Chapter 2 #3
“If that’s what you think, then that’s some of your own baggage and I don’t really know how to carry it for you.
When I look at you, Lila, I see a damned competent woman.
I wouldn’t have jumped into this business venture with you if I didn’t.
That’s what I’m trying to get you to understand.
I want it to run well. I have more vested in this than just money.
I know that it’s complicated that you guys inherited this place.
But it gives you something to plant a flag in.
I’ve got money, I was successful in the rodeo just like your brothers, just like you.
I’ve got my own place. But it’s not this.
This place, and everything that you have here, that’s impressive shit.
I want to be more than just somebody that works for you. More than someone who works for Cody.”
“But you don’t just work for Cody,” she insisted. “This is your place too. You invested in it.”
“I know that. But this isn’t my land.”
“You work it like it is,” she said.
He looked down at his feet, at his boots pressing on the trail that they had made.
This part of it was on Painted Ridge Ranch.
And he was proud of that. Proud of the work they were putting into it.
Proud every day when he walked on this trail into the new, undeveloped spot. Proud of what it would become.
Proud of what it was already.
“Honestly, you should show up at your mom’s house with a monocle,” she continued, shifting the subject quickly.
“You deserve that. You deserve to get something back. That’s the one thing I regret about my dad.
That I didn’t tell him off. I wasn’t angry enough to.
But I wish I had. I wish I had... Maybe even lied a little bit.
Told him that my life was miserable without him, and he caused me all kinds of problems.”
“Technically, he did. He made your mom into what she was.”
Lila shook her head, her dark ponytail bouncing with the movement.
“My mom made herself into what she was. Nolan, I don’t blame my dad for that.
Or maybe... maybe that’s not fair. I think he was an ass.
I think he was an ass who took advantage of a young woman.
But... However much I think she was taken advantage of she has some stake in what happened later. ”
She kicked the side of a tree and continued.
“She should have pulled herself up. Should have done the right thing for her kids. She expected Cody and Walker to do that. To take care of me. When I was just a snot-eating baby, they were in charge of making sure that I didn’t die or run off the balcony at the apartment or something.
If she can expect them to do that, then it’s fair for me to expect that she could get over her issues with my dad and parent.
So, I don’t give her a pass. Just because things were difficult.
I know they were. I’m not debating that.
But the fact that she could only ever be happy when she was with a man who didn’t even love her?
That’s the kind of shit that I never want to carry.
Not ever. Maybe that’s part of why I didn’t yell at my dad.
I’m not real worried about being him. But I’ve made it my mission to never be her. ”
Lila, Cody and Walker’s mom had been a cleaner at David Reynolds’ ranch house.
She had only been nineteen when she’d started a relationship with the much older, much richer David.
And he had toyed with her, refused to support her when she had his kids, but often brought her back into his bed.
It had been an intermittent and dramatic affair that had a negative impact on everybody.
Nolan had spent enough time at their place to bear witness to some of it. To their mom crashing out on occasion.
It was bad stuff.
He couldn’t blame Lila for feeling like she wanted to avoid that fate.
He supposed they all made their own cautionary tales out of their traumas too, in addition to making their own houses.
“My dad’s daughter...” he began, “I don’t know if my dad took care of her, or if her mom did.
I don’t even know if she knows him, though it looks like they shared an address at some point.
Not sure really who her mom is. I can send her a message through the DNA site that I used. I’m just putting it off.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve spent all these years without a family. Feels kind of like dumb shit to jump into connecting with one just so you can feel a rejection that you may never have had to feel.”
“Ouch. And understandable. I’m just grateful that so far, we haven’t found any half-siblings. Everything is dramatic enough with the three of us.”
“Yeah. Well. I debated if I needed to connect with mine. Since I’ve got you all.”
Something changed in the set of her shoulders when he said that, but she didn’t turn to look at him. They spent most of the rest of the hike in relative silence.
It was a goddamn scorcher of a day. Nolan was sweating his ass off by the time they’d done three-quarters of a mile.
It was heavy work, hard work. And while he did a lot of the chainsawing, Lila was an asset. She was a hard worker.
She always had been. He’d taken an interest in woodwork a long time ago, and he had a thriving art business on the side of all of this.
But there was a limit to the number of large-scale projects he could take on at a time, and a limit to the number of people who could pay what it cost for him to make his wooden sculptures.
Most of his work was hyper realistic, and it took a while to do.
The mustang he had done for the front of the Painted Ridge Resort was one of his proudest pieces.
And Cody had given him a larger piece of the land, and a lot of money for it.
But Lila was a pretty good hand with carving too, because he had shown her how to do it when she was little. He had found her with a whittling knife and wood up late at night working on it. He wondered sometimes if she even remembered that.
He stopped and downed the last contents of his water bottle before stripping his shirt off. “Hell,” he said. “It’s hot.”
He turned around and saw Lila, hands on her knees.
She looked up, sweat rolling down her temples, dirt smudged on her cheek.
She never liked to admit that she was tired, hot, or defeated.
This morning had been a rare instance when she had been plastered to the couch. But she looked like she was plum beat.
“We need a break,” he said.
“We can’t take a break,” she said, straightening. Her eyes went to his, then down, then away.
“What?”
“Come on,” she snapped. “We don’t have time to take a break. We have to get a full mile today, otherwise we’re going to end up falling behind.”
“Fine. I’m up for doing the whole mile, but I personally need to take a swim.”
He looked off to the left, where he knew there was a river rushing just on the other side of the trees. They had done a hard hike through all of this early on and flagged everything. “Come on, Lila. Imagine it. Cool, crisp water.”
“Nolan…”
“In fact, we should blaze down to the river. The horses are going to need drinks at a certain point, and people may want a break.”
“That’s going to cost us time,” she said.
“Not much. What do you reckon? We’re a hundred feet from the water?”
Her eyebrows were low, her forehead wrinkled, her expression comically grumpy. “Maybe.”
“Let’s do that, and our reward can be to jump in it.”
He could see the moment she relented, her eyebrows relaxing, her forehead smoothing.
“Better idea,” she said. “Let’s see which part of the river we actually want to blaze to. Maybe there’s not anywhere nice, right parallel to where we are now.”
“Fair point.”
“We can pack our equipment down, take a swim, trailblaze back,” she said.
He was surprised that it hadn’t taken him that long to talk her into it. Mainly because she was usually obstreperous for the sake of it. But not today. But he supposed she was too beat today to be a brat.
He picked up his machete, and she grabbed the saw. He was not taking the chainsaw down there. If something needed to be chainsawed, he would have to go back in and do it.
And they marched themselves down toward the water. The brush was thick, but they could fight their way through it.
He angled his shoulders and pushed a branch forward, and then he heard a sharp yelp behind him. “For God’s sake! Warn a girl next time.”
He turned around and saw a little red mark on her cheek, right where the dirt was earlier. “Sorry,” he said.
On a reflex, he reached out toward her to touch it or something. But she took a step back, her expression sour. “I’m fine,” she said.
Then she pushed forward, elbowing him as she did, weaseling her way through the brush down toward the water.
Fair enough. He deserved for her to be mad about that.
He hadn’t meant to nearly take her eye out with a pine.
She had been right to scout the river first, because this part was shallow and fast-moving.
But when they went up a ways, there was a pool perfect for swimming, and great for leading a horse to.
Though whether or not they could be made to drink was up in the air, as conventional wisdom had taught him.
“Perfect,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said, turning away from her and undoing his belt buckle, unzipping his jeans and tugging them down his thighs. He had a pair of black boxer shorts on underneath.
So, he didn’t think much of it as he headed straight for the water. His breath hissed through his teeth as the cold water hit his stomach, but then he laid down across the surface of it and submerged. Lila was still standing on land.
“Come on,” he said. “Water’s great.”