“What’s the situation?” Mike asked as we got closer.
Russ glanced over. “Near the eye, needs a few stitches, but she’ll be fine.”
Crew noticed me and smiled widely. “Hey, I didn’t realize you were back.”
I stopped in my tracks, torn between the running away feeling and the need to be in his arms for comfort.
“Mal here thinks he’s to blame,” Mike said bluntly.
Crew’s expression fell at the same time Russ scoffed.
“Why in the hell you thinkin’ that for?” Russ asked me. “If we all were considered at fault for every honest mistake we make, this ranch wouldn’t run a day. Everyone would just be sitting around, feeling sorry for themselves.”
Mike snorted and went to peer into the stall.
Crew approached me in that same way he’d done before. Like I was a nervous animal.
“Baby, you know accidents happen. Even if you hadn’t been upset, you could’ve forgotten it. There’s countless timessomeone has forgotten to close a stall door or a paddock gate. Shit happens.”
“I know, but Bodhi looked so upset—”
“He’s upset because I told him to walk,” Russ cut me off. “That boy is a mother hen when it comes to Imelda Staunton, and he was making her nervous. I told him to go cool off and only come back when he wasn’t lost in his head.”
Crew pulled me to his side and then practically dragged me to the stall.
I choked up when I saw the foal. The mare was fine, eating hay, but the foal was still bloody from where she’d somehow ended up injured.
“It looks worse than it is,” Ennis said quietly as he leaned to the wall near the foal. “You know how it is with anything around the head, whether human or animal. Lots of blood vessels.” He grinned a little. “She’ll just have a kickass scar for a while.”
Crew cleared his throat. “Dad? What’s the biggest thing you’ve messed up here?”
Mike hummed. “Probably when I left the water hose on for the day back when you were little. Do you remember that? Your mom asked me to water her vegetable garden while she took one of you to the doctor’s. When she came back some… I don’t know, five hours later? The well we had was pretty much dry and her vegetables were floating.”
Everyone but me chuckled.
“I drove Mike’s new truck into the ditch,” Ennis said.
“I almost lost Isley.” Russ shook his head. “That kid was wily, I swear. He liked to climb things, so I knew he was in the hay loft. He just didn’t tell me he’d jumped down to the outside and then fell asleep in the tack room while I was in the loft looking for him.”
Mike laughed. “I remember Jenn being so fucking mad at you for losing a toddler.”
“What are we laughing at?” Bodhi asked from behind us.
“Russ losing Isley.” Crew smiled over his shoulder.
“Oh. Fuckup stories?” Bodhi asked, then came to stand next to me.
Crew nodded. “Yeah.”
“I forgot that we weren’t supposed to play with matches when I was six,” Bodhi said casually.
I gawked at him. “Holy shit!”
Mike snorted. “He managed to almost burn down the brand new barn, too.”
“And he didn’t ‘forget’ shit,” Crew added.
“Hey, you’re supposed to be on my side!”
