13. Carson James
13
CARSON JAMES
“H
ow’s everything lookin’, doc?” I asked as I peeled my work gloves off and shoved them in my pocket.
Martha, the vet who had been servicing the ranch since I was in diapers, was packing up her bag when I walked over. She let out a weathered laugh. “You’re gonna be awful busy come springtime. All your ladies look healthy, though. Gonna give you a good bunch of calves.”
I offered a hand and braced her elbow as I helped her up. “I appreciate you coming all the way out here.” My breath clouded with each word.
Doc rested her hands on her hips and surveyed the herd. “Sharp lookin’ bunch. You’re doing good work out here. And the ranch isn’t lookin’ too shabby these days. I might have to grab my better half and take her out for a date night at that fancy steakhouse. Sure smelled good when I was driving in.”
I bit my tongue to keep from talking shit about the restaurant. Christian wasn’t out with me today. But I knew if I so much as thought a bad word about the lodge or restaurant, Cassandra would pop up like bloody-fucking-Mary and dare me to speak.
Christmas had come and gone, and we were firmly in the new year. I was glad to see the decorations disappear. I hated the garland draping from each window of the lodge. I hated the trees with their twinkling lights lining the walkway to the restaurant.
I hated how goddamn picturesque it was.
January, with its gray skies and bleak temperatures, was a reprieve. For once, my surroundings matched my mood.
Doc said her goodbyes, packed up, and headed out.
Truthfully, I wasn’t on schedule today. Not that I would have admitted it to anyone. But I hadn’t taken a day off since Christian laid out his ultimatum. Either I spent every waking moment as far from civilization as possible, or I got my ass terminated.
I didn’t question whether he was bluffing when he said he would fire me; I knew he wasn’t joking.
Ranching hadn’t been a choice for our father or his brothers. It was survival. But our parents raised the four of us making sure we knew it was a choice, not a destiny. It also meant everyone had to work hard and keep from bitching about it. We could all walk away, and that’s what pissed me off the most.
I didn’t want to leave this place, but I also didn’t want to toe the party line.
“CJ, you there?” Christian’s voice crackled over the radio.
I ripped the radio off my belt and smashed the side button. “Present.”
“Head up to the house.”
My knuckles turned white as I strangled the radio. He knew exactly what he was doing.
I couldn’t argue on an open line. We kept family drama separate from ranch work. It was a management tactic that kept the family respected among the ranch hands. We presented a united front, always.
“Still working,” I clipped in return.
Christian didn’t waste a second. “You’re done for the day.”
A colorful string of curses flipped through my head, one after the other. I dropped the radio to my side, resigned to let him have this one.
On second thought, I picked it back up and pressed it to my mouth. I hesitated, then dropped it again.
Anny glanced at me from where she was nibbling on the threadbare grass. I swear she called me a dumbass in that one look.
“Understood,” I muttered into the radio before turning the damn thing off.
I had been summoned.
Anarchy was full of attitude today, and I didn’t blame her. She let it rip as we galloped across the plains. Adrenaline rushed from my fingertips to my boots in a tidal wave.
The rush of wind around us flooded my lungs. For once, I could breathe.
We took the long way up to the house, circling the backside of Ray’s property and Christian and Nate’s houses. Part of the route was so I could stretch the ride out as long as possible and avoid family dinner. The other part was so I didn’t have to see the restaurant. So that I didn’t have to see her shitty clunker of a car. So, I didn’t have to think of her in that building.
Far sooner than I wanted it to, my parents’ ranch house came into view.
Christian was waiting on the front porch, sitting in one of the rocking chairs with his arms crossed. “Took you long enough.”
“Had shit to do,” I groused.
He let out a displeased huff. “I told you to straighten up, not to work yourself to death.”
“Same thing, isn’t it?” I dropped off Anny’s back and headed up the stairs.
“Dinner’s ready,” he clipped. “Wash up.” And with that, he turned and walked inside.
“Yes, Dad ,” I muttered at his back. Something warm and aromatic floated through the air, making my stomach growl.
I slipped into the kitchen and found my mom tidying up.
Her cheeks lifted when I slid through the door. “Well, hey, sweetie. I was starting to wonder where you were.”
“Sorry,” I said under my breath as I turned the tap on and scrubbed my hands. “I was out pretty far.”
She let out a low chuckle under her breath. “I figured. Doesn’t bother me. Unlike children, chili will keep. Go take a load off and eat with the family. There’s a place for you.”
Of that, I had no doubt. Mom always set a place for everyone, even when we weren’t there. When Nate was deployed or stationed somewhere else, there was always a place for him and his first wife.
When Ray was riding the rodeo circuit, there was always a place for him. When he moved back to the ranch after his accident and refused to see anyone, she still set a place for him.
Maybe that’s what hurt so much about Christian putting his foot down about this thing between Lennon and me. For years it had been Dad, Christian, and me running the ranch. Then Dad retired and it was only Christian and me.
Now I felt like a lone ranger.
“What’s the matter, kid?” I asked Gracie when I dropped into the seat between her and Bree.
The side of the table where my nieces sat, looking rather morose today, was safe. I wouldn’t have to hear about whatever shit Cassandra and the lodge and restaurant managers were cooking up.
“Nothing,” she grumbled into her bowl as she stabbed a bean over and over with her spoon.
I reached into the cast-iron skillet and snagged a piece of cornbread. “I don’t know about that. Why are you murdering your chili?”
“It’s about a boy,” Bree mouthed from her spot, catty-cornered to me.
“Ah.”
“It’s not about a boy,” Gracie snapped.
Geez. No wonder Christian was on edge these days. Two teenagers were a nightmare and I had barely been sitting between them for thirty seconds.
“Then what’s it about? Who do I get to kill?”
Bree snickered, but Gracie ground her teeth together.
I gently elbowed her.
Gracie huffed. “I’ve been talking to this boy named Jordan, and he invited me to go to the bonfire with him on Friday night, and I got all excited, but then he invited my friend Julie too. So now I don’t want to go because he invited her after he had already asked me to go with him. And when I told him I didn’t want to go, he told me I was making a big deal out of nothing.”
I made a show of mulling it over. “Grace, I think there’s only one thing you can do.”
“What?” she mumbled in the most sour tone I’d ever heard as she stabbed another bean.
“Change your name, move schools, and never be friends with anyone whose name starts with J.”
Bree snickered, but Gracie’s cracked smile made my heart soften.
“What’s that thing that Cass says all the time? Anyone whose name is spelled weird is a red flag? Add ‘J’ names to that. Jordan, Julie, Joe, James, Jessica, Jackson, Jonathan, Jenny. Red flags all around.”
Gracie let out a soft laugh. “I can’t not be friends with people because their names start with J.”
“Eat up, kid. You’ll figure it out.”
She stirred her spoon around in her chili, but it was less felonious than before. “What do you think I should do?”
Not go to a bonfire. Everyone knew what happened at those teenage hormone fests.
But I wasn’t her parent. That nightmare dilemma was Christian and Cassandra’s problem.
“Go anyway. Have a good time. Find some better friends while you’re there. If the J-names want to act foolish, let them. Don’t let their actions and choices get to you. Be your own person and what’s meant for you will find its way to you.” I shoveled in a bite. “And if you need to hide a body, call me.”
“Thanks,” Gracie said as she finally dug into her food.
“How’s the herd looking?” Nate asked from the other side of the table.
I nodded as I swallowed. “Good. Doc said everyone’s on track. Should be a busy calving season.”
“I bet the lodge guests will love having some baby cows to look at,” Brooke gushed. “I love calving season. It would be so fun if you had some bottle-fed calves up close to the property for people to help feed and love on.”
My cows did not need strangers to feed them or handle them in any way.
“No,” I clipped.
Ray bristled, straightening in his wheelchair as he glared at me for the tone I took with his wife. “You wanna try that again?”
Great. Now he was angry with me too.
I wiped my mouth and shoved away from the table. I had eaten enough to tide me over until I could scrounge up something at the bunkhouse.
“I’m heading out. See y’all later,” I grumbled.
Mom’s face fell as I stood. “Carson James...”
There it was. The double name everyone always used because I was always the one getting in trouble. Even in my thirties.
I remembered when everyone called me Carson. They’d shortened it to CJ after a particularly trying summer I spent following Nate around while he was home, trying to do what Christian was doing, and attempting to be like Ray.
“Thanks for dinner,” I said as I passed Mom and headed out the door.
Somehow, Cassandra was waiting for me on the porch. I hadn’t even noticed her slip out. Last I remembered, she was talking to Becks and Brooke about the upcoming Saturday afternoon they’d spend together in town.
“You blew me off.”
I kept walking. “When?”
“For our ride this afternoon.”
I paused.
When Cassandra first started working at the ranch, we got in the habit of taking afternoon trail rides together. She was shit with horses, hated everything, and needed a reprieve. Kind of like I was, except horses were the only things that tolerated me.
I scoffed. “We haven’t gone riding in months.”
“And whose fault is that?” she said as she pushed away from the porch and started after me down the stairs. “You’re the one who stopped showing up.”
“I had work to do.”
She let out a terrifying laugh. “Bullshit. You boys like to pretend like it’s work, work, work, sun up to sun down. But it doesn’t have to be that way, and you know it. You’re using those damn cows as an excuse to run away because you’re uncomfortable.”
“I already got an earful from Christian. I don’t need it from you too,” I said as I stomped over to Anny.
“I tried my best,” Cassandra called after me. “I’m sorry it wasn’t good enough.”
Two things struck me.
First, Cassandra apologized for something. That made me want to check the weather report for snow in hell.
Second, what was she talking about? What wasn’t good enough? I hated to admit it, but she had turned our struggling ranch into a destination. People were willing to pay a mortgage to stay there.
“I know you’re unhappy, and it’s my fault.” Cassandra’s expression softened to a state I had never seen it in before. She was always sporting her “hell hath no fury” look. “So, if you want to be pissed at someone, be pissed at me. Not your family.”
“You’re family.”
Her eyes widened.
I shrugged it off. “Got that new last name, right?”
But the truth was, Cassandra was more of a sister than a sister-in-law. We bickered and picked at each other, but we never meant anything by it.
Something had settled in me when she joined the ranch. Like a missing weight had balanced the scales.
Same with Becks. She had been holding down the fort long before Cassandra came to the ranch.
Brooke felt like the final piece of our family. She was the miracle that brought Ray out of the darkness after his accident.
I loved my sisters. So why did things still seem off kilter?
Cassandra followed me over to Anny and held her hand out, waiting to see if my horse was in an amicable mood or not.
Anny snapped at Cassandra’s hand, and Cass jumped back.
“See?” she said as she crossed her arms. “Anarchy used to tolerate me because we’d ride in the afternoons. Now she hates me again.”
I shrugged. “She’s antsy because of the storm coming in.”
My stomach soured as I hopped on Anarchy’s back and took in Cassandra’s face. She looked genuinely regretful, and that wasn’t an emotion she let slip around anyone.
“I know you lost a lot when we built the lodge and the restaurant,” she said. “But I hope you’ll stick around long enough to see what you’ve gained rather than what you lost.”
Anarchy stood still as Cassandra and I stared at each other.
Finally, Cass backed away. “Have a good night, Carson.”