Chapter Eleven #3
looked like already had some flowers, and gotten into Max Harper’s truck.
Somewhere out there his brother was fixing fences and
probably still thinking Shane was a moron who didn’t know what he saw. Or
heard.
Shane watched the acres fly by as Max started toward the
town. “Rachel seemed sad, but I think she was comfortable. I think she’s just…
I don’t know. I don’t have a lot of experience with moms. I think she loves her
kids and she loves you, but she’s overwhelmed.”
He was a bit overwhelmed, too. Last night when Bay had made
his statement of intent, Shane had frozen. It had come to such crystal clarity.
Bay could find a way to fit with Brooke’s world. Eccentric, renowned artist was
kind of the dream for a woman like Brooke.
“Well, that’s what happens when you think you’re finally
done with kids and suddenly your asshole husband gets you pregnant again.” Max
stared out, too. The man seemed different this morning. More serious. Like
sleeping without his wife in bed had made him more solemn. “I fixed it, though.
At least I hope I did. I have to go back in a week and make sure none of my
swimmers survived. Gotta make sure Doc drowned them real good. You using a
condom when you fuck my sister?”
“You could push me out here,” Shane offered. It looked like
there were some soft places to land. If he waited until they were closer to
town, he could push him over an edge and into a chasm.
Like what they planned to do to him and Bay in Wyoming. You
know it would serve Bay fucking right to find his murdered body in a ditch
somewhere. See if that asshole could get along without him.
“Been pushed out of a lot of moving vehicles, have you?” Max
asked.
“Just the one.” Shane wasn’t going to play scared around Max
Harper. He either would try to hurt him or he wouldn’t. He rather thought this
whole trip was about telling Shane how he wasn’t worthy of Brooke.
He wasn’t traditionally educated.
He didn’t have a family to offer her.
He had a job that didn’t pay much and was often transitory.
His brother thought he was a liar.
“Who the hell pushed you out of a car?” Max sounded shocked
for once.
He hadn’t thought anything could shock Max Harper. Well, he
would probably laugh. “Let’s just say the supposed maternal figure in my life
did not want to take me to a family wedding but my cousin insisted, so she
accidently took a curve too fast on the golf cart she used to take people
around to look at apartments. She was a property manager for the complex we
lived at for a couple of years. This was after my dad lost all our money
gambling. They had to sell the house her parents left them and my grandfather’s
ranch. To say she was unhappy would be an understatement. Naturally she blamed
me. She then tried to sue the complex saying the seatbelt was faulty, but she
told me not to wear it. So it was a win win for her.
I broke my arm, and she didn’t have to explain my presence at the wedding. I
stayed home alone. I was nine. They were gone for three days. They left food
for the dog at least.”
Max’s hands eased, and he slowed the truck to the normal
speed limit. “Your own momma did that to you and Bay?”
He didn’t know? He wasn’t surprised. Everyone thought they
were fraternal twins. “She was my stepmother. My mom had an affair with her
husband and while she tried her hardest to prove I wasn’t his, DNA didn’t lie.
When my momma left me on her doorstep, she decided I would make a fine whipping
boy.”
“I thought you and…”
It was what most people thought. “We’re a couple of months
apart, though I don’t remember a lot before I went to live with Bay’s family.
She hated me but she couldn’t let me go into the system because that would make
her look bad. The good news was she also couldn’t starve me because that made
her look bad, too. She wouldn’t let me eat at the dinner table with her family.
I learned how to make simple food when I was young because if I didn’t, she
would give me a couple of pieces of bread and that would be dinner. Going to
school did me a world of good because there were suddenly eyes on me wondering
why I weighed half what my brother weighed.”
“Holy shit. I thought I had a bad parent.”
Just because his stepmom had been worse didn’t mean Max
hadn’t had it bad. And it was obvious the Harper boys had taken a bad situation
and made it work. “You did. He left you. Your mother died and while you were
mourning her, he left you alone to raise a young girl. He was a shitty parent,
Max. You were a good one.”
Max stilled at the words and seemed to get emotional. “I
don’t know that Brooke would say that right now.”
If there was one thing he knew, it was that Brooke loved her
brothers. She would forgive them eventually. “Brooke is hurt that you don’t
trust her. She’s feeling guilty because she thinks she wasted all the time and
money you spent on her.”
“That’s such bullshit. We never said that.”
“The trusting her part or the wasted money and time part?”
Max’s head turned, and his expression was oddly calm. “Both,
and you’re excellent at deflecting, but then I suspect you would have to be.
It’s hard to be the one who always fucks up, isn’t it? Even though you never
fucked up. It was just put on you. I’ve been thinking all this time that you
and your brother were somewhat like me and mine. And you are. I keep trying to
figure out which one is me and which one is Rye. You see, Rye is the one who
always does the right thing and I’m the one who fucks up.”
At least Max saw him. He supposed it was inevitable that
someone would see through his arrogance and bravado. “Well, then I guess I’m
the fuck-up.”
“I’m sure your stepmother made you feel that way.” Max’s
tone softened. “Why are you still with Bay? I know your parents died, but I
can’t imagine wanting to stay with the brother who sat by and watched you be
abused.”
“He didn’t.” A single memory washed over him, a moment that
formed so much of the core of his being. “When my mom left me on the doorstep,
my father wasn’t home. My stepmom left me outside. She told me I should run
away. That no one wanted me. I didn’t know where to go. I had a SpongeBob
suitcase and a backpack my mom had packed for me. I remember it was raining and
I was cold and she hadn’t fed me lunch. She said my new mom would, but it was
obvious my new mom didn’t want me. It was getting dark and then Bay showed up.
He’d come from around the back since his mom was in the living room calling
everyone she could trying to figure out how to get rid of me.”
“How old were you?” Max asked.
Brooke’s brother was going to truly understand how imperfect
he was for his sister. “I was five and so was Bay. Dad was doing well at the
time. I mean not well enough to pay child support or anything, but they had a
nice house and a treehouse in the backyard. Bay took me up there and told me we
were brothers and that it didn’t matter what his mother said, he was my big
brother and he would take care of me. And he did. I spent that first night in a
sleeping bag in the treehouse, and then Dad got home and the pastor came and
suddenly I had a little space in Bay’s room. When he was old enough he told her
he would run away if I couldn’t do the things he could.”
A long moment passed before Max spoke again. “And how did
you adapt?”
Shane shrugged. He supposed he had in a lot of ways. Ways he
was trying to unlearn. “I learned to not like anything. Or at least to never
express I liked something.”
“Because she would take it away?”
“Yeah,” Shane admitted. “I know everyone says foster care
sucks, but it was better for me than being home. It was hard for Bay, though.
Despite everything he still had some love for our parents. His mom saw how
talented he was. She gave him everything he could want when it came to art. She
tried to make it so he didn’t have to do a thing but work on his portfolio. She
had dreams of him going to art school in Paris. I don’t know that would ever
have worked out, but one day he had a future and the next he didn’t.”
Max seemed to think about that. “You never had one so it
didn’t bother you.”
It was nothing less than the truth. “The group home felt
like freedom to me.”
Max’s head shook. “Was there any money? I know that’s a
stupid question. If there had been money, someone would have come forward and
taken you and Bay in. So she wanted Bay to go to art school but she didn’t save
any money?”
His stepmother had been a complex woman. “In her defense
there was never any real money. My father blew it the minute it was in his
hands. She thought Bay’s talent would save her.”
“So you decided to rodeo and make some money that way,” Max
surmised. “Let me guess—you got tired of making the money and then it all going
to pay for your next broken bone.”
So he knew the circuit. “By then we knew some ranchers and
they hired us on, and that’s what we do.”
“That’s what you do. Bay makes art. According to Stef he’s
incredibly good, and Stef isn’t wrong about those things. What happened to the
grant? Stef told me all the money from the auction that day you and your
brother tried to buy my wife went to Bay.”
“It was ten grand, and we coasted on it for a long time.”
“Why doesn’t Bay hang out here and work on his art?” Max
asked. “Stef would get you a cabin. He’s real high on what Bay does.”
They’d talked about it, and Shane knew he couldn’t do it. He
couldn’t freeload off his brother. “We liked to move around a lot when we were
younger.”
“And now?”
How much should he tell this man? “I like Bliss. Bay, too.”
“What made you decide on Bliss?”
Shane sighed and turned. “Do you want me to tell you how
much I love your sister?”
Max nodded. “Yes. I think it’s time for you to say those
words to me so I can start dealing with the situation. I’m damn tired of
sitting around and pretending everything is going to work out and that all we
need is time.”
He got the feeling Max was talking about more than Brooke.