Page 59 of Mister Cowboy
“Oh, thank God. Solid ground,” she cried shakily.
Laughing, he led the horses to his old climbing tree. Her expression changed from anxious to awestruck as she turned a circle, looking at the landscape around them. “What is this place?”
“The trail we came up is a small portion of the land owned by Blackstone Ranch. This”—he looked up and around—“is my childhood hangout.”
She smiled, her brown eyes sparkling. “You had a hangout?”
“Mm-hmm. Complete with a tree house. We played here a lot as kids.” He grabbed the closest tree branch and pulled himself up before lending a hand down to help her climb.
“This is a day of many firsts for me. Are you sure that limb can hold us both?”
Eyeing the massive tree branch, which was so big his hands wouldn’t fit around it, he nodded. “Get up here.”
She navigated the low branch with extreme caution, holding on to it like she feared the three-foot drop to the ground.
“Don’t worry. Worst case scenario, you fall and somehow manage to break a bone.”
She shot daggers at him with wide eyes. “Not helping.”
He pulled her close and wrapped a steadying arm around her. “I’m kidding. I told you I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.”
She rubbed her hands together and brought them to her face. “It’s beautiful out here. Cold, but beautiful.”
Tucking her in closer, he looked out to the open space around them. “Yeah, I suppose it is.”
“What does one do at a hangout?”
“You didn’t have one when you were a kid?”
She shook her head. “Not really. I suppose I had a coat closet that I used to hide in to read or listen to my Discman.”
“Oh man,” he said, feeling for the first time like his childhood had something better than hers. “We rode horses and four wheelers, had contests to see who could climb the farthest up this tree,” he looked up through the branches to the top.
“You and Henry?”
He nodded. “His parents both worked here, so he spent more time here than his own home.”
“Louisa said you were close…” her words trailed off.
“We were. I idolized him. He was everything I wasn’t. Athletic, popular, daring. I followed him around when we were kids—all over this ranch. We ran in different circles at school. I wasn’t exactly in the athletic and popular crowd, but to his credit he tried to include me in everything. Even when I really didn’t fit in.”
Chuckling, he thought back to the many times Henry had tried to get him to hang out with other kids from school. “He was a football player in high school, and this one time, he invited me to this party at one of his friend’s house. I showed up with my big glasses, wearing khakis and a tie because I thought, ‘Hey it’s a party, people will be dressed up.’ He didn’t bat an eye. Took me around and introduced me to everyone.”
Her smile lit up her face, and she nudged him with her shoulder. “Always stylin’. That sounds like you.”
He nodded, remembering how great Henry had made him feel despite how self-conscious he had been in those ridiculous clothes.
She grew quiet, waiting for him to say more. Swallowing the lump in his throat, he continued. “Henry is my brother. Half-brother. Though, he and I didn’t know it at the time.”
“What?” She shifted so fast that he had to catch her so she wouldn’t fall.
“Henry figured it out his senior year. He took a long hard look at his dark brown eyes and wondered how his blue-eyed parents had conceived a brown-eyed baby.” Letting out a deep breath, he continued, “I didn’t know. He grew more distant toward the end of his senior year of high school. I noticed, but I chalked it up to him getting ready for college. He’d already decided he wanted to be a doctor and had been accepted into Stanford. I don’t remember when or how it began, but eventually, he wouldn’t even acknowledge me at school. He left the week after graduation, and I never heard from him again.”
January studied him silently and bit her bottom lip.
“I finally found out a few months after he’d left. I overheard Louisa and Steven—Henry’s father—arguing. They were talking about Henry, and Steven had kept repeating over and over again how they should have told him sooner. I thought for sure Louisa was sick and Henry had gone off to find the cure for cancer. That seemed like something he’d do, you know? Anyway, I confronted my parents, hoping to somehow help, and my parents finally told me the truth. Henry is my half-brother. My father’s first son.”
“So, Henry didn’t tell you before he left?”
