was with them in body, but his mind had refused to let
go of any more secrets. Ethan was there next to him on every part of the search
for whatever they thought they might find. His eyes were red and his posture
screamed that he was shocked and grieving, but he never let go of Adam.

Adam didn’t know if he was drawing strength
from Ethan, or if it was the other way around.

“We’re calling it a night,” Ryan announced.
He was in full-on sheriff mode, calling in search parties and criminal
investigation units. He’d had dogs out. They were going to find this meth lab
Adam had recalled, just not tonight. Although Adam had said it was some way
from the Ranch, hell it could be in another state for all he remembered. Surely
they would have found evidence of a fire on Crooked Tree land back in 2004 if
it had happened nearby?

One by one they left until only Ethan, Adam,
and Cole remained.

“We should go back,” Ethan said.

Cole nodded his agreement, but he was staring
way past them and up the hill.

“I’m so sorry,” Adam said for the hundredth
time that day. “I wish I hadn’t remembered. I don’t want this memory.”

Not a lot of detail had come through with
the memory. Adam couldn’t recall exactly where he and Justin had been; he
couldn’t give details of landscape or names or anything that actually helped.

I’m fucking
useless. I tell Ethan that Justin is dead, and then I shut down.

Ethan, for his part, was clearly in shock.
The three of them hadn’t told anyone that Adam recalled Justin dying, a
conscious decision Ethan had made because he wanted to be the one to tell his
dad.

And after all, what did one dead boy mean
to all the experts combing through the ranch acres?

“I just want to check one thing,” Cole
murmured softly.

He looked distracted as he slipped down off
of Juno and into the darkness beyond the trees.

“I love you,” Ethan said softly.

The words were clear and firm; he evidently
wanted Adam to know that despite all this, his feelings wouldn’t change.

“How can you—”

“Because it’s always been there, and
whatever happens, we’ll always be in love.”

They gripped hands, holding tight, and
together they waited for Cole.

For someone who was supposed to be a
trained SEAL, he was making a lot of noise over there in the trees. Crashing
and banging, and Adam thought he heard a shout. He pulled a flashlight out of
the rucksack attached to the saddle, and aimed it into the trees.

“Cole?” he said loudly.

More crashing. Adam glanced at Ethan, who’d
pulled his weapon and held it high.

“Stay here,” he ordered, and disappeared
into the trees.

Adam didn’t want to, but the sight of the gun
had him hiding back against Easy, who, bless him, didn’t move a single step
away.

Then there was no more crashing, no sounds
of anything; it was eerily silent, and fear gripped Adam. What should he do?
Run into the woods and find out what the hell was going on? He still didn’t
have a cell phone, and he didn’t know how to handle this… he was beginning to
panic.

“Adam,” a voice growled from the path
beyond.

Adam couldn’t see who it was, it didn’t
sound like Cole or Ethan.

“Who is it?” he snapped. “I have a gun.” He
added the lie.

The owner of the voice in the dark chuckled.
“A, you wouldn’t know how to use it.”

A
? Only one person ever called him A. Adam aimed the flashlight into
the darkness, but couldn’t get a fix on the shadows.

The owner of the voice stepped closer and
light fell on a hooded figure. “You have to stop remembering me.” The voice was
firm. “It was my fault you were in Chicago. I should have left things alone.
But, promise me, A, promise you’ll stop remembering until I get this fixed. Let
them search, but don’t remember me.”

“Justin?”

“Apologize to Cole for me. I think I hit
him harder than I thought.”

“Please, Justin?”

“They told me you were dead,” the person confirmed.
“Otherwise I wouldn’t… Jesus, Adam, I thought I’d got you killed. You have to
know that.”

A crashing in the dark from the trees
startled Adam and the flashlight slipped momentarily. When he aimed it back at
where the voice had been, there was nothing.

But, he knew, as Ethan came onto the path
supporting a dazed Cole, that it had been Justin in the shadows.

He was certain of it. He crossed to Ethan
immediately, and together they helped Cole to a sitting position on the ground.
Adam’s hand came away wet and the flashlight picked up blood.

“Someone hit me,” Cole muttered. “Got a
couple shots in, but the fucker knew his moves. We need to get the cops back.
Taking down a fucking SEAL, that bastard has to be something special. Someone
call back Ryan.”

Adam swallowed. “No,” he said. “No
sheriff.”

“What?” Ethan asked as he pulled out his
cell. “We need to get the search parties back up here.”

Adam reached out and placed a hand over the
phone. “No,” he repeated. And then he had to say the words that would mean
everything to Ethan. “Justin said….”

Ethan cradled Adam’s face, searching for
something, looking scared. “Are you okay? Are you ill?” he asked urgently.

There was no other way of doing this; he
had to rip the Band-Aid off the wound in one pull. “I saw Justin.”

“In your memories?” Ethan asked. He sounded
so sad, devastated.

“No. Here. Now.”

Ethan rocked back on his heels. “I don’t
understand.”

“You went into the trees and you left me
here. And then he was there, waiting. He told me to stop remembering until he
could fix it.”

“Adam—”

“No, listen to me. Ethan, I promise you,
Justin is alive.”

Two weeks had
passed since that night. Excepting Cole, Ethan and him, no one else knew about
Justin. Or of the possibility that Justin was alive, anyway. Ethan had wavered from
elation that Justin could possibly be alive, to despair thinking that it was
all a con and Justin was dead. The emotional roller coaster was taking a toll
on him and, worst of all, he couldn’t share any of it with his dad.

Adam was convinced,
though. The man with the growly voice had called him A, and to him that was
telling.
H
e tried to be there for Ethan, he really did, but the last few days had
been hard. Not least of which was Ethan taking Marcus into Missoula for his
first therapy. They’d stayed in Missoula overnight, and it had just been Adam at
the house. Cole had gone back on duty almost immediately after the lake
incident, and that left Adam alone and—he had to be honest with himself—despondent.

Which was when he
found Nate. And that was a good thing.

“Hold that for me”
was all Nate said when Adam walked into the stables.

Adam thought that sulking,
where he could maybe get a ride out of it, was a good thing. At least it got
his miserable mopey face out of other people’s business.

He took the halter
and then wondered why he was holding it. Nate hadn’t moved, just looked at him
expectantly.

“What?” Adam
finally asked.

“Got a family of
six, Mom, Dad, twins aged sixteen and two under-tens, booked for a trail ride up
past Ember Bluff. You want to help?”

“Sure.” How hard
could it be? Hell, it would get him out and doing something for himself, and he
had to get his head back into the game.

His latest checkup
had been clear; his ribs were good, his wrist okay, and he was retrieving
memories nearly every minute. The only problem with that was sensory overload: too
much input led to headaches as he fought to slot the memories into where they
should be. He still couldn’t quite get a handle on the burning or what had
happened next, but clearly his case was something to do with the meth, or close
to it.

And Justin? Adam
had no idea how the hell Justin being alive impacted any of this. The
rational-cop part of Ethan came to the front whenever they discussed it, then
he would go quiet as his heart went to war with the words he’d spoken.

Adam helped the visiting
family; he learned the process from Nate, evidently familiar with some of it
both from his time on the ranch in Wyoming as a hand, which was still mostly a
blank, and from helping out at Crooked Tree on non-school days as a teenager,
which was coming back to him more clearly.

The family were Mr.
and Mrs. Keyes with their four well-behaved children. They loved the riding,
loved the early-May weather—in fact there was very little they disliked about their
Montana break.

Adam was the first
to admit he’d not helped up to now as much as he could have, lost in what he
thought of as self-indulgent languishing. He dealt with the horses, humming as
he worked, and the tension that had ridden him since Ethan left lessened with
each passing moment.

“How did that go?”
Nate asked.

Nate was dealing
with Juno, and Adam was brushing down Easy. Adam had taken to riding Justin’s
horse whenever he went out. “I really enjoyed it.”

“You always used
to follow me around, always good with the horses,” Nate said. “What are your
plans now?”

He was the first
person to ask that question. Everyone else assumed that Adam would stay there,
even Ethan.

“I want to stay
here. You think there’s a place for me?” Uncertainty inside him filtered into
the question.

Nate looked over
at him; he didn’t look surprised to be asked the question.

“This is your
home, Adam. Not only do you own some of it, but it’s in your heart.”

That was poetic
from big gruff Nate, and Adam smiled over at him. “Yeah.”

“We’re busy,
expanding, looking to open up the Creek Cabins again. We could use a guy who
could run the treks, work in the stables alongside me, maybe take over some of
the paperwork, like for feed and the veterinarian schedules.”

“I knew there was an
ulterior motive.”

“What can I say, I
don’t like paperwork. You can start whenever, do what you can, and work up to
whatever you finally want.”

The suggestion
seemed too good to be true, but Adam didn’t have to think long. “I’ll be here
tomorrow,” he said.’

Then they
exchanged nods and smiles, and Nate left.

“Adam, can we
talk?”

Adam turned to
find Marcus behind him. He looked uncertain, a little gray, but his hands were
in fists at his side.

“Of course. Are
you okay? Do you need to sit down?”

Marcus shook his
head. “It’s Ethan.”

Fear hit Adam.
Ethan had left for Missoula early this morning for a meeting with his Chief.
Had something happened. “What? What’s happened.”

Marcus held up a
hand. “No, nothing. I’m sorry. I just…”

Adam relaxed a
little.

“Seems like Ethan
will be going back to Missoula to work,” Marcus said. Adam knew where this was
going, but hadn’t expected Marcus to talk to him about it.

“I think that’s a
possibility.”

“More than a
possibility, Adam. He’s a good cop, being there, in Missoula, it suits him. He
was never going to stay here, not really.”

Adam felt like he
was treading on a field of landmines. “Are you okay with that?” he asked,
cautiously.

“Remind him I told
him it was okay, that I think it’s a good thing.”

“You told him
that?”

“I talked to him
when he was with me in hospital for the first treatment. I think we made
headway to getting back to where we should be.”

“I think so,” Adam
agreed.

“He said that he’d
be home as often as he could, and that he wasn’t leaving for good this time.”
Marcus sounded hopeful, but was clearly waiting for Adam to confirm what Ethan
had said.

“We’re making a
home here,” Adam confirmed. “Is that okay?”

Marcus stepped
right up into his space and pulled him into a hug. “God, yes.” And then, with
no other words, he left.

Adam finished up
and went back to his house, feeling relief at seeing Ethan waiting for him on
the porch. “How did it go with the Chief?” he asked as he climbed the steps.

Ethan didn’t
answer, only swept him into a heated kiss, right there in the early-evening
quiet. When they separated, Ethan looked so grave.

“It was okay,” he
admitted. “It went well.”

Ethan squeezed his
hand and tugged him into their house.

They made coffee
and decided to walk down to Branches for dinner in the hope Sam would take pity
on them. They stopped halfway down, checked in on a now sleeping Marcus, and
lingered a while on the bridge, hand in hand, both thoughtful and quiet.

“Your dad came to
see me at the stables.”

“He did? Was he
okay?”

“Said I should
remind you he’s okay with you going back to work in Missoula.”

Ethan nodded,
looked lost in thought, then pulled Adam in close. “Love you,” he whispered.

Only when they sat next to each other on
the sofa of Adam’s place
, with
plates of food on their laps, did Adam recall what he meant to ask. “So, tell
me, what did Chief Flynn say to you today?”

“That he’ll take
me back tomorrow.” Ethan wasn’t holding back or explaining away, evidently
going for the direct approach.

“Did you say you’d
go back?” They’d discussed the decision; decided they could make things work if
Ethan was in Missoula and Adam was at Crooked Tree. Ethan could come home on
his days off, and Adam could visit the city. Ethan had been born to be a cop,
or that is what Adam thought.

Ethan glanced at
him and he looked worried. “I said I’d talk to you.”

“You’re a good
cop. Ethan. You should go back.”

“What will you do?
Would you come with me? I think you should take up your place here.”

“And on that note,
Nate said he wanted me to work alongside him, take up my role on the ranch.”

Relief crossed
Ethan’s face. “It’s what you should do. You belong here, with the horses.” Then
he looked a little uncertain. “What did you say to Nate?”

“That I wanted to
stay. I was born a rancher’s son, but that doesn’t mean anything unless you
love the land as much as I do. I guess this is where I was always meant to be, but
I know it means you’d be in Missoula alone….”

“Don’t think like
that. When I work, I don’t think about much else. You’ll be okay here, with new
memories to build
, and
I’ll be home as often as I can. Back to you, here, if
you want me to be. We could have a home here, build a family.”

“You’d only be
coming back to check on your dad anyway,” Adam teased.

“Ass. That’s only
half of it. I want to be with you, always.”

“Okay then, I’ll
be part of the ranch, and you’ll get the bad guys out there. Then you’ll come
home to me, and we’ll make this place ours.”

“I will. I love
you, and I want forever with you. Whatever form that forever takes.”

And then, without
the shadow of Justin between them,
Adam pressed a kiss
to Ethan’s lips and then stepped back
, with love in his heart and a future that looked bright. “I love you,
Ethan.”

“I’ll always love
you, Adam.” Ethan smiled as he spoke. “I’ll never stop.”

“Which is a good
thing given I wouldn’t let you.”

They sat holding hands facing the
blank wall, and leaning into each other.

“You know what,
though,” Adam mused.

“What?”

“If we’re going to
live here, we should actually buy some furniture.”

THE END