2. Chapter Two
Chapter Two
BEN
A giant fluffy ball of love bounds into the room and hurls himself at me, knocking me flat on the bed.
“Get off me asshole, this is a clean shirt!”
I get a face full of tongue for my trouble. Caleb laughs from the doorway and doesn’t call his dog off for a good ten seconds. When he finally whistles, Bear peels away and drops at his heels, pretending he’s been an angel his whole life.
I sit up and wipe my face on my sleeve. “I’m leaving in an hour. Now I smell like dog and I have paw prints on Carla’s favorite shirt.”
“He only does that to family.” Caleb crouches and scratches Bear behind the ears. “Take it as a compliment.”
I’ve already packed. Did it last night, then did it again this morning, because the first time I couldn’t sleep and the second time I couldn’t sit still.
Suit bag on the closet door. Boots by the case.
The folder with the vendor contracts, run sheet and seating plan, tabbed and in order, ready to ride shotgun for two hours.
Three days out from my wedding and there’s nothing left to do but drive.
I check the folder’s still on the dresser. It is. I already knew it was.
“You all set?” Caleb tips his head at the case.
“Think so.”
“How you feeling?”
I look at him. We don’t do this, him and me. Whatever went wrong when we were kids, and a lot did, we handled it without needing to make it a conversation. Twenty years of that. He picks now.
I rub the back of my neck. “Fine. Wedding nerves.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s a big deal, a lot at stake. I’m getting everything I wanted. Wife, house, the whole deal. I’m good, Caleb.”
I’ve said it enough times this week that it’s sounding like the truth.
He holds my eye a second too long, then lets it drop, because that’s the deal we’ve always had. You don’t push. You just stay in the room.
“Josie wants you up at the big house.”
I groan. “I’ll see everyone Saturday.”
“She’s already cooking. You’re going.”
I follow him out across the yard. It’s early enough that the creek’s still throwing mist and the hardwoods haven’t decided what the day’s going to be. Tennessee in June. By noon it’ll be thick enough to chew.
I hear the big house before I reach the porch. That’s a Callahan morning. You can hear one three fields off.
Inside, the table’s buckling under enough food for a funeral.
My cousin Ethan and his wife Josie are arguing about something over the pancakes, except Ethan’s got his hand curled around the back of Josie’s neck the whole time he’s doing it, so it isn’t a real argument.
Their kid, Grace, is down on the floor with a fistful of crayons and a piece of paper the size of a barn door.
Her cousin Mason’s leaning over her shoulder, very serious about it.
“You have to do the legs,” he tells her. “Horses got four. You only did two.”
“It’s a special horse.”
“There’s no special horses. All horses got four.” He spots me. “Uncle Ben. Tell her.”
I crouch down and look at the paper. Purple horse, two legs, and what might be a hat. “That’s the best horse I’ve seen all week.”
Mason stares at me like I’ve betrayed the whole family.
“Brave man,” says Josie from the stove, not turning around.
Maeve and her husband Jack are down on the floor too, refereeing.
Jack’s hand keeps going to Maeve’s baby bump, and every time he strokes it, his eyes turn glassy.
Noah and Quinn have their heads together over a laptop, arguing quietly about a new trekking route.
Caleb crosses to the coffee pot and kisses his fiancée Regan on the top of the head on his way past, easy as breathing.
I still haven’t gotten used to watching my brother do a thing like that.
My family. Cousins, a brother, and all the people they’ve dragged home and made ours. Every one of them up at seven in the morning to feed me before I go.
My place is a room in the old bunkhouse past the stables. A bed, a chair, a window over the paddock. It’s enough. I keep it squared away, and I’ve never once asked a single one of these people for a thing. Which is why they don’t wait to be asked.
Josie says it with breakfast instead.
“Sit.” She points the spatula at a chair. “We’re not sending you off hungry.”
“I’m not going to war.”
“Might as well be.” My cousin Luke shoulders in through the back door with a tray of muffins, wife Amy behind him carrying the coffee. “Marriage. It’s prison with better food.”
Amy elbows him in the ribs. “Says the man who chased me until I was too worn out to turn him down yet again.”
“And it worked.”
Josie sets a plate in front of me. Eggs, bacon, biscuits, a cinnamon roll the size of my fist. I eat, because it’s easier than arguing with Josie about whether I’m hungry.
Caleb drops into the chair across from me with his coffee and gets straight to it. “So. Still can’t believe you’ve got some guy I’ve never met standing up next to you Saturday instead of me.”
Here it comes.
“Garrett’s Carla’s oldest friend. It matters to her.” I keep my eyes on the plate. “It’s a suit and a ring in a pocket. It’s not a thing.”
“It’s the best man, Ben. I’ve known you my whole life and I’ve never heard the guy’s voice.”
“You’ll meet him on Saturday.”
“You picked a stranger to hold your ring over your own brother.”
“I picked not making it a fight,” I say, trying to make it light, but no one laughs. “Carla wanted Garrett. It’s the one thing she insisted on, and as it’s her family footing the bill for the wedding… And I want the day to be perfect for her.”
Caleb looks at me over the mug and says everything he needs to with his eyes. He drinks his coffee, staring at me. I look away.
“Uncle Ben.” Mason appears at my elbow with his arms folded and a frown on his face. “Are you gonna have babies?”
It’s less a question and more a demand for information.
“Maybe one day, bud.”
“When you do, I’m the oldest cousin, so I’m in charge of them.”
“Noted.”
He nods, business concluded, and goes back to supervising his cousin’s art.
By the time they let me out the front door, I’ve got a cooler in my arms I never agreed to take. Muffins from Amy. A tin of something from Maeve I’m not allowed to open till Saturday. Grace hands me the purple horse, folded into eighths, and I put it in my shirt pocket to keep it safe.
Caleb walks me out to the truck with Bear weaving between us, sure he’s invited to something.
I open the door and Bear tries to climb in. I catch him by the collar and hand him back.
“Not this time, buddy.”
Caleb hooks two fingers under the collar and holds him off, then leans in the window while I get settled.
“Ben.”
“Yeah?”
“You can pull out of anything. Any time. Even this. We’d still feed you. We’re not about to rent out your room.”
I laugh. He doesn’t.
“I’m good,” I tell him. “Best decision I’ve ever made.”
He steps back, slaps the roof of the truck twice, and I pull out down the long gravel drive. My whole family on the porch, getting smaller. The folder on the seat beside me, with every detail in it, tabbed and in order.
Two hours to Blue Ridge Ranch. Two hours, and I finally get the life I’ve wanted.
In the mirror, Bear breaks loose and chases the truck all the way to the cattle guard. Then he stops dead at the edge of it and stands there watching me go until the drive bends and takes him out of sight.