Frank wrote about my plan to join the army. About sitting at the dinner table and announcing it. About the look in my eye.
This was a boy plannin his escape. No way was that happenin.
I sat up. Kept reading.
So I sorted it. I called Bob.
The room noise faded out. Cassidy read something about Frank lighting a bushfire. Declan was doing something that had Bella asking him if he was okay. I felt Sapphire’s gaze on me, but I couldn’t look up.
All it took was two small reports being slipped into the right system.
My hands had started shaking somewhere in the last paragraph, and I couldn’t make them stop.
Kayden’s application was rejected before he even made it to the medical.
For fifteen years, I’d kept that fucking rejection letter. It was hard proof of everything Frank had always said about me. That I wasn’t built for anything beyond this land. That when it counted, I didn’t measure up.
And all this time I’d believed I was useless.
But it wasn’t me. Frank had called Bob, and Bob had put two fake reports into the system. Assault charge. Stolen firearms. Clean enough to disappear. Dirty enough to close the door to the only career I’d ever wanted.
Frank had looked me in the eye every day for fifteen years and let me believe I’d failed.
“Kayden,” Sapphire whispered.
Rage hit me like one of Frank’s gut punches.
“Hey.” Sapphire’s hand covered my wrist.
“What the fuck!” I slammed my fist on the table. Plates jumped. Everyone looked up.
“What?” multiple voices asked at once.
“Frank sabotaged my army application.” I stood so fast the chair slammed over, hitting the floor like a thunderclap. “Him and Bob. They put fake crime reports into the system. Assault charge. Stolen firearms. They fucking made shit up.” I grabbed the note and read the last lines aloud.
“You boys might read this and think what I did was cruel. Maybe it was. But a man’s job is protectin what belongs to him, and Kayden Branson belongs on this land whether he likes it or not.”
I slammed the note face down on the table and stormed out of the room.
“Kayden,” Cassidy pleaded.
“Hey, buddy, come on,” Declan said.
The night air hit me like a wall. Cool and quiet after the suffocating heat in that dining room. I walked to the far end of the verandah, gripped the railing with both hands, and yelled into the darkness. “Farkkk!”
I’d wasted fifteen years believing I wasn’t good enough, believing the army had taken one look at my application and decided I wasn’t worth the trouble. I’d built my whole life around that. Stayed on Koolaroo. Worked the land. Told myself it was where I belonged.
The screen door opened behind me.
Moments later, Sapphire stood beside me at the railing, close enough that I felt her warmth as she looked out at the dark paddocks the same way I was.
We stood like that for a while.
“This proves you’re not a failure,” she said in a breathless whisper.
“Well, I’ll never know, will I?” I growled out. “He made sure of that.”
She inched closer, nudging her shoulder against mine. “But you know now that it wasn’t you. You’re a good man, Kayden.”
