Rope Me Down

Chapter 1 Boone

Boone

The phone rings at two forty-seven am on a Wednesday, which means it’s Marcus. No one else ever calls me this late. My sons know better. Suppliers stick to business hours. And anyone worth talking to is either already under my roof or smart enough to wait until morning.

I set down my glass, bourbon, two fingers, the last of the night.

I’d been on the back porch, watching heat lightning stitch across the far ridge, counting seconds between flashes the way my father taught me: four seconds per mile.

That puts the storm somewhere over Dawson’s old wheat fields, moving slow, taking its time like summer storms do out here when nothing stands in their way.

The phone buzzes again on the kitchen counter, rattling against the wood.

I take my time getting up and crossing the kitchen.

The tile is cool under my bare feet and the window above the sink is cracked open.

The air smells like dust and hay and the heavy green weight of rain that hasn’t broken yet.

Everything feels tense, waiting for something to break and the fact that Marcus is still calling tells me everything I need to know.

I pick up on the fourth buzz.

“Yeah?”

“Dad.” His voice comes off clipped, already defensive before anyone’s accused him of anything.

He slurs just enough that I know he’s been drinking, but not so much that he can’t hold the performance together.

Marcus has always been good at controlled deterioration, just enough mess to seem human, never enough to seem weak.

“I need you to listen before you say anything.”

I lean against the counter and wait for the absolute chaos he’s about to introduce into my life. His brothers are nothing like him. I don’t have to worry about late-night calls of any kind from those men, mostly because they’re a few doors down from mine under my own goddamn roof. Marcus, however,…

“I got picked up. It’s not a big deal, it’s not—some bullshit at Halston’s party. Someone called the cops about the noise and they just started booking everyone who was still inside. Half of them were asleep on the couches. The whole thing’s going to get thrown out.”

“Okay.” I’m not sure why Marcus wants to make this my problem. He made it very clear he was not part of this family when he left the ranch and everything else behind.

“But I need you to call Haggerty. The lawyer. You’ve used him before, right? For the thing with the fence dispute—”

“I know who Haggerty is.”

“Right. Good. If you could call him tonight, get him down here by morning, I can probably be out before they process the whole group. There are like fifteen of us. They don’t even have enough chairs.”

He laughs, the laugh of a man who thinks he’ll be telling this story at brunch.

I hear someone in the background—a drunk voice complaining and then a door closes before it goes silent again.

Swallowing a chuckle, I mull around for the right words.

This goes beyond disappointment. The first or second time ten years ago, I was disappointed.

Now? I’m slightly pissed off that this man thinks his father is still going to bail him out in his 30s from his own stupid actions.

There’s also only one thing that matters.

“Marcus.”

“Yeah?”

“Where’s Ash?”

Silence. I’ve been dealing with that kind of response since he was fourteen, when I’d find cigarettes in his jacket and ask where they came from. “What?” he says, pretending not to hear. He heard me.

“Ash,” I say. “Where is he?”

“Why are you asking about Ash?”

“Because you were at a party, and you always take him to these things, and now you’re in a holding cell, so I want to know where he is.”

He always dragged Ash along. That was his move, show up with this quiet, pretty man at his side like an accessory, something to complete the picture of the life Marcus thought he was building.

I’d heard about it from Teague, who heard it from someone in town: Ash standing in the corner of a house party nursing the same beer for three hours while Marcus worked the room, shaking hands, telling stories, and performing the version of himself everyone wanted.

Ash waiting by the door when he was ready to leave.

Ash falling asleep in the passenger seat on the way home, because Marcus never left before two a.m. and Ash never complained.

Teague had told me that last part with a look I recognized, the same look I saw in the mirror. But just like Marcus, Ash is a grown man. I can’t step in before I know I’m wanted and that’s not my place, no matter how much it pains me to stay back.

Now, though? My only priority is making sure Asher Dunne is safe and by my son’s avoidance, I’m not sure that he is.

“We weren’t together tonight,” Marcus says.

“What do you mean you weren’t together?”

“I mean, he wasn't at the party. We went out earlier—dinner, or whatever—and he wanted to go home.”

“Or whatever?” I ask. My hackles raise slightly as I push off the counter, already searching for my keys.

I swear to god if Marcus did something… In the next breath, I lean back against the surface, reminding myself that Ash is not mine to take care of.

This is just a polite check in. This doesn’t mean anything.

“Dinner, Dad. We went to dinner.”

“And then?”

“And then he wanted to go home. So I dropped him off.”

Something in his voice snags on “dropped him off.” It came out too fast, too flat, like a stone he was trying to skip past me.

I’ve spent thirty years reading men, buyers, sellers, handlers, the kind of men who shake your hand while they’re calculating what they can take from you and my son has never been as good a liar as he thinks he is.

“You dropped him off where?” I press.

“At his place. Near his place. Look, can we deal with my situation first? I’m sitting in a holding cell that smells like piss and I’ve been here for two hours and I need a lawyer, not a conversation about my boyfriend’s—”

“You said at his place. Then you said near his place. Which one?”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Which one, Marcus?”

“Near, okay? Near his place. He said he wanted to walk the rest. What does it matter? He’s probably home by now watching TV and eating cereal out of the box like he always does. Can we focus on the fact that I’m in jail?”

I pinch the bridge of my nose, my gaze falling on the lone mug at the edge of the sink, a chipped blue monstrosity that was always Ash’s favorite. No one’s used it since he was here almost eight, nine months ago during Easter weekend.

He’d been washing dishes without being asked, just up from the table while Marcus sat scrolling on his phone, and he started gathering plates.

I came in for water and found him at the sink with his sleeves pushed up and soap on his wrists.

He looked at me over his shoulder, and something passed between us that neither one of us was brave enough to touch.

We had both said goodnight but it felt like something lingered. Forcing myself to keep my thoughts to myself, I left him in that kitchen, refusing to break my morals for a man who wasn’t mine. He stopped coming to dinners after that. I can’t say I blame him.

I press the phone tighter to my ear. “Where near his place?”

Marcus hesitates. “I don’t know exactly—”

“You don’t know exactly.”

“Off Meridian somewhere. Maybe closer to Route 9. I wasn’t paying attention to the—”

“Off Meridian.”

“Yeah.”

“That stretch off Meridian that doesn’t have streetlights.”

“I guess? I don’t know. He said he wanted to walk.”

“At what time?”

“I don’t—eleven? Eleven-thirty? Somewhere around there.”

Three hours ago. Ash has been out on a dark road for three hours, or he’s home by now, or he’s stranded somewhere in between and Marcus hasn’t checked and sounds annoyed that I’m still asking.

“Why did he want to walk, Marcus?”

Marcus lets out an exaggerated sigh. “Because he’s dramatic. You know how he gets. We were talking in the car and he got in one of his moods and said he wanted out and I said fine, so I let him out. It’s not like I pushed him out of a moving vehicle.”

“What were you talking about?”

“It doesn’t—”

“What were you talking about?”

I hear him shift, the scrape of a bench or chair beneath him. When he speaks again, the drunk has receded a notch and the defensiveness thickened. “The ranch,” he finally says. “He was talking about the ranch.”

My hand tightens on the phone.

“He was going on about some memory from Easter. Something Teague said. Laughing about it. I told him I didn’t want to hear about it and he wouldn’t drop it, so it turned into a thing.”

I temper down the rage billowing beneath the surface. Some part of me is ecstatic Ash remembers Easter, that it’s a good memory. The other part of me hates that my son can’t see that this house could be good for all of us, if he would just… No. Marcus left. “A thing.”

“A fight. An argument. Whatever. He gets like this, Dad. He latches onto stuff and won’t let go. He loves bringing up the ranch like he’s part of it, like he’s one of you guys, and I’ve told him a hundred times—”

“A hundred times what?”

“That it’s weird! The way he is about you—about all of you. The way he talks about Teague and Ledger like they’re his brothers. Well, not brothers. The way he—” Marcus stops and takes a breath. “He talks about you.”

I don’t say anything.

“He talks about you all the time. ‘Boone said this, Boone did that, Boone’s porch, Boone’s kitchen, Boone’s horses.’ It’s constant. And I’m sitting right there.”

A nasty bit of hope spreads through my chest before I squash it. As of right now, Ash is still Marcus’. I hate to admit it but I’m also not crossing that boundary until I get verbal confirmation from Ash himself that this thing with my son is over.

I think about the way I looked right back at him every single time and told myself I was imagining it. Tonight, I’m getting that fucking confirmation.

“So you put him out of the car,” I say, “because he was talking about me.”

“I put him out because he wouldn’t shut up. He was being annoying. He does this thing where he—”

“Did you call him?”

“What?”

“After. When you got to the party. When you had your drink and your handshakes and your fun. Did you pick up the phone and check that he got inside?”

Silence.

“Marcus.”

“No. I didn’t call him. He’s a grown man, he can walk half a mile without—”

“You said Meridian. Half a mile from Meridian to his apartment is generous and you know it. It’s closer to two.”

“So it’s two. He’s got legs. He’s fine.”

“You don’t know that. Did you even call him when you got booked?”

“I know Ash. He’s fine. He does this for attention. Makes everything into a bigger deal than it—”

“The way you know Ash,” I say slowly, “is that he shows up. Every time. With food he’s made and stories he’s saved and that look on his face like he’s just grateful to be in the room.

And you’ve been taking that for granted so long you forgot it was a gift.

” The fucker didn’t even call Ash to make sure he got home.

Ash wasn’t Marcus’ first call because Marcus’ first priority is himself and no one else.

I am not above hitting my son and I very well might do that next time I see him.

Marcus’ voice crackles through the line. “Dad, I really don’t need the lecture right now. I need a lawyer—”

“When’s the last time you asked him how he was?”

“I talk to him every day.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I don’t—we talk. We went to dinner tonight. I took him out, and we had a perfectly normal evening until he started—”

“Where’d you go?”

“What?”

“Dinner. Where’d you take him?”

He hesitates for a beat too long. “Moretti’s.”

I can’t help it. “Moretti’s closed three months ago.”

Another pause. I hear him breathing through his nose the way he does when he’s caught, that same sound from when he was a kid, standing in front of a broken window with a baseball tucked behind his back.

“It might’ve been—we got take-out. We ate in the car. What difference does it make?”

“You got take-out, ate in the car, and then kicked him out.”

“I didn’t kick him—”

“You’re going to rot in there tonight.”

“What?”

“I said you can rot.”

“Dad—”

“I know what you need, Marcus. I’ve known what you need your whole life, and you’ve never once been interested in hearing it.

So here’s what’s going to happen. You’re sitting in that cell until morning.

You’re calling Haggerty yourself at sunrise.

And you’re thinking about what kind of man lets someone out on the side of the road because you thought they were annoying. ”

“This is insane! You’re choosing Ash over your own son right now, you realize that? Over a phone call in the middle of the night? He’s fine. He’s home watching TV. This is exactly what he does—he gets everyone worked up so they feel sorry for him. He did it to you, he does it to Teague—”

“Goodnight, Marcus.”

“Don’t hang up on me.”

“Or what.”

I listen to the catch in his breath, the recalculation beneath his bluster. Marcus is cruel but he’s not stupid, and he knows that voice, that quiet one I use when I’m past anger and into something colder.

“I need a lawyer,” he says, voice smaller now, trying another tack.

“Then call one.”

I hang up the phone, though it stays in my hand.

I stare at the screen, Marcus’ name blinking across the top, call ended, fourteen minutes and twelve seconds.

Then my mind turns to Ash and where he might be.

Three hours is a long fucking time in this brisk weather and in the dark, it would feel colder.

Letting out a heavy breath, I chug the rest of my whiskey and scroll to Ash’s name in my contacts.

It’s been there two years, used only for logistics.

Friendly. Paternal. Appropriately distant.

But Marcus is in a cell tonight. Marcus put Ash on the side of a road and drove to a party.

Whatever line existed between what I’m allowed to want and what belongs to my son, Marcus just torched it.

I press the call button.

It rings five times before going to voicemail, his soft voice reaching my ears. “Hey, you’ve reached Ash. Leave me a message.”

I don’t leave one.

This time, I search for my keys and find them at the door, Teague glancing at me from the porch chair as I head to the car. “Where you off to, Pops?” His smile is entirely too wide, which tells me he knows exactly who I was on the phone with and probably understands where I’m off to.

“To pick up a stray,” I say, letting my own smile take over my face.

There’s no doubt in my mind Ash declined that call for a reason, the same reason I always excused myself from dinner early before making a fool of myself when he’d visit. Marcus never deserved that beautiful soul.

And I’m going to make him regret this night every fucking day.