Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
BOOKER
I hadn’t believed her when she said a family dinner would be a great idea. If I was completely honest with myself, the only reason I went through with it was because Reece seemed to really want to do it.
I hadn’t even considered that I really had a family. And that thought made me feel like an absolute ass right about now.
It wasn’t that I didn’t think of Trace as family. Of course, I did. He was my brother, and I might not say it out loud, but I loved him. I guessed I’d just never really considered that we met the criteria of what a family was supposed to be. And that wasn’t even taking into account Xander. We’d grown apart over the years, but that didn’t mean I didn’t care about him either. We’d just gotten too caught up in our own lives that it was easy to forget about the other, which made me feel like an even bigger ass than before.
Looking around at the people gathered in my home, I could see how mistaken I’d been.
They’d been here this whole time. I’d just been taking them for granted and not giving them the credit and respect they deserved.
Even poor Dex. He’d been our friend since childhood, and he was always there whenever we needed him. Hell, he’d fixed up Reece’s car, and I know for a fact that there was no way he’d charged me for all the work he’d done on it.
Over the years, I’d closed myself off. I’d shut myself away on this ranch, convincing myself that it was for the best. That I was protecting myself. All I’d done was deprive myself of the life I’d always dreamed of. I pushed away not just the people who hurt me but those who genuinely cared about me as well. And I wasn’t the only Farrington brother who’d done that. Pushed and pushed at the cost of not just themselves but the people around them.
That was going to change.
Because Reece was right, and I was absolutely telling her that when we were finally alone again.
But first, there was something more serious I needed to deal with.
“Come on,” I said, pushing Xander’s feet off my coffee table as I stood up. “You can help me with some last things around the ranch for the night.”
He looked up at me in alarm and then down at his fancy slacks. “What? I’m working for my supper now, am I?”
“Damn straight. Now, move your ass.”
I strode through the kitchen and headed out the back door, Val running around me before she fell into step at my side. This was her favorite part of the day and even the promise of belly scratches from Cade wouldn’t keep her from the ranch chores.
If only everyone else had the same attitude. Well, minus the belly scratches. I had my limits, except for Reece.
I could hear Xander’s footsteps as he jogged down the steps behind me, and I gritted my teeth as I pushed my feelings down.
He was my brother, and that won him a certain amount of understanding. But I wasn’t living my life the way we had in the past. I wasn’t shutting up and watching anyone treat the people I cared about like shit.
“Val, come,” I snapped, immediately feeling bad as she looked up at me from my side. “Sorry, girl.” I ducked down and ruffled the hair at the back of her neck, keeping pace until he reached the barn.
Unfortunately for Xander, the closer we got to the door, the more my frustration built.
Three steps inside and I was spinning on the spot, grabbing my brother by his starched shirt collar and tossing him against a stall door.
“What the fuck!” he gasped as he bounced off the wood, and I pushed him back to pin him in place.
“What the fuck? Damn straight, what the fuck, Xander! What do you think you’re doing?”
His brow furrowed in confusion, but he didn’t push me away from him. He hung there looking almost resigned and waiting for what came next.
It made me pause, and my gaze moved over my brother as I really looked at him for the first time since he’d arrived in town.
With a sigh, I stepped back. “What’s going on, Xander?” I asked, slightly calmer than before.
He brushed his hands over his shirt like he was trying to straighten out the non-existent wrinkles. It was a tick he’d had since he was a kid. It came from the impossible standards our parents had held us to and Xander’s constant pursuit of them.
Until he stopped.
And he went off to college, barely ever returning to town again.
Xander’s eyes moved to his shoes, and then he went to move past me. “What did you need help with?” he said as he tried to walk away.
I didn’t push him back this time, even if the anger inside me really wanted to. My hand came to his shoulder, and I stopped him in his tracks.
“Don’t do that. Don’t ignore whatever it is you need to talk about.”
He glanced at me over his shoulder. “You’re not exactly one to talk. A minute ago, you were throwing me across the barn, and now you want to hold hands and talk about our feelings?”
“I’m not holding your fucking hand. Now tell me what’s going on?”
Xander sighed. He moved back to the stall door and leaned against it of his own volition this time, but his eyes stayed on the ground as he tried to find the words for whatever it was he was struggling to say.
“I messed up, Book,” he finally said. When Xander looked up and finally met my eyes, I almost didn’t recognize my brother. “I really messed up.”
My hand moved back to his shoulder, but instead of shoving him away from me, this time I pulled him closer and hugged him tight. I stepped back from a bewildered-looking Xander.
“It won’t be as bad as it seems. We’ll fix it, but you’re done being rude to Reece. Whatever stick you shoved up your ass before you came here, you need to pull it out. And you owe her a damn apology.”
Xander’s eyes widened almost comically. “I wasn’t…” Then he sighed. “I’ll apologize. I’m sorry, Book. I didn’t mean…Hell, I’m too lost in my head. I don’t know what I’m doing half the time.”
“It’s never as bad as it seems,” I repeated and then nodded toward the back of the barn where the little unnamed mare was still stabled. Xander followed as I headed to the hay storage. Val pushed her way between us and then moved closer to Xander like she always did when someone was hurting.
“I’m an alcoholic.” Xander laughed wryly, and my shoulders tensed at the impact of his statement. “I’ve never admitted that to someone I know before.”
“Okay, well…”
“And I lost my medical practice.”
“What!”
Shit, that wasn’t the right reaction, but hell, you didn’t just casually drop a statement like that and expect a person to shrug it off.
“Yep, everything caught up with me, and my partners didn’t want to deal with the fallout, so they strongly suggested that I let them buy me out, and then casually threatened they’d report me to the medical board if I didn’t.”
“Whoa, whoa, back up a bit. I’m still digesting this.”
Xander glanced at me out of the side of his eye and then made his way over to where the hay bales were stacked in the corner before dropping onto one. “There’s nothing to digest, Book. It’s a done deal. I took the deal, and they bought me out ten months ago.”
“Ten months?”
“Yeah. I may have sat and wallowed for a while after.”
I took a seat on the hay next to him, trying to think about what to say next. Xander had worked so hard to get to where he was. It was practically unheard of for someone at his age. I had a feeling that our parents had a hand in it, but if they did, they never told him or anyone else. Which was most definitely unlike them.
I couldn’t see how he could be so laid back about this whole thing, but I guess he’d had a lot longer to come to terms with it.
“So what’s the plan now?” I asked.
“Finish up my treatment and then figure out how to salvage my career.”
“You’re in treatment then.”
“Working the steps. Got a sponsor and everything. He keeps telling me I can go back to work, but I just…I don’t know. I need some time. I want to get a year under my belt. I want to prove that I can do it. Not to mention that I’ve got absolutely no clue what to do next.”
“Doc Matthews closed up the practice in town,” I told him. “Willowbrook is crying out for a primary care physician.”
“Yeah, because running back to the root of all my problems is just what I need right now.”
He wasn’t wrong. Our parents were the root of most of our problems. It was the curse of the Farrington family that our mother could never accept. In her eyes, she could never be the problem. Regina Farrington existed in a world of absolute superiority over those around her. It couldn’t last though, and I was sitting back, waiting to watch the fallout. As long as it didn’t hurt any of my brothers, it would be the best damn time of my life.
“I wondered why you were back in town.”
“Trace told me about Cade, and I wanted to meet him. Plus, we all need to talk about Gage. We’re bringing him home, right?” Xander looked around the barn and sighed. “Not that ‘home’ is really where any of us want to be.”
I knew what he meant. Our parents’ house had never really been a home. We’d all gotten out of there as fast as we could and never looked back. Maybe dragging Gage back to all this was cruel. He was free of it all. Living life the way he wanted. Wasn’t that what we’d all dreamed of back then?
“I don’t know about bringing him back. That’s a choice for him. But he needs to know that we know the truth now, and it shouldn’t be something that keeps him away. Reece has tried to get in contact with him through his social media accounts, so I guess we’ll see if he bites.”
Xander looked at me in question. “Reece?”
“She did some social media job before all this. I don’t know anything about that stuff. Besides, he’s more likely to respond to a beautiful woman than any of us,” I said, waving my hand around.
“You’re not wrong there.”
Xander sighed and leaned back. Val put her head on his lap, and he absently played with her ears while he thought. I didn’t think I’d ever done this before. Just sat in silence with Xander and existed in the same place without any kind of expectation.
“I’m sorry,” I finally said, breaking through the silence. “I should have been there more for you when we were growing up.”
He shrugged. “It is what it is, Book. None of us had it any easier than the rest. We’re lucky that Gramps gave us the means to do whatever we wanted and get the hell out of that place. There are a lot of kids worse off than we were.”
He was right, but it didn’t make me feel any better. It didn’t make the situation any easier.
I wanted to be the guy that had moved past all this. The one who didn’t let the past affect his present so much, but how was that ever going to be possible when they still lived so close by? When heading into town came with the constant risk of seeing my mother around every corner.
My grandfather had saved me for a brief moment when he’d left me the ranch, but he also chained me to this town and my parents in a way I’d never realized before. I could never leave the ranch. I could never leave the potential of everything I was building here. It could do so much good for so many lives.
And because of that, I now saw that I’d never truly be free.
I couldn’t bring Gage back into this. He shouldn’t have to live his life surrounded by his biggest regret. The kindest thing was to let him keep having the life we all wished we could have had as well.
“How has it been so many years and it still feels like such a mess?” I mused.
Val lifted her head from Xander’s lap and looked at me, a soft whine escaping her until I laid my hand on her back.
Suddenly, Xander started laughing. It was the deep belly laugh of hysteria and damn if it wasn’t contagious. The moment he locked eyes with me, it came bursting out of my mouth as I threw back my head and laughed along with him.
Poor Val just sat between us, looking confused until she jumped off the hay bale and trotted away, clearly done with our antics.
“Have you ever seen such a sorry pair?” Xander asked. “A drunk and an asshole.”
“Hey! I’ve been nothing but nice to you.”
Xander looked at me wryly. “I have to admit you are weirdly nicer now that you’ve got Reece in your life. I just can’t decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”
“Is that why you’ve been so rude to her all night? You think she’s some kind of devil woman out to corrupt my soul?”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” Xander pushed me gently and huffed out a laugh. “Your soul was lost years ago. I’m more worried that you’re trying to lure her in by being someone you’re not. The poor woman might need an escape route, and I’m such a nice guy that I’d have to go completely out of my way to provide her with one. It’s going to be a massive inconvenience considering that I live in the city.”
“Yeah, ever the nice guy,” I quipped.
“Out of all of us, I’m definitely the nice one.”
I was pretty sure the look I gave him following that comment said it all.
“Does Trace know?” I asked, not sure how I felt about that.
Xander nodded. “It’s hard to hide when you’ve been staying with someone for a while.”
I guess that made sense. It didn’t take the sting out of him not feeling like he could come to me sooner. I was the eldest. I was supposed to be the one that protected them all.
“I’m turning the ranch into a therapy center,” I blurted out.
Xander raised his eyebrows in surprise, and I stood from the hay bale, walking over to the stable for the little mare and leaning on the door. When Xander joined me, I continued. “Healing horses has always been something I’ve been passionate about, but I want to expand on that. I want to help people as well.”
I could almost feel the look of surprise on Xander’s face at that statement but chose not to take it personally.
“This place has done so much for me. I know it can help others too. Plus, with the funding I could raise, it gives me the means to bring in more staff, expand our rescue numbers.”
“You’ve really thought about this,” Xander said.
“You could say that. I have my investors lined up, and I’ve already started work on putting in some cottages on the property for people to stay in.”
“That’s really impressive, Book.” Xander sounded impressed, and even if it warmed a corner of my heart I didn’t want to admit to, I didn’t know if he’d feel the same way after what I planned to say next.
“I need a doctor in town, Xander.” I turned to look at him to gauge his reaction. It was actually the one part of my business plan that I hadn’t been able to square down. I needed an on-call medical presence in case something went wrong.
Xander sighed, his head falling forward as his shoulders slumped. It was the reaction I’d been expecting.
Here I was thinking about how Gage deserved to live his life on his own terms, and yet, the first chance I had, I was reeling Xander back in.
Being on his own hadn’t been the answer for Xander though. We’d all seen him partying in high school, and obviously, that continued in college. But if it had reached a level after that to put his entire career in jeopardy, then maybe distance wasn’t what Xander needed.
Our parents were an issue we all needed to deal with. But we had support and family in each other. Reece was right. We should be building on that. We should let the people who cared about us take some of the load.
Hell, maybe we could even figure out a way to free ourselves of the parental curse if we worked together. Take back the town for ourselves and everyone who lived in it.
Okay, that sounded a bit too murderous for real life, but consequences could be a bitch, and it was time the eldest Farrington generation started facing them.
The little mare shuffled forward a step, and we both paused, practically holding our breath as she slowly, cautiously, moved closer. When she stretched her neck and her soft muzzle brushed across Xander’s hand, I knew I had him from the cautious smile that slowly came to his lips.
Xander slowly turned his hand, and the mare pressed her nose against his palm, huffing out a breath when she realized there wasn’t one of the treats there that Reece had been sneaking to her. He gently ran his hand over her muzzle, and the mare moved closer instead of cautiously stretching out to test the person in front of her.
Xander sighed again. “Tell me more about this plan of yours.”