48. Colt
Run - Stephen Fretwell
“Hey, Colt!” Mia, Cole’s fiancée, chirps in greeting.
My younger brother, on the other hand, looks like someone died.
“Mia.” I press a kiss to her cheek. “Good to see you.”
She nudges Cole when he folds his arms in greeting and glowers at me. “Don’t be a baby. He wanted you to spend your birthday with people who love you. That’s not a crime, Cole.”
He squints at her. “Whose side are you on?”
“The side of righteousness.”
“You and your sci-fi books.”
“What does sci-fi have to do with righteousness?”
“Duh. Isn’t it obvious?”
After all these years of railroading three brothers, I’m a pro at spotting an argument in the making so I clear my throat.
His attention flickers to me, and so does his fist—he punches me in the shoulder. “You suck.”
“I don’t.” I’m in no mood for his BS, birthday or not.
Ignoring the big baby masquerading as my little brother, I go through the preflight checks and we’re in the air not long after.
One smooth flight later, we disembark. Unsurprisingly, the whole family—aside from Zee—is waiting beside the runway.
Mrs. Abelman included.
“It’s our resident poltergeist!” Cole greets, arms wide as he draws her in for a hug, laughing as she bats at his shoulders for him to let go of her.
Even Mum’s laughing as she’s chiding, “Cole, leave Ida alone.”
“Why would I do that? How would she know I love her otherwise?”
Mrs. Abelman snorts as Cole hooks Mum in a hug too. “I can cope with less effusive declarations of love, Cole.”
Mia grins as she holds out her hand for Mum. “So great to see you again, Lindsay.”
Mum tuts and kisses her cheek. “Less of the formalities, dear.”
The words rub me on the raw. “Somehow, I don’t think you’d say that if Zee were the one visiting.”
I’m not afraid of confrontation, but it’s not something I seek either. So my words are the verbal equivalent of a first punch.
Aware that I’m the center of everyone’s focus, I arch a brow at Mum who splutters, “I don’t know what you mean, Colton!”
“I think you do,” is my soft retort because I apparently woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.
Guess that’s what happens when evidence rolls in, confirming that your father’s a lying, conniving, devious piece of shit.
Cole flicks a look between us. “Everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine,” Mum quickly counters, her brow puckering with genuine confusion that irritates me more. “Colton can’t expect me to grow attached to Susanne when his marriage has an expiration date. Unlike with you and Mia.” She goes so far as to kiss Mia’s cheek for a second time, which is like tossing a red rag in front of a bull.
“My marriage has as much of an expiration date as Cole and Mia’s—it’s up in the air. Only the fates will decide how long we’re together for. What I do know is that Zee, her name is goddamn Zee and I’ve asked you a dozen times to call her by her chosen name, will be the mother of your grandchild. She deserves more respect than you’re currently giving her.”
Callan cackles. “Go, bro.” When he holds out his fist for me to bump, I scowl at him until he huffs.
“This isn’t a joke.”
“I never thought it was. I’ve told Mum to call her Zee but she won’t.”
Noticing that Mia’s cheeks are bright pink, I cup her shoulder. “This has nothing to do with you, honey. I’m making a point.”
Her timid smile has Cole squinting at me with displeasure, but I’m not going to apologize. Mum needs to listen to me, and if shaming her in front of the whole damn family is the way forward, then that’s on her.
“Cole, you’re with me.”
He harrumphs at my order but, after kissing Mia’s cheek, trudges over to the truck while the rest of the family gets sorted with the ranch hands helping out.
As soon as I’m behind the wheel, I purse my lips. “You going to treat Zee with kindness or talk to her like she’s dog shit?”
“I was thinking of pretending she doesn’t exist.”
“She didn’t set the fire, Cole,” I say with a sigh.
“If she didn’t, then who did?” he snaps. “You’re so certain that she’s innocent, but that fire had nothing to do with faulty wiring.”
His insistence has me studying him. “What are you talking about, Cole?”
“I’ve been thinking about that time a lot recently. Ever since Mia came into my life, I realized the wound’s still gaping and hasn’t been healing. We talked about it and… I remembered something.” He scrapes a hand over his head. “I overheard Pops on the phone with someone. Looking back, I think it was the insurance adjuster. It sounded like he was paying him off.”
It’s one thing for me to come outright and say that I think Clyde set fire to the stables, but Cole doesn’t trust Zee and despite this new revelation, why would he take her word for it?
Pensive, I stare at the range, finding the comfort in it that I usually do, but there’s nothing there that puts my mind at ease. Not with one of our sore spots being lanced like an infected boil, revealing decades’ worth of unhealed trauma. Because this doesn’t start and end with the fire—it’s one big amalgamation of a childhood gone awry.
We’re silent on the ride to the house. I didn’t mean to be quiet and I’m definitely not mad at Cole for getting in his feelings, especially when he did come home like I requested and in the middle of the playoffs, but neither do I know how to get the words out that I need to.
It feels like Pandora’s edging ever nearer toward her box and I’m supposed to brace for impact but no one gave me a seat belt.
“You okay, Colt?”
The question jerks me from my heavy thoughts. I turn to glance at my little brother who’s studying me, concern lacing his expression.
“I’m better than I have been in a long while.”
Reluctantly, he concedes, “Marriage is suiting you?”
“Yeah. It is. Could be that it’s Zee who’s suiting me more than marriage.” My hands tighten on the wheel. “I knew her. Before the fire. She’s no stranger to me.”
“Huh?”
“After her dad’s funeral, she’d sneak into the stables and I’d go sit with her.” Having shared this with Theo, it’s easier to talk about. “Got to know her over a real long time. Learned the measure of the girl. Didn’t trust in that measure when I should have?—”
“I don’t understand.”
I rub my jaw. “Who could blame you?”
He turns in his seat, demanding, “Colton, you knew her? Were you dating?”
“No, we damn well weren’t. You know what the age gap is between us. Do you think I’m some sicko? I guess I was like an older brother. At least, on my side, that’s how it was.”
He’s quiet for a second. “You mean she liked you differently than you did her?”
“The age gap was something I couldn’t see past. Doesn’t matter so much when one of you is approaching thirty and the other said farewell to it a couple years back.”
“I guess not,” he mumbles, tone stilted.
“I’m going to be honest with you, Cole, and you’re not going to like what I have to say.”
“I’m already not liking it.”
“I figured as much.” The wheel creaks under my palms. “Couldn’t blame you. Figure you’ll be angry at me for a long while and that’s okay. But… I thought she did it too.”
He doesn’t explode. Doesn’t punch me in the shoulder.
If anything, his silence is more unnerving.
Cole is never quiet.
Like a fool, I attempt to fill the vacuum. “I gave her an alibi because she was young and, to be frank, as messed up as we were. Are,” I correct.
“Why?”
“Because she tried to kiss me that night and I rejected her. During the fire, she was trapped with Loki.” My throat tightens as realization strikes. “She was depressed before her brother died. That day, the family received news he was presumed killed in action. I guess I thought she was fucked up enough to end it all and hurt me at the same time.”
“And you still gave her an alibi?”
His wooden tone has me gritting my teeth. “She was a kid?—”
“She was a killer!”
“She didn’t do it.”
“You expect me to believe that now?” he snarls.
“I don’t expect you to believe anything without asking questions. But I want you to know something?—”
“That you’ve been lying to me for years?”
“No. Well, yes. But, this time it’s about Uncle Clay.”
“What about him?”
“He left the ranch’s stewardship to me.”
“What?!”
“Yeah.”
“But Pops?—”
“He lied too,” I tell him simply. “And I can’t imagine how much he had to spend in bribes to keep the trustees from kicking up a fuss, but I have to reckon that the insurance payout on the fire would have kept things ticking along for a while. Franny alone must have reeled him in a couple million.”
“Are you trying to tell me that you think Pops set the fire?”
“I’m not trying. I’m telling you.”
“Proof?”
“Mrs. Abelman found Uncle Clay’s will. We had no evidence of any bribes by that point?—”
“Meaning you have them now?”
I nod. “Today. I only went looking because Zee told me what she saw that night. I listened to her side of the story for once. I treated her like shit for the past ten years, Cole. Cut her out as if she meant nothing to me, but she wasn’t nothing.
“While my relationship with her was fraternal, her feelings were different. Though I did love her in my own way.
“Cutting her out was my self-imposed punishment for sparing her from the aftermath of what I thought she did.” I rub my jaw. “I know it’s a mess, but I never let her tell me anything. I stopped seeing her. Refused to talk to her. Avoided her and the ranch at all costs?—”
“I remember Callan complaining that you weren’t coming down on the weekends.”
“I had to. As much as I didn’t want her to go to jail, I hated myself for being so goddamn weak because she killed Loki and Betsy and the rest.” Spying the house in the near distance, I brake and switch off the engine. All while bracing myself for the fallout. It’s brewing. “Then, Callan tried to?—”
“Yeah,” he interrupts. Neither of us likes to bring up that time.
“There was no more avoiding the ranch. Once this whole marriage contract BS came about, she signed everything but she said she wouldn’t marry me unless I answered a question.”
“Which was?”
“Did I think she had it in her to kill Loki?”
“He was your horse. Why would she?—”
“As much as he was mine, in a way, he was hers too. You don’t share heart horses, I know that. But they were pretty damn close to it. He loved her and she loved him. She was always hiding in his stall. Always giving him attention and talking to him. It was like he was her only source of comfort in a time when she was having to face grief and loss every couple years.
”I know it makes no sense when she had her own mount, but she was different with Loki and he was the same with her. You know how he was—hated being tended to by anyone other than me. I spoiled him, but that was nothing to her.” I grip the back of my neck. “She’d never have hurt him and I told her so… Here we are.”
“You gaslit me,” he growls.
“I did.” I turn to him, wanting my brother to see that I take full accountability for this situation. “I’d already perjured myself for her, Cole. I couldn’t let you fuck that up.”
His stony gaze turns on me. “Did you kill Lydia Armstrong? Callan told me she was sending Zee poison pen letters too. Were you trying to protect her?”
“No, dammit. I didn’t kill her. Clyde did.”
He skims over my words like I never said them. “Callan said that she lied to the cops for you. That her alibi was fake.”
“Callan talks too damn much.”
How the hell did the little shit even know that?
“Only fitting. One fake alibi deserves another.”
His nostrils flare and that serves as my first warning. When he punches me, I don’t fight back. Just hiss as blood spurts from my nose. Then, he shoves open the door and jumps out, striding off to the house without another word.
I watch him go.
I don’t stop him or call him back.
He’s within his rights to be furious at me and I more than earned that punch.
Tenderly, I touch where his fist landed. Accepting that I probably earned the busted nose too.
Finding a less-than-clean rag in the glove compartment, I stem the bleeding as best as I can, not willing to start the engine until Cole’s made it inside.
When I see him disappear into the house, I set off once more, but instead of joining him and the rest of the family, I turn toward what was the border of Zee’s land and mine and what’s now ours, and I park up ten or so feet from one of the Bar 9’s lakes.
Does it come as a surprise when, forty-five minutes later, I spy Jas in the rearview mirror, Zee atop her saddle?
Not particularly.
I have no idea how she knew where I’d be, but I’m not going to complain. I watch her amble to the driver’s side of the truck, her movements silken as she and Jas work together like they’ve been partnered for a lifetime.
“Cole’s pretty much his own weather front,” is her greeting.
My lips quirk at the apt description. “Can bring a blizzard and a heatwave all in the same day.”
“You told him about the fire?”
I shift a look at her, glancing away from the crystalline surface of the lake. “I did. Was he cruel to you?”
“No. You need ice on that.”
I shrug. “Isn’t the first time one of my brothers hit me. Probably the first time I deserved worse though.”
“He didn’t?—”
“I lied to him. For a decade, Zee.” I suck in a breath, regretting it when it makes my busted nose ache. “There were always going to be repercussions for that.”
“You told him everything?”
“Sure did. He’s a blabbermouth. He’ll tell the others too. Saves me the job.”
Whistling, she jumps off the saddle.
“Let her go. Jas won’t run away.”
“You sure?”
“100%.”
As I thought, Jas doesn’t chase liberty—she’s too spoiled to want it. The Camarillo merely wanders to the shoreline.
“Have you changed your pump site today?”
She rolls her eyes. “I know you’re the town’s daddy, but you don’t need to baby me.”
“Not a crime to care,” I murmur.
I get it.
The fatigue she must feel from being hypervigilant is something I can’t imagine dealing with, and now, she has me, Tee, Callan, and Mrs. Abelman monitoring her blood sugar. It’s only because we give a damn but it must be tiring.
“No,” she mumbles. “Sorry. Callan came at me while you were out, about my cookies.”
“What about them?”
“He says my blood sugar spikes when I decorate them.”
My brows lift. “He wouldn’t say that if it weren’t true.”
“I’m a perfectionist,” she counters.
And that makes her blood sugar spike? How random.
“It doesn’t matter. It’s just why I’m grouchy.”
Nodding my understanding, I turn to watch Jas as she prances in the water. Which is when I come to an admittedly abrupt decision, but today feels like a good day for that. “Things will be getting busier over the upcoming year.”
She tilts her head to the side. “Why?”
“I’ll be setting up the breeding program.”
She rests her arms on the open window and pushes her face toward mine. “I know you mentioned it before, but are you shifting away from beef stock?”
“Not entirely, though we both know it isn’t sustainable. Not in these numbers.” I snag her fingers in mine. “I thought maybe you’d want to be a part of it.”
“Me?”
The joy in her eyes only cements my belief that this is the right time. “Yeah. You were always great with the horses.”
“Maybe with the care, but I’m no good with stuff like breeding. I always feel sorry for the mares.” Her free hand toys with the medallion she always wears.
“You equine feminist, you.”
“Don’t you know it.” She shivers. “I hate the noises they make. It creeps me out.” It doesn’t take much to figure out why that is and I gently squeeze her fingers in comfort. Instead of blanching or blushing though, she mutters, “You know when I went to see the triplets and Grand-mère?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I found something in one of the drawers in Mom’s vanity.”
Her tone tells me it wasn’t a ‘good’ something.
I stay silent, waiting for her to find her words.
“I think Clyde was paying Mom for sex.”
That has me blinking.
And gaping at her like a fish.
“That’s pretty much how I’ve felt ever since I found out,” she mumbles.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” I chide, opening the door. Soft enough it doesn’t jar her but enough that we have to untangle our fingers.
In a flurry of movement, I shove my seat back as soon as we’re apart, then I open the door wider, grab her hand, and haul her onto my lap.
It takes some fiddling but we make it work without her banging her head.
“I was studying her ledger?—”
“Ledger?” I ask, confused. “Like for accounts?”
“Yeah. That’s what I found. Her little black book,” she says grimly. “We were always in the red. Until ‘CK’ made a deposit.” She shudders. “I think he wanted to make the same deal with me at the airport. The way he touched my cheek…”
Outrage fills me. “That asshole.” I draw her tighter into my hold.
“That asshole singlehandedly propped up the Bar 9,” she rasps. “The duration of their arrangement is insane to me.”
“When your father was alive?”
“No. But this went on for years.”
“Shit.”
Nodding, she mutters, “Maybe I’d be better with the breeding now that I know it wasn’t… what I thought it was.”
My mind’s blank.
I have no idea what to say to her to make any of this right. I don’t know if it’s within my power to?—
“We need to hire my family some staff to look after the house. They’re not doing so great on their own.”
Okay.
Change of topic coming right up.
Not healthy but damn if I have a better idea on how to improve this shitshow.
“Sure thing. I’ll get Theo on it.”
Relieved, she sighs. “Thank you. Your mom called me Zee.”
I kiss her temple. “When?”
“When she introduced me to Mia. Who, by the way, is sweet.”
“She is.” I gesture to a smaller lake in the distance. “Cole proposed to her on that lake over there.”
Her brows lift. “When it was my lake. Why, Mr. Korhonen, were you trespassing?”
I grin at her. “The whole setup was pretty neat if I do say so myself. The water was frozen and he’d hired this violinist to serenade them. Then, Callan, Cody, and I placed hundreds of candles on the ice. She’s a figure-skating coach and he was her pupil, so, mid-routine, he proposed.” I tap my nose and then point to a barely there rise on the horizon. “He doesn’t know that we watched.”
Amusement lights up her eyes. “Did he fall?”
“Once. But it was a controlled landing. When he went down, he proposed.”
“That’s sweet.”
“He can be. When he tries not to be a pain in the ass.” I clear my throat. “Once we get over this hurdle, he’ll be a good brother-in-law.”
“He doesn’t have to like me, Colt,” she reasons. “I don’t need that from him.”
“Maybe you don’t, but I do. I didn’t raise him to be a dick to women and certainly not to family.”
“You didn’t raise him.”
“Not as much as Callan, but I did for a while. Clyde was no use and, toward the end of their marriage, Mum wasn’t bearing up well. It’s how he got the courts to agree to his petition for sole custody.”
“To cut the ties between mother and sons like that—so cruel.”
I crack my knuckles. “Sums him up.”
She slots her fingers with mine. It takes me back to when we were in Loki’s stall. Her silent support and comfort got me through some of those rough times.
I brush my lips over her knuckles, watching her small smile and finding a different kind of solace there than I ever did when we were younger because she’s mine now.
That small smile is for me and it means so much more when it comes from Zee, my wife, than Zee, my sixteen-year-old friend.
“You never told me what this is.” I gently tug on her necklace.
“You never asked.”
“I’m asking now.”
“Tee’s nonna gave one to each of us. It’s St. Christopher. He’s the patron saint of travelers. Tee, of course, lost hers about three days into owning it, but I always wear mine.”
“Didn’t it remind you of home?”
“Sometimes.” She cups my cheek. “I think I am a masochist.”
I snort. “Then we’re in the same boat. I also told Cole about the will.”
“Figured as much. What did he say? Aside from causing this mess.” Her thumb gently swipes along my busted nose.
I’m grateful I found some antibacterial wipes in the glove compartment or she’d have been greeted with blood too.
“They’ll probably serve my ass on a plate at the BBQ for lying to them, but his big mouth will spare me from having to tell Callan and Cody everything.”
“Will they forgive you?”
“Eventually.” I scratch my jaw because the last thing I feel like doing is grilling hamburgers. “If you hear fighting, leave us to it.”
“You’re grown men!”
“We’re brothers,” I mutter. “It’s how we deal with feelings. Fists and banter.” She pulls a face then settles her forehead on mine, careful around the damage to my nose. “It’ll be a fresh start. Of sorts. But if it means Cole will leave you alone, it’ll be worth it.”
“No, Colt, I?—”
“Everything’ll be fine. I have you.”
Her throat bobs but she whispers, “You do.”
“Then that’s all I need.”
And I seal it with a kiss.