Page 41 of The Cowboy's Surprise Return

A lot had changed for the brothers on the day of the flood. Brant had found his future career, Ryan had decided his brothers weren’t worth listening to, and Cole had figured out some important things about who he was.

Back then, he’d always been Levi’s shadow, second in command, feeling important by proxy and as though he could do anything his older brother could do.

Yet that day he’d failed at keeping his brothers on task, keeping them safe. Cole had frozen in shock, while both Myles and Brant took immediate action. Without Levi there barking at him, Cole had been locked with indecision, unsure how to fix the situation.

Shortly after, he’d joined the rodeo in an effort to find his own path and to force himself to make split-second life-or-death decisions while on top of livid bulls.

“I’ve never really heard the ending to the story,” Jackie said, drawing him from his thoughts. She had settled in a cross-legged position, her left knee resting against his. “Just that Myles and Ryan were swept down the creek, Brant got bounced around in the truck when your mom floored it across the pastures, and that Ryan thought he should have crossed elsewhere.”

“Eventually he and Myles came up against a downed tree.” Cole pointed downstream. “I managed to grab them.”

“I thought you said you froze?”

“I did.” He’d stood there staring in panic when Myles had jumped in. Then, not knowing what else to do, he’d run down the creekbank following alongside.

“But what could you have done? Jumped in as well?” She handed him half a sandwich from the lunch bag they’d packed in a saddlebag.

He took a bite.

“Maybe your role was to do exactly what you did—run downstream and catch them when they passed under a fallen tree? Then haul them out?” She gave him a wry look. “You’re too hard on yourself.”

“They would’ve found somewhere else to climb out,” he said, tossing a piece of breadcrust toward a squirrel that had come down the angled oak, curious about the newcomers.

“I dunno. I’ve heard the story, as I said,” Jackie stated with a healthy dose of skepticism. “Myles told me he was half-drowned by that time and wasn’t sure they were going to surface again if they went under. He said he couldn’t reach the branch and was saying his last prayers when you appeared out of nowhere and pulled them out, like they were no heavier than teddy bears.”

Cole could still feel the wrench in his shoulder as he’d grabbed Myles’s outstretched hand, locking his fingers around the stone-cold ones of his brother. The momentum of the current had jerked him half off the fallen tree. He’d hooked his legs around branches he couldn’t see, his abs straining as he’d stretched, fighting the force that wanted to drag him off the thick trunk. One split second of error could have sent him into the current along with Myles and Ryan.

Like in rodeo, adrenaline had kicked in, giving him strength to do the impossible. He’d yanked Myles, then Ryan out of the water, hauling both brothers from the danger sucking at their boots like a hungry beast. Their lips had already been a frightening shade of blue when he’d pulled them onto the fallen tree. The rapids below had been rushing, frothing brown water ready to consume them all, and he’d all but thrown Ryan onto dry land.

His youngest brother had coughed up an impressive amount of water. Could Ryan have survived in that swollen, freezing creek for even a minute longer? How much strength had been left in Myles’s muscles to keep them afloat?

“It sounds like you boys worked as a team,” Jackie mused. She wrapped her fingers around Cole’s forearm and brought him back to the present.

He nodded, suddenly no longer sure why he’d felt like such a failure in that crisis. Maybe because he hadn’t barked out commands like Levi would have done. Maybe because he hadn’t been the one to jump in without a thought. He’d been a stronger swimmer than Myles, who was four years younger. But he’d also been strong enough to pull his brothers from the frothing waters, which Myles might not have been able to do.

Maybe it had worked out the way it was supposed to, and what he felt now was simply the fear that had dug in deep with its claws while he’d stood on shore at a loss. It was a terror that had tainted everything about the memory for him up until the present moment.

Cole placed his hand over Jackie’s, willing himself to make peace with the memory. A better man would have prevented the whole thing from happening, just like a better man would have been able to prevent the mess he’d made of April’s life.

But he wasn’t that man. He was himself.

And maybe somewhere in the retelling of this tragic tale he’d figured out that there might be more to April’s story, too.

* * *

Jackie sidled closer to Cole on the picnic blanket. She tried to picture the quiet creek trickling past as swollen and dangerous.

She wasn’t going to “fix” Cole, as Carmichael predicted, but she could listen and be a friend.

From her perspective, Cole had done exactly the right thing and kept a cool head with the whole Ryan-in-the-creek incident.

“Why are you still beating yourself up for Ryan falling in?” She gestured to the slow-moving water.

“Because it’s not the only time I’ve frozen during a crisis.”

“You mean it’s not the only time you’ve waited for your moment to make a difference?”

Cole was silent, and Jackie feared she’d broken the train of thought that had been allowing him to open up to her.

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