Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Oh, he was being a real big fucking idiot about all of this. He didn’t want to do this camping trip, but he was also chomping at the bit to do it.
Touching her the way he had to help her start the fire had been idiotic, and then…
Then he had mentioned Tyler. He shouldn’t have done that. She hadn’t been pushing in a way that required him to mention his brother.
She hadn’t pushed after he said he didn’t know where Tyler was.
It was the God’s honest truth.
No man could be certain what happened after you died.
Tyler could be all around him, could just be in the dirt. Could be in heaven, could be in hell, he supposed, if God was as vengeful and full of wrath as some people claimed he was, and Tyler had failed to repent for some sin or another before his death.
That wasn’t something that Zane believed, wasn’t something he wanted to believe, but then, he wasn’t sure what he wanted to believe.
It didn’t really matter. So he didn’t know.
He had decided that for the camping trip, they would be hiking one of the most remote parts of the area, and wherever they got to in the darkness, that was where they would camp. It would be the place that they had to settle down for the night.
It would be unfamiliar to her, and she would have to try to use the compass to get them back, so she would need to establish the coordinates at the beginning of the trek.
Obviously, he would be there to help her if anything went wrong, and when they made camp for the night, he would have her start a fire, try to build something up as a shelter for them, and have her get her space blanket out.
Which meant that he would have to buy her a new space blanket. But that was fine with him.
He was also messaging with a guy about a horse. Not in a metaphorical way.
He was considering getting into raising horses; it was what his dad had done on their ranch in Texas, and he had always felt an affinity for horses, even more so after he had done equine therapy.
His goal wasn’t always to work at Painted Ridge Ranch. As much as he believed in what Cody was doing, and appreciated the lengths that he was going to in order to choke out his metaphorical demons.
Though, even though this wasn’t his goal, he had promised Cody that he would help move a pile of wood from some old snags that had been felled last week. Some of it was going in the burn pile, and some of it was salvageable for woodworking, or at least for a woodstove.
Then, at noon, he was meeting with Cara to go on their camping trip.
The dumbass, wilderness graduation camping trip that was guaranteed to put him on edge more than he already was.
His dreams had been a mix of his brother, running in a field with Zane running after him, never being able to catch him, and Cara.
It was whiplash.
Grief mixed with an unholy need that made him feel like he needed to get out of town and find a woman.
But he knew himself too well for that.
He could detach completely and have sex just to have a form of release.
But it left him feeling dirty at the end, and he didn’t like the feeling.
He had enough shame, enough loathing, enough survivor’s guilt that made him feel like he didn’t deserve to be here, and he didn’t feel like taking on any more of it.
Not ever. Thank you.
He got out of his truck, threw his phone onto the seat, and picked up his old work gloves.
He stared at the palm. Where there was a big tear.
He was supposed to buy new ones. He had gone to Cara’s house two weeks ago now to give her a care package from Marlowe, and he had done so because he had said that he needed to buy a pair of new work gloves.
Which he did. But that had gone completely out of his head after his conversation with Cara.
Completely.
He let out a hard breath and shoved his hands into his gloves as he walked over to where Cody was standing by a large pile of wood.
“I thought you got new gloves?”
“Couldn’t find them,” he lied.
“Get it together, Zane,” Cody said, shaking his head slightly.
Cody was the closest thing to a brother he had on Earth. Even Cody didn’t know everything about him.
Or, maybe he did. Maybe he had done an exhaustive internet search on Zane’s name. That would pull up some news stories.
But they had never talked about it, so it didn’t make a difference to him either way.
The biggest thing that Zane didn’t like to deal with was the shock and the pity that people experienced when they knew his whole biography.
He didn’t really care if they came by it on their own, not if they didn’t make their reaction to his grief his problem.
He didn’t want to share the story. It lived inside of him, in his bones. It was his, on a cellular level, had changed the way that he was put together as a man. He also couldn’t know who he would be without it.
It didn’t mean he didn’t feel regret, anger, despair, shock, and all those other wonderful things on some days, but he had accepted – not the tragedy – but that he had experienced it to some degree.
But he preferred for people to act weird around him because he was an asshole. Not because they felt sorry for him.
“If you have to get out of here at noon, we’d better get going,” Cody said.
“Yeah. I don’t need to get out of here at noon, I need to meet Cara at noon.”
“Meeting Cara?” There was an intensity to the tone of that question that Zane resented. And also understood. Which made him even more resentful.
He grunted. “You know that I’m helping her with her wilderness survival skills.”
“Yeah. How long does that take? She doesn’t need to be you.”
“If I’m going to do something, I’m not going to go halfway,” Zane said.
If one thing was true about him, it was that.
“All right. What’s on your docket for the day?” Cody turned and began to pick through the wood. He threw a dead chunk off to the side and picked up a nice-looking log and chucked it into the back of his truck.
Zane followed suit.
“We’re going camping.”
“Camping? Overnight?” There was that intensity again. Pointed, and definitely not neutral.
“Yes. I’m going to make her figure out a shelter, a fire. Also, I want to get her out at night so that we can work on using the stars. She also needs to figure out how to use a compass, and I’m going to work with her on that today as we hike away from the ranch.”
“I don’t even know how to ask you this question,” Cody said. “Mainly because I’ve never had to.” Cody looked like he was in pain for a moment, closing his eyes briefly before he continued. “Do you like her?”
Do you like her?
The question was so weird. It harkened back to a time when things had been different.
When things had been innocent, and feelings had been something that just appeared.
Not something that he had to do battle with, fight back, slay like they were deadly dragons.
Back when you might pull a girl’s hair if you wanted her attention.
To childish days, which he could barely remember, not apart from pain and loss and the horrible truth that the world was an ugly place.
“Do I like her? Fuck, Cody.”
“You spend a lot of time with her. It’s a pretty reasonable question.”
“I’m the one who found her. I’m the one who saw her curled up like a baby at the foot of that hill. I want to make sure that she’s safe. That’s it.”
It wasn’t it. And he had a feeling Cody knew that, which was why he was asking. Cody wasn’t an idiot.
“Yeah. I know that. But she went to the bakery every day before that.”
“You know me,” Zane said. “Think about what you know about me, and the way that I am. It doesn’t matter whether I like her or not. I’m not going to do anything about it.”
Because there was no point denying it. Like. It was the wrong word. It was a weird word. But he knew what he was saying.
Did Zane want to fuck Cara? Hell yeah. Though even that characterization made him uncomfortable. He thought back to when she had put her hand on his elbow on the trail, worried that she had been mean to him.
Maybe it wasn’t the wrong word, but it was a word that didn’t fully encompass what he felt.
And so he came back to like.
“You’re allowed to be happy,” Cody said.
“I’m pretty happy,” Zane responded, grabbing a large chunk of wood and heaving it into the back of the truck. “I mean, on a sliding scale of the kind of happy that I ever am.”
“I just mean, it would be completely reasonable for you to have a relationship.”
“Not interested. Thanks. That’s kind of my point. You can trust me. I’m not going to do anything to mess this up. To mess up what you have with Marlowe, to mess up Cara and her bakery, and I just flat out wouldn’t do anything… She’s like ten years younger than me.”
“I know,” Cody said.
“It’s not my thing.”
“Yeah. Well. Good talk.” Cody was being sarcastic, and Zane could tell, but it had been a pretty damned deep talk as far as Zane was concerned.
They didn’t discuss things like this. Not ever. It wasn’t their relationship. Hell, it wasn’t Zane’s relationship with anybody.
It was the God’s honest truth. He didn’t have a lot, but he had some honor. At least, he liked to think so.
Which meant that he probably needed to talk to Cody eventually about the fact that he was planning on eventually transitioning his focus to his own ranch.
But he wasn’t even in the infancy stages of that. Even if he got one horse that he didn’t keep here at Painted Ridge, even if he started improving the facilities on the property, it wasn’t going to come together for a long while.
There was no point in worrying about something that far in the future.
Just like there was no point in Cody worrying about something that Zane was never going to do.
His feelings had nothing to do with anything.
They worked until he was sweaty, beads of it dripping down his face, and he regretted that he hadn’t saved enough time for him to shower before he went out with Cara.
It was far too easy to imagine deciding to take a dip in the river. Inviting her to join him.
Hell no.
Absolutely not. Not when he had just re-dedicated himself to his own honor.