Chapter Two #2
We fell into the old military rhythm without thinking. Rawley would call the measurement, I’d dig and drop the post, he’d make sure it was plumb, then I’d fill the hole and tamp the dirt. It was as close to peace as either of us got, but even then, the ghosts kept pace.
Sometimes, when the wind shifted, I could smell Carter’s shampoo—the green bottle he left on the shelf in the guest bathroom, the one he insisted was “for sensitive scalps.”
It was probably an $80 bottle, some imported Scandinavian bullshit, and I’d mocked him for it the first week he showed up. He’d laughed, tossing his head back, then handed me the bottle and dared me to try it.
I never did. But I stole a capful once, after he left, just to remember.
Rawley squinted at the sky, fingers twisting wire with quick, brutal efficiency. “Storm’s coming,” he said. “You sure you’re good to work all day?”
I slammed the auger down, spinning it into the soil with more force than was required. “Can’t work from bed, can I?”
He shot me a look, sharp and assessing. “Didn’t say you couldn’t. Just don’t want you keeling over halfway through.”
“I’m fine,” I said, and meant it less every time.
We worked in silence for a while, the only sounds the metallic whine of wire, the crunch of dirt under boots, and the distant bawl of a calf separated from its mother for the first time.
I knew how it felt.
Rawley’s phone buzzed in his shirt pocket. He fished it out, checked the screen, and answered with a grunt. “Steele,” he barked.
I tried not to listen, but I couldn’t help it. Ever since Carter left, every phone call felt like a potential landmine. My hands tightened on the post driver, knuckles whitening, as Rawley walked down the line with his back to me.
“Yeah,” he was saying, “the irrigation’s holding. We got the new pump installed last week.” A pause. “I said it’s fine, Barrett. If you want to send someone out to check, that’s your call.”
I exhaled slow, letting the tension bleed out through my arms. Barrett. Not Carter. Never Carter.
Rawley’s voice dropped, softer now. “You can tell Dad I don’t need his input. Not today.”
The conversation died. Rawley stared at the phone for a second, thumb running along the edge, then pocketed it like it was loaded. He came back and picked up the next roll of wire. “Family,” he said, as if the word explained everything.
“Never easy,” I offered.
He snorted. “You get along with yours?”
“Don’t have one,” I said, and left it at that.
Rawley didn’t push. He never did. He knew my story more than anyone.
We worked the rest of the line, finishing another fifty feet before the sun cleared the ridge and started baking the frost out of the ground. Sweat rolled down my back, soaking the flannel, and my forearms burned from the weight of the posts.
Good.
I needed to feel something.
At nine, we broke for water. Rawley leaned against the back of the truck, chugging from a battered metal thermos, eyes fixed on nothing.
“You ever think about getting out?” he asked, voice low.
“Out of Montana?” I wiped sweat from my face with the sleeve of my shirt.
“Out of the loop. Out of the rut.” He said it like he was talking to himself, not me.
I shrugged. “Don’t know how. Do you?”
He grinned, quick and sharp. “Nope. Guess that’s the trick.”
We drank in silence, passing the thermos back and forth. The sun was warm now, cutting through the last of the morning’s chill, and for a second it felt like maybe things could be simple.
But then Rawley’s phone buzzed again, this time with a text that made him go stiff.
“Problem?” I asked.
He showed me the screen. Just a string of words: “Board dinner this Friday. Family expects you to be there. Don’t embarrass us.”
I read it twice, then looked up. “You going?”
He shook his head, jaw set. “Not if I can help it. I might have agreed to limited contact with them, but that doesn’t mean I’m headed back to Texas.”
He tossed the phone into the cab and turned back to the fence, but I saw the tension in his shoulders. He worked faster, more violently, as if the wire could hold his problems together if he just pulled it tight enough.
Me, I just kept digging. My hands blistered, then bled, but I didn’t slow down. The pain was good. Real. It was easier to focus on the ache in my palms than the ache in my gut every time I thought about Carter.
He should have been here by now. He promised Rawley he’d stay a whole summer, help with the books, maybe even learn how to back a horse out of the barn without spooking it. But then he left in the middle of the night, no note, just a pile of laundry and a coffee mug with his initials on the bottom.
I’d told myself a hundred times that it was for the best. That I had nothing to offer him except a mattress that sagged in the middle and a body held together by trauma and duct tape.
But every time I saw his name in Rawley’s texts, every time the wind came off the pasture with that green-apple tang, I wanted to rip the world open and find a way to start over.
Rawley finished the last stretch of fence and clapped dirt from his gloves. “Lunch?”
I nodded, throat too dry to speak.
We drove back to the house, windows rolled down, letting the wind whip the sweat from our faces. I could tell Rawley wanted to say something else, but he waited until we were parked and halfway up the steps to the porch.
“You know he’s not coming back, right?” Rawley said, not looking at me.
My mouth went dry. “Who?”
He gave me a sideways look, like I was the world’s worst liar. “You know.”
I thought about denying it, but what was the point? “Yeah,” I said. “I know.”
He nodded, then went inside, the screen door banging behind him.
I stood on the porch a minute longer, letting the sun burn my skin.
The world was too quiet, like it was waiting for something to happen.
I wanted to punch the siding, to scream, to call Carter and demand an explanation.
But I didn’t. Instead, I wiped my hands on my jeans, went inside, and ate two cold sausages from the fridge without tasting them.
The afternoon was more of the same. Mending, hauling, sweating, breaking, repeating.
Every so often I’d check the horizon, half-expecting to see a rental car crawling up the drive, Carter behind the wheel with his hair all wild and his eyes rimmed in gold.
But there was only the wind, and the endless stretch of land that refused to forget anything.
By four, my muscles were soup. I finished the last of the day’s chores, wiped my face, and headed for the barn. I had a ritual now: check the horses, sweep the aisle, then sit on the hay bale where Carter and I had sat that night, just to remind myself it really happened.
I was halfway through sweeping when my phone vibrated in my pocket. I fished it out, hope blooming and dying all in the space of a heartbeat. It was Burke, texting from the feed store: “You want the good hay or the cheap shit?”
I thumbed back, “The good. Always.”
But my hands shook after, the adrenaline dump leaving me weak. I stared at the phone, thumb hovering over Carter’s contact. I still had his number. I still had every message he ever sent me, even the dumb memes and the one-word answers.
I wanted to text him. More than that, I wanted to hear his voice, even if he just told me to fuck off.
But I didn’t. I set the phone down, finished the sweep, and sat on the hay bale, elbows on knees, breathing in the dust and the memory of what could’ve been.
This was how you paid penance in Montana: in sweat, and silence, and all the words you never got to say.
The barn was empty, but for a second, I swore I could hear Carter’s laugh, soft and unguarded, echoing off the rafters. I held onto the sound until it faded, then stood up, squared my shoulders, and went to finish the day’s work. One foot in front of the other, just like always.
Maybe tomorrow I’d be strong enough to call.
* * * *
If you want to know when a day is about to go to hell, listen for the way time slows right before impact. The afternoon had been steady, the kind of predictable that makes you believe nothing could knock the world off its axis.
I was tossing fifty-pound bags of feed into the bin with Burke, working through the list and feeling, for once, like maybe tomorrow I really would call Carter. Maybe I’d find the words, or at least an apology.
The sun slanted low, drenching the yard in that high-summer gold, dust floating in the air like fallout from some distant explosion. The only other sounds were the engine tick of the truck and the chorus of flies buzzing over the sugar beet pile.
That’s when I heard it: the crunch of tires on gravel, not the lazy roll of a local, but the careful, tentative approach of a rental car. Out-of-towners always drove like they were waiting to see if the road would turn on them.
Burke cocked his head. “We expecting visitors?”
“Not that I know of,” I said, squinting through the sunlight. The car—a compact, silver, city model—slowed at the edge of the drive, then coasted to a stop by the barn. Dust billowed up, blurring the world for a second.
My body went cold, every nerve locking up. My arms were full of a sack of grain, but the weight didn’t register. I watched the car door open, slow like a movie scene.
Then he stepped out.
Carter. Hair longer than I remembered, tied back with a blue band that looked like it had cost less than a dollar. No suit, no silk—just jeans, a massive black sweater that swallowed his frame, and boots that still had the store tags half-torn on one heel.
He stood for a moment, taking in the ranch like it was the last place on earth he ever thought he’d see again. I could see his chest rise and fall, shallow at first, then steadying. He shut the door, hands trembling, and adjusted the bag over his shoulder.
Even from fifty yards away, I could tell something was off, but my brain wouldn’t process the data.
Burke let out a low whistle. “Well, fuck me sideways. Didn’t think the city boy would make it back before frost.”
I set the feed bag down, missing the edge of the bin and dropping it to the ground with a dull thud. “Watch it,” I snapped, though my voice was hoarse. I brushed past him, feet dragging me forward before my head could catch up.
Rawley must’ve heard the car, too, because he barreled out of the barn, wiping his hands on a rag, his face pinched with confusion. He froze halfway across the yard, staring at Carter like he was a ghost or a debt collector.
No one spoke.
We just stood there, the three of us caught in a standoff.
Carter broke first. He walked toward us, boots sinking into the soft dirt, face set in this blank, unreadable expression. He looked up at Rawley, then at me, and for a split second, something like hope flickered in his eyes.
“Hey,” he said, voice small.
Burke snorted and spat, then stage-whispered, “Awkward,” before heading back to the truck.
Rawley didn’t budge, but I saw his Adam’s apple bob like he was trying to swallow his own confusion. “What are you doing here?” Rawley managed, tone flat but not hostile. “I thought you weren’t planning on coming back.”
Carter shrugged, shifted the bag higher on his shoulder. “Just needed to see the place.” He cut a glance at me, then away, like he was afraid of what he’d find.
I stepped closer, barely breathing. Up close, I could see the changes: the slight puffiness under Carter’s eyes, the paler skin, the new angles of his jaw. I looked for bruises, for injuries, for anything that might explain why he’d been gone so long and come back looking like this.
That’s when I saw it. The shape under the sweater, rounded and new, the faint curve of his belly outlined in the afternoon light. My brain blanked, then filled with white noise.
“You’re—” I started, but the words stuck.
Carter’s mouth twisted into a half-smile, brittle and exhausted. “Yeah, I am.”
The silence that followed was nuclear.
I wanted to reach for him, to close the gap and touch him just to prove he was real. But my feet stayed rooted, useless.
He looked at me, eyes rimmed red, and for a second I saw everything he’d been carrying. Every ounce of fear and pride and shame. “I don’t need anything from you,” he said, barely above a whisper. “I just—I wanted to tell you before—”
Rawley started to say something, but I cut him off with a look. He held up both hands, surrendering, then turned and went back to the barn.
That left just the two of us.
We stood in the empty yard, neither willing to close the gap. The wind picked up, tugging hair loose from Carter’s ponytail, sending a curl across his cheek.
“You look tired,” I said, and immediately regretted it.
He huffed a laugh. “You try puking every morning for three months, see how fresh you look.” His hand hovered over his belly, unconsciously protective.
I nodded, throat closing up. “Is it—” I didn’t finish the sentence.
I couldn’t.
“It’s yours,” he said. “And yes, I’m sure.”
The bite in his tone surprised me.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Why didn’t you stay?” He shot back, eyes blazing. “Why did you run?”
My jaw clicked shut. I tried to find the words, any words, but they’d abandoned me. I settled for the truth, ugly and raw. “I thought I’d fucked everything up. I thought you’d hate me, or worse.”
He stared at me, unblinking. “I didn’t hate you. I just wanted to know if it mattered, if I mattered.”
The space between us was a canyon, but he bridged it first, stepping forward until we were close enough to share a shadow. He looked up at me, daring me to flinch.
I didn’t.
We stood like that, the sun sliding down and the world holding its breath.
“I don’t want anything from you,” Carter said, voice softer now. “I just—wanted to tell you in person.”
The urge to protect, to claim, to fix, boiled up in my chest. Every instinct screamed to pull him in, to make him safe. But I remembered the look in his eyes that night, the way he’d never been owned by anyone, not even his own family.
So I did the only thing I could. I put my hand over his, warm against the curve of his belly, and asked, “Are you okay?”
He laughed, a sound I hadn’t heard in months. “No. Not even close.”
“Me either,” I said.
He nodded, as if that was all the answer he needed.
The sun dipped lower, painting everything in fire. I didn’t know what would happen next, or if I even deserved another chance. But for the first time since Carter left, I could breathe.
We stood together, two broken halves, with a world of possibility balanced between us.
And I finally understood: some things you can’t fix with work, or words, or wounds. Some things you just have to hold onto, no matter how much they scare you.
The last of the sun disappeared behind the hills, and I let myself hope.
Tomorrow, maybe, I’d tell him everything.