Chapter Thirty #2
“I don’t know what’s right anymore,” Tanner added finally, which was the heart of the issue. His father, whom he had looked up to his whole life, had lied and kept the truth from him. Jake understood that now more than ever.
“I get it. Peony told me on one of the first nights I was here that Brett looked for me after my mom left, apparently never stopped, even long after he had you two. My mom always said that we were kicked out, that my father was a good-for-nothing asshole who didn’t want me. That we were better off without him.”
“Really?” Brady said, finally speaking. “That had to be really tough to swallow as a kid.”
“Well, apparently he . . . he was an asshole,” Tanner spit out, and sniffed, running the back of his flannel shirt cuff under his nose. “He knew you weren’t his, Brady. He had to.”
“Maybe. But here’s the thing, Tan. It doesn’t matter anymore,” Brady said, and stood up quickly, looking over his shoulder.
Jake followed Brady’s gaze, and Chip’s brown muzzle popped around the corner, his ears forward, nosing Brady, who grabbed his reins. Chip dragged him forward toward Tanner, seeing his human on the ground.
Jake sensed that Brady was really uncomfortable, unsure of what to say or do, and the distraction was a welcome one as Brady busied himself with looking the horse over.
Liz had told Jake that Brady was usually the one who could smooth out Tanner if he was stewing, and if not him, then it was Brett.
Jake guessed that Brady didn’t know what to do or say this time, his own messed up feelings about their father coming into play.
How did you defend a man you were angry with for lying to you your whole life?
How do you reconcile the confusion when you’re already confused?
Jake had been there so many times he couldn’t count. His brothers hadn’t, until recently.
Jake stood up, dusted off his jeans, and stepped over to Brady, who was checking the saddle cinch.
“I got this. Why don’t you ride back to the ranch, I’ll get Sloppy over there into your truck and get him home, at some point,” he said quietly.
“You sure? You two aren’t exactly buddies,” Brady said, leaning on the horse.
Chip nudged at Jake’s arm, and Jake ran his hand over the horse’s forehead.
Tanner hiccupped behind him, and Chip’s ears went forward, toward the sound, and he stretched his neck until he was touching Tanner’s shoulder.
He lipped at Tanner’s shirt and nickered.
Tanner reached up and ran his hand lazily down Chip’s muzzle.
It was good enough for the horse, who then straightened back up and looked at both of them expectantly, as if to say Aren’t you going to help him?
“He’s fine,” Jake murmured, and tweaked the horse’s ear. Brady chuckled at that and grabbed the horn of the saddle.
“And here you are talkin’ to horses like you’ve been country this whole time,” he joked, then hooked his foot into the stirrup and lunged up and over into the saddle. He met Jake’s eyes and frowned as he gathered up the reins.
“Thanks. I don’t know what to do to make this better.”
“You can’t,” Jake supplied, and shrugged. “He has to do the heavy lifting.”
Brady looked over at his brother, who was now watching them both, blinking like an owl. “Look. Tan, you’re drunk as a skunk. You gotta go home, you can’t stay here. New York can drive my truck. I’ll get Chip back to the stable and tell Liz that we found you.”
Tanner waved him off, and Brady turned Chip and with one more nod to Jake, kicked the horse into a jog back down through the headstones.
“I can’t do it anymore,” Tanner blurted as soon as Brady was gone.
Jake sank back down beside him, propping his arms on his bent knees and relaxing into as comfortable a position as he could get leaning on cold stone.
They could be here a while, and if Tanner was opening up to him, he’d sit here all damned day if he had to.
“Do what?” he probed carefully.
“Keep all this shit together,” Tanner stated, and waved his hand in the direction of the ranch, the defeat plain on his face.
“Why do you think you have to?” Jake asked bluntly. “You have Brady, Liz, and me. Peony. Heck, the crew too.”
“I know that,” he replied, “It’s not about— More like I’m pissin’ off the one man who isn’t here to piss off anymore, and bein’ pissed off at him at the same time. Don’t wanna go back on what he needed from me, but angry at him for doin’ the same.”
“And you don’t want to be mad anymore,” Jake added.
Tanner nodded. “It’s fuckin’ with my head.”
“Ah.” Jake didn’t understand exactly what that would feel like, but he got the point. The expectations that took root in the child of a parent who had molded his children to take over for him. Those were not easy boots to fill when said parent had secrets that threw it all into the rough.
“You know, I think it’s eating you alive that you can’t tell him off for what he did to us, and tell him to make it right,” Jake said, hoping it wasn’t too forward of him to suggest.
Tanner looked at Jake like he was certifiable, then bowed his head and let out a sigh that came from somewhere deep. He shifted a bit and picked at his fingernails.
“Maybe.”
The silence enveloped them once more, and a few birds in some nearby trees started chirping. It was restful, if not for the cloud of doubt and sadness covering both of them as they wrestled with what Jake had just said. Jake wished he could talk to his father.
Just once.
To ask him what in the hell he had been thinking and to hear what his voice sounded like. Did Jake sound as much like Brett as everyone said he did?
He would never truly know.
Darker clouds were moving in from the west and north, and Jake wondered if that meant rain. Not able to read the skies like everyone else could out here, he scanned the horizon.
“Rain coming?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Tanner mumbled, pointing the way Jake had been looking. “Likely some, over there.”
“All right then, up you get,” Jake said, rising to his feet. It was time to get going, even if he needed to be patient. This was better handled at home with some strong coffee in a nice, dry kitchen. He held out a hand to Tanner, hoping he would take it and follow Jake’s lead.
Tanner grabbed it and Jake hefted him up, Tanner’s other hand going out to steady himself as he found his feet, swaying a bit. He blinked a few times and then planted himself against the stone pillar, obviously dizzy.
Jake gave him a once-over just in case, the habit long ingrained in him from his mom, because she usually had some sort of cut or torn clothing, and he stopped his hand halfway toward his brother.
This was not his mom, and Tanner was not in need of coddling.
He frowned and stepped back, looking away from him, stuffing his hands in his pockets.
When Jake looked back at Tanner, he blinked in surprise, because tears were spilling down Tanner’s face.
Shit.
That was not something Tanner would want him to see, so he reached forward and pulled him into a hug, bracing for a punch or a shove.
Surprisingly, Tanner didn’t push him away, but instead leaned into him and put his arms around him.
Jake held him up, letting him get it out of his system, and cleared his throat because he didn’t want to cry either.
But, as he held Tanner, a strange unplaceable emotion overtook him.
This man, his brother, the one who had hated him on sight, needed him.
Tanner let go after a few moments, shrugging up his shoulders and wiping at his face, not meeting Jake’s eye.
It was really significant what had just happened, and Jake patted him on the back, wanting to maintain the contact for a moment more, to reassure himself that this wasn’t some anomaly.
Maybe he’d needed that hug as much as Tanner had.
Jake glanced at the big headstone, then reached down to pick up the mostly empty bottle of booze, the familiar feel of the cold neck grasped in his fingers a reminder of how many times he’d held an almost empty bottle wrestled from his mother in his hands before herding her into bed to sleep it off.
The scent of the whiskey reached his nose, and he looked up and around at the beautiful view, the silent, stoic gravestones, feeling at odds with the serenity, inside him a chaotic mess.
Maybe he would bury his mother here, when she passed.
Maybe then she would finally be at peace.
Maybe he would be too.
It clenched his heart, and he took a deep breath in, then out, trying to push the resentment and regret away from his body. He didn’t want to feel this way anymore, and he certainly didn’t need to feel it right now.
“Listen. I resented this man my whole damned life. You resent him now. I think that’s enough resentment for an entire lifetime,” Jake blurted as he turned the bottle in his hand and looked back at his brother.
“You gettin’ head-shrinky on me now?” Tanner mumbled, cocking his head. “This snowflake bullshit ain’t gonna—”
“No. Just want to be done. How’s about we let this shit go, right here?” Jake interrupted him impatiently. With a flourish of the bottle, he paced around to the front of the headstone, looking for his father’s name. Tanner followed him, a confused look on his face.
“What’re you doin’?” he mumbled, still not steady on his feet, his voice slurred.
Holding the bottle up, Jake slowly poured out the remainder of the amber liquid on the stone.
It splashed over the freshly carved words then flowed along the edge and into the bright green square of new grass where his father’s remains were placed.
He waited until the last drop was done and then pierced his brother with a look that hopefully conveyed what he was trying to do.
Jake wanted to bury that resentment here. Release it so he could move on. He had to; it was holding him hostage, preventing him from truly letting himself be present, no looming deadline of what would happen when he could leave people and a home he had come to truly give a damn about.
No holding back on being with a woman who could very possibly be the one.
“No matter what happened in the past, or what happens now, he was our dad. This place is his legacy, no matter which one of us is on the deed. Nothing changes that. This place is your home. He may have dragged me into this mess to appease his own failure, but—”
Jake stopped as Tanner went wide-eyed and then looked away. Yep. This was getting emotionally uncomfortable, but it needed to be said. He needed to have Tanner understand what it meant for him to have been brought here, the change that was happening in him.
“And I’m glad for it, because I found a family that—even if some of them are assholes—cares about each other.”
Tanner snorted a chuckle and leaned his shoulder on the smooth stone obelisk, leveling one of his patented you’re an idiot looks at him.
“I’ve never truly had that before,” Jake added, which wiped the look right off Tanner’s face as quickly as it had appeared.
Jake waited for the smartass quip, but none came. It was tacit approval of what he’d said, so Jake clenched his jaw and set the bottle down beside the wet patch of ground, like a symbol of finality, leaving it here to make a point that it was done.
“I’ll go wait at the truck. You say your piece and meet me there, if you can walk a straight line.”
“Don’t need to. You said it,” Tanner said, and started weaving his way down the hill toward the truck.
Jake fell into step with him. As he did, Tanner put his arm up and around Jake’s shoulders.
“You’re a good man, Jake,” he slurred quietly. “I’m sorry.”
Jake couldn’t respond, the heaviness of what he’d done balancing out the weight of the bond he’d just forged with his brother, making him feel oddly centered yet newly burdened. So he put his arm up over Tanner’s shoulders as well, and they walked down to the truck together.