“Yeah, should’ve texted. Data’s tight and the meds knock me out, so I’ve been pulling over a lot.” Crying, getting BJ’s from randos, you know typical Hoyt Knox shit. I glanced at the house. “Old man know I’m here?”
“Nah.” Cool. Simple reply. Not that anything here was ever simple. “You’re welcome here,” he rushed to say.
“I won’t cause trouble.” I wanted to assure him of that. What Abel did remained to be seen.
“That’s not?—”
“I’ll park the trailer by the hay barn. Out of sight, out of mind. Might run a cord for electric. Otherwise he won’t know I’m here.”
“We have a room for you in the house,” Jesse said real quiet-like.
“I cleared it out,” Lucas interjected with all kinds of brightness. “New mattress and drapes, green, which I hope you like, and new sheets, which is more than I got from Jesse when I arrived.”
“Nah. Trailer’s fine. The less time the old man and me share air, the better.”
“No, not in our old house.” He jerked a thumb at house behind him. “In this place.”
Oh. That was also something. “In the big house?” Huh again. I turned my attention to Lucas. “Thank you, Lucas, but I’m not a guest that needs fancy.”
“It’s my place too,” Jesse blurted. I was more than a little confused. “Walter left me some of the ranch and the rest is Lucas’s and…Jesus. That’s a story for another day.”
“You own the house?”
“Not all of it, and some of the ranch. But yeah, you can stay here easy enough.”
“I’m used to being alone.” Secrets kept better when they weren’t shared.
That secret ain’t a secret here, Hoyt.
Oh right. Old habits die hard.
The yard got real quiet then.
“Dad doesn’t live on the property anymore. He’s not foreman anymore, he’s…in town. He’s…not like you remember.” Jesse looked all kinds of pained.
“I remember a lot.”
“We need to sit and talk.”
“Yeah, we will.”
That sounded defensive even to my ears.
“There’s stuff you need to know about Dad?—”
“Yeah, I said okay but not now.” Ouch fuck. Okay, that took him back. I was a bastard. “Shit, Jesse, I don’t want to think about that man.” A soul could only take so much pain. “I’m not here for him.”
He stared at me for a long, anguished moment.
“No,” he said, not unkind, just honest and waved at my arm. “You’re here for you.”
“I wanted to see you and?—”
“Not just that. You’re fucked-up and out of options.”
Fuck me. My little brother was brutal. Honesty usually was. I closed my mouth. “Not all options and I want…look, I’m sorry for losing my shit.”
Poor Lucas. Talk about fucking awkward.
