Chapter 1

1

Cole knew how a person was supposed to feel after their dad died. Daniel had lost his nearly eight years ago and he said there were still memories that hurt because he wished he could relive them or had time to create more like them. However, since the last interaction Cole had with his own father involved being threatened with the various weapons in his dad’s gun closet, the news that the old man had finally kicked it brought mixed feelings.

Cancer finally won, his sister, Evelyn, had written. It had taken a few years of coaxing from Daniel for Cole to look up his siblings on Facebook. She was the one to respond first. His two brothers, Owen and Jamison, weren’t on social media as much, but even so Owen never accepted Cole’s friend request, and Jamison only did so after their dad’s diagnosis came in. The old man himself, according to Evelyn, never touched a computer or smartphone unless he absolutely had to.

A similar conflict of emotions had struck Cole when Evelyn told him the news about their dad’s illness. It had started as liver cancer, but he stubbornly insisted it was nothing and it was in his bones by the time Jamison convinced him to see a doctor. This had been almost a year ago while Cole was caught up running the summer camp that took place on Seyda Ranch, where he was chief ranch hand. He spoke to his dad once during the treatment to apologize for not being able to visit. His dad’s response had given him more reason not to go.

“You should be the one dying, not me.” The anger in his low voice was the same as it had been during Cole’s childhood, albeit now his dad sounded raspier, more worn down. “I thought I’d get the call from some slum in Austin saying the AIDS had killed you, and I’d tell them to keep the body. You and your kind have no business walking God’s green Earth.”

Cole clenched his fists at the memory. Yet here I am, you old bastard. That’s more than I can say for you. He read the date on the funeral invitation again. March twenty-fifth, the service was at the church where Cole and his siblings had been dragged on odd Sundays followed by a private service at the family homestead. Evelyn had made sure he got the invitation, and Cole suspected he might not have received one without her influence.

As always, Cole turned to his better half for advice. Daniel was washing the dishes from dinner, and Cole waited until he was done to tell him the news. Saying it out loud made it more real, but it didn’t change Cole’s opinion about it.

“My dad finally died,” he said.

Daniel, who knew all about Cole’s past, sat at the table next to him, eyes full of sympathy. “He was that far gone, huh?”

“Stage four’s a bitch.” Cole shrugged. “Now there’s gonna be a funeral, and…” He turned his computer for Daniel to read.

“That’s this weekend,” Daniel remarked. “Would you…do you want to go?”

Cole shrugged again. “It’s been nearly eighteen years since I left. Hell, I’ve been gone longer than I lived there.”

“It’s still your family.” Daniel visited his mom in Michigan at least once a year. He had taken Cole a few times and honestly Cole felt more accepted and at home in that little suburban house than he ever did on his own family’s ranch. Then again, Daniel’s parents had raised him kindly, so family meant something different to him. Cole’s own mom had died in a car accident when he was a little kid, so the closest thing he had had to that growing up was his grandmother, and she died a couple years before he got booted out.

“It’s also short notice. We’re at the height of calving season and we need all the hands we can get.”

Daniel folded his arms on the table. “Two missing hands can’t make that much of a difference.”

Cole looked down at his two hands as he tried to think of more excuses. He wiped at what he thought was a speck of dirt and discovered he had a new freckle on his wrist. It was one of many, joined by a few faint scars and the callouses on his palms and the pads of his fingers. His dad had taught him how to use these hands in hopes that one day he’d become free labor for the ranch. Jamison was the oldest, so the land would pass to him—was about to pass to him—so if Cole hadn’t left Texas he would likely have remained nothing but another set of hands. Here, at least, his hands were among the most trusted, if they weren’t the most trusted, and they weren’t only for raising cattle. There were so many things he had done, so many people he had met, so many lives he had changed, all because he wasn’t stuck on that damn dirt patch in the middle of nowhere. One life would have ended prematurely if it weren’t for him, and that person was sitting across the table right now.