Chapter Eight
Denver King was experiencing a moment of pure joy. A rare moment. There had been so much construction going on, so many changes,
on King’s Crest over the past few months that it was a rare day indeed when he and his brothers were all together, riding
their horses at a breakneck pace across the fields.
But that’s what he was doing today. The air was cold, biting into his face, and the feeling of the horse’s hooves pounding
on the ground was like a sacred drumbeat that resonated in his soul.
Sheena hated this place, and he could understand why. But for him, he would always be here. Not just because he felt obligated
to the people that his father had hurt. Because he genuinely loved this land.
Yes, his family had founded this place on lies. But that wasn’t what he was building off of. He was building off of a love
for the place. He was building a sense of family around it. Creating a new definition for it.
He was building something. Because he refused to spend his life carrying around all this weight without doing something good with it. Something worthwhile. Because it couldn’t all be a long slog up the hill. At least, he hoped not.
He tugged back on the horse’s reins, and turned them in a wide circle, and his brothers followed suit. They were laughing,
grinning. And this, this was the legacy. As far as he was concerned.
This was the one thing he’d done that he was truly proud of. Family dinners, and his brothers smiling. His sister having a
family of her own. All of his brothers were married now, or about to be. Some of them were fathers, some with babies on the
way.
He was the patriarch. He had put himself in that position. That was maybe the one thing he disagreed on with Sheena.
The thing they’d done to show up for their family, it was active. He could understand the way she felt about it. He could
understand why she didn’t want to take any credit for it. It wasn’t truly credit that he was after. He felt like it was good
to remember that something like this was a choice. A choice you had to make every day. It was the only thing that kept his
head above water sometimes. Because if this was a choice, that meant he had control. If this was a choice, then that meant
he wouldn’t accidentally find himself waking up one day in the image of his father.
“When you think you’ll be done?” Justice asked.
He looked over at his brother from his position on the horse. “What?”
“With the changes here. The expansion. You’ve been head down and running flat out for a couple of years now. And now there’s
this thing with Sheena. And it’s dovetailing with the big Christmas thing . . . I’m just wondering, when are you going to
rest?”
He thought about the years spent playing poker. Traveling between here and Vegas. Putting in a rancher’s day’s work at King’s
Crest, and then putting in a gambler’s weekend.
Hard drinking. Nights of anonymous sex.
Waking up in the morning stained with shame. Coming right on back. The hard work like a baptism. An absolution.
The evidence that his family was doing well, evidence that maybe he wasn’t so bad after all.
“When I’m dead,” he said to his brother.
Justice didn’t laugh.
“Seriously. Life is for living. Not resting.”
“Some would argue that rest is part of living.”
“Listen to you,” he said. “A bastion of mental health.”
“I don’t know. Maybe just enjoying life a little more than I used to.”
“Well, some of us here don’t have sex on tap.” He looked around at his brothers. “Okay. Only me. Just me.”
“Denver . . .”
“Hellfire,” said Denver. “Is this an intervention?”
“It’s not an intervention,” said Daughtry. “Just an observation that you’re working harder than usual. Which is really saying
something.”
Genuinely, though. What was the alternative? Sitting around with his thoughts? No, thanks.
“Actually, it’s a good time to mention that I’m considering selling barbecue. Officially. Like at Sheena’s bar.”
“Another thing?” Landry asked.
“Hey. You had a baby. Why can’t I have a barbecue?”
“Not the same,” said Daughtry.
“Why not? This is the kind of thing that married people always do. You can’t stand me not doing things the same way. The changes
that I’m making don’t seem valuable to you because you think that life begins and ends with . . . love. Whatever. I’m good.
I’m thrilled you and Fia have your little boy, Landry. Love that you have your girl. Arizona’s babies are great. I don’t want
kids. I don’t want . . . all that. This place is my kid. You were all my kids.”
“We are not that much younger than you.”
“It’s the responsibility. And I’m not saying that you all didn’t feel it. I am just saying that . . . the buck stops with
me. Let’s be honest about that. Nothing wrong with it. It’s just a roll of the dice. Birth order.”
“We are all adults,” Justice said. “If you hadn’t noticed.”
“Some of us are very new to adulthood,” Daughtry said, looking at Justice.
Justice was in his thirties. But Daughtry meant philosophically, since until very recently Justice’s idea of a good time had
been getting drunk and having anonymous sex. He was newly reformed.
“I didn’t ask to be insulted.”
“And I didn’t ask to be born,” Denver said. “But here we are. Anyway. None of you need to worry about me. Maybe you just need
to accept that my idea of being finished looks different than what you think. That we are here, on this land, after all the
bullshit our dad pulled, to me, that’s kind of being finished. Arriving. I feel fucking healed by it.”
“You sound like it,” Landry said.
“And here I was just thinking that today was one of those rare peaceful days.”
It was still peaceful. Honestly, he didn’t mind his brothers worrying about him. That felt like something in and of itself.
A bit of a win.
He looked at the green mountains, all pine. At the blue of the sky, so bright even in November that you would be forgiven
for thinking it was warm outside. But no. Yeah. This was one of those rare wins that hadn’t been a gamble.
They finished their ride out on the mountains, and by the time they got back to King’s Crest, it was dark. He wondered if Sheena would still be on-site. He had said that he was going to check out the work that had been done today, but it was a little bit later than he had anticipated.
While he and his brothers put the horses away, they were discussing dinner.
“There’s plenty of stuff to reheat,” he said. “If you guys want to come over tonight.”
“Fia cooked,” said Landry.
“Bix did not cook,” said Daughtry. “So I’ll text her and see if she wants to come by.”
Justice grinned. “I think Rue had plans.”
He would take one out of the three. He already knew that Arizona was busy. It was why she hadn’t come out onto the ranch with
them today; they had taken their kids down to the coast. Even though the youngest of the kids was just a tiny baby.
He figured that parents were entitled to do whatever ridiculousness they felt like doing. And if they wanted to make baby’s
first beach trip before the kid could hold its head up, that was up to them.
It was better than what their parents had done to them, anyway.
“Great. I have to go check in on the construction for the bar. But feel free to go rummaging through the fridge and heating
some things up.”
“Will do,” said Daughtry.
He walked out of the barn, and down the path that led to the old gambling hall.
There were no vehicles out front, save Sheena’s car. He could see a light on inside that he assumed was one of those work
lights.
He walked straight on through the door without knocking or signaling his presence. To find her perched up on a ladder, holding
paint chips up.
“There’s no point doing that in the dark.”
She screeched, and grabbed hold of the top of the ladder. And then when she looked down at him, her eyes were furious. “Dumbass,” she said. “You could’ve killed me.”
“I didn’t mean to startle you. But obviously your reflexes are good enough that I could not have killed you.”
“For God’s sake,” she said.
She started to climb down the ladder.
“Walk me through today,” he said.
“Nice to see you too. Really missed you.”
“Did you want to engage in small talk? Last night it didn’t seem like you did.”
And that was a dumbass thing to say. It really was, because she had probably done them both a favor by leaving quickly last
night. No. No probably about it. She had.
Because electricity had been crackling between them, and while he was fond of electricity, he preferred it contained. In wires.
In a wall. Not . . . whatever this was. The sparking, deadly overflow that seemed to want to get everywhere.
It was on another level. Something he had never experienced before, and he was not in a space to be experiencing heretofore
unexperienced levels of attraction.
“What did you all do today?”
“We made plans,” she said. “Basically, we went over everything with a fine-tooth comb and tried to figure out what all we
needed. We are going to have to open the walls and completely rethink the whole electrical situation. It looks like somebody
added the system, maybe forty years ago, but it’s not in good shape.”
“Doesn’t surprise me. I imagine all of it was done without permits.”
“Yes,” she said. “Which is another issue. We are going to have to pull permits, and while Manny has pretty good relationships
with the county, that can still take a long time.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll make a call.”
“You can just do that?”
“Yeah. I can.” It was complicated. The son of the guy who ran the building permits department at the county had gotten involved
with his dad at some point, and he had been part of Denver’s restitution scheme. And while some might look at that and say
that it was akin to paying someone off, Denver disagreed. Because he hadn’t sought to make things right with the guy to try
and get something in return. It was just that the end result was they had a fine relationship. And to his mind, if that made