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The ranch had seen better days, and so had he. Everything was falling apart. Running the place alone hadn't felt like such a burden at twenty-three, but at thirty-three, he felt every minute of it. At night, he fell into bed so exhausted he could barely breathe. He didn't even have the satisfaction of a job well done to carry him off to sleep, only an endless list of unfinished chores.
Tessa used to beg him to sell the place, livestock, furniture, and all, to the first bidder. "Let them turn it into a hemp farm for all I care," she said. Some days, she probably even meant it. But it wasn't so simple. The ranch had become Seth's prison, but it was also their lifestream. It paid for Tessa to go away to college, and besides, he didn't know any other way to earn a living. Nobody in Sweetwater would hire him with his reputation. If he sold the ranch, he'd be forced to move out of state and live in a bunkhouse, doing the exact same job for someone else's profit.
He couldn't stomach the thought of a life like that. He was a damned good cowboy. It ran in his blood. More than a hundred years ago, his great-grandfather had started their homestead from nothing. Seth could bring it back from the dead now.
The rhythmic crunch of approaching footsteps jerked him out of his funk, and he turned the flashlight toward the sound. His sister trudged across the pasture in the pitch dark with only a tiny clip-on lantern attached to her jacket zipper to guide her. She'd turned into a tall, voluptuous beauty while she was away at college, but she still looked like a little girl to him, bundled up with a cranberry red scarf and a knitted hat with a giant pom-pom on top. She clutched a thermos and a bundle of wrinkled wax paper in her arms.
"You never came in for dinner," she said accusingly.
"I'm not hungry." Seth leaned against the truck, tucking the wrench under his arm and tugging off his gloves to blow on his chilled fingers.
"You're always hungry," she said, rolling her eyes. She cracked open the thermos and thrust it beneath his nose. The rich, meaty scent of barley soup wafted into his nostrils, and his mouth began to water. He reluctantly set down his tools and accepted the offering.
"Don't look so smug," he said, slurping his first mouthful and closing his eyes. Warmth spread through his body, thawing his stiff limbs.
"You've been in a bad mood all day," Tessa observed, watching him closely. "Ever since Aiden Doyle showed up."
Seth cut her a sharp look. "How'd you know about that?"
"I've got eyes, don't I?" Her expression was scathing. "I watched him pull up through the kitchen window. Then I watched him leave, looking like he'd swallowed a thundercloud. I would've asked about it, but you were too busy stomping around."
"Sorry," he muttered, eyes cast downward.
He always tried to be gentle with his sister. By this point, he'd spent more time raising her than either of his unlucky parents, and he knew she looked at him as some Frankenstein-style graft between father and brother. His mood impacted her hard, and his opinion carried more weight with her than it should.
"It's fine. Now you just get my meatloaf in sandwich form." She huffed and took back the empty thermos before handing over the paper-wrapped sandwiches. "Did he say something nasty?"
"Who?"
That earned him a smack on the shoulder, probably her hardest, but he only laughed and deflected her with ease. "What do you mean by nasty?" he asked.
Tessa shrugged and glanced away, toying with the zipper of her jacket. "Just…anything," she said vaguely. "People talk."
Especially people in town—and usually about Seth. Whispers weren't as subtle as people thought. It was one of the reasons he'd sent her away to college when she hadn't wanted to go. She needed a bigger world that didn't revolve around their family's reputation, for better or worse.
"I remember how nice he used to be," Tessa muttered.
"You mean how cute you thought he was," Seth teased. "You used to have a huge crush on him."
His sister lifted her nose and pointedly ignored him. "It's just that it's weird for him to show up after all this time. He must want something. Anyone who would ditch you right when you needed him most is a lousy friend. Especially after what you did for him."
"It's more complicated than that," Seth said wearily.
"How?"
He tore a huge bite out of his sandwich, chewing viciously to buy himself some thinking time. Then he added another bite and thought some more before settling for half-truths. They had served him well thus far, and he saw no reason to change his habits. "He was going through a hard time, too. Don't forget that he lost his job when the herd died. He was scrambling for work, dealing with his mom, and I was busy cleaning up the mess here?—"
He broke off abruptly, fighting back the visceral sense of revulsion he felt whenever he remembered the carnage. He'd been responsible for those animals, and he'd failed them. So much had gone wrong.
Aiden was a wreck that night. Seth had been on the phone with him, listening, forgotten on Aiden's mattress while his mother screamed at him. Then he'd heard the heavy thunk-thunk-thunk of flying books.
"She was only throwing them toward me," Aiden had excused later that night. "Not at me."
Seth couldn't sit around and listen to the verbal abuse, so he'd started up his truck and headed down the mountain. The drive took so long that by the time he pulled up to their little hobby farm, Barbara Doyle had already left in a fit of righteous indignation. Her son, barely eighteen, sat alone on the floor of his ruined bedroom, stuffing clothes into a garbage bag.
"What happened?" Seth asked. He tried to sit on the freshly made bed but froze when his hand landed in something cold and squishy. "Why is your mattress wet?"
"Mom was throwing water at me," Aiden said without looking up.
