Chapter Five
The Bennet Ranch
Aly looked at her reflection. She’d done her makeup—a rare thing indeed—but now it felt like she was looking at a stranger.
Cal had said they should all look their best. Put together and impenetrable. Unflappable and sure.
She felt none of those things, but she was going to do everything in her power to exude that on the outside anyway. So looking like someone else only aided in that.
Or so she told herself.
“Was this really necessary?” Landon grumbled from where he was getting ready in the bedroom.
She looked out from the bathroom to where he stood glaring out the window loosening his already loose tie.
She crossed the room to him, reached out to tighten and straighten his tie.
He looked so handsome, and so not like himself.
She’d only ever seen him wear a suit at funerals, and that had been years ago.
Not Landon as a grown man in a … well, it wasn’t an expensive suit by any means.
But it was still quite different than ranch wear.
“Cal said it would be best to look as much like you take this seriously as possible. A suit is serious.” She patted his lapels, met his grumpy gaze. “You know, you’re going to have to wear a suit for the wedding.”
“Not this suit.”
No. Not this one. She sighed, any attempt at thinking about happy, positive things fading away.
Nothing about today was going to be positive. No amount of trying could change that. In the months leading up to it, she’d believed the trial getting here would be good. An ending.
And it would be, but she’d underestimated the time and pain it would take to get there. All these meetings with the lawyers had made her realize they weren’t just going to have to go over it all again, they were also going to have to pull out and analyze every terrible, traumatizing detail.
Landon put his hands over hers, gave them a squeeze, no doubt he knew the direction of her thoughts. “Come on. Let’s head out.”
She nodded, letting him wrap his arm around her waist and lead them out of the bedroom.
If there was one positive to all this hardship and upheaval, she thought it was that they’d had to learn to lean on each other.
It had stripped away a lot of their inherent and taught tendencies to isolate and handle things on their own.
A gift from Benjamin Bennet, among a whole heap of other traumas. The one ahead of them included.
But with deadbeat mothers who showed up out of nowhere, angry brothers of dead women, and now an awful trial to get through, she and Landon hadn’t been able to just isolate. They’d had to lean on each other. In ways they never would have otherwise.
All this bad had brought them closer, had made leaning on each other easier. Maybe she’d take a harder learning curve over all this, but she couldn’t control the world. Or people.
Thinking about control and people had her sighing. Worry cropping up. “I wish Cal would have stayed put.” He hadn’t said he was going to get drunk, just said he was going to meet Nate, but Aly knew.
Once in a while wasn’t cause for worry. And it wasn’t the act of getting drunk. It was that haunted look in his eyes. It was a reminder that she’d spent a lot of years pretending like Benjamin Bennet wasn’t an alcoholic.
She wouldn’t do the same with Cal. No, there’d have to be some stepping in. She wouldn’t let him slide away into his trauma or alcohol. And neither would Landon.
“Nate said he was all right and he’ll get him to the courthouse on time,” Landon said.
“I know. I know. And I know Nate will watch out for him, but he won’t think to make him eat or take care of himself. Maybe that bullet wound is healing, but…”
“He’s not a kid, Aly.”
She wanted to pout. Landon was right, but she just wanted to … smooth everything out and make it okay and she knew she couldn’t. What Cal was dealing with, none of them could fix. She wasn’t even sure Benjamin Bennet’s conviction would really help him.
Which was a worry that hung over all of them, Cal himself included.
Landon retrieved his keys and wallet, and Aly grabbed her purse. Before they could walk out into a frozen winter morning, Landon stopped her at the door.
“No matter what? We’re going to be okay.”
It wasn’t optimism. It was determination. That he would do everything to make it okay. One of the reasons she loved him as much as she did.
“Yeah, no matter what.” She lifted to her toes to press a kiss to his mouth.
When he held her tight, deepened the kiss, she let him for a few beats, then pushed at his chest and fixed him with a scolding look when he finally pulled away.
“We shouldn’t be late,” she said.
But he smiled at her, ran a hand over her hair. “It’d be a lot more fun.”
She laughed in spite of herself, and it felt good. To laugh. To love. To know they had each other’s backs no matter what. “You never think you should be late for chores even if it would be a lot more fun.”
“I mean, I think it, I just don’t do it.” He was trying to keep that lighthearted feeling, but his expression changed. Became weighted, as they moved for the door.
Worry. Concern. He held a lot of the responsibility at the Bennet Ranch. He was not a man who delegated.
But because of that, because of who he was, down to the bone, he had a staff of ranch hands who didn’t just respect him but cared about this ranch and wouldn’t let anything fall by the wayside.
“The ranch is in good hands, Landon.”
“I know.” He huffed out a breath. “I just hate the idea this might take weeks.”
She did, too, for lots of reasons. The ranch was fairly low on that list. It would survive. It always did. But she wanted the Bennet brothers to survive too.
Landon opened the door, waited for her to step outside. He locked the door behind them, and they walked in silence to his truck.
Aly wasn’t going to let this trial, this ghost, haunt her present. Not when she had so much to be happy about.
Or so she told herself.
Driving into the courthouse parking lot, even with Landon’s free hand holding hers, it was harder and harder to hold on to that belief.