Ty was more than ready to get back up on that ornery bull and finally do what he’d been training to do since the start of the year.
He had to get through one last family dinner first.
Ty would have happily avoided his brothers altogether, but Abby and Becca had suckerpunched him. They’d been lying in wait when he’d come back in from the fields this evening, glowing with good intentions and affection.
Ty didn’t have the heart to tell them it was no use. It didn’t matter how many members of his extended family packed into his bunkhouse. All he saw was the absence of Hannah.
“We made all your favorite things,” Becca told him, in that bright, deliberate way she’d always used to talk. Back when she’d believed she was responsible for everything. She darted a glance at Abby. “Abby’s grandmother’s fried chicken, those sweet potatoes I know you love, and my cornbread. You always say I make the best cornbread.”
“That’s because you do, peanut.”
Ty even managed to throw out a grin.
“We need to celebrate you before your next victory,” Abby chimed in. And she’d smiled with nothing but kindness and understanding.
He didn’t know how to tell her that didn’t help.
“It might not be much of a victory,” Ty said. “That bull wins more than he loses.”
“The fact that you even want to get back on any bull, much less that one, is a victory as far as I’m concerned,” Abby said matter-of-factly. “That’s what we’re celebrating.”
There were worse things in life than subjecting himself to a meal made up entirely of his favorite foods. Ty ate. He drank and noticed Brady clocking the one beer he nursed with what struck him as entirely too much interest.
But he didn’t care enough to ask.
“You’re going to be amazing,” Becca told him excitedly, after they’d all demolished one of Abby’s pies. “And we’re all going to come cheer you on.”
Ty went cold at that. He looked over at Gray. “What? No. Your dad doesn’t like the rodeo.”
“Of course Gray loves the rodeo,” Abby said placidly. Too placidly. “Because what reason would he have not to love it?”
Given that the reason had been Cristina, Ty figured Abby had suggested to her husband that he find a way to overcome his issues.
“I love the rodeo,” Gray retorted, though his eyes gleamed when he looked at his wife. “It’s a passion of mine.”
“No one wants to miss your ride to glory, Ty,” Brady said from beside him.
Something in Ty turned over at that, but he stamped it back down. It didn’t matter if they were there. It didn’t matter if they weren’t.
Nothing mattered. Wasn’t that the point?
It was what he’d wanted.
“Terrific,” he said. He pushed back from the table, doing his best to grin at Abby and Becca, lazy and at his ease, as always. “Thank you both for the victory meal. I sure do appreciate it.”
It was a relief to push his way outside. To feel the dark and the land envelop him again.
Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.
One way or another.
“Hey, jackhole,” came Brady’s voice. “If I could have a minute before you waft off into the darkness again?”
Because of course he couldn’t let well enough alone. Ever.
“I don’t have time for this,” Ty said without turning back around. “I have to head out early tomorrow morning.”
“What’s your plan, exactly?”
Ty sighed. “Same plan as it always is, baby brother. Get on the bull. Stay on the bull. Jump off the bull when the buzzer sounds and try not to get trampled. The end. Bull riding is real simple.”
“See that, Brady,” came Gray’s irritatingly mild drawl. “No need to worry. He might have busted himself up the last time around, but I’m sure it’s fine that he figures he can reclaim his reputation on the business side of a pissed-off, two-thousand-pound bull. That’s bound to end well.”
Ty took his time turning back around. Once again, he was standing in the yard of the ranch house, forced into a conversation he didn’t want to have. It was a good thing he’d come to terms with this land, because it sure seemed to insinuate itself into every part of his life. Hannah. Jack. His irritating brothers, standing shoulder to shoulder like a wall of spare me.
Behind them, the lights were on in the ranch house. Abby and Becca were still in the kitchen, either cleaning up or making something for the morning. Becca was talking animatedly, waving her hands in the air for emphasis. Abby kept looking up and laughing as she responded, one hand drifting to her belly.
All smiles. All love. All that family crap Ty knew, deep in his blackened soul, he would destroy if he got too close.
“What is this?” he asked, laughing at his brothers. Not nicely. “An intervention? For bull riding?”
“I was considering an intervention for your drinking,” Brady said. “But then I watched you tonight. And you acted drunk the way you always do, but you didn’t actually drink much. Why would anybody pretend to be drunk when they’re not?”
“You’re the one who needs me to be drunk, Brady.” Ty didn’t know where that came from, but he didn’t take it back. “And you know me. Always happy to oblige.”
“I don’t really care if you’re drunk at the dinner table,” Gray said. “As long as you don’t start flipping it, we’re good. But what’s fake drunk all about?”
“I never faked being drunk,” Ty managed to say without shouting. He deserved a medal. “You decided I was drunk, and I didn’t do anything to disabuse you of the notion. It’s not the same thing.”
“Ty,” Brady said, in a very careful, extraordinarily placating tone of voice.
Speaking of jackholes.
“Just stop,” Ty told him. “Whatever this is. I don’t need to talk. I don’t want to talk. I have nothing to talk about.” He looked from Brady to Gray, then back again. “Okay?”
“I told you,” Gray said, ostensibly to Brady, though his gaze was steady on Ty. “He doesn’t want to do anything but storm around, telling himself what a martyr he is, when I’m pretty sure that’s not the word most people would use for a man who walks away from his own kid.”
Ty lurched forward, something he hadn’t known he was holding tight snapping. And filling him with sheer, pure fury, bright and hot.
“I didn’t walk away from my kid,” he threw at Gray.
Brady let out a laugh Ty found hostile. “You literally turned around and walked off into the night.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.” He shook his head, but that didn’t clear it. Nothing had in months. And that pulsing ache was back. “I’m protecting him.”
“From what?” Gray asked. “A father? He’s not going to thank you for that.”
Ty fought to put all that fury back where it belonged, deep inside him and locked up tight. “If we could go back in time and have someone protect us from ours, I’d do it in a heartbeat.”
“Like Mom?” Brady asked mildly. And not for the first time, Ty had to reassess his baby brother. Who didn’t sound anything like a baby then. “Who you’ve apparently forgiven for leaving us with him.”
Ty shook his head while the fury—and worse, the sadness—that he’d locked away since the night everything had fallen apart, again, roared through him. It made him unsteady. It made him feel like someone else. “I haven’t forgiven anybody.”
“And why would you?” But the way Gray was looking at him, with a kind of grim understanding that boded only ill, made Ty more unsteady. “Start forgiving people and you might have to get around to forgiving yourself. And then what?”
“Why would I need to forgive myself?” Ty gritted out.
But Gray only shook his head. “I can’t answer that.”
Ty rubbed at his jaw, appalled to find his hand was shaking. Great. That was what every bull rider wanted most—a lack of control over his own body. “I really appreciate the two of you ganging up on me tonight. It’s exactly the kind of Everett family send-off I should have been expecting. What a treat to relive ancient history.”
“You’re not Dad.”
Brady threw that out like a bomb.
It exploded like one.
Everything shuddered to a stop. The world. Ty’s heart.
When he’d been positive he’d gotten rid of that thing a long time ago.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” he told Brady, biting off the words. “I had a chance to prove that I was nothing like him, and I failed it. Spectacularly.”
“Oh yeah? What did you do?” Brady challenged him. “I assume you’re talking about Hannah. Did you beat her up? Call her names? Treat her so badly she packed up and took off in the middle of the night?”
“Of course not.” Ty’s head was pounding. “But I can’t really say that. I can’t remember.”
His confession didn’t have the effect he was going for. Brady rolled his eyes. Gray looked … the way Gray always looked. Stern. Steady.
“Whiskey?” Brady asked.
“I wish it were whiskey,” Ty threw at them. “A man who drinks too much whiskey can always stop. But no. I can’t remember what happened the night I got stomped.” He pulled in a long, deep breath. “Or anything that happened for two years or so before that.”
Both of his brothers were silent.
Brady blinked. “You mean…?”
“You don’t mean you can’t remember something.” Gray frowned. “You’re talking about actual, medical memory loss.”
“It’s not unusual after an accident like mine,” Ty said stiffly. “But there’s no medical reason for me not being able to remember. The actual accident, sure. That’s probably gone forever, and God bless. But the two years before that? My mind has taken it upon itself to basically erase my entire relationship with Hannah. Why would it do that?”
Both of his brothers stared back at him.
“I’ll tell you,” Ty said, because he didn’t want them to throw out excuses when he knew the truth. “Because I don’t want to remember what I said. What I did. Because I turned into Dad.”
“You’re not Dad,” Brady said. Again.
And with more force this time.
“Even he knew I was.” Something was cracking open inside of Ty. Huge and terrible. “He always knew. He could see himself in me.”
“He could see himself everywhere he looked,” Gray retorted. “Because the only thing he ever thought about was himself. Not because he was right.”
“There is a poison in me,” Ty told them, matter-of-factly. “There’s no getting it out. You want to talk about the Everett family legacy? Well. It’s a disease. And I have it.”
There were too many stars. He could feel the mountains, brooding out there. Waiting. And the land. Always the land, stretching out so far it should have felt wide open, but Ty knew better now. It was a chokehold.
But he didn’t mind anymore. He’d surrendered. He’d accepted what he couldn’t change. Wasn’t that supposed to be a good thing?
“You don’t wake up one day and become Dad,” Brady argued. “It’s not a disease. There’s no Dad virus. It’s a choice he made, every single day of his life. That’s not poison, Ty. That’s a preference.”
Gray’s gaze was hard on Ty’s. But in a way that made Ty want to meet it. Rise up to it, maybe. He didn’t. He couldn’t.
“If you don’t want to be like Dad, it’s real simple,” Gray said. “Don’t be like him.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It really is,” Brady retorted. “Why are you letting dead men tell you who you are?”
Ty about staggered back at that one. But he held his ground. Somehow.
“I appreciate this,” he told them, when he could speak. “I really do. Go Team Brothers. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get my stuff together. Because I’m still leaving early in the morning, despite this charming conversation.”
He turned and started across the yard.
“Ty.” Gray’s voice stopped him. But Ty didn’t turn back around this time. “One way or another, you’re going to get off that bull.”
“That’s the plan,” Ty said. To the night as much as his brothers.
“And when you do, you’re still going to be the man who walked away from his own son,” Gray said. A pitiless sucker punch.
“Thanks, Gray.” Ty even grinned, though there was no one to see it. “I appreciate that.”
“You’ll be no different from Dad,” Gray continued. “And not because you’re poisoned. But because you’re afraid.”
Ty couldn’t speak. He couldn’t come up with a response to that, mostly because he couldn’t argue the point. He shook his head and kept walking.
“When you decide to be like Dad, that’s not his fault,” Brady said, his voice following along no matter how Ty tried to get away from it. No matter how he tried to pretend he couldn’t hear it. “He’s dead. You choose to follow in his footsteps and that’s all on you.”