Page 33 of Blazing Hot Nights
Maybe the foreboding darkness had nothing to do with the storm and everything to do with my state of mind. I had been irritable for days and hadn’t seen Beau but in passing since he had told me off. I knew I had deserved it. I just hadn’t yet sorted out what to do about it.
A sound came from behind me, and I was standing with the gun before I had registered it fully. A horse meandered toward me with a rider atop I recognized. I lowered the gun back to my side.
“You’re as jumpy as spit on a skillet, son,” Beau said, his words carrying across the ridge.
I rolled my eyes, glad he couldn’t see me in the dark, and rested the gun back against the log. “Something up? You could have hit the radio if you needed me.”
Beau pulled Cloudy Day to a halt and jumped down, hooking his reins to Rapunzel’s line. He grabbed a beer from my cooler and lowered himself to the ground next to the fire. “Nothing’s up. It was a nice night, and I thought you probably could use some company. Also, you took all the beer.”
I sat down and shook my head at the man who was more than a friend. He was my brother. Had been since he had moved into my house when we were eleven. Beau had never had it easy, and I wasn’t making it easier on him now either. I had to remember without him, I would be screwed. “Figure it’s the latter more than the former, since it’s going to rain.”
He shrugged and tipped the bottle back, not making eye contact with me. “I guess I just hoped we could enjoy the fire and stop bickering like a bunch of crows over roadkill.”
I tapped my bottle on my knee and stared at the fire too. “We can. That said, I owe you an apology, Beau. I feel like lately, all I do is apologize to you for being mean as a momma wasp. It’s not intentional.”
“It is intentional, but that’s because you know I’ll accept the wire-brush treatment and still stick around.”
I nodded, tipping my head at the end of the motion as much for me as him. I was accepting my bad behavior over the years and hoping I could start to change it. “Hard as it is to admit, you’re right. I took my frustration out on you because I knew you’d keep forgiving me. Sometimes I just don’t know nothing for nothing. At least I’ve figured out that much. When Heaven told me that Dawn said you were thinking about going back to Texas, it struck me that I had to stop acting like I don’t need you around here. I do. I need every single one of your talents, or we might as well fold this place up and both head back to Texas. If it weren’t for you covering for me over the last five years, I’d long been out of business. Things can’t continue like this. You don’t deserve that kind of treatment. I might be dumb as a prairie dog, but I do know that without you, Bison Ridge Ranch doesn’t exist.”
He tipped his beer at me before taking another swallow. “Thanks for saying it, boss. I accept your apology the same way I’ve accepted all the others, and the ones to come in the future.”
“I’m hoping to cut down on the ones in the future, that’s my point. I’d also like you to stop calling me boss.”
“What would you rather I call you? Dirt-for-brains?”
I chucked a beer cap at him, and he laughed the laugh I remembered from our high school days. God, I’d missed that laugh. “When did we stop laughing and having fun?”
“About five years ago,” he said, his laughter dying.
I lowered my bottle slowly with a nod of my head. “That’s another thing I want to change. I know how much we all loved Callie, but she’d be all over us like fire ants to see us at each other’s throats. She definitely wouldn’t want that.”
Beau swung his head back and forth. “Nope, she sure wouldn’t. She wouldn’t want a lot of things that have transpired since she left us.”
I nodded thoughtfully, my eyes on the flames again. “You’re right there too. You’ve been right about a lot of things. I’ve just been too stubborn to listen.”
“More like you couldn’t get past the guilt.”
“Absolutely true.” His brows went up in surprise, and his bottle hesitated at his lips. “You didn’t expect me to agree, did you?”
“Shooting straight from the hip? No. It’s been more obvious than the nose on your face to everyone else, though. You’ve always been resistant to the idea that you were feeling guilty for something that wasn’t your fault.”
I shifted and swallowed hard, ready to admit something to someone that I could hardly admit to myself. “Callie knew the risks, and what happened to her could have happened to any of us. None of us could have helped her.”
“Wow, I never thought I’d hear those words from your lips. You’re right, but I wasn’t going to be the one to point that out.”
“I know what the risks are here, Beau. I don’t feel guilty about Callie’s death, and I don’t have my head in the sand when it comes to how dangerous the animals are that we raise.”
“I’m confused what you feel guilty about then,” he said, swilling his beer while he waited for me to answer.
I poked the fire, my brain warring with my lips about that answer. If I let it out into the open air, and another person knew the truth, I could never walk it back. Never. I was warring over if I could live with it out in the open or if I could continue to live with it wrapped around my soul, choking it off. The answer was obvious, but the words didn’t come easy, regardless.
“I’ve come to realize the guilt is from wanting more now that she’s gone.”
He didn’t say anything for a long minute while he worked out what I was trying to say. Finally, he said, “You mean because you don’t carry an eternal flame for her after her death? That you’re only thirty and have your whole life ahead of you? Callie would never expect you to mourn her for the rest of your life.”
My mind flew to that pair of blue eyes I couldn’t get out of my head. Had it only been a few days since I’d tasted those delicious lips? Mr. Monster stirred at the thought of our trip together this weekend. Hours of uninterrupted time with her where I could steal more kisses from my little piece of heaven. The thought struck me with such honesty that I waited for the guilt to grip me at the thought of being with another woman. Usually, the idea of making a new life without Callie filled my throat with bitter bile that I forced myself to swallow back down. I waited, but it never came. That alone made me sit straight up in the smoky night air.
I turned to make eye contact with Beau. “I honestly don’t know what Callie would expect, Beau. We were young and never talked about what the other would want if we passed. We should have, I can see that now, but that’s hindsight for you. Our marriage wasn’t in a great place when she died.”
