Jesse
Ispent the afternoon doing anything but what I needed to do.
I checked a fence line that didn’t need checking, moved feed that could’ve waited, and fixed a latch I’d already fixed twice.
Work had always been the answer, except now it felt like hiding, and I knew I was avoiding the talk. The one Lucas and I owed each other.
Feelings had snuck up on me like that—unwanted, badly timed, and impossible to shake.
I couldn’t get my head around why I’d feel anything for the man who’d shown up with plans that could turn my life inside out.
Maybe the answer was that this impossible lust we seemed to be enjoying didn’t have to mean anything.
A short-term thing. Sex. Simple, contained, as long as he understood that was all it was ever going to be, and that none of it would change my mind about selling.
When I headed back toward the house, the yard was empty.
No sign of him outside, but the truck he’d been using was still parked where he’d left it.
I went in and called his name. No call back, but I heard movement instead—soft, uneven.
Footsteps, maybe. Upstairs from Walter’s room.
I knew he’d been up there clearing things out, wondered if maybe he’d take over the room, although he was still in the small and much colder room my idiot ass had stuck him in when he arrived, as if that alone would make him turn tail and run.
I took the stairs two at a time. The door was open, just a crack, and there was a sound I couldn’t place at first. Not pain. Not exactly. Something breaking.
A sob.
I stepped inside.
Lucas was on the floor with his back to the wall, a cushion under his knees, an old shoebox in his lap, and when he peered up at me, his face was blotchy, his blue eyes red, tears tracking down his cheeks. It hit me how vulnerable he looked.
I stopped short, my chest tight in a way that had nothing to do with anger or plans or the ranch.
“I didn’t mean to upset you, Lucas,” I said. The words came out wrong immediately. “No.” I took my hat off and held it in my hands. “Maybe I did. I’m confused, Lucas. I didn’t—”
“It’s not that,” he said. “I know it’s messed-up; I get it. You’re supposed to hate me, just like everyone…” He scrubbed at his eyes, and he hadn’t finished what he was saying, but what the lack of words implied shut me up.
He wiped his face with his sleeve and looked at me, jaw locked as if he was bracing for another hit.
“I found Miguel,” he said and swallowed.
“I asked him outright about that night, about how Walter pulled him out, about him dying, and he told me that my grandfather was a good man. That Walter freaking Barrett accepted and supported him. Stood up for him when it mattered against everything. So why couldn’t he accept me?
” Lucas asked. “Why did he have all this information that he paid for, but he didn’t want me? ”
I crossed the room without thinking and lowered myself to the floor beside him, and he didn’t move away. After a second, he leaned onto me, tentative at first, then heavier, his shoulder knocking into my chest as if he’d run out of strength to hold himself upright.
I slid an arm over his shoulders and tugged him in, a sideways hug that let him keep the box, let him keep his space, but told him I was there.
He moaned under his breath as he folded into me, and I stayed like that, breathing with him, my hand firm at his shoulder.
He fidgeted, cursed, and then, finally rested in a comfortable position.
“Tell me what’s wrong,” I whispered, and he sighed.
“I was fifteen,” he began, then shook his head. “No, it started further back than that. My dad, Dennis Barrett, wasn’t a good man. He was bitter, angry, a drunk; he never hurt me physically, but it was…”
“Words.”
He glanced at me, frowning. “Yeah. Words and neglect. He was… hateful.” He went quiet, lost in thought.
“Well, you know I have one like that,” I said because I hated the silence.
“Yeah,” Lucas said, and he glanced up at me and was so damn sad. “Does your dad know you’re queer?”
“Fuck no,” I said, “he nearly killed my brother for coming out to him, and I’m not half as brave as Hoyt, nor half as stupid.”
“Doesn’t it hurt to hide yourself?”
“No. When I needed anything, I’d head to Denver. I don’t want anything more than that.”
“Just sex, then.”
“Yep. What about you?”
Lucas sighed. “I wasn’t an easy person to hide out inside.
I mean, I came out to my parents unintentionally just by being me.
You know, I was this short, curly-haired kid who loved eyeliner and drama club, so it was obvious.
At my mom’s wake, Dad lost his shit. Threw me out, tossed my belongings, burned them in front of me and everyone else who never for one minute stepped in, got his gun, told me to run. ”
“Jeez—”
“You’d better believe I ran, because it was an impossible situation, and I knew it could only get worse. You get that right?”
“Yeah, I do.”
Hoyt had run because he had no choice. I just wished he’d taken me with him or killed our dad right there on that day. Although killing would have put Hoyt in jail, I didn’t wish that. But in more selfish moments, I wished I’d been important enough for my brother to stay.
“I ended up on the streets, had some savings, ended up at this homeless charity, Harbor 5280, that found kids like me, helped us. They took me in and saved my life. That’s who the money would go to.”
“The money? Oh… you mean from a sale?”
“Yeah.”
Great, add that extra guilt to me now. One more thing for me to wrestle with, thinking kids out there might go without.
Christ, I’m a selfish fucker.
“… so, the night before Rebecca found me—she runs the charity now—I called Snow Creek, used my last dollar, begged to come here, needed my grandfather to send me some money, or find me, and he let me cry and explain about Dad, about being queer, about being thrown out and homeless, and you know what he said without hesitation?” I shook my head.
“Along with a lot of slurs, he said, and I fucking quote, ‘no sissy girly would step foot on Snow Creek’.”
I watched his lips move; the shock of the words he’d used was a knife. “He said what?” I asked quickly, sitting upright, dragging Lucas with me, and turning to face him, careful not to yank him when he winced. “He said those exact words?”
“I’ll never forget them,” Lucas murmured.
“Walter wouldn’t say that. That wasn’t your grandfather,” I said, guilt and horror flooding me.
“I asked him—”
“No, listen to me. Did the person you spoke to tell you his name? Did he answer the phone and identify himself? Did he…” Was I shouting? Because Lucas winced and tried to move away. “Sorry, are you sure that was who you were talking to?”
“Yes?” He phrased it as a question, as if he suddenly doubted himself.
“That doesn’t sound like your grandfather.” I stopped then, because when I told him, any chance at anything between us, just sex or discovering more, would vanish, but I couldn’t stop this. “Lucas, I’m so fucking sorry, but your grandfather didn’t answer the phone.”
He peered up at me, confused, and I had to rip the Band-Aid off.
“That’s the kind of thing my dad would say.”
The words hung between us, heavy, and I watched them land. Lucas went still, his breath catching, color draining from his face so fast it scared me.
“When you heard him,” I said, slowing myself down, forcing the pieces to line up instead of crashing into each other. “When he cornered Miguel. Before he hit you.” I waited until he looked at me. “What do you remember?”
Lucas swallowed. His eyes unfocused, as if he was staring past me at something he didn’t want to see.
“A cowboy,” he said faintly. “Shouting. Big voice. Angry. He grabbed Miguel and backed him into the wall. Kept saying—” He broke off, shook his head. “I don’t remember the words. Just… a cowboy. A cowboy yelling.”
My mind stalled, then lurched forward all at once.
Walter hadn’t been like that. Not ever. He raised his voice when it mattered, sure, but he didn’t corner people. He didn’t bully. And he sure as hell didn’t sound like my father.
I felt lost for half a second, standing in the wreckage of it—and then something clicked.
“Wait,” I said, already reaching for my phone. “Hang on.”
I opened my camera roll and scrolled fast, heart thudding, past feed deliveries, fence lines, Boone’s dumb, handsome face. “I’ve got something.”
Lucas watched me as if I’d gone off the rails.
“I was at a horse sale,” I said, shaking. “A couple of years back. Event down in Pueblo. I was videoing the stock for Walter—bloodlines, movement, all that.” I found it. Stopped. Turned the screen toward him. “But I caught something else.” I hit play. “This is Walter.”
Walter’s voice came through first, calm, steady, talking horses. Then another voice cut in from off-camera. Familiar in the worst possible way.
My dad.
I looked at Lucas as the sound filled the room. “So, Walter’s talking first, and my dad is the one replying,” I said.
Lucas jerked, and his hand flew up, knocking against my wrist, and the phone clattered to the floor between us, the sound still playing, tinny and unforgiving.
“No,” he breathed, scrambling back until his shoulders hit the wall. His knees came up, boots scraping wood, his whole body folding in on itself as he gasped in pain. “No—turn it off. Jesse, turn it off.”
I killed the sound and dropped the phone, all my attention on him.
He had both hands over his ears now; fingers dug into his hair as if he was trying to rip the noise out of his head. His breathing turned fast and shallow, eyes wide and glassy, fixed on nothing.
“That’s him,” Lucas said hoarsely. “Those are the words of the man who told me…”
“The second one. My dad?”