Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
W est headed up to the house, girding his loins to take Trey and the kids into town.
Oh, he wasn’t worried about the kids. They were just kids. They had their moments, both good and bad.
It was Trey he was worried about. He got the feeling, every time he was around, that Trey was, like, three seconds away from losing his shit. He was on that razor edge.
West had seen it with rodeo guys who had been injured and had to retire too early. They had given up everything they loved, and they were right on the verge of giving up on life.
So West needed to walk a fine line.
“Morning, West,” Mark, the housekeeper told him. “How’s it going?”
He took his hat off to enter the house. “Good. Good. How are you?”
“Honestly? I’m worried about Trey. I think he needs a nanny, or a seeing eye dog, or—” Mark stopped, took a deep breath. “I mean, don’t get me wrong. I love working here, I love my job, I love being a housekeeper, I love cooking. I even really like the kids. But I’m not a babysitter or an educator, and let’s be honest, Trey really needs something to do. I’ve talked to Race, and apparently this man used to have this huge life traveling and selling businesses and doing this and doing that and now?” Mark rolled his eyes. “He’s teaching a two-year-old how to wipe her butt. Good work, sure, but I think maybe he’s going a little bit crazy. No offense. Honest. This comes from a place of love.”
West wasn’t certain exactly why Mark was confiding in him. It wasn’t as if he and Trey were still lovers, or even still friends. Hell, Mal was Trey’s best friend. Not him.
Maybe Mark just needed someone he thought was as new to this whole Trey situation as he was. Someone to bounce ideas off.
“Well, I think he just needs to be able to do his own work. I’ll talk to him about a nanny. He was saying he was going to get someone in from the service.” He tapped his hat against his thigh, trying not to get all agitated. Trey wasn’t his problem to solve.
Running the ranch was.
Even if he wanted to take it all on his shoulders to help Trey.
“Oh, I’m just blowing off steam. Don’t get yourself fired. I know that he’s just being picky about who he wants around his kids. That makes sense. Of course he wants to be like sure and stuff, especially with the whole blind thing. So there’s that. And nannies are expensive. I was just worried. It was a bad morning. Ignore me.” Mark glanced down. “Please don’t tell him. I said anything. I was just blowing off steam, I swear.”
One of his eyebrows winged up. “What happened this morning?”
“Oh, apparently Zoe wet the bed. And Noah just….” Mark rolled his eyes, lips twisting. “He just had a meltdown. I guess it’s really hard for him. He really misses his mom. And it’s weird, huh? Because you think, you know, kids get tired during the day and they start to wear down and then they have their temper fits and stuff. Not Noah. The mornings are challenging for him. But I have to say, Mr. Trey figured it out. So just don’t say anything.”
Zoe came out in a bright little sundress, her black ringlets bouncing all around her head, eyes like little shiny buttons. She stopped, staring at them. “Hi.”
West found her a smile. “Hey, little girl, how you doing? Are you ready to go shopping?”
“Uh-huh. Pack pack.” She twirled and her little rainbow-colored skirt billowed out.
“Isn’t she cute?” Mark clapped. “Go find your shoes, huh?”
“Flop-flops.”
“Your flip-flops should be fine, honey. They’re by the door.” Trey came in with a vicious black eye, a red line bisecting it as if he had been hit with something flat and sharp.
“Jesus, what happened to you?”
Trey shrugged. “We had a bad morning. Thanks for offering to drive us, West. I appreciate it.”
Trey was as fine as frog hair split three ways in his simple T-shirt and jeans. The sunglasses and ball cap just finished the look off. “You don’t have to worry about making dinner tonight, Mark. I know it’s your night off. Have a good weekend. I’ll either buy something for the kids, or we’ll pick something up on the way home. Don’t worry about us.”
“Oh no, sir, I wouldn’t dare worry about you and the stove…”
“Don’t tease the blind person.”
Noah came out head down, dressed and ready to go, but expression so sullen, glaring at Trey, his little arms crossed over his chest.
“Are you ready to go?”
Noah wouldn’t look Trey in the face. “Uh-huh.”
“All right.” Trey glanced at West. “How about you? Are you ready to go?”
“I am.” This was going to be a long damn day if these guys didn’t all get along.
He took a deep breath, then let it out as he followed everyone outside. Someone had pulled a big Escalade up in front of the house, the back a wall of car seats.
He got Zoe, then Noah settled, then hauled his ass in next to Trey. He took a minute to familiarize himself with all the controls before heading out.
“So, what’s first on the agenda, Trey?” he asked, breaking the silence, which had been only relieved by little Zoe kicking her feet.
“I guess we’ll should go to the Walmart in Trinidad. They should have all the school lists and everything—all the things we need. Backpack, supplies, shoes, jeans, a lunchbox.”
He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Trey in a Walmart. Hell, he hadn’t known that Trey knew what a Walmart was. Fascinating. “Sure, honey.”
“Good deal.” Trey pressed his lips tight, and somehow West knew, just knew that Trey had guessed what he was thinking, and that embarrassed the fire out of him, and his cheeks started to burn.
“That’s all right. If you don’t mind, we can do the dry goods stuff at the Walmart. Then we can all have lunch and then maybe stop at Safeway. That way, I can get food for the weekend, just serve the kids stuff that’s easy.”
“Because you don’t cook,” Noah sing-songed.
“Nothing fancy, that’s for sure,” Trey agreed.
“That’s because your eyes don’t work.” Noah was going to push and push, and West got it, he was hurting, but this was harsh.
Trey ducked his chin, expression bland as cheese. “Don’t you know it. They do not work well at all.”
“Why not?” Zoe asked.
“The blood vessels in my eyes started exploding, and they’re leaking.”
Noah frowned, chewing on his bottom lip. “How come they’re not bright red then?”
Trey shrugged. “Because it doesn’t work that way. It would be cool though, wouldn’t it? To have red eyes like a monster. Maybe I’ll do that for Halloween, get some contacts and have red eyes.”
West didn’t love the idea of Trey putting contacts in. It felt unsafe, somehow.
Noah shot them a look. “Is Halloween close?”
“Well, it’s the end of August, so we have all of September, and Halloween is the very last day of October, so eight-ish weeks.”
West remembered one amazing Halloween where Trey had dressed as Loki, complete with horns and black leather. He’d had no idea when he’d gone to pick Trey up for the party they were going to, and he’d almost dropped his teeth in his lap.
Lord. He didn’t need to be thinking of that around these kids. “So, where do y’all like to eat here in town?” he asked, hoping to engage the kids.
“Froyo,” Zoe piped up right away.
Trey chuckled. “She’s obsessed with froyo. But we have to eat lunch first, kiddo.”
“I like Bob and Earl’s,” Noah said. “They all have good soup.”
“Then we’ll go there.” Trey glanced at him, sunglasses hiding his eyes. “Right?”
“Surely. Walmart first.” He’d kind of been hoping for Tequilas, but he’d live.
“Did you go to school here like me?” Noah asked West. “Dad didn’t. He says he went to school, uh, somewhere else..”
“My parents lived in Denver. I went to school in an academy there and then I went away for high school. I came back to the ranch in the summers and on spring break. This is where my grandparents lived,” Trey explained.
West smiled in the rearview mirror. “I didn’t go to school here in this town, but I went to a school just like it, just a little one with not many kids. It’ll be great. I think you’re going to like kindergarten. You get to learn things and make friends. Go to parties. There’s all sorts of things that you can do.”
The little boy gave a long-suffering sigh. “What if they don’t like me?”
“Well, why wouldn’t they like you, son?” They turned onto the highway, the road smoothing out, the sun shining in on them.
Noah paused, then blew out a long stream of air. “Because sometimes I get really mad. Sometimes I do stupid things like throw things and hurt my dad. And I know that it’s wrong but sometimes I do it anyway. And I can’t stop it.”
Trey shook his head. “That’s why you go and see your therapist and talk to them about it. That’s why she helps you find ways to not be so mad or when you are so mad to talk about it. Everyone goes through things and we just learn to deal with them. Like sometimes we can say ‘oh I’m very mad. I need to go hit clay’.”
“Assuming Clay is not somebody’s name, right?” West muttered under his breath, and Trey whacked him right in the thigh, hard enough to sting.
“Be good.”
What fun was that? That was the first real smile he’d seen today, and he liked it. A lot.
“Could I have some clay to hit if I get mad?”
“I don’t see why not. We can get you both some clay for sure. Then you can make a horse or a me or a ball. When you get angry, you can just hit it with your fist as hard as you want to. And let yourself feel mad, but then you have to let go a little bit or you’re going to be very unhappy.”
Christ, this was like a hell of a row to hoe for these kids and Trey. Here, let me let me take your mom, and then let you have a dad who doesn’t have any way to see, and you have to start school too.
It all felt too much and he was a grown-up.
“Are you mad at me?” Noah’s voice was so very small.
Trey turned in his seat to face Noah. “No, honey. I’m not mad at you. I’m sad for you because I know that you don’t want to be mad all the time. But, you know what, guys?”
Both kids said no, and Trey continued. “I’d really like to have a good day today now. Pick out new backpacks, some new shoes, buy some colors and some coloring books and stuff for school, a lunch box. Have lunch. All those fun things. We can go have a good day. It doesn’t have to be a bad day all day long just because the morning was bad.”
West wanted to agree, but he kept his mouth shut on all the things he wanted to add. This was Trey’s roadshow, not his.
“Okay.” Noah smiled, he saw it in the rearview. “I want it to be a good day. I’m sorry.”
Trey kept it easy, with a smile and a casual shrug, but West could see the way those shoulders relaxed. “I am too, kiddo. I know it’s so tough. So, from here on out, we have shopping, soup, and froyo, and we just sing silly songs and maybe Mr. West will take the long way home.”
“Oh, now, I like a nice drive,” West put in. “Just a pretty view, huh?”
“I like cars,” Zoe said, still kicking.
“Do you? Why?”
“‘Cause cars go bye-bye. I like to go bye-bye.”
Noah bobbed his head. “Me too. I like to go and see new stuff.”
Trey glanced at him. “There hasn’t been a lot of new stuff for a while. It’s hard because I’m not the safest driver on Earth.”
That seemed to be a bit of an understatement, but who was he to argue? He was just here to drive and make things a little bit easier. “Well, we can hire a cowboy whose main job is driving. No sweat. I can keep him busy when you aren’t running.”
Trey sighed softly, shoulders going up around his ears. “I want the meds to work.”
“Sure you do.” He wasn’t going to get into that in front of the kids. “But for now, you know some drover would love to shuttle everyone around. I’ll make sure he or she is the most responsible one I hire.” These were precious cargo, Trey and the children.
“Okay. That’s…reasonable.”
Yeah, reasonable, safe, functional. Trey needed calm, he reckoned. Someone who could make decisions who wouldn’t get freaked out.
“Cool.” He grinned, heading down the highway toward Trinidad.
“Cool!” Zoe threw her hands up, waving them madly.
Trey chuckled. “You are so lucky you’re the new guy,” he murmured.
“I know it. Let’s grab it while it lasts.”
“Yeah. She’s pretty easy to deal with.”
“She’ll have her moments.” He’d seen more than one rodeo little one who lost their shit when they got old enough to understand why everyone whispered.
“Don’t we all?”
“Lord, yes.” West snorted. “I have one or two daily.”
“Some things never change.”
West was quiet a moment, then a light chuckle broke out. “I guess that’s true, huh?”
“Yes. Some things do, for sure, but some don’t.”
West didn’t answer. He just drove, little Zoe’s singing filling the silence.
He thought Trey dozed off, the car and the sun making the world lazy and sleepy.
He pulled in at the Wally World, and they all piled out to shop. Zoe danced through the store, and Noah actually started smiling, and it was all good.
Trey drove the cart, and it wasn’t until West touched his arm to steer him to the left that he realized how terrified Trey was. There were fine beads of sweat on Trey’s upper lip, his nostrils flared.
“Hey,” he said, pitching his voice low. “I’m right here. I got a bead on both kids. You just breathe. Never let them see you sweat.”
“I haven’t been out with both kids before,” Trey whispered. “I can’t do this.”
“You can. I got you. And they know. Like, they’re right here. Neither is trying to wander off.” West kept his voice low. It was soothing, he hoped, and Trey breathed in, then out. “Just hang in there, honey. Seriously.”
West didn’t see how Trey was gonna have a choice but to deal. There was only so much a man could order online. “Hello. I’m right here. I’m not going to let anything happen. This is something that kids need, so let’s do it, all right?”
Please, man. These kids need this. Just cowboy up and fight through it.
Trey bobbed his head, those lips still tight. “I just need to get him his stuff. Little bit, too. Zoe needs some school supplies.” Trey made those finger quote dealies.
Good man. “All right, so he’s going into kindergarten?”
“Yes.”
There were all these pieces of paper with all of these lists of supplies, and there it was, kindergarten. Okay, that was easy. They had ten thousand things they needed. “I have the list so…”
Trey managed to find a smile.. “Right on. All right, guys, now we have to pick things out. First, let’s start with the backpacks, then we can fill them.”
Zoe’s eyes were huge. “I can have one too?”
“Yes, you can have one too, and?—”
Noah shook his head at Trey. “No. She’s not going to school. Only me. I’m the kindergartener.”
West found himself wanting to growl, but Trey smiled as if it was no big deal. “She might be going to daycare one or two days, you never know. Or she can use it to carry her stuff around. You’re her big brother, and she thinks you’re amazing. She wants to be just like you.”
Noah puffed up a little bit. “She can’t be. I’m the big brother.”
“Yep. And she loves you so much. Let her have a backpack.”
To both Trey and Noah’s credit. Noah pondered it and then let it go. “Okay, but she can’t have the same kind I have.”
“I think that’s fair.”
“Look at this pack-pack!” Zoe cried. “It’s got unicorns!”
Noah rolled his eyes. “It’s rainbow sparkles. So little kid.”
“Well, you just said she’s littler than you,” West pointed out. “What all do you like?”
“Um. Super Mario? Gru from Despicable Me . Sometimes I like superheroes.”
“That works.” West knew from being around kids all the damn time at the various places he’d worked that it was better to give them a few choices and narrow it down rather than let them have dozens of confusing ones. Zoe had clearly made up her mind, so…
“There’s a Gru one,” he pointed out.
“Oh, it’s cool. It’s not Minions . Everybody else will have Minions , I bet. Oh, it comes with a Minions pencil case. I wonder if I can get a lunch box that’s Minions .”
“What’s lunch box?” Zoe asked.
“It’s a box where I’ll have a sandwich and a cookie and chips and a juice box. And when it’s lunchtime at school, we have that.” Someone had obviously gone over this with Noah.
Zoe frowned. “Lunch is at home.”
“Oh, sweetheart. Noah’s going to go to school. So he won’t come home until after lunch,” Trey explained.
She shook her head. “No. I go too. My brudder.”
Man, this was gonna be hard to explain.
“Come on, kiddos. Let’s go get crayons.” Trey was really good at that whole distract-and-deflect thing. West had to admit it was impressive.
Also, the busier Trey was, the better he functioned.
Noah did end up going with the Minions lunch box, and Zoe pouted like she’d never even heard of one when he picked it up. They did manage to get all the stuff on the list including Kleenex and wet wipes and tongue depressors and plastic spoons.
“I get doing crafts with tongue depressors, man, but plastic spoons.” West couldn’t imagine.
“Forky!” Zoe hollered, and he stared at her for a second.
Trey shrugged. “Don’t ask. You got me. I don’t remember using plastic spoons in kindergarten.”
“You didn’t even go to kindergarten,” West shot back.
“Private kindergarten is still kindergarten. Don’t be an ass.”
“Da, you said a cuss.” Noah lit up every time he caught Trey doing something wrong. At some point, Trey was just going to explode.
“I did. Now let’s buy jeans.”
Soon there was a basket full of T-shirts and sweatshirts and jeans and shoes and underwear, socks and little dresses and sweat suits and a handful of brightly colored hair doolies.
“Is there anything else we need? Foodwise, do you think?”
Was there anything left in the store? West shook his head no. “You said we were going to go to the Safeway after lunch. That way we don’t have to worry about the heat.”
“Right, so the toy section.”
Oh, someone spoiled these children. “Have they earned a visit to the toy section?”
“Yes, no one ate anyone. Count this as a win.”
“Okay.” He would take Trey’s word for it. By the time each kid had picked out a toy, Zoe was getting fussy, and West’s jaw hurt, and he wondered how Trey did this all day.
“Someone is hungry, huh, girlfriend? Let me check Bob and Earl’s page and make sure they’re open today, okay, Noah?”
“Okay.” Noah shrugged as if it didn’t matter, but West had a feeling it would go poorly if the place was closed.
“Score. Okay, West. To downtown.”
“You got it.”
“Do we really have to go to the Safeway too?” Noah asked. “We could just order a lot of food at the restaurant and take it home.”
Instead of snapping like West expected—and wouldn’t blame Trey for, to be honest—Trey smiled like that was the best answer ever. “Wouldn’t that be fun? To just order all the food at the restaurant and then? Nom nom nom, eat it all up. It would be super, super crazy expensive, though, and probably not tasty.” Trey tilted his head. “What I can do, though, is make an order at the Safeway while we’re driving and then we can pick it up after we get done eating lunch.”
“That would be cool,” Noah agreed, offering Trey a smile.
“Super cool!” Zoe yelled, then said. “Ouch cream?”
“I will totally get some ouch cream, sister.”
Lord help him. West had to admit that, as bad as Trey thought he was doing, he was really, really doing a great job. He was functioning, he was dealing. He’d dealt without a housekeeper, he was dealing without a nanny. The son of a bitch had this.
Trey just got on his phone and, in between talking to the Safeway app and having it read stuff to him, he had managed to order stuff for sandwiches and breakfasts, along with some Little Debbie snack cakes, frozen pizzas, grapes, and a shit ton of ice cream ranging from vanilla to Rocky Road and a couple of flavors in between. All to be picked up in an hour and a half.
That was pretty damn amazing.
“Online ordering I understand on a deep personal level, trust me.”
“Did you remember to get orange juice, Da?”
“Thanks, Noah. Good catch.”
They pulled into the little downtown, and everybody got out of the car. The kids were a little grumpy, a little hungry.
West was unbelievably grateful that Trey had managed to get it to where they could have the groceries put in the truck. He wasn’t sure he could manage going through the grocery store with Trey, much less with Trey and the kids.
He’d been out of circulation for a bit. His last job had been pretty… isolated. And the cracks were showing right now. West felt a little… brittle.
Bob and Earl’s smelled damn good when they walked in, though, and he breathed in deep. Food would go a long way to improving his mood.
“I know, right?” Trey said softly, picking up his inhale, he guessed. Wild. “What are the specials?”
He glanced at the board even as he grabbed the standard menu. “Uh. Breakfast burrito is ham, egg, and cheese with a green chile bechamel. There’s a quiche…” He shuddered. “Tomato basil soup and a three-cheese grilled cheese. And, uh, some kind of dessert that I can’t pronounce.”
“They have burgers and stuff, too. Fish and chips, which I know you like.”
“You remembered.” That pleased him more than was reasonable.
“I remember everything about you,” Trey said. The words were sure and a touch flat.
West wasn’t certain if that was good or bad, but that didn’t matter because he was not going to let this fuck with his day any more than it had to.
“Good.” It seemed like the most reasonable answer.
They got seated—Zoe with a booster chair, but Noah refused one, choosing to sit with his feet curled up underneath him. Both kids got a placemat and crayons to color with.
West watched with fascination.
Zoe was still at the stage where she grabbed a crayon and zigzagged across the page furiously, talking to herself and telling herself stories.
Noah was more careful, drawing circles and rays for suns and stick figures. Little square and triangle houses, that sort of thing.
He guessed that was normal. He didn’t know, but he did know the kids had a therapist who came in once a week to help and talk to them. So surely if one of them wasn’t right, someone would have told Trey.
“What are you guys thinking about eating? You want grilled cheese, sister? Or do you want chicken nuggets?”
“Nugs, nugs. Nugs, nugs.” She never even hesitated.
“Soup and sandwich. Chicken soup,” Noah said, “And a sammich.”
“Great. Chicken soup, cheese sandwich, chicken nuggets and fries. I think I’m going to go with the breakfast burrito. It sounds really really tasty and easy to eat.” Trey slumped back into the chair. “And I need coffee.”
“I heard that.” The server grinned. “Hey, guys. I like the colors. Coffee. Sir?” She looked at West.
“Coke, please.” He thought he would try the fish and chips.
They ordered it all, and she brought some fresh bread, which was amazing. He thought that wasn’t so much standard as it was something to keep the kids happy, and Trey gave each one of them half a slice with some butter.
Trey was doing way better than he thought he was, to be honest.
“I really appreciate you doing all this for us today.”
As if he wouldn’t have helped. Even if Trey hadn’t been…Trey, even if they hadn’t had the past that they did, West wasn’t an asshole. He couldn’t have let this little family swing. “It was my pleasure.”
Trey pursed his lips. “Yeah, rounding up horses is easier work.”
“Oh God, yes.” The words popped right out of his mouth, causing both he and Trey to chuckle.
“Now that we got that over with, tell me. How bad of shape is the ranch actually in?” Trey sipped his coffee. “I mean, I know that when Ethan left, it was a mess. I know Ben says that it’s just fine, but you know, I worry.”
“It needs some basic work, some basic upkeep, but it wasn’t left so long that the center didn’t hold. You know, it’s a good setup, you just needed someone who cared about it to come in and do the work.”
Trey’s lips tightened a little bit more. “You know, I do care about the place. I know that everyone goes on about how I didn’t care and I’m not this and I’m not that. I had different dreams, sure, but when Granny needed me, I came back.”
“All right.” West had always reckoned that Trey had come back when his eyesight had gotten bad and happened to be there when Miz Matheson died. “Nobody’s saying you can’t cowboy up.”
That earned him wide eyes. “Sure they are. Everyone says that, including you, so don’t bullshit me.”
“Da!” Noah stared at Trey, face a study in overacted shock. “You said a cuss again!”
Trey took a deep breath, held it as if he’d taken a hit off a spliff, and let it out. “Sorry, son. I’m gonna start giving you guys a quarter every time you catch me.”
Noah’s eyes went wide. “Yeah? Cool!”
“Yeah, cool,” Zoe agreed, still mangling her place mat.
Once the kids stopped paying attention, West leaned closer. He needed Trey to hear him. “I never said that. I didn’t think you couldn’t cowboy up.”
Trey rolled his eyes and damn, it was unnerving watching him try to focus on part of West’s face, trying to see more of him. “You don’t have to lie. It’s okay. I wanted to do something other than ranching, and I did it. I was successful at it, and I made a small fortune. I sold for enough to where I don’t have to work another day in my life and I can send my kids to college without counting on income from the ranch. I’m not ashamed of that.”
“Then stop acting like you are.” West sighed. “And by someone who cares, I meant the foreman. You got shafted by the last guy.”
West didn’t want to fight. He surely didn’t. But he did want to shake Trey and tell him he wasn’t the enemy.
He wasn’t, dammit.
“I know.” Trey pulled back into himself like a turtle in a shell. “Sorry.”
“Da-rn it, Trey…”
Trey smiled, the expression forced. “Want some bread?”
And just like that, he’d been pushed away.
Again.
Seemed like that was their damn theme song.