Page 3 of Broken Player

Rolling my eyes, I lifted myself into my own saddle, leading the way to the east pasture. Squinting up at the sun, I figured we'd have a couple of hours left before my mom called us in for dinner. She rang a dinner bell and everything. We needed to finish the fence repair before then because tomorrow we had a whole new never-ending list of shit to do around here, and it felt like Quinn and I would never get it all done. With one last glance back at my best friend, I picked up the pace and tried to push the past as far out of my mind as I could.

Rinsingthe suds off my hands, I watched the dirt-tinted water swirl down the drain. The smell of my mom's home cooking hung heavy in the air, and my stomach growled. Quinn took off his boots in the mudroom behind me and hip-checked me out of the way. "Move your cute ass, I'm starving."

We both knew my mom would never allow us at the table without freshly scrubbed hands, something ingrained in me since I was a kid and something Quinn had learned quickly when he'd come to work for my family when he was twenty-one.

I tossed the towel I'd just used at him, and it hit him in the face. He glared at me as he pulled it off, and I giggled. "Now who's holding us up?"

"You'll be lucky if there's any left for you." He pushed past me and threw me a grin over his shoulder.

"You better not hog all the food, Quinn, or so help me I'll hogtie you and make you sleep in the barn," I threatened. When it came to my mom's chicken fried steak, all bets were off.

He laughed. "Sweetheart, I'd love to see you try."

"Knock it off, you two," my mom scolded lightly. We both mumbled our apologies and sat down next to each other at the table. My sisters both came into town for dinner tonight, so they sat across from us. My dad sat at one end of the table, and my mom would sit at the other when she finished piling dishes onto the table in front of us.

"Yeah, you two. Stop flirting at the dinner table," Justice, my younger sister, piled on.

Rolling my eyes, I reached for the salad bowl, scooping a heaping pile onto my plate. "Quinn and I can't seem to help ourselves, sis. Don't be jealous."

Quinn choked out a laugh around the piece of roll he'd shoved in his mouth and pounded himself on the chest. I reached over and hit his back, too.

"You're going to kill the poor guy, Ryan," my older sister, Charlie, chimed in. She shot Quinn a sympathetic smile before stretching her hand across the table to grab the bowl of salad from me.

"Seriously, Ry. Come into Dallas this weekend and come out with us. Even Quinn is coming," Justice said.

I raised my eyebrow at Quinn, and he shrugged his shoulder. "What? It's been a while, and I need to blow off some steam. Literally."

Chuckling, I glanced over at my dad. I'd known Quinn was gay since high school, but when he'd come out to my family, I didn't expect my dad to be so okay with it. He was an old school Texas cattle rancher. But he loved Quinn like the son he never had.

My dad stopped slicing into his chicken and looked up at Quinn with his eyes sparkling mischievously. "You better be staying safe, son. And watch out for my girls." That was as much approval as any of us were going to get.

Quinn straightened up next to me. "Yes, sir. I always keep at least one eye on them. And I'm always careful."

My dad nodded once and resumed slicing into the breaded meat in front of him.

"Well, I don't feel like going out this weekend, so I think I'll stay back," I decided before stuffing a piece of chicken in my mouth and moaning as it coated my taste buds with deep-fried goodness.

Next to me, my best friend cringed. "Jesus, Ry. Save it for the boy next door, will you?"

I nearly choked on my bite and had to grab my glass of ice water and chug some to get the food down my throat.

Charlie shifted her eyes in my direction. "Speaking of Maddox, are you still not over that ridiculous crush you had on him? It's beentwelve years,Ryan. He's not coming back."

My cheeks heated up like they always did when my sisters brought Maddox up. For a long time, they'd been understanding and sympathetic. Until months had turned into years, and now that it'd been more than a decade, they'd completely lost their patience with me. Every week they'd come to dinner and pressure me to go out with them and try to meet someone.

I just wasn't ready. I didn't know if I ever would be.

Justice studied me with her green eyes narrowed slightly. "She's not going to budge, Charlie. I don't know why we try anymore. You might as well become a nun, Ryan."

My mom stepped in. "Girls, enough. If your sister doesn't want to come with you this week, drop it. She'll come around in her own time." She turned to look at me with a soft smile on her face. My mom had been the one who comforted me all through high school when I wanted to give up and curl up in a ball and never leave my bed again. She may not understand my pain from a personal experience perspective, but she was my mom, and on some level, I think she knew how deep my hurt ran even now. I thought she probably hurt for both Maddox and me for what we went through back then. She always looked at him like he was her son.

My dad cleared his throat. "We went to see the doctor today."

We all froze, stopping mid-bite and turning to look between my parents. My dad had been thrown from a horse four years ago and never recovered his ability to walk. Being confined to a wheelchair was the worst kind of torture for a man who lived for working his land. He'd tried everything he could up to this point to help, but nothing worked. I didn't even know how much physical therapy he'd done over the years, but still, he spent his days in the house or on the porch in his chair.

"You did? What for?" I rested my chin on my fist and my elbow on the table.

"We heard about a specialist with a new experimental treatment. We set the appointment six months ago but didn't say anything because we didn't want to get our hopes up," my mom explained.

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