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Reece looked not only surprised but moved, if the way his jaw working and him swallowing was any tell. I rolled my eyes again and slammed him on the shoulder. It shoved him to the side a bit. “Now outta my way. You’re riding Sally Anne here and I’m taking Lightning.”
“Hey, why do you get the stallion? They were my wedding presents!”
I laughed and looked at him over my shoulder. “Yeah, but Xavier says he’s barely broke and it’d be my ass if I got you thrown the day before your wedding. Plus,” I said before disappearing into the stables to find Lightning, “I get dibs cause I’m the oldest.”
Chapter Sixteen
JEREMIAH
I sat gingerly at the rehearsal dinner chair that evening.
“I told you, you shoulda let me ride Lightning instead of you,” Reece said with a big-ass grin from across the table. We were all out at a fancy restaurant terrace on Lake Travis—they’d had a late cancellation that Ruth managed to snatch for us.
I grimace-smirked an acknowledgement in my brother’s direction. “Yeah, yeah. If you’d been on Lightning when he bucked like that, you’d have ended up with a broken ass instead of just a bruised one. I am the master of the tuck and roll.”
Reece laughed and looked out on the table of our gathered friends and family. “Yeah, more like the master of the awkward fall-and-holler-your-ass-off.”
“Hmm, and yet,” I undid the cufflinks and shoved up the sleeves of my dress shirt. “Not a scratch.” My legs were ripped up all to hell and my tailbone hurt so bad I was trying my hardest to lean forward and put most of the weight of sitting on my thighs, but no one needed to know that.
I grinned. “Plus, I got right back up on that—” fucker. I stopped myself just in time and glanced to the right where I saw Charlie’s mom reaching for her pearls as if to start clutching them, “that horse. So all’s well that ends well.” I sat back a little without meaning to and struggled not to wince through my smile.
We’d had a great time on the ride, other than the tumble from Lightning when I’d challenged Reece to a race. And the racing wasn’t because I was a testosterone-filled jackass who always had to prove his superiority to his twin brother anymore—no, it wasn’t because of that. I challenged Reece to race and tried my fucking hardest to beat him because I was intentionally being nostalgic for those times.
And if Lightning wasn’t exactly on the same page as me and bucked me off when I tried nudging him a little too fervently in his hind quarters—well, I was just chalking that up to an excellent learning experience for all involved.
Plus, giving my little brother the win like that on the day before his wedding was really just the gentlemanly thing to do.
It was nice for all of us to be sitting down like this. Especially when Ruth had done us all a solid by putting the parents-in-law at the opposite end of the table by some of her parents’ old friends she’d wrangled into coming. Ruth and Charlie had been on the go all day and after Reece and my brief hour trail ride, so had we.
Ruth’s to-do list wasn’t endless—it had been doable. But only barely.
But Charlie had grabbed her friend’s hand and dragged her to sit down and enjoy the actual meal with us. That had been about half an hour ago and we’d all been eating good food, and more importantly, drinking fucking fabulous wine. I wasn’t usually a wine guy. I was a hefeweizen guy all day long. But fuck if this cabernet—or whatever the hell this ruby red magic drink was—didn’t go down smooth after the fourth or fifth glass. I’d lost track—I just knew the waiters at this fancy as fuck place never let my glass get more than half empty before they were there topping me off.
I felt loose and magnanimous—two words that were usually much more often ascribed to Reece than me. I was the uptight twin. The stuffy one with a stick up my ass. I knew that was what people thought of me, but tonight I didn’t give a fuck.
It felt like this afternoon I’d finally cleared the air with Reece, maybe once and for all.
Reece hadn’t even laughed when I’d gotten thrown—he’d immediately jumped off Sally Anne to make sure I was okay, and when he’d reached down a hand to help me up, I’d clasped it in confidence.
Yes, after he’d made sure I was alright, he had hopped back up on his horse and continued the race, finishing long before me since I’d finally decided safety was the better part of valor and took it slow, getting to know our new stallion rather than put my neck on the line again.
But when I finally caught up to Reece at the ridgeline, he wasn’t smug. No, he was in one of his rare contemplative moods, staring out at the vast vista of the Texas plane, wheat-colored Bermuda grass as far as the eye could see. It was almost time to harvest again.
“You know,” he said, hand loosely on the pommel of his saddle, “I don’t know if I ever told you how grateful I am that you decided to drag me along on this little adventure of yours.”
“What are you talking about? It’s both of ours.”
I’d brought my horse right up beside his and he looked over at me with a yeah, really? expression. He shook his head. “No way Xavier would’ve trusted me with this much responsibility on my own. Hell, I wouldn’t’ve trusted me.”
“Well.” I held the reins loosely as we looked out on the sloping hills that seemed to go on forever, huge wide Texas sky overhead. “A lot can change in a year. Moving down here, taking on the ranch—”
Reece laughed. “C’mon, we both know it was Charlie that made the difference. I hate to be one of those men who needed a good woman to turn him around. And I was trying before she got here. I don’t know if you’ll believe that, but I really was working on my shit. But she just…” He’d trailed off. “She gave me a reason for it to stick, ya know? The future wasn’t just this hazy maybe someday anymore. And I know you don’t believe it’ll stick, but I swear—”
I shook my head, “No, no, man. I’m sorry I gave you such shit about it at the beginning. I can see it. You have changed. I’m sorry I was holding onto the past like that. You and Charlie are something special. It’s why I wanted to bring you out here. I’m proud of you, man. I know I’ve given you a harder time than anyone, but I’m proud of the man you’ve become.”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small box. “It’s why I wanted to give you this today.” I handed it over to him.
Reece’s brow scrunched. “What is it?”
