It was the night before Thanksgiving when Brady and his brothers finally held their bonfire.
They’d batted around several different ideas about how best to burn what was left of the table that had been such a symbol of the stranglehold Amos held over all of them. Every night at dinner, first in the dining room and then around the new table that Brady delivered one day from the shop of a local woodworker, they talked about what to do with all that kindling.
Brady figured it was another way to talk about how much brighter and happier things were without that last remnant of Amos here in the house with them. Even his bedroom seemed free of ghosts these days.
He was tempted to believe he might be getting there too.
“We should do it out by his grave,” Gray said that afternoon. They’d been out in one of the pastures, all of them saddled up on horseback as they’d rounded up the herd and looked for stragglers. “Seems fitting.”
They would all end up out by the river, where the family plot waited for them. That was a given. But Brady no longer viewed that as a kind of prison sentence. Instead, it seemed more and more like a fitting end to every Everett story. The land gave and the land took, season after season, but one day, they would all rest in it.
It was practically a lullaby.
“Too morbid,” Ty drawled, managing to look like he was lounging while on a horse. A rodeo trick, no doubt. “We’ll all be there ourselves soon enough. Why rush into it?”
“Because that’s less morbid,” Gray said with that laugh of his that still surprised Brady, though he heard it a whole lot more these days.
“I’m not sure I want to give the old man another somber, serious occasion.” Ty shrugged. “We had that at his funeral.”
“You were drunk at his funeral,” Brady pointed out.
Ty nodded. “I’m not sure he deserves a moment of clear-headed reflection from me.”
“Maybe a moment,” Gray said, his gaze on the horizon. “If it’s the last moment.”
“Doesn’t sit right with me.” Ty switched direction in that elegant way of his, barely seeming to move as he controlled his horse with ease. “I’m ready to move on. I have no idea if Dad can rest in peace, but it’s time to leave that to him. We have lives to live.”
Brady kept pace with them, the way he had so many times he could have counted for a year and still not made a dent. They’d spent their lives on the backs of horses. They’d spent even more time running cattle, fixing fences, and tending to the thousand and one things that could crop up in the course of a day on a ranch. His brothers looked like cowboys through and through, riding out to the fields in the cold. He guessed that made him one too, with the cold November wind in his face. There was the crisp, clean scent of snow in the air, clouds over the mountains, and the gift of bright autumn sun while they worked.
“What do you want to do?” Gray asked Brady.
Because that was what had changed the most since Halloween. They asked him now.
They didn’t necessarily do what he wanted to do, or how he thought they ought to do it, but they asked.
It seemed like such a little thing.
But it was enough.
That was how they ended up out in the yard later that night. Not just Gray, Ty, and Brady, but the whole family. Everyone was bundled up against the cold while Ty started a fire in the portable fire pit they usually used only in summer. They went out after dinner and gathered around it as if it weren’t a cold, damp November night too close to the end of the year.
“No one wants to make this sad,” Brady said when the flames were jumping. “Because it shouldn’t be. Not anymore.”
He took a moment to look around at his family, gathered there in the dark with the Colorado stars stretched out high and bright above them.
There was Gray with his arms wrapped around Abby, a few days out from their one-year anniversary. Abby leaned back against her husband’s chest, baby Bart snuggling in her arms, and if the only thing the year had brought was the way Gray smiled down at them, that would have been enough. But next to them was Hannah, holding hands with Ty like they were loved-up teenagers. And rounding out the Everett clan was Becca, no longer overly serious and old before her time. She held Jack on her hip, singing little songs to him while he laughed at the flames.
“I would have thought a good way to not make it sad was to avoid speeches,” Gray said, not looking up from his wife and child.
“If it were up to you, there would never be any speeches, ever,” Brady pointed out. “Or unnecessary sentences of any kind.”
Gray laughed. Another actual laugh, not just a curve in the corner of his mouth that was open to interpretation, which was itself such a shock still. “Fair.”
“I meant what I said on Halloween,” Brady continued. “I’m looking forward to what we build, and I’m happy to put Dad behind us.”
“Hear, hear,” Ty drawled, and everyone raised what they were drinking.
Which for Jack was a sippy cup. That Becca had to grab before he threw it in the fire. Or did the same with her Coke.
“I hereby declare this Everett night,” Brady intoned, while everyone’s drinks were still in the air. “A night of merriment, out with the old and in with the new. Tonight, we will burn the bits and pieces of that table, and tomorrow, we’ll eat too much and give thanks. Next year, who knows? We’ll burn what doesn’t fit anymore to make way for better things.”
Everybody cheered at that, even Gray.
Brady pulled out his phone and put on some music. Not a mournful, funereal dirge, but some solid country to remind them where they were. Out here on the ranch that had been handed down to them, but required all of their hands, linked together, to keep going.
They all took turns taking handfuls of splinters from the wheelbarrow they’d set up earlier, then throwing them into the fire.
Becca danced with Jack. Hannah taught them all how to do her favorite two-step. Abby went inside at one point, then came back out with blankets to swaddle themselves in and the makings for s’mores.
And they all sat around and talked. Not about Amos, but about life. The here and the now and finally, without any fighting or sniping, the future.
“Think of it like a state park,” Brady said, sitting with his brothers as the splinters dwindled, and the bonfire kept going. “Except it will be private. And we’ll make money on it. There will be camping. Access to the river. And a more high-end tourist option as well, because like it or not, the tourists have found Cold River.”
“He’s trying not to say glamping,” Ty told Gray lazily. “Because he doesn’t want you to say—”
“What? Glamping? That’s not a word.”
“—that, Gray.” Ty laughed. “Brady doesn’t want you to say exactly that.”
“It’s glamorous camping, Dad,” Becca said, rolling her eyes like a proper sixteen-year-old, disgusted to death by her parent. It made Brady’s chest tight. “For people who want to camp, but without all the gross stuff.”
“Like nature,” Hannah chimed in. “And dirt.”
“There’s nothing gross about nature,” Gray said. “It’s nature. Dirt is the point.”
“Gray is not going to come around on the glamorous camping thing,” Abby said, looking like she was trying not to burst out laughing.
“You’ll like what they pay to do it,” Brady said idly. He named some competitive rates. And when Gray nodded instead of muttering darkly about real ranching and the problem with college degrees, that wasn’t just progress. It was a miracle. “I’m going to build a little lodge. More of a visitor center than a hotel, but you never know. We’ll see how things go. Maybe down the road, a hotel wouldn’t be out of the question.”
Gray made a face at that. “Seems like a slippery slope to me. One minute it’s a hotel, and the next it’s a dude ranch. Filled with the kind of people who would pay money to go to something called a dude ranch.” He blew out a breath. “Can llamas be far behind?”
“Obviously I’m planning the llama farm too,” Brady said. “But that’s phase two.”
“Everyone loves llamas,” Ty drawled.
“I’m looking forward to it,” Gray replied. He grinned. “Can you train them to actually serve the lavender hemp lattes?”
And there, while the fire danced and the table burned, Brady believed he could. He believed he could do anything. That together, he and his brothers—he and his family—could rearrange the mountains.
He thought that finally, after all this time, Cold River Ranch was really a home. His home. He had everything he’d ever wanted but had figured he wouldn’t get to have. His brothers, treating him like a friend. Their beautiful wives, funny and fascinating. And three remarkable members of the next generation too, growing up here with the land all around and a whole lot less Everett family turmoil. Relatively speaking. Who knew what they’d accomplish?
If Brady did nothing else in his life but bask in this, he would be perfectly content.
But he wanted to be more than simply content.
Brady had his heart set on happy.
“Is it safe to talk about Amanda Kittredge?” Ty asked sometime later. “Or will there be more destruction of property?”
Gray whistled, long and low, but didn’t contribute a comment. Likely because that was his comment. Brady looked back and forth between them.
“That depends what you have to say about Amanda Kittredge,” he said. “I can’t rule anything out.”
“An observation, that’s all,” Ty replied. Innocently.
He was kicked back in one of the camp chairs someone had found in the barn, because heaven forbid Ty didn’t look as lazy as possible at all times. Even when he had Jack sprawled out over him, unconscious in the wake of his s’mores-induced sugar crash.
Brady sighed. And braced himself. “Hit me.”
Ty grinned. “There are a lot of women out there that a man might get in a fight about, circumstances being what they are.”
“I’ll want an accounting of those circumstances later, sugar,” Hannah said from beside him.
Ty glanced at Hannah with laughter in his gaze, but his expression was serious when he looked back at Brady. “But a woman prepared to burn down the house for you? A woman who doesn’t pull her punches, even in the middle of some ugly family stuff? That’s gold, in my opinion.”
“You need to lock that down, college boy,” Gray drawled, and this time, Brady knew exactly what that curve in his oldest brother’s mouth meant. “No more walks in town. Whatever that is. Get it done.”
Brady knew Gray hadn’t been hanging around gossiping about his younger brother. Gray hardly bothered going into town at all if he could avoid it. But Abby went in all the time. So did Hannah. And Becca. All three of them smiled at him, which was as good as an admission of guilt.
There was a time not so long ago that he would have found these small-town games of Telephone suffocating. He would have longed for the anonymity of Denver. Tonight, however, it felt good to have so many people this invested in him. In his happiness.
Maybe that was what family was. What it was supposed to be.
“Not to mention,” Gray said, “making an honest woman out of her might take that Kittredge bounty off your head.”
“There’s no bounty on my head.” Brady didn’t think there was. But who knew with Riley. “I’d like to see them try.”
Ty laughed. “Look who’s full of himself now that his shiner’s faded.”
“I appreciate the concern,” Brady said, and he incorporated the whole family in that. With a smirk. “But don’t you worry. I know exactly what I’m doing with Amanda.”
Because he hadn’t been kidding when he’d said that he wanted this night to be an annual thing for his family.
And it was past time Amanda was a member of his family. Officially.
Which meant Brady needed to handle the last holdout from hers.
The next morning was Thanksgiving, so he finished his usual chores and then skipped breakfast, because it was time to hash things out with Riley.
Because even Riley Kittredge, one of the most stubborn men alive, couldn’t pretend to have urgent business somewhere outside Longhorn County on Thanksgiving. Not while his mother drew breath.
Brady knew he’d be home.
Riley’s cabin sat at the end of a dirt road on the edge of the forest, almost all the way out into the foothills. Brady had helped build this house. The summer before college, he and every other able-bodied member of the Cold River High School Cowboys had come out here and helped. And Riley had added to it over the years, broadening his windows to better take in the view. Adding a shop and his own barn.
Brady hadn’t envied his friend the life of domesticity he was settling into back then. Not when Brady had been all set to take off to a better life. He’d wanted to see exactly how wide and how far he could sow his wild oats, and he had.
But here, now, everything was different. And he understood far better why a man might take a deep pleasure in owning a piece of land, building a house with his own hands, and settling into the life he’d made.
Maybe he understood better than Riley did these days, because last night he’d done his best to burn out what ghosts remained. He’d burned away what kept him bitter, and Brady wanted what came next. He was ready.
He knew that wasn’t true for his friend. Not with his ghost alive and well and often popping up in the same room.
Brady parked his truck out front, then climbed out into the still, cold morning. He could see smoke coming from Riley’s chimney, but he didn’t bother to look for his friend inside the house. Not at this time of day. He made his way over toward the barn, his feet crunching into the frigid ground with every step.
He wasn’t surprised to look up before he got near the barn door to find Riley standing there, watching him approach.
Without a single sign that they’d ever been friends on his face. Much less best friends. Best friends who would even have called themselves brothers not too long ago.
Riley was acting like none of that had ever happened. Like Brady was nothing more than some guy.
Brady knew that Amanda thought he was sad about what had gone down between him and Riley. But he wasn’t. Maybe on the day. But not now, weeks later.
Now he was pissed.
“You took a shot at me already,” Brady tossed out into the frigid space between them, as much of it coming from Riley as the blasts of cold air when the wind picked up. “You punched me in the face. And I let you because I deserved it. That was almost a month ago, so why are you still sulking?”
“This isn’t a high school football game, Brady. I’m not impressed by your offense. I asked you to protect my sister from men like you, not to go ahead and—”
“I want to marry her.” Brady threw that out, and it wasn’t to placate his friend. It came out a whole lot more like a weapon he thought he could use here. “I love her. I’m going to marry her. And I don’t need your permission or your blessing, but I would like it.”
Riley laughed, his gaze much too dark. “Over my dead body.”
“That can be arranged.”
Another laugh. “You don’t want to fight me.”
“You’re right. I don’t. But not because I’m afraid. You and I both know that people started calling you the most dangerous of the Kittredges because you pushed Stephen Crow into a locker in seventh grade.”
“He would be the first person to tell you he had that coming.”
“The point is, it’s not because you moonlight as a ninja.” Brady opened his arms wide, the universal sign for come at me. “We can fight if you want. I already took the hit that was coming to me, but sure. Let’s make it worse.”
“Do you think this is a joke?” Riley demanded, taking another step out of the barn into the cold, gray morning.
“I don’t think it’s a joke at all,” Brady replied. “But I also don’t think it’s really about me.”
Riley scowled. “Are there other two-faced liars who’ve been messing with my sister? Because I’ll handle them too. But then Amanda and I are going to sit and have a talk about what people call—”
“I love you like a brother, man,” Brady said with a quiet ferocity. “But you do not want to finish that sentence.”
They stared at each other, both of them a little too hot in the frigid morning. Brady could see their breath like clouds. Evidence of the temper they were both clearly fighting to keep at bay.
Riley’s chest heaved and his scowl deepened, but he didn’t finish what he was saying.
“There’s something you need to know,” Brady said, holding his friend’s gaze. “I would never have gone behind your back if it was a casual thing. I would never risk a lifetime of friendship for a simple roll in the hay.”
“Good to know you save your deception for big-ticket items. That’s a real comfort.”
That stung, but Brady kept going. “I shouldn’t have done it either way. I regret that you walked in on us like that. I really hope you know how sorry I am. And how much I wish I’d handled things better.”
Riley studied him for a moment, not bending an inch. “But you’re not sorry you put your hands on her.”
“No.” Brady kept his gaze steady. “I’m not sorry about that part at all.”
Riley swallowed hard, then looked away. Away from the house and the mountains that rose up severely behind it, out toward that view of his. That rolling view over the whole of the far valley, where their families had feuded, tended the land, raised up herds and horses, and kept on keeping on without killing each other outright. For generations now.
“The Kittredges and the Everetts have had feuds before,” Brady pointed out. “We can have ourselves another twenty-year standoff, if you like. But I’ll remind you, Amanda’s younger than the both of us. She’ll wait twenty years, and then she’ll knock you upside your head when you’re too old and feeble to do anything about it.”
Riley shook his head, still staring out at the valley. “I don’t really think you should be reminding me how much younger my sister is than you.”
“Fine. A twenty-year feud it is. Good times. I’ll use Thanksgiving to notify the rest of my kin. Isn’t that how it’s done?” He rolled his eyes. “Or we could fast-forward to the part where we ride off into the mountains as enemies, but come down as friends.”
“You don’t need my input one way or another,” Riley muttered, still staring off into the distance. “I got an earful from my mother about how respectful you’ve been. How you’ve asked not only her and my father, but each and every one of us—and my grandparents—to give you the green light. She just can’t stop talking about what a forthright, trustworthy gentleman you are, Brady.”
Ouch. “Riley—”
“But you and I both know that’s not the case.” Riley turned back then, his dark gaze flat. “Because you and I also know that I didn’t walk in on you giving her a peck on the cheek. That wasn’t a sweet little kiss. It was the kind of kiss a man gives a woman he—”
He didn’t finish that sentence either.
Brady stared back at him, refusing to give an inch. “I kissed her like a man who has every intention of marrying her. But Riley. Come on. Do you really want to stand around talking about how I kissed Amanda?”
“I do not.”
“What’s it going to take?” Brady demanded. “You already hit me. I don’t think you really want to talk about it anymore. The good news is, I have good intentions. I’m guessing from your perspective, that’s also the bad news. But I’m running out of patience.”
“Patience?” Riley belted out one of those laughs. “I would not describe anything you’ve done since you got your hands on my sister as patient.”
It was Brady’s turn to laugh, suicidal as it might have been. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Riley ran a hand over his face, clearly thinking about what that might mean. And just as clearly wishing he hadn’t. Then he met Brady’s gaze again.
Two old friends. Possibly bitter enemies.
“Don’t ever lie to me again,” Riley said, his voice dark.
“I swear on everything and anything holy, I won’t.”
Another moment dragged by. Riley’s jaw worked. But nothing else moved.
Finally, he blew out a breath. “I guess this was always going to happen. And I guess it could have been worse. She could have had a teenage rebellion.”
“She could have behaved like we did in high school,” Brady said dryly. “Imagine that.”
Riley grunted. “I’ll pass.”
Brady waited.
“Given that it was inevitable,” Riley muttered, “I’m glad it’s you.”
“Why, thank you, old friend.” He didn’t actually laugh, but it was close. “I believe that’s the kindest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
Riley glared at him, which was better than the flatness. “You ever make her cry like that again, and I’ll take your head off. Let’s be real clear about that. You’re my best friend, but she’s my sister. If there’s a side to take, assume I’m on hers.”
“I would expect nothing less.”
The morning was still cold and gray and raw enough to be called bitter. But when Riley looked at him, Brady was relieved to see that the worst of the darkness had lifted. If he wasn’t mistaken, that was a smile he saw lurking around in there.
“If you’re marrying her, I guess that means you’re part of the family,” Riley said. Grudgingly. “It was one thing, you being only an Everett. You’re going to have to step it up if you want to be one of the Kittredge boys.”
“I don’t want that. I don’t want any part of that.”
For the first time since he’d walked into that barn on Halloween and started swinging, Riley looked downright cheerful.
“We’ll train you up right.” He closed the distance between them and slapped Brady on the back. Harder than necessary. Much harder than necessary. “We’ll get you there.”
“Happy Thanksgiving to you too, brother,” Brady replied.
He and Riley talked a bit more, had a cup of coffee to mark the occasion, and then Brady got back in his truck.
And that was that. He’d done it.
There were nothing but green lights and blessings as he set off down Riley’s dirt road, toward the rest of the valley and the start of Thanksgiving Day.
Brady had spent the past month paying a kind of penance, fighting every minute of the day to keep his hands to himself. He’d wanted to do it, but it had been sheer torture.
Near impossible, some days.
He’d kept reminding himself that Amanda deserved to be treated well. Respectfully. And Brady really had known her since she was in diapers. She never had been a roll in the hay, and he never should have treated her like one.
But he was tired of it. He was tired of chaste walks down Main Street. He was tired of that clawing need inside him that he was sure was tearing him up. And above all, he was sick and tired of not being able to call her his.
And then act accordingly.
He’d had vague plans to wait until after the holidays, but as he left Riley’s, he decided that he’d waited long enough. He’d spent this whole year waiting, period.
For the time to pass. For his brothers to magically come around to his way of thinking. For his fury at his dead father to go away.
He been waiting and he’d been waiting. He’d come here thinking his life was on hold for a while, not that it would have to change completely. That was why he hadn’t changed it. He’d been here in body, but not in spirit.
Just as Gray had always accused him.
Then in the course of two months, everything had changed. She had changed him. Everything was different now. Brady most of all.
He could barely remember who he’d been even back at Ty and Hannah’s wedding at the end of August, when little Amanda Kittredge had worn a dress he’d tried his best not to look at too closely, out there in the sweet grass behind the Everett ranch house.
He’d been waiting his whole life. He was tired of waiting.
He was ready for his real life to start.
Right now.