“You got fat in the off-season, Liam,” Alex said.
Liam shot him a deadly look. “Tell you what. I invite you to start a fight with me and see just how out of shape I am. I just haven’t ridden a horse in... Well, since I was last here.”
Alex shrugged, crossing his arms and lifting his beer to his lips. “I don’t need to fight you to know that twelve years in the army gives me the advantage. I haven’t ridden a horse recently either, but I’m fine.”
Alex hadn’t looked all that fine only a few moments ago, but it seemed as though he was redirecting his stance now that he saw how miserable Cain and Liam were. It was impossible not to like Alex sometimes. Even though he was an obnoxious son of a bitch.
“Yeah,” Liam grumbled, “well, some of us haven’t lived at boot camp for the past twelve years.”
“True. But then, neither have I. Boot camp looks friendly next to Afghanistan,” Alex said. “Trust me.” He took another sip of beer. “Come to that, cows look friendly next to Afghanistan too.”
Alex was going to be the toughest one to scare off, Finn realized. He seemed like the easygoing one. Like the one who would cut and run when things got difficult. But there was an intensity that went beneath the surface, a strength that the rest of them hadn’t really been around to witness but that Finn knew was there just the same.
“We’re going to have to milk the cows again in a couple of hours. Take a break. Eat. There’s food in the fridge from last night, or you can drive down to town if you’re in the mood. Just be back by two.”
Alex and Liam looked at each other, then left the room. Either to go grab some rest or a burger, Finn didn’t know. But he didn’t really care. Unless they were going to hightail it back to where they came from.
But that left him alone in the room with Cain. And he had never really known what kind of things he was supposed to talk about with his older brother. They had a lot in common in some ways. They were the ones that stood alone, isolated. No full-blood brother, and very little in the way of attention from their father.
Though it was a strange thing to have the common ground between yourself and your brother marked by all the things you didn’t have in common. Where you were raised. Who you were raised by.
But in his family those strange connections were all you had anyway.
“You don’t have to enjoy this so much.” Cain leaned back in his seat, resting his head on the back of the chair. “I’m thirty-seven, not seventeen. And I feel every year of it right about now.”
“You own a ranch, Cain,” Finn said, looking at his older brother. “Why are you acting like you haven’t been on the back of a horse since the dawn of time?”
“It’s probably been a couple of years,” he said. “I paid other people to manage the actual day-to-day stuff. At least, that’s how it’s been since my wife left.”
“So you just turned everything over to other people?” That was unfathomable to Finn. He liked to have his hand in every aspect of the ranch. Sure, he had people who worked at the Laughing Irish other than himself and his grandpa, but he was in charge, unquestionably. And he went out and rode the perimeter of the place almost every day. It was in his heart, in his blood. And he didn’t possess the ability to let go of even a piece of it.
“I had too much to hold on to in my personal life.” Cain swore, setting his beer down on the table. “I love being a father, but I can’t say that I ever thought I was the best one. But now I’m all Violet has. And I felt like... How could I possibly be out working on the ranch when there was more than enough money coming in if I never touched it? Someone had to make sure everything was all right at school. That all of her homework was getting done. And I could let the work go, so I did. Anyway, there was still paperwork. And I basically buried myself in that, plus doing the legal work of making sure I got sole custody. So that Kathleen could never just walk back into our lives and decide she wanted to try and take Violet from me. Not after she left the way she did.”
“Why did she leave?” They had never talked about this. But then, they had never talked about much of anything. Finn hadn’t even fully realized that Cain’s ex-wife had removed herself so completely from the picture.
“Probably for a million stupid reasons. And a couple of really good ones.” He paused, looking down at his hands. “But the worst part about somebody leaving you like that is you can’t shout it out. I mean, I know enough to know she wasn’t kidnapped or anything. Because trust me, that was my first thought. Your wife disappears on you and the first thing you want to do is call the police. Because there’s no way she’d leave her thirteen-year-old daughter, right? I mean, sure, maybe she’d leave the husband she could hardly say a civil word to. But Violet? That’s the part I don’t get.”
He stood, pacing the length of the kitchen before he paused at the window over the kitchen sink, just as Finn had done a few days ago. He looked out at the view, taking it all in, and Finn felt a strange mixture of irritation and pride as his older brother surveyed everything Finn had worked to make this ranch over the past nearly two decades.
“It’s the part I can’t forgive,” Cain said heavily. Then he turned back to Finn. “If you think a full day of work, day in day out, scares me, you don’t know what I’ve been through. I’m raising a teenage girl, Finn. I’m not scared of jack shit except all the ways I might fuck that up.” He took a weighted breath. “But I need something new. She needs something new. Otherwise, we’re just going to sit there mired in old memories and drown. I need your money even less than Alex does. My ranch was big, and when I sold it I got more than I’ll ever spend. I can invest it back into the Laughing Irish. I can invest in Violet’s future. That’s what I want. But this isn’t about needing property, or needing to earn a living. Not for me.”
Cain didn’t have to get into a deeper explanation than that. Mostly because Finn recognized exactly what Cain needed this place to be. It was the same thing Finn had needed when he’d showed up, angry and lost at sixteen.
He didn’t need money. He needed salvation.
“I’m warning you,” Finn said. “This ranch will drag a whole lot out of you before it starts putting anything back. And then, it’ll always be that way. Give and take. You and the land.”
“That’s all right,” Cain said. “I kind of want it to hurt.”
Finn didn’t want to understand Cain. Because that was perilously close to being on his brother’s side. To wanting to help him out in some way. He bristled against his growling conscience.
He should want to help his brother, he supposed. It was much easier to oppose his presence when he imagined that Cain wanted to be here for the wrong reasons. That it didn’t matter. That a payout would make things square.
This made it a whole lot more difficult. It made Finn feel a whole lot more petty.
“Violet doesn’t seem very happy to be here,” he pointed out. Which was maybe the lowest blow he’d tried to land yet.
Cain laughed, but there was no humor in it. “She’s not happy anywhere. I don’t know what to... I mean... It’s like she’s a different person now. She used to be this adorable, little bitty thing. And I can remember her with two missing front teeth and a big smile so clearly that half the time that’s still what I expect to see when I look at her. Instead she’s this sullen creature that will barely make eye contact with me. She was mad at me in Texas. I figure she can be mad at me here. But at least maybe with a little less baggage hanging around.” He shook his head. “I could never shake the feeling that she was waiting for her mother to come back. And the longer we stayed at the ranch, the more I felt like that was why. That it was why we were both still there. It had to stop.”
All of this, the emotion, the understanding, scraped against Finn like a particularly splintered board on bare skin.
“I don’t know