Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
WAYLON
I had to admit Silas had done us a solid bringing his friend Devon to help with roundup. The man was magical on horseback. Even riding an animal he’d never seen before, he could cut like any wrangler I’d ever seen. When Silas had first told me about him, I’d thought the man was a polo player or an English-style rider who wouldn’t know the first thing about rounding up selected head from the herd.
After a few hours on the first full day of work, I knew I owed Silas one hell of a thank-you.
Maybe a thank-you shower since our apology showers had been so effective.
The day was long and hot. The sun baked through the shirt on my back, heating up my thighs in the saddle and running in rivulets from under my hat band. But I relished the physical work. A hard day on horseback was ten times better than an easy day in the office as long as I was outside moving.
Silas had driven the utility vehicle loaded with water and food Sheridan and Bo had supplied, Taza had quickly shown Silas how to anticipate which gates we needed help with when, and Sheridan and ZuZu helped transport the selected horses to the paddocks closest to the barn.
At one point during a break to grab a bite and to water the horses in a nearby stream, I took the opportunity to get to know Dev.
“Silas says you’re friends from college,” I began.
I’d already picked up on the fact he was a quiet man. Silas had mentioned a recent loss in his family, but I didn’t get the idea he was naturally outgoing or gregarious, even out from under the pall of grief.
“Yeah, a group of us did a project together,” he said, mouth softening into a slight smile. “Silas was the bossy one.”
I snorted. “No surprise there.”
“Right. And he hasn’t stopped bossing us all around since.” He seemed to wonder if he’d misspoken because he hurried on. “Don’t get me wrong. I love him. He’s one of the best men I know. All the broth—I mean, all the guys from that group… we became very close… all of them are like family to me.” He paused to take a deep breath. “I don’t know what I would have done without them these past few years.”
He stared out over the stream curving gently across the landscape, in counterpoint to the rugged mountains in the distance. Living in Majestic my whole life, the scenery was familiar. Homey. I didn’t always stop and admire it the way I should. Imagining how it must look through Dev’s eyes made me appreciate the patchwork of lush greenery, the hypnotic sway of the tall grasses in the breeze, the vibrant color of the wildflowers, and the quiet melody of the water in a whole new way.
“Bit different from New York, eh?” I offered.
“Huh?” Dev blinked at me, seeming lost in his own thoughts.
“New York,” I repeated. “That’s where you all live, right?”
“Oh. No.” Dev shook his head. “Zane’s a musician, so he’s in LA most of the time, especially when he’s recording like he is now. Landry travels all over. He does some modeling, and there are a couple of recurring jobs in Europe that keep him overseas a lot. Bash is definitely in New York. He has a new boyfriend and is trying to help him get his business off the ground.”
I nodded along, appreciating the intel. Silas kept a lot of his personal life to himself. He’d told me plenty about his sister, about his business. Other than telling me about his group of friends in vague terms, though, he hadn’t shared much. He tended to change the subject whenever I asked too many questions.
Dev regarded me thoughtfully, and I realized his quiet nature hid a keen insight.
Too keen.
“Why don’t you ask me what you really want to know?” he suggested.
I gritted my teeth and let out a breath. I hadn’t known what I’d been fishing for until he called me on it. “I want to know more about Justin.”
Dev’s eyebrows lifted. “Silas told you about Justin?” His lips turned down in an exaggerated frown. “Huh.”
“Yes. Sort of. No, not really,” I admitted, unable to even fudge the truth under Dev’s watchful eyes. “He’s mentioned him a little. I know Justin is his ex. And that Silas went to Vegas to stop Justin from marrying a woman who turned out to be as terrible as Justin.”
But I didn’t know how Justin was terrible. I didn’t know what he’d done to Silas that could make my levelheaded husband fly to Vegas to stop a wedding. And somehow, the fact that Silas never spoke of him suggested that, just like with his friends, there was a whole lot he wasn’t saying.
Dev shrugged. “Justin broke his heart.”
“Oh.” The truth stung. Be careful what you wish for, Waylon . “I see.”
“Silas craves being in charge. His self-assurance is through the roof. He trusts his own judgment more than anyone else’s, with the possible exception of Bash… Nah, actually, no. Silas trusts himself most of all. So when Justin betrayed him over a business deal, it broke Silas’s trust in his own ability to judge people. That is what broke his heart. He had to face his own fallibility.”
“Vegas is a long way away from New York.” I kept my eyes on the stream. “He must’ve been pretty angry.” Which meant he’d probably cared a whole hell of a lot about Justin at one time.
Dev shook his head, peering over my shoulder to make sure Silas was still too far away to overhear. “No. Silas went to Vegas because he’s a good man and wanted to save Justin’s fiancée from making a mistake. Only, it turned out, she didn’t want to be saved.” Dev met my eyes. “Even if Justin hadn’t turned out to be a lying user, though, he still wouldn’t have ended up being Silas’s life partner… or whatever Silas’s version of a happy ending is.”
“Why not?”
He hesitated and glanced back at Silas again, as if trying to figure out how much he could say to me without betraying his friend. Then he looked at me, as if he was trying to read my mind. He nodded to himself, as if coming to a decision.
“Silas needs to be needed. Serving others, helping them, brings him fulfillment. Justin was never going to admit to needing anything or anyone. He was all about himself.”
Dev’s words stayed with me the rest of the day as we continued separating horses out and moving them into place for loading up the next morning.
By the time night fell, Silas was sunburned and sore, but he still managed to cobble together a couple of sandwiches for us just before we showered and fell into bed. At 4:00 a.m., we started again.
This time, Sheridan and Silas stayed back at the barn to oversee the trailer pickups while Taza, ZuZu, and I continued to pull horses from the farther pastures.
When ZuZu and Taza left with the latest group, I hopped off Helios to close the gate and noticed a nearby horse stepping a little funny. Saya was one of our own mares and was most often used when ZuZu brought friends over for trail rides. I decided to check her shoes before leaving this pasture.
Just as I moved my hand down her fetlock and leaned into her to get her to shift her weight off that leg, a large bird took off noisily from a nearby tree, startling her and causing her to hop away from me. With my body weight already off-center from leaning against her, I fell toward her… which might not have been catastrophic if another nearby horse hadn’t also startled and lurched toward us.
Suddenly, I was pressed between two thousand pounds of muscular horse as they scrambled away from whatever had scared them. I tried kneeing and elbowing as much of their weight off me as I could, but my ribs, arms, and hips felt as battered as if I’d tumbled across a ship’s deck in a storm between two barrels of bricks.
After they both bolted away across the pasture, I was left writhing on the ground, trying to catch my breath. The guilty raptor dove and swooped above, meeting up with a second one, which explained the sudden and violent lurch out of the tree.
Thankfully, the horses stayed away as I struggled to breathe and assess my injuries. It felt like I’d been beaten up, but I didn’t think any of the damage was too serious. My radio remained securely strapped to Helios’s saddle, which did me a fat lot of good while I was too banged up to get to it.
Silas. I want Silas. Silas will fix this.
The thought was born from the childlike need for comfort after an injury, but it was there nonetheless. I couldn’t stop thinking about him and wanting him here. He was dependable. Confident. Take-charge. He would know what to do.
But he wasn’t here, and I was a grown-ass adult who needed to get his shit together.
I groaned and cursed myself for not paying closer attention to my surroundings earlier. Not that I would have known to anticipate the bird’s departure—it was simply one of those flukes that happened sometimes at just the wrong moment, catching a well-trained horse in a rare moment of vulnerability.
By the time Taza came back, I’d managed to stand up and call Helios to me so I could take a few deep gulps of water from the bottle in my saddle bag. I thought through the remaining work that needed to be done and wondered how the hell I was going to haul my sorry ass back into the saddle to finish out the day.
“What happened?” Taza said as he saw me moving gingerly.
I explained, pointing to the traitorous bird still wheeling above with its partner. Taza winced and offered help, but I sent him first to check on Saya and the other horse who’d spooked. Once he was done checking everything, ZuZu had ridden up.
“We thought you’d be done in here by now… Why are you holding your arm like that?”
I quickly explained that I wasn’t holding my arm but my side because of a tumble, and I was going to need to swap out with Sheridan or Dev for the rest of the day after hopefully getting my hands on some serious painkillers back at the barn.
Taza and ZuZu helped me get back in the saddle and insisted on escorting me in case I couldn’t keep my seat.
The ride was uncomfortable and made it clear that one of my hips had been bruised along with my side, shoulder, and thigh. Pain seemed to radiate everywhere, and all I could think of was my bed. Well… all I could think of was Silas and my bed. As silly as it sounded, I wanted him with me. I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him since my fall.
My head swam, and other body parts like my neck and back began to complain.
By the time we returned to the barn, I was keeping my seat by sheer force of will.
Sheridan saw me first and frowned, but before she could ask what happened, Silas came running, yelling over his shoulder at Dev to call an ambulance.
Thankfully, Sheridan cautioned him to wait until they could find out what happened.
I fell out of the saddle into Silas’s strong arms and felt my eyes burn in relief. “Fuck,” I whimpered. His grip on me was both painful and desperately reassuring.
“I got you, Way. What happened?”
I couldn’t get the words out past the sudden emotion clogging my throat. Instead of answering, I tucked my face into his chest and tried to focus on breathing. Thankfully, Taza and my sister relayed the story.
Dev approached and asked pertinent questions about my injuries, and Sheridan headed to the barn for ice and painkillers. Silas carefully moved me over to a nearby bench and sat me on it before crouching down in front of me.
“Do you want to go to the hospital?” His voice was solid but tender, and I could tell by the look in his eyes he was struggling not to boss me around.
I shook my head. “Need to finish?—”
“Absolutely not,” he snapped. “You can forget that right the fuck now.”
I caught ZuZu’s wide-eyed stare and noticed Sheridan trying to hide a smirk. Dev simply looked on in concern.
“But I?—”
Silas’s eyes were even more intense than usual. “Hospital or bed, Mayor. Your choice.”
It wasn’t the first time I’d been this tired and sore, but it was the first time in a long while that I had a crew in place I could trust to finish the job without me.
“Bed.”
Silas stood and began barking orders. He put Sheridan in charge of double-checking the stock that was being loaded, ZuZu in charge of pulling the next group from the paddock to the tie bars and checking them all over in the process. And then he charged Taza and Dev with gathering the next group of horses from the pasture.
I slumped on the bench and tried to think through anything we might have been forgetting, but my brain was too busy assessing my pain and discomfort to focus on the details of roundup.
When Silas came to escort me to the vehicle, I leaned more heavily on him than I’d hoped.
“Sorry,” I murmured. “I’ll be okay in a bit.”
Silas grunted his disagreement and settled me into the passenger seat before moving around to the driver’s side. Sheridan approached and said something to him. They talked too softly for me to make out, and then we were on our way home.
Silas helped me into the house and urged me to sit so he could help me off with my boots. I tried pulling off my shirt, but my shoulder complained too much. My head spun, and I wondered if it would be acceptable for me to simply throw my sorry, filthy ass into the bed as I was. Silas grumbled under his breath as he finished removing my clothes, revealing red bruises and a few scrapes from the rocky ground. With every visible injury, he winced, blew out a frustrated breath, or cursed.
When he yanked off his own clothes, I blinked at him. Was he getting into bed with me? “I… don’t think I’m up for…”
He rolled his eyes. “I’m washing you off, cowboy. Come on. I promise not to get fresh with you in the shower.”
Well, that was a first. While my libido was disappointed in the news, my stamina was vastly relieved. Silas led me to the shower and held on to me while gently soaping the dust and sweat off me. He handled me with such tenderness I couldn’t help but fall for him just a little bit more than before. More than I should have.
No one had ever taken care of me like that. Even my mother had never been the soft-hearted or coddling type. She’d been practical and traditional, raising her boys to “man up” and “get on with it” whenever we’d fallen or been hurt.
“Where’d you learn how to mother people?” I mumbled, feeling suddenly uncomfortable with the stew of emotions I was experiencing.
“It’s called basic human decency,” Silas said, but he didn’t meet my eyes with the words, and I wondered if he even believed them. Basic human decency would have been helping me into bed. Or helping me to the bathroom and then leaving me to my own devices.
This was something altogether different. As I watched his strong hands move along my skin, I couldn’t stop wondering what he was thinking.
Did he feel more responsibility for me because I was technically his husband? Was that triggering something in him, like a protective instinct or sense of obligation? Or would he have behaved this way with any other friend?
Had it been Dev who’d fallen out in the pasture…
I shook my head to clear it of images of Silas and Dev together in the shower. The very idea of the two of them together annoyed the fuck out of me.
“Did you and anyone in your group of friends ever…?” I asked before I could stop myself.
Silas’s eyebrows furrowed. “Ever…?”
“You know…”
When he still didn’t seem to understand, I made a noise of dismissal. “Never mind. I think the pain meds are kicking in. Ignore me.”
His eyebrows finally lifted in understanding, and his lips quirked up. “Did any of us ever hook up? Is that what you’re asking?”
“No. Never mind. Forget I asked.”
“The answer is yes.”
I blinked at him as my stomach dropped. “Oh.”
“Yeah. And it’s still going on. But no one else knows, so don’t tell Dev.”
“Oh. Yeah, no. Sure.”
I moved away from him and did a final rinse, suddenly feeling even more exhausted and battered than before. When I turned to look for a towel, my foot caught the sill, and I started to trip forward out of the shower enclosure.
Silas’s strong arms banded around me to keep me from damaging myself further. I felt incredibly stupid, klutzy, and needlessly jealous. It was humiliating, all of it.
“Easy,” he murmured behind my ear. “Let me grab a towel. Stay right here.”
I closed my eyes and pressed my lips together to keep from telling him to fuck off and stop being so kind, that I didn’t need his help.
As he moved the dry towel over me, heart-achingly gently, he began speaking casually as if he were giving me sandwich options.
“Bash and I suspect Kenji and Landry have something going on. Other than that, I don’t know of any hookups among us. I certainly haven’t done it. Haven’t even been tempted. Maybe we know each other too well, but we mostly see each other as brothers.”
I kept my eyes closed and nodded, trying like hell to appear as if I didn’t care more about what he said than I would about the sandwich options. In reality, my relief made me even dizzier than the fall had made me.
He dropped soft kisses on my shoulder, my side, my hip… I eventually realized he was laying featherlight kisses on all the places I hurt.
The gesture was too much. I was too weak to resist falling for him, and I couldn’t afford to let myself even consider having real feelings for him.
“Silas,” I breathed, worried about leaving my job half-done. “Please go?—”
“I am. I will. As soon as I get you settled in bed, I’ll go help finish, I promise.”
I opened my eyes to stare at him. “You will?” I’d fully expected him to stay and boss me around. And maybe part of me had hoped he’d stay and coddle me.
“Of course. I know you’re worried about roundup. I’ll make sure everything runs smoothly. Sheridan and Dev can handle it, I promise. And if there’s any question, I’ll come ask you.”
He wrapped an arm around me and walked me to the bed, yanking back the covers and urging me onto the mattress. The only body part of mine he could reach once I was settled in the nook was my foot, so he leaned down and kissed the top of it. “Rest. Stop worrying. Let others carry the load for once, Waylon. Let me help.”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I thought about what Dev had said earlier, about Silas’s need to help others.
“Okay,” I said.
Those two tiny syllables felt like the click of a lock releasing, a door opening.
My last thought before the pain meds finally pulled me under was that I’d done the unthinkable.
I’d fallen irrevocably in love with my husband.