Chapter Thirty-six
Jake,
By now, hopefully you’re on the ranch and know about your brothers, are owner of your birthright as the eldest of my sons, and have busted into my private study and found the safe.
If not, then my wishes were not followed and whatever the situation is, I hope you are at least reading this on West Line soil.
I don’t know what to say to you or write to you, but I’ll try. For an old man, addled as I am in the head, it doesn’t come easy now.
I’ve never known you as an adult, only held you in my arms as a baby, watched you waddle around in the garden as a tiny boy, and set you on your first horse when you were only as high as my knee.
For days all you wanted was to climb back up on that mare, screaming “Dolly! Dolly!” whenever your mother would bring you down to the barn to see us.
She never got on with horses despite my cajoling; it was a rare thing when she came to watch us men ride.
You were my pride and joy, my firstborn son, and I was never so full of hope for the future of our home.
But Heather took you from me before I could teach you to be a man. Before I could teach you right from wrong, to read the land, or master a rope. I looked for you for a long time, and I didn’t find you until now. She hid you from everyone in our families, disappeared without a trace.
You weren’t named Jake when you were born.
We named you Henry, after my father, Henry Michael.
But your mother registered your birth certificate without me knowing, and you were only ever Jacob Christopher West, hence why I couldn’t find you easily, and even then, you never went by your full name.
At least she kept your last name the same.
I’m sorry I was never there. I don’t know what your life was like, what hardships you endured or didn’t.
My investigator says you have become a successful man, well-off, live in nice places, and are well liked.
You are a businessman like me, and that is solace I can take with me when I go.
I read the article in The New Yorker about you, from a few years ago.
My investigator forwarded it to me. It was how we found you, because you looked just like me.
I would never have expected one of my sons to become a master chef. I’m proud of you nonetheless, because a West always does their best at whatever they do, no exceptions. I just hope you know how to properly cook beef.
I’ll never forgive your mother for what she did, leaving like that.
I loved her, more than I have ever admitted to, nor did I get the chance to make her an honest woman.
Why she left, I can understand. I was a fool, young and stupid, taking her for granted, not understanding what she needed to live out here and be a rancher’s wife.
I shouldn’t have stepped out on her, either.
But I did, and I paid the ultimate price. I lost you.
I should have told your brothers about you long before, and I regret that too. I have many regrets as I face the end of my life. You are my biggest.
If you need to go back to the life you have, do it. The will was intended to bring you here, show you what you were meant to be. To apologize for not fighting harder to keep you here, where you should have grown up.
Give the place back to your brother Tanner.
He loves this ranch as much as I do, and I know he’s likely angry at me for the burden I forced on him when his mother died, then when I dismissed that loyalty by leaving the ranch to you.
In the files in that safe is a legal document nullifying the will, if you choose to.
But I hope that you will love this place as I have and stay, be part of the family you should have had. I’d like to think you’ll take after me and feel connected to the land as I do, because it is part of you. Always has been.
I didn’t know you, son, but I loved you from the moment you were born and I held you in my arms. I only wish I’d had the guts to tell you in person.
Your father,
Brett
Jake wiped his wet cheeks and looked up from the letter in his hands.
He was sitting in his father’s chair, in the war room, the best place he could think of to read it, in the spot where it was likely written.
He looked at the picture from the safe, which he’d put back together and propped on the desk earlier in the evening.
A picture of him, on Dolly, with his father, right before he turned three.
“Holy shit, Dad,” he murmured into the empty room, and looked back down at the letter. A letter that answered so many questions but gave him just as many new ones.
He opened the file folder in front of him and carefully pulled out the papers. Sifting through them, he found the documents his father had mentioned immediately.
They reverted ownership, pending Jake and Tanner’s signatures, with a space for a lawyer to notarize them.
Not Brady, just Tanner. With that omission, it was obvious that Brett knew Brady wasn’t his son, and Jake wondered if he could amend that after the fact, because there was no way he wasn’t including Brady.
There was also a stipulation that Peony was to stay at the ranch as long as she was able and be cared for by whomever was running the place.
“Well, old man, I won’t kick her out, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he remarked, and scanned the document further in case there was anything else he needed to make note of.
The corner of an insurance policy peeked out of a yellowed folder marked Peony, and he set that to one side.
No mention of that in the legal documents at all, so he’d need to do some research.
It was a lot to wade through, and he would need some help deciphering it all.
Frank was going to have kittens. All the work he’d done to find a way around the will, and the solution was right here all along.
“Damn it, Dad, why couldn’t you just have been straightforward?
” he said, and dropped his head into his hands, scanning the papers again.
His eyes drooped after a few more minutes of scrutiny, and he looked at his phone.
It was well past midnight. He needed sleep, and he needed to get his head straight because tomorrow was going to be a big day.
This letter and the paperwork was his ticket home. Back to New York, back to his old life. He could wash his hands of this place, and it would be an odd, strange tale to tell around the table at parties. But as he folded the files up and set them on the desk in a neat pile, it hit him.
This was home.
He sucked in a breath, the declaration in his mind crystal clear as he looked around the dusty office, the last refuge of a man he’d never met, who’d given him something priceless that Jake could never thank him for.
If he could, he had absolutely no idea what he’d say, but maybe that didn’t matter.
More internal debate on that felt like entirely too much effort, because right now, bed was calling, and he was too emotionally drained to think about it anymore.
He stood up, stretching, and dragged himself out of the study, down the hall, and into his room.
The urge to fold himself up in bed with Liz was strong, but it was really late, and because she was up early for work, he didn’t want to disrupt her sleep, even though she’d told him to.
He also didn’t want to end up talking all damned night and be wrecked for tomorrow.
He shucked his jeans and shirt onto the floor and climbed into bed without turning the light on, too tired to brush his teeth or do anything remotely domesticated.
Instead of the normal chilly sheets, his bed was warm, the bedding pushed onto his side. He reached under the piled up covers and found a soft, seminaked body curled up on the other side.
Liz. He reached back behind him and switched on the bedside lamp.
She was asleep, curled in a ball, his mother’s crocheted blanket in her arms, her face buried in it, wearing nothing but one of his old New York boxing gym T-shirts and bright-blue underwear with a horseshoe on each butt cheek.
She’d been crying, her nose red, her eyes puffy from it.
He slid a hand over her hip, and she stiffened.
“Liz,” he whispered, glad for her presence and worried all in the same breath. “Liz. It’s okay.”
She sleepily opened her eyes, and with a tiny whimper threw her arms around him.
This was not the no-nonsense woman who could stare down anything in her path.
Something in Brett’s letter to her must have cracked her right open, otherwise she’d be at her place, asleep.
He wrestled the blanket out from between them and pulled her closer, holding her as she curled into him.
“Hey,” he whispered as gently as he could. “Sleep. We can talk in the morning.”
She sniffled and raised her mouth to his, the need in her gesture shaky and frantic. He relented, kissing her back, trying his best to absorb her distress, sliding his hands over her to soothe her. She was hurting, and he hated the way it made him feel.
A need to be close to her, to take comfort in her as well kicked at him when she relaxed in his arms, her hands wrapping into his hair, her legs tangling with his.
He was hard the moment one of those noises she made when she was turned on slipped out of her; that quiet, throaty hum that was a promise of pleasure.
He hesitated. Could he take advantage of this, with both of them so emotional? Was it the right thing to do?
“Liz, we don’t have to—” he tried, but she shushed him.
She pushed him onto his back, straddling his hips, and shucked her shirt. Circling her waist with his arms, he pulled her flush to him and kissed her, because she was damned near melting on top of him and he wanted to connect to that heat.
“Need this,” she murmured, her hands roving low over his body.
“Then take,” he murmured back. If she needed, he could give.
A flurry of hands removed their underwear, and he held her hips as she found him and sank slowly home, the feel of her surrounding him all he could handle as he slid inside her, inch by inch.
She rolled her hips and folded over, nose touching his, eyes focused on him.
She let out a small cry and rolled her hips again, moving against his length, wet and tight.
He wanted at that moment for this to never end, for the world to fade away, be replaced by her body sliding with his, the complete and utter surrender to her shocks of pleasure as he watched her, held her close to him, absorbing her.
“Come for me, Liz. Let it out, sweetheart,” he breathed.
She braced herself on his chest, her hair a wild halo around her head, her breath fast and hot, her cheeks flushed, her back arched as she moved. Nothing had ever come close to how possessed he felt by her right now, knowing she was his in the same way.
She let out another throaty moan, covered her mouth with one hand, and shattered hard and fast, her muscles shaking. He held her as she sagged against him, rolled her over, and thrust into her the moment she was on her back under him, pulling him down to her at the same time.
“I need this too,” he gasped and let go of the control he’d held on to so she could take what she needed from him. Now it was his turn; the drive to lose himself to her felt all-consuming. He slammed into her and she took it, biting his shoulder, murmuring his name over and over.
He came as she hooked her heels together over the small of his back and dug her fingernails into his shoulders, branding him, mixing delicious pain with his release. His entire body exploded with pleasure, and he surrendered everything in him to her in that moment.
“Liz,” he breathed, head buried into the pillow beside her, his body shaking.
“I—” He was at a loss for what to say, the unbelievable sensation of completeness unlike any endorphin rush he’d ever experienced.
He thought he’d been emotionally drained after reading his father’s letter, but this was overwhelming.
It could be the culmination of a day that would shake anyone’s composure, or it could be he was just bone-ass tired, but he realized he was crying when she wiped at a tear with her hand, slowly sliding out from under him to fold over his now prone, boneless body.
“It’s okay,” she whispered.
He lifted an arm and pulled her close, his pulse in his ear, the rubbery, shaky buzz of his release rendering him unable to move.
More tears slipped out, but he wasn’t upset.
It was the oddest feeling in the world. He felt utterly fucking amazing, but here he was, tears slipping down his face.
He huffed a watery laugh out and concentrated on slowing his breathing.
“You good?” she murmured a minute or so later when he let out a big breath, expanding his chest, most of the tears done, it seemed.
“Yeah. Today was a whole lot, and we’ve all got a lot to think about with these letters. Decisions and ideas are swirling in my head, and I feel like I’m in the spin cycle of a washing machine, but the last thing amazing sex should do is make me—”
“Happy cry?” she supplied.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he said. “And what exactly is a happy cry?”
“I know what’s right,” she whispered, not answering his other question. She wiped the last spots of wet off his cheeks, a soft smile spreading across her face.
“You do?” he replied, shifting to his side. “Tell me.”
She brushed his lower lip with her thumb, and scooted up, kissing him gently. “If I tell you, you can’t tell me no because it’s the truth, I can feel it,” she said.
“And what is that?” he asked.
“You know what you want now.”
“I do?” he said, wanting her to spell it out.
“You’ve figured out where you belong, and I hope—” she whispered.
“Yes,” he interrupted, goose bumps rising along his arm. He looked back at her, this woman who in the matter of a few weeks had challenged his heart almost as much as his brothers and the ranch had challenged his head. Both had irrevocably altered his soul.
“I don’t know how it’ll work yet, but there’s no way I could leave this ranch. Not now,” he added when she smiled widely, her eyes dancing over his with his admission.
“And why is that?” she asked.
“You are my home, Liz. I love you.”
She blinked slowly, and then leaning into him, nose to nose, took a breath and held it. He hoped it wasn’t the wrong thing to say. He prayed she was just absorbing it, figuring out what to say back. He knew those words weren’t frivolous for her. They had been heavy in the past.
“I love you too,” she blurted, and kissed him.