Jesse
Six months later
The call had come out of nowhere, the last day of March, a year and some days since Lucas had arrived at Snow Creek. Unknown number. Bad timing. I almost didn’t answer it.
I was halfway through paperwork on the horse purchases when the phone rang, the landline echoing through the kitchen as it always did, too loud.
It was now used only for emergencies, because Walter had insisted he needed it.
Irritation was already rising because I suspected it was marketers, but then I recalled that this was the phone my dad would have answered to talk to Lucas that time, and I picked it up with more enthusiasm.
“Snow Creek Ranch,” I said.
There was nothing on the other end. Breathing. Static. Long enough that I checked the receiver, convinced the line had gone dead.
“Hello?” I tried again.
A voice came through, hesitant and rough around the edges. “Hey, this is… uh, this is … I’m wondering if anyone other than Abel Knox is there that I could speak to?”
I went very still. Just using my father’s name made me think this was some shit that had happened in town, and I steeled myself for more.
“Is this one of the hands?” the caller asked, and I was still in fight mode, and must have hesitated too long. “Okay, well, if someone could call me back, I’d appreciate it. My name is Hoyt, and I—”
“Hoyt! It’s me! Jesse.” For a second, I’d thought the line was playing tricks on me. That my head had filled in a name it wasn’t ready to hear. My brother was calling me.
I didn’t answer fast enough. I heard him shift, heard the doubt creep in.
Silence, but not dropped-call silence. Shock silence.
“Hey, Jesse,” he said. “You sound… older.”
“I am older.”
A soft huff of a laugh. “Yeah. Yeah, you are.” He cleared his throat. “Um… can I come visit?” My chest tightened. “It’s just me and my trailer.”
“How many horses?”
“None,” he said, too quickly. “Just my shit. It’s not a permanent thing or anything. I’ll work while I’m there.”
“Sure, you can visit,” I said because anything else felt impossible. But what about Abel? What if he and Hoyt came face-to-face and Hoyt ran again? “Are you… You gotta know that Abel is still around.”
There was a pause, then, careful. “Yeah, saw on the website,” he murmured.
Fuck, I really needed to update that sooner rather than later. Or maybe Lucas could do it; he was a hell of a lot more technical than I was, and waiting for a social media marketing person could take forever.
“I can sleep in the trailer to avoid him,” Hoyt continued. “I just… it’s just for a few months that maybe I thought we could talk and shit, while I mend up from an accident.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah, I will be. Look, that’s not the reason… it was, but mostly, Jesse, I wanna see you, and I dunno, make things right, I guess.”
“Okay, yeah, come home,” I said. Firmer.
The silence after that felt like standing at the edge of a grave. All the things neither of us knew how to say piled up between us.
“Well,” I said finally. “See you soon.”
“Yeah. Thanks, Jesse.” His voice softened, cracked just enough to hurt.
When the line went dead, I stayed there with the receiver in my hand long after the dial tone kicked in. My chest ached. My eyes burned.
Hoyt was coming here to Snow Creek.
My big brother was coming home.
I needed to clear a bedroom. Move bedding in.
Lucas wandered in, searching for coffee.
“My brother is coming to stay.”
He blinked at me, then threw me his cute-as-fuck smile. “Awesome.”
“He’ll need somewhere to sleep.”
Something like excitement lit his eyes. “How about the spare room? The one with the iron frame bed?”
“He said he’d stay in his trailer.”
“And you think that’s okay, Jesse Knox? Nope, we need to go mattress shopping, and we need to go now.”
“No, I—”
He yanked me in for a kiss. “Shut up, Cowboy, let’s do this thing. You think your brother is a fan of green? I’m thinking green would be a good color.”
“I don’t imagine he’d care.”
“He’ll love it by the time it’s finished.”
I wish I knew my brother enough to agree.
I'd been putting off driving into town all week, and I ran out of reasons to avoid going in after Hoyt’s call, because I was reminded that I had a father and I needed to do my duty.
No more.
Just that. Duty.
I told Lucas I had an errand, and he didn’t question it, but I think he knew where I was going.
The facility had linoleum floors, a nurses’ station, and a smell like industrial cleaner over something else. Clean and sad and where people ended up when the people who loved them couldn't keep them safe anymore.
Not that I loved my dad. That was the honest truth, and I'd stopped being ashamed of it somewhere around the third time I'd pulled him out of a ditch.
But I drove out here because I was his next of kin, and because the Doctor had made the calls that needed making, and because I'd signed the papers, and that was the end of it.
His current support carer met me at the door. “He's having an okay day,” he said, which was his version of he might know who you are.
Dad was in the chair by the window when I came in, thinner than he'd been at Christmas, a plaid blanket on his lap, TV on low. He turned when he heard the door.
“Jesse.” He said it flat.
“Hey, Dad.”
I sat in the chair across from him. There wasn't much to say, and I'd learned to stop trying to fill it. Outside the window, the parking lot. Past that, the edge of town. He watched it like he was waiting for something that wasn't coming.
This was what it was now: the two of us in a beige room, the TV too low to make out, and me not loving him, and him losing his ability to know who I am.
He wasn't the man who'd driven me into the ground every day of my childhood.
He wasn't the man who'd taken a whip to Hoyt and made me watch.
He was something smaller and quieter, and I still didn't like him, and I wasn't going to pretend otherwise.
But I didn't need to like him to sit here for an hour, and I didn't need to forgive him to make sure the bills got paid.
There was one thing I'd never been able to say to his face. Not because I'd wanted his approval, but because I'd spent my whole life knowing exactly what it would cost me. That fear was gone now. Whether he remembered this conversation tomorrow didn't matter. I wasn't saying it for him.
“Got something to say,” I began, waiting until his eyes finally settled on me. “I’m gay.”
His eyes widened. “Huh?”
“I’ve got a partner and his name’s Lucas. I love him, and he loves me. He’s a good man, and I’ve never been happier.”
Something sparked behind his eyes. Recognition, and for a heartbeat, there was a familiar hate there.
“Filthy...” The slur came out thick and blurred, but the hatred behind it was unmistakable. His right hand clenched into a fist and lifted a few inches from the blanket.
It stopped there.
He didn't have the strength to hit me. Hell, he didn't have the strength to hurt me anymore, not with his fists and not with his words.
The anger drained from his face as quickly as it had come.
His hand loosened. He frowned, his eyes searching mine with growing uncertainty.
Then even that was gone. He simply stared at me, lost again.
I wouldn’t say it again, but I’ve said it with all my heart, so it would lodge somewhere in his brain. Maybe.
“I got a call today,” I said, because something in me needed to say it out loud, even to him. “Hoyt's coming home.”
Dad blinked, slow. Something moved across his face, there and gone.
“Hoyt,” he said, as if he were finding the name somewhere far back. Then he grimaced. “Shoulda fixed him better,” he muttered.
Even losing his mind, he still somehow clung onto hatred. Maybe this should be the final time I visit?
He didn't say anything else. The TV went to an ad for insurance, and he watched it without seeing it, and I sat there until the hour was up and said goodbye, and he said nothing at all as I walked out.
I drove back to Snow Creek with the windows down and the cold air coming in hard, and didn't think about him the whole way home.
We got Hoyt’s room done by the next day, Lucas fretting that it wouldn’t be done in time. Two days later, there was no sign of him, and the accident had happened in Texas, so I had assumed that was where he was heading from. That’s a long-ass way, but still… two days?
“God knows what I’m gonna do when he gets here,” I muttered, forgetting Lucas was in the kitchen.
“He’s your brother,” he said, lifting his gaze from construction reports long enough to send me a compassionate glance. “Hug him. If I had a brother, I’d hug him until he couldn’t breathe.”
“He probably ain’t the hugging type,” I muttered.
Lucas didn’t answer right away, and the weight of my brother arriving injured and angry, plus the thought of Dad deciding to head back out here, lodged itself in my chest like a shard of glass.
I was startled when Lucas climbed into my lap, straddled me awkwardly, knees braced on either side of mine, arms wrapping around my shoulders like this was the most natural thing in the world.
I stiffened out of reflex, then let myself go.
“You’re hugging me.”
“You’re different.”
“Jesus, Jesse, you’re wound tight,” he murmured against my mouth. “I bet you’ve got a hundred fears fighting for space in your head right now.”
I huffed out a breath. “You don’t know half of it.”
He smiled, thumbs brushing along my jaw. “I love that you’re the hugging type,” he said, as if it was a secret only he knew.
“I’m really not,” I said, even as my hands came up to hold him close.
Lucas kissed me, slow and sure, and I realized he wasn’t afraid of what came next. “You are with me,” he said quietly. “And I love you.”
“I love you,” I murmured. It still felt weird to say that, but I tried to show Lucas every moment how I was feeling, but… what if I was messing up? “Honestly, Lucas, baby, I do.”
“I know.” He chuckled, and we made out lazily, gentle and sweet and everything I wanted.