"No, you were trying to control me. To keep me in your little box, where I was safe for you. Not me.” I take a deep breath and push my tears back even as my eyes sting a little. “I know you thought you were protecting me." And I do know that. That's the thing. "But there's a difference between protecting someone and keeping them from their own life because it makesyoufeel better."
He goes quiet for a long moment. A muscle works in his jaw, and I can see the wheels turning in his head.
"He said that too," Tyler says. "Last night."
"Did he?"
"Yeah, more or less." He looks out toward our parents' house and toward the fields our family has worked for 30 years. "He was right."
I blinked. I wasn't expecting that.
"I was scared," he says. It's not an excuse, though he’d always used it as one. "When I'm out there, everything changes. Every day, something is different, and there's nothing I can do about any of it. And then I'd come home, and you'd be here, and everything would be exactly like I left it, something I could count on." He looks at me. "That wasn't fair to you."
"No," I say. "It wasn't. But this isn’t just about when you are out there.” I gestured to the world as a whole. "You’ve been doing this since I was five. But I’m not five anymore. I’m old enough to run this ranch on my own. I’m old enough to join the army. I’m old enough to decide if Bo is good enough for me or if I want to be reckless and date Kevin.” Igive an involuntary shudder. “You don’t get to decide that for me.”
"And Bo—" He lets out a sigh. "Bo is the best man I know, Falon. That's why I asked him to watch out for you. Because I trusted him more than anyone." He shakes his head. "I just didn't think about what would happen if watching out for you turned into something else."
"There you go again, planning it all out, huh? That’s the thing, Tyler.Youdidn't think about what would happen ifwatching out for meturned into something else.” I repeat his words back to him, emphasizing that he should watch out for me.
“I won’t apologize for asking him to watch out for you, you’re my little sister, whether you like it or not, but I can see now that I can’t tell you who you can and can’t date.” He scrunches his nose like he hates the fact that he has to say it.
“And now?"
He's quiet for a beat. "Now, I think maybe it makes sense. The two of you." He says it like it hurts a little. Brothers. "I don't love it. But I think it makes sense. The two of you have had eyes for each other since you were fourteen."
"Tyler." I wait until he looks at me. "If you make me choose between you and Bo, I will choose. And I will never forgive you for making me do it.” I am so serious. I don’t think Tyler has ever seen me like this because he blinks at me, and his expression is shocked before he hides it behind understanding.
He holds my eyes for a long time. Then he nods. Once. The same tight nod he gave Bo last night on the dance floor, and I realize that the two of them are more alike than either of them would ever admit out loud.
"I'm going to need some time," he says.
"Yep," I say, knowing that there is a good possibility that Tyler was about to be estranged if he made me choose.
He jumps off the straw bale, careful with his arm, and stops in front of me for a second. Then he pulls me in with his good arm, and when he lets go, he doesn't say anything else. Just walks back toward our parents' house.
“Oh, Ty,” I call out. He turns. “How did you come across this new revelation?” I ask, trying to keep the smirk off my lips. There was no way he came to this conclusion on his own.
He scrunches his nose again and looks over the fields, not at me. “There is a slight possibility that maybe Mom and Dad got hold of me last night. Right after Bo did.”
He waves me away as he walked away.
I stand there in the yard for a minute after he's gone.
When I go inside to make coffee and try to figure out what to do next, I realize that I just did something that I have never done. I stood up to Tyler. Huh, things do change.
The next few days are strange.
Bo is still here. That's the thing I keep running into. Every time I think about what I heard through the screen door, every time those fragments line up in my head, I round a corner, and there he is. Making dinner. Working on Hank's corral, again. I swear that goat is part shredder. Sitting on the guest house porch with Rowdy in the evening, like everything is normal, like nothing changed on the Fourth of July.
He tries to explain. More than once.
The first time is over dinner. I came in from the fields, and the smell of pot roast, which he knows is my favorite, wafted through the screen door. He sets it on the table andsits down across from me and says, "What you heard wasn't all of it."
"I know," I say.
"Then let me tell you the rest."
"No." I pick up my fork. "This is really good."
