His Country

Prologue

They call it Gods country.

Aiden wasn’t sure why. He supposed it was pretty in an open sort of way. Flat land dotted with scrubby grass clinging to thin soil. Endless blue sky broken up by gnarled Mesquite trees he used to try to climb as a kid. He’d end up with a palm full of thorns and broken bark under his fingernails. He’d kick at the flimsy trunks and swear, wiping his dirty hands off on his jeans before trying again.

Because that’s how things were around here. If you were smart you left. If you were dumb you stayed.

And if you were stubborn, you survived.

Aiden didn’t know any other way to be. He never dreamt of life beyond the rusted barbed wire fences of his family ranch. Didn’t think past the one stoplight town with a gas station that doubled as a liquor store—closed after five pm and on Sundays. Everything was closed on Sundays.

While the rest of the world expanded, his little town stayed the same. Desperate folk scrabbling to survive in the only way they knew how.

The year Aiden started high school was the year he learned about heart break.

You’d think with all the country music being played he’d be familiar with the concept. But if Aiden thought about heart break at all, it was twangy chords under a neon moon. A lover’s name whispered on lips too afraid to speak over the hushed clinking of ice in a drink. The thunk of an empty beer can hitting the bottom of a trash can.

No, Aiden thought heart break came with a warning label. But heart break was sneaky. It came in the form of official looking letters from the bank. Ones with the clear plastic window that crinkled ominously as he lifted it from the mailbox. It came in the form of late nights hunched over a computer his dad didn’t understand, trying to keep the numbers on the screen from dipping too low.

But they did. They dipped lower and lower until his dad had to sell off large chunks of the farm. Land that Aiden knew like the back of his hand. Land that his ancestors had bled on, scraped a living out of. Vicious land that took and took and only grew disappointment.

Heart break came in the form of a bad winter. In endless deaths of calves and ranch hands that he’d known since he was a kid packing up their bags, tossing them in the back of dusty pickups that had been parked in front of the bunk house for so long their tires had worn patches in the grass. They wanted to stay, but they had families to feed. It wasn’t personal even though it felt like it was.

Heart break came in the form of growing up too fast. Of being sixteen and choosing family over friends. Of giving up football practices so he could help his dad feed the cows or patch a fence. Listening to his friends talk about the throes of adolescence while Aiden tried to piece together their tractor for another season. Just one more.

Heartbreak came in the form of realizing that he was different. That he’d grown up the same way as everyone else, listened to the same stories and believed the same things, but he still couldn’t make himself care that a girl in the next year was wearing a real bra. Or that someone saw the faintest line of a thong on a senior as she bent down to tie her shoe. That he preferred hard to soft. Angled jaws and gruff laughter to tinkling bells and floral perfume.

And finally, in the most crushing of them all, heartbreak came the first day of his sophomore year when he looked up from his locker to see the new kid everyone was talking about. The kid with dark blue eyes and skin tanned from long football practices under the Texas sun. Of blonde hair that shimmered like the gold of a sunset on a painting from an artist whose name his southern tongue couldn’t twang around.

Because nameless heartbreak can be survived. But when it has a name? When it walks past him with a soft nod, lips curling ever so slightly? That’s the kind of heartbreak that leaves a mark.

Before Everett Reid walked into his tiny high school, Aiden had been fine ignoring it all. It wasn’t hard—he was tired. Between his before school chores and his after school chores it wasn’t difficult not to be consumed with it all. The hints of puberty tickling the back of his mind. The hormones that tried to rear their ugly head and demand attention. He could swat them down effortlessly. One more stack of hay, one more fence stretched tight. What’s a boner when he could be sleeping? When the only material he had to supply his curious hormones with were the models on the tractor magazine his dad got in the mail.

But then Everett walked in with his angular jaw and big hands, hands that threw a football in a perfect spiral. There is nothing stronger than the hormones of a horny sixteen-year-old and it was only the stubbornness bred into Aiden that kept him sane.

Aiden wasn’t dumb enough to say these thoughts out loud. He knew where he was. He knew who he was. He wasn’t the kind of person who had time for feelings or thoughts like that. Aiden wasn’t the loving type. So he did what he did best—he ignored it. He put one boot in front of the other and didn’t look past the brim of his hat.

And he was fine. He became Everett’s friend. They both liked the quiet. Not the awkward kind but the soft kind. Warm, where they just existed. Breathing the same air with thoughts they didn’t need to share. When they did talk, they spoke of football and the season. Of new movies he’d seen, or that time his family went to the beach and a crab bit him in the ass.

Everett had moved to town the summer before. His family bought the feed store when Mr. Elks sold it rather than lose it to the bank. In a town that literally lived and died by the price of hay, the Reid’s were the closest thing to royalty they had.

If Everett’s family didn’t already have a reputation, his arm solidified it. Not many sixteen-year-olds from no name schools in the middle of fucking nowhere made it onto ESPN but Everett did. He walked onto the schools starting quarterback position and then he made them famous. Where Aiden had played, Everett had won.

His name made him a legend, but it was his quiet humility that got people. Girls came and went, brushing up against him like waves on the shore. Everett rebuffed them all in his inobtrusive, polite way. Never gave a reason as to why he wasn’t interested. Which only added to his intrigue. Everyone wanted him but no one could have him.

Aiden became an expert in lying. His face stoic as he waited for Everett to finish reading another garishly decorated letter littered in colored penciled hearts. Eyebrows never even twitched when a girl slid into the seat next to them at the lunch table, ignoring him in favor for the football player with a future.

And that was fine. It was all fine because it was all Aiden was ever going to have.

Were he the kind of person who considered the future he would know that Everett was destined for greatness. Born with potential in his blood and the talent to see it through, Everett was on a train barreling for prominence. And Aiden was just a stop along the way.

But he didn’t think about the future. He didn’t think about anything except one boot in front of the other.

The summer of his senior year his father’s best friend, the man who had been the ranch’s foreman for as long as Aiden could remember, died. He had a son Aiden never met. The kid’s mom wanted him to attend a good school in the city, but after his father’s death he came into town. Maybe he wanted to know the hardworking man he’d only met a handful of times or maybe he was chasing something. Fate was guiding him to the place he was meant to be. Aiden never asked.

Billy Whitlock was everything Aiden wasn’t. He was open, confident, and comfortable. He only thought about the future. He was so busy looking toward what could be he didn’t know where he was. Goofy like that, he was constantly falling on his ass. Aiden found himself laughing more that summer than he ever had.

Essentially useless on the farm, he made up for it by being enthusiastic. Ignoring the callouses and the bruises, the exhaustion, and the grit between his teeth. He learned to ride, absorbed everything Aiden taught him. Billy was book smart, too. He quoted authors Aiden had never even heard of.

He never made Aiden feel stupid. He never made him feel less. Billy was the brother Aiden didn’t expect. For the first time in a long time, the tightness in his chest lessened.

The night before they started their senior year Billy told Aiden he liked boys. Without a trace of shame, he watched Aiden over a glass of off brand cola that always tasted flat. His lips curled into a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

Clenching his glass, Aiden stared back with the same face he wore when the boys in the locker room talked about curves and long hair. “None of my business.”

Billy held his gaze for a long moment before relaxing. Lapsing back into whatever chatter he insisted on filling the silences with.

Aiden’s chest tightened again.

And the next evening, on the first bonfire of the school year, over warm beer and the smell of burning gasoline some kid tossed onto the fire, Everett Reid locked eyes with Billy Whitlock. Aiden watched as those blue eyes burned in a way he had never seen before. Everett dropped his red solo cup, ignoring the way the beer splashed up his ankles as he crossed the field to Billy.

Head cocked, smile wide, Billy greeted him. Not a trace of a lie on his face.

Everett looked at Billy like he was something. Not the sun. The sun burns. Destroys crops and scalds the grass, chews up hay harvests and makes sweat drip into your eyes. No, Everett looked at Billy like he was the first rain of the season. Anticipation thrumming in the air with each life-giving drop of a storm. Water that ran in rivulets over the hard earth, seeping into the dirt and bringing life to what was once dead. Music on a tin roof and promise in the air. Another season. Hope.

And Billy looked at Everett like he was the future. Sparkling, dazzling, and everything that was good on the horizon.

In five minutes, Billy had done what Aiden never could. Never would.

Pain clawed its way down Aiden’s chest. Like a hot knife, it twisted in his gut in a blow that was far from lethal. Killing him would be too easy. And Aiden was too stubborn to die.

He nodded when Billy grinned over his shoulder excitedly. Tipped his drink to the two when they disappeared into the darkness, hand in hand. He watched them take on the school, change perceptions about what was right and what wasn’t. He watched as the scouts came to look at Everett. He watched as Everett took an offer that allowed him to have Billy by his side. The same school that gave Billy a full ride to study. And he watched as they fell in love, that look in their eyes never fading.

Even as he felt like he was. Like the sharper they became the less distinct he became. His edges blurred while they shone.

Just before graduation they finally lost the farm. Billy offered to help, of course he did, but his mother shushed him. Told him to make a life for himself. To reach for that future he wanted so badly. She never said that to Aiden.

He finished high school. Whatever else they could say about him, he did that. He took the last test, and walked right out of school. He didn’t think about how unfair it was that the person who never wanted anything had nothing. He didn’t think about how the ache in his chest stung. And he didn’t think about being angry.

Because he couldn’t. How could he be angry when the two people he loved found happiness?

He was happy for them.

And he was fine.

One boot in front of the other, he found himself with a duffel bag full of stuff and his thumb out. Aiden didn’t want a final summer. He didn’t want anything. Not as he climbed into the dented bed of a pickup and watched the sun set on the town he never thought he’d leave.

Wind ripped through his hair, and he settled back against the cab of the truck.

They called this place Gods country.

Aiden never found out why.