Page 25 of Down in Flames
“Nobody,” West said, cutting Gus a dangerous look. The old man lifted both hands in surrender, nodding wearily. “Nobody at all.”
He saved the Triple M for last, partly because it was the biggest delivery, and partly because the thought of facing Michael again terrified him. Apart from a few quick texts when he got back to town, they hadn’t spoken, and West was beginning to worry that Michael regretted what he'd said in California.
Michael didn’t speak about his past much, but West knew he’d lost plenty of loved ones over the years. His grandfather was long gone, and there were no relatives flying in for the holidays, no cousins for Abby to visit, not even an opinionated in-law questioning his parenting. It was just him and his little girl and the family of lost cowboys he’d built up around him. Nearly losing the ranch had probably brought back a lot of old fears and grief, and then West had to go and ghost him on top of everything else. What a mind fuck. No wonder he was willing to do anything to keep from losing someone else he cared about.
It made sense.
They would both play it off, and things would go back to normal. West would never let it show when the might-have-beens got so bad they nearly killed him. He could do that. For Michael.
That decision should have settled him, but as the long day drew to a close, he found himself babbling anxiously to the puppy in his passenger seat. His palms were damp and sliding on the wheel, and even an open window and George Strait crooning about Amarillo on the old FM radio couldn’t calm his nerves.
So, he talked to the dog.
“Want some?” he asked, thrusting out an open bag of corn nuts. The puppy stuck out her nose and sniffed curiously. If Derek had given her a name, he hadn’t shared it, so West had taken to calling her Patches. If the wagging of her fat little rump was any indication, she didn’t mind. She shook her head, sneezed, and then curled up disinterestedly on the bed he’d fashioned from an old towel.
“Suit yourself,” he said, tossing back a few nuts and turning one-handed onto Elkhorn Road.
He knew this road like the back of his hand, but he hadn’t dared get anywhere close since those first few days after the fire. It was a shock to turn onto the familiar gravel road and not be greeted by massive wooden arches capped by an M forged from giant horseshoes.
Even now, destruction was everywhere. The fire had originally sparked with the horses in the stable, but it hadn't stopped there. The pristine white fencing that used to run along the culvert was now nothing but charred logs, and a quick and dirty barbed wire fence had replaced it. Beyond the wire sat black and fallow fields. Acre upon acre of ruined pasture; an unending sea of ash stretching all the way to the foothills of the Strawberry Mountains.
West knew that Michael had already spent a small fortune on hay just to get the cattle through the winter, but the success or failure of next year’s herd depended on sowing enough seed to germinate in the spring. The twenty industrial sized bags of grass seed in the bed of West’s truck wouldn’t do any good unless Michael fixed his irrigation before the ground froze.
At the end of the road, the house and the outbuildings sat in various stages of construction. Some of them were gutted down to the wiring and others were already coated in fresh paint. They looked like haunted houses, strangely eerie with their bare frames and empty windows. Trucks, scrap piles, and heavy machinery littered the work yard, and a giant rental dumpster was filled to overflowing with detritus.
A huge CAT excavator sat in a nearby field, surrounded by a handful of cowboys, and just as West glanced in their direction, something struck his windshield with a hard splat.
“Cripes!” he yelled, slamming on the brakes.
Patches tumbled off the seat with a yelp.
“Sorry,” West said absently, throwing the truck into park and hopping down. Dark, sticky liquid dripped down the glass, and he tested it with one cautious finger. It was mud, thick and gooey, and it must have been a ball the size of a cantaloupe to strike with such force.
“Whoops!” a man shouted from the field.
“What the hell, Aiden!” West shouted back.
The cowboy grinned, hanging from the back of the excavator by one arm and waving. There was a sharp bite in the air today, but he was shirtless and his blond curls were plastered to his forehead with sweat. He was covered in so much mud that it looked like a strange new form of body art.
“Come on in; the water’s great!” Aiden called. The excavator jerked beneath him, dumping a full bucket of mud, and Aiden went tumbling off the back. He landed hard in the slop.
“Oops,” Calvin Craig said mildly from behind the controls. Aiden rolled onto his back and thrust two middle fingers in the air, but Cal only chuckled.
God, West had missed them. Sure, he’d seen them around town, but it wasn’t the same. In a strange way, the ranch was a second home for all of them, a place where they could be themselves. The only path to acceptance at the Triple M was hard work, but once they’d proven themselves, it would take the force of God to make any of them leave. That was part of the reason the fire had shaken them up so badly—and the reason Michael had been forced to threaten their jobs if they went after Sutter on their own. They all wanted revenge.
West was laughing as he picked his way across the ruined field. Patches followed behind him, running double-time on her tiny paws, little ears flapping in the breeze. She yipped and scampered up to Aiden, nipping at his hair and slinging mud everywhere.
Two days ago, Michael had been kissing him outside a rundown motor lodge on the wrong side of the California border. But in that time, it looked like he'd managed to dig to the center of the earth. The pit was half-filled with murky water, and Michael and Celia stood thigh-deep in sludge, hauling on an industrial-sized pipe wrench.
Like Aiden, Michael was shirtless and filthy, and West’s heart tripped when he laid eyes on him.
It was like this every time. Whenever he got a little distance and managed to convince himself he could control this obsession, all it took was one look to make a liar out of him. Michael was beautiful in a way West had never known men could be, and West knew he lit up like a beacon whenever he was around. His feelings were so bright and so loud that Michael always seemed to sense his presence even before he'd announced himself.
Right then, Michael glanced over his shoulder, attention landing unerringly on West and sucking the breath right out of his lungs. He knew he was suffocating, but he didn't care. He wanted this man more than he wanted his next breath. There was a time he thought he’d go crazy with it. Maybe he already had.
Play it cool, West reminded himself as he finally broke free from the gravity of Michael’s gaze. Just play it cool.
He flipped his attention to Aiden and reached down to offer a hand, saying, “I don’t know why, but I’m dead certain you deserved to get dumped on your ass."