Chapter 7
CHAPTER 7
CASH
C ash didn’t know what to say. He knew things were contentious between Wilder and Lain, and he had a vague idea about the type of parent their father was. This didn’t seem like a good opportunity to ask questions, though, and an even worse time to make assumptions. Wilder looked like he’d rather pull a tooth than talk about this any longer, so Cash did the only thing he could think of.
He changed the subject.
“You got any work gloves?”
Wilder blinked at him. “No. Should I?”
Cash bobbed his head from side to side. “Probably, yeah. We’ll get you some. For now, I’ve got a spare set in the glove compartment there. You’ll need it when we start picking up the hay bales. That twine will tear your hands up without gloves.”
“Picking up the hay bales?” Wilder repeated. “With our hands?”
“Yeah, they’re the square bales, not the big round ones.”
“Ah, I see.”
“Some of the other boys are already out there this morning gathering them. They’ll help us load up, so it won’t be just the two of us filling up the whole trailer.”
“Oh. That’s good.” But he looked away as he said it, and Cash wondered if that was for a reason.
“And about Billy?—”
“There’s no need, boss,” Wilder said, turning to look at Cash with a carefully smooth expression. “He can feel however he wants. I’m just here to do a job. I won’t take anything he says personally.”
“I’ll make sure he leaves you alone,” Cash replied. “We’re all here to do a job, and I don’t like seeing him air his grievances with you in the workplace.”
“Technically that was at the dinner table,” Wilder quipped.
Cash bit back a smile. “Nonetheless, it shouldn’t have happened. I don’t think he will, but if he tries to approach you again, I’d like you to let me know so I can deal with him.”
Wilder shrugged one shoulder. “He was right, in a way. I did treat his sister like shit, probably. I’m understandably no one’s favorite person. If I could’ve gone somewhere else, I would have.”
Cash’s chest tightened at that, but he wasn’t sure why. It shouldn’t make a difference to him where Wilder went or why. He barely knew the man. But still… “Whatever happened with his sister was a lifetime ago. Like he said, she’s married and happy now. It’s time to let go of high school grudges. And I doubt you treated her like shit.”
“No, it’s true. I didn’t realize it, but I wasn’t particularly…” He paused to think of the right word. “Thoughtful, I guess.”
“What teenage boy is?”
Wilder huffed out a halfhearted laugh. “The truth is—” He stopped, glancing at Cash. His palms rubbed up and down his thighs nervously.
“The truth is?” Cash asked, glancing between Wilder’s careful gaze and the narrow trail he guided the truck down.
Wilder cleared his throat. “The truth is, I dated Rebecca because I thought I had to. I thought I needed to blend in.”
Cash’s hand tightened around the steering wheel. “Blend in? Why?” He knew why. He knew why. But he wanted to hear Wilder say it, and he was pretty sure Wilder needed to say it for his own reasons.
Wilder’s deep blue eyes were cool, calculating. “Because the last thing I needed was for my father to find out he had a faggot for a son.”
Cash’s jaw clenched hard at the slur. “Don’t call yourself that.”
Wilder’s expression lightened somewhat, like Cash’s anger at the word cheered him. “That’s what he called them. Us, I guess. I learned pretty early on that nothing good would come of letting him find out the truth. So I hid it by dating Rebecca. I even thought I could maybe learn to like her. She was a nice girl. But all I did was use her to keep him off my back.”
“He sounds like a piece of shit,” Cash said bluntly.
Wilder’s smile was all teeth. “Oh, he was.”
It was on the tip of Cash’s tongue to say he was glad Wilder did what he did, but he stopped himself. That was a path best left untrod. He didn’t know the situation well enough to make that kind of statement, even if he had a general idea.
“I don’t blame you for doing what you had to,” Cash said. “I get it.”
“You do?” Wilder asked doubtfully.
Cash smiled lopsidedly. He supposed reciprocation was only fair. Wilder had shared something personal, and now Cash should do the same. “Yeah. Growing up bisexual in Mississippi was not exactly easy.”
A grin bloomed slowly on Wilder’s face. “You? Bi? Really? I never would’ve guessed.”
“I beg your pardon,” Cash teased. “You ain’t supposed to judge books by their covers.”
“Well, forgive me, then,” Wilder replied. “Big strapping cowboy like you. I would’ve bet money on you being straight as an arrow.”
“Not so much. This arrow’s got a nice, queer little curve to him.”
They both laughed. “And Mississippi, huh? How’d you wind up in Montana?”
“Oh, I traveled for years. Got out of the swamp when I was eighteen. Bought a cheap camper and a cheaper truck and hit the road. I followed rodeos for a while, doing whatever work needed doing, then found my way out here in the west where the big ranches are. Bounced from ranch to ranch until I found Blackwood looking for help online when I was twenty-five. Too intriguing a job to pass up, and here I am, seven years later.”
“Seven years.” Wilder looked out the windshield, his body rocking gently with the truck. “What are the odds you’d find this place right after I left it.”
There was even more to it than that. Lain wouldn’t have put out the job listing for help if their father had been alive and well. The only reason Cash was hired at all was because Wilder had gone to prison. Cash wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t.
Wilder’s mind must have been traveling a similar path, because he murmured, “It’s funny how things work out.”
“That it is,” Cash agreed.
The other hands were visible out in the field, stacking square bales of hay in anticipation of their arrival. They moved aside as Cash pulled the trailer up beside them. Wilder opened the glove compartment, handed one pair of gloves to Cash and took the other for himself.
It was shaping up to be a hot, sunny day. They were lucky to be getting such an early start, before the sun had baked the landscape. By the time Cash and Wilder had joined the others, they were already tossing hay bales onto the trailer, so the two of them climbed into the trailer to line them up in neat stacks to be tied down. Nobody spoke for a while, and Cash focused on the warmth of the morning sun and the burn of muscle in use as he picked up bale after bale and stacked them at the front of the trailer.
Every time he passed Wilder, he caught a whiff of his scent, sweat and coffee and soap. Setting a bale into place, he turned around as Wilder was grabbing one from Darryl, and Cash’s gaze lingered on the way his jeans pulled taut across his rear and hugged his thighs, the bulge of his sweat-shiny biceps and the corded strength of his forearms. He turned around, and his eyes caught Cash’s.
Shit.
Cash lurched into motion, ducking his head so the brim of his hat hid his face. Wilder passed without a word, hefting the hay bale, and Cash took his place, grabbing a bale from Billy. When he turned, this time Wilder was looking at him .
Heat simmered under his skin that had nothing to do with the sun. He didn’t feel like he could breathe until Wilder’s gaze fell away.
No way they could go there. Wilder was an incredibly handsome man, but getting involved with him would only jeopardize everything Cash had built here. Blackwood Ranch was as much his home as it was the Blackwoods’ at this point. Lain was his boss, and things between him and Wilder were far too contentious to throw Cash’s own attraction to Wilder into the mix. And besides, as foreman of the ranch, he was technically Wilder’s boss. There were a thousand reasons why it would be a bad idea. He couldn’t risk it.
So he kept his eyes down and focused on the work.
Once the stacks were tied to the trailer, he waved the hands off and climbed back into the truck with Wilder. Neither of them spoke, both reaching wordlessly for their bottles of water while the air conditioner blasted them. They wouldn’t have the extra help unloading at the other field, so they might as well take a beat and cool off in the truck while they could.
Wilder took his hat off, leaning over to stick his sweaty head right in front of the air vents, and Cash laughed.
“So dramatic,” he said, dropping his bottle in the cup holder and putting the truck in drive.
Wilder chuckled. “Man, there’s a world of difference between slinging weights in the prison yard and doing actual manual labor in the heat.”
“I imagine so.”
It was true, Wilder was dripping sweat. It gleamed on his temples and in his hair. Cash pointedly didn’t think about how good he looked, his face flushed and his eyes bright. Physical work looked good on him.
“Where are we taking this hay?” Wilder asked as the truck trundled down the trail. Cash kept one eye on the rearview mirror to make sure none of the hay fell off the back. He thought they’d tied it down well enough, but you could never be too sure.
“To the barn.”
“Which barn?” Wilder asked. “There’s like twelve now.”
Cash chuckled. “There’s seven, actually.”
“Jesus Christ,” Wilder murmured.
“There’s one positioned between four corners of the fields behind the house. That’s where we store most of the winter feed. Easier to distribute it between those four fields there, which is where we keep the cattle during the winter months.”
“Great.”
Cash glanced at him, but there was no bitterness in his tone or demeanor. He seemed to like this work, and for all his hardship, he didn’t appear to begrudge Lain his success or hate the ranch for its unfortunate part in his history.
It made it all the harder for Cash to hold him at a distance.
After they delivered the hay to the feed barn, they returned the truck and trailer to the house.
“What’s next, boss?” Wilder asked. He’d drained his water, and though the sweat was fading from his skin, his face was still flushed from the exertion of unloading all the hay bales between the two of them.
“First, go take a break.” He pointed at the bunkhouse as they came to a stop in front of the truck, its engine clicking quietly as it cooled. “Twenty minutes. Drink some water. Have a banana or something. Don’t want you overheating.”
Wilder scoffed. “I’m fine.”
Cash smiled patiently. “You are—for now. I want to keep it that way. You’re in good shape, but you aren’t used to working quite this much. I don’t want you dead on your feet later.”
Movement caught his eye, and he turned to see Lain standing in the doorway of his office. He gave Cash a wave and gestured for him to come over.
“Guess he needs a word,” he said, glancing back at Wilder, whose expression had gone flat. “I mean it. Go have a break. I’d tell anyone else the same, so don’t think I’m babying you.”
“Babying the big bad felon?” Wilder said in a scandalized tone. “No one would dare.”
Cash gave him a playful shove. “Get out of here. Go on.”
“Yessir.” Wilder gave him what passed for a salute and turned on his booted heel. The back of his shirt was dusty and damp with sweat.
Cash made his way over to Lain, who ducked inside his office and sat heavily behind his desk. His straw hat, very similar to the one Wilder had picked out, was sitting atop a stack of paperwork.
“How’s he doing?”
Cash eased the door shut behind him and nodded. “He’s doing good.”
“Annalise has been asking me a thousand questions about him all morning.” He winced. “She thought he was me?”
“In her defense, you’re identical twins.”
Lain snorted. “Yeah, I know. That’s not—I just don’t think I prepared her well enough for his arrival. I mentioned he was my twin. I don’t think she really understood what that meant, though. How’s he been?”
Cash sat down across from him and took his hat off, dropping it in the empty chair beside him. “He seems… okay. He waffles pretty hard between relaxed and guarded. There’s a tension about him, like he’s expecting a hit from somewhere he can’t see.”
Lain pursed his lips. “That’s not a prison thing,” he said slowly. “That’s a thing our father instilled in him, I think.”
“Ah.” Cash didn’t quite know what to say to that. “He’s shown some interest in the mustang.”
“The wild one?”
“Mm-hm. He got him to take an apple out of his hand.”
Lain’s brows rose. “I’ll be damned. He always did love the horses. If he wants to keep working with him, that’s fine with me. Lord knows nobody else has had any luck with him, and I’d hate to get rid of him.”
“I was going to suggest as much. I’m hopeful that he can have him broken by the time we need to bring the herd down.”
Lain hummed. “Six weeks, yeah. I’d think that would be enough time for him to get a saddle on him and get him used to being ridden.” He paused, then asked, “Has he named him?”
“Not as far as I know.”
“Let me know if he does. I’ll put it on the horse’s paperwork.”
Cash fought a smile. “How are you feeling about having Wilder back?”
Lain blew out a breath. “Hell, I don’t know. Conflicted. Sad. Nervous.” He shook his head. “I keep thinking about how different everything could’ve been.” He looked like he’d aged ten years just thinking about it.
“Boss, if it’s not too bold of me to suggest: I think you two should really sit down and have a conversation about all of that. I’m sure there are things left unsaid.”
“Oh, definitely. I just don’t have any idea how to say them. Or if they even really need to be said. There’s no changing the past, after all.”
“With all due respect, boss, I really think they do.”
“Bringing it all back up again would just hurt us both, I think. It’s over and done with. He served his time, and now he’s here. I think we should just focus on that.”
Cash wasn’t so sure about that. He remembered the way Wilder’s expression went carefully blank at the sight of Lain. There was a lot going on under the surface that he was trying to avoid showing. In his experience, keeping things bottled up never boded well for anyone.
But it wasn’t his place to push the matter.