“Watch it, Black. I can put up with you insulting me all the way to the second coming, but I won’t tolerate for one fraction of a second you insulting Rowen.” He interrupted me before I could say what I was about to. “In jest or not. I’m protective like that.”
“Protective? You? No way.” As much as I loved giving Jesse a hard time —in fact, it was a favorite pastime—when it came to Rowen, it was only out of habit. “You know I like the two of you at least ten times more than I like myself, right? I might talk a lot of shit, but you know if either of you needed anything . . . anything . . . I’d give my f**king life if need be. Right?” I nudged him, making sure he was getting what I was saying. I’d shove him straight off the rock if that’s what it took for him to get it. “Right, Jess? You know that, right?”
Jesse’s face couldn’t have gotten more solemn. Then he grinned. “Are we having another moment?”
I should have shoved him off the rock. “Shithead.”
Jesse laughed, sending another rock skipping into the river. I was too pissed to count. “I know. Difficult as you are and as much as I know you’d rather chop off your left arm than show any real emotion, I know you’ve got Rowen’s and my back when and if we need it.” He paused just long enough to cue me in that he was winding up to say something big. Jesse loved using dramatic pauses. “You do know, though, that friends-through-thick-and-thin goes both ways, right? You need something, we’re a phone call or a five-hundred mile drive away.”
“So you shouldn’t be the first person I call if I sever my carotid artery?”
“Only if you’ve got a death wish.” That ever-present hint of smile fell clean off of Jesse’s face. “Shit, Garth. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that . . .”
“Walker, please, for the love of god”—I picked up one of the rocks just so I could squeeze it—“don’t start treating me like I’m some nut case about to stuff my head in an oven. Give me enough credit that I’m too self-centered to do something like that because really, I can’t take another person treating me like I’m going to implode if they say the wrong thing.”
Jesse stared out into the river before nodding. “I can do that. No imploding nut cases around here.”
“Ha. Other than the one beside me.”
“At least your warped sense of humor is still intact,” Jesse replied.
“In tip-top shape actually.” The rock I was squeezing was either going to break a few bones in my hand or crumble, so before either rock or hand broke, I hurled it into the river. No skipping that time.
“If you want to take some time off and come hang out with Rowen and me in Seattle—”
I lifted my hand, stopping him. “Again, your woman already beat you to the offer-the-loon-refuge punch. If I wasn’t terrified of the permanent damage that would be done to me hearing the two of your freaky mating sounds, I might actually take Seattle and your couch into consideration.”
“Green much?” Jesse quipped, unfazed.
“Gloat much?”
Jesse sighed. “Take it or leave it, just so long as you know you’re welcome whenever. Okay?”
I nodded my acknowledgement because I knew Jesse wouldn’t let it go until I did. Before he could get anything else out, because lord knows, that guy couldn’t not talk if his life depended on it, I took the conversation and ran with it. “So, what about you? How’s p**sy-whipped life . . . I mean ball-and-chain life . . . I mean married life . . . I mean engaged life treating you?”
“Just so you know, if you hadn’t just been at your dad’s funeral fifteen minutes ago, your ass would be off this rock right now.”
“Fuck, Jess. I thought I told you to stop treating me like a self-imploder?”
He shrugged. “Fine.”
Then before I noticed him move, my ass didn’t fall off that rock—it flew off. It was a damn good thing said ass landed on a patch of sand, or I would have paid back the favor and then some. “I sure have missed you, Jess. Kind of like the girl you screw once and who just won’t take a hint that you don’t want to slap a ring on her.”
“Missed you too, pal.”
“This summer, eh? You’re really ready to castrate yourself?” I’d almost climbed back on top of the rock when Jesse gave me a warning look. “I mean, you’re really ready to tie the knot?”
“I’m really ready.”
“My god, Walker. You are insane.”
“It’s a concept you will never quite grasp, I get it.” Jesse slid out of his suit coat and rolled up the sleeves of his dress shirt.
“What? Getting married?”
His head moved side to side. “No, loving a woman enough to even imagine getting married.”
“Ouch.” I thumped my fist against my chest. “I just ‘buried’ my father. Take it easy on me.”
“I thought you didn’t want me treating you any differently.”
“So did I,” I replied.
“Well make up your mind already.” Jesse smiled at me and hell if I couldn’t not smile back.
“What’s the rush?”
“I was planning on asking you to be my best man, but that seems wrong if you’re still under the belief that love and marriage are your arch nemeses. I need a best man who’ll support me and have my back, not one who’ll try to talk me out of saying ‘I do’ right up until I say it.” I glanced over at him, lifting my brows. “Or talk me out of it after saying ‘I do,’” Jesse added with an eye roll. “Not exactly the kind of stuff a guy needs in a best man.”
“But you and I both know no one is better suited to throw the bachelor party that would go down in infamy. We’re talking get Guinness on the phone because we’re going to break every bachelor party record out there.”
Jesse pitched another rock into the river. “Yeah, something else I’m really not looking for in a best man.”
“You suck the fun out of any and every situation, you know that?” Even though I was masking the whole best-man conversation with humor, I was honored as all hell that he’d even consider me his best man. We’d grown up together, but plenty of shit had gone down between us—thanks to yours truly—and I just considered myself lucky that Jesse still talked to and tolerated me. Never once had I guessed he’d consider me as his best man.
But he was right. I’d make one pathetic excuse of a best man with my ideas on love, marriage, and happily ever after. I could smile and get through the ceremony, but I didn’t believe in any of that shit. Kind of hard to when the closest thing to love I’d experienced with a girl had been not wanting to immediately toss her out of my bed in the morning. For Jesse, I got it. I understood why he wanted to marry Rowen. He had it so bad for her, his eyes were about to go crossed. Love and marriage made sense for Jesse Walker. Love and marriage made no sense for me. Arch nemeses may have been an exaggeration, but they were concepts I was definitely avoiding.
Or had they been avoiding me?
“Do me a favor and give it some thought, will ya? I’d love to have you as my best man, but I’ll understand if you’re not up to it.”
I nodded. It was a decision I wouldn’t make lightly. “There doesn’t happen to be a spot for a ‘worst man,’ is there? Because I can assure you that’s got my name all over it.”
Jesse laughed with me. I was about to climb off the rock and go in search of that whiskey—enough heart-to-heart for a lifetime—when his face got all serious again. Shit. “What are you planning on doing now?”
I knew what Jesse was asking, but hell if I was answering. “Getting rip-roaring drunk and finding a woman who can make me forget everything, including my name, for a little while. Or a long while preferably.”
He let out a long sigh. “And after that? Then what? Dad said he told you that you were welcome to move into the bunk house with the rest of the hands, but you said you were staying at a friend’s place for a while.” Jesse gave me a purposeful look. “What friend do you have that I don’t know about who’d give you the green light to move in with them indefinitely?”
“One you don’t know.” I kept my reply short and my eyes forward. Jesse was an expert at sniffing out my lies. Probably because he had fifteen years of experience doing so.
“Name?”
“I’ve got a name for you.” I lifted my middle finger at him.
Jesse looked like he was going to shove me off the rock again but stopped. That, right there, was the defining line between the two of us. Jesse thought first, jumped later. Me, I jumped first and maybe, maybe, thought later. I’d make an argument as to which was the better option if it wasn’t so damn obvious which one of us was winning at the game of life.
“Fine. Should you ever desire to move out of your ‘friend’s’ place, or should they decide to kick you out, you know you’re welcome at Willow Springs, right?”
“As welcome as the clap,” I replied.
Jesse let out another sigh. His and Josie’s reactions to me were lining up. “I already said I’ve missed you, right?”
“Yeah, yeah. And I think I forgot to say f**k off.”
“It’s good to have friends.”
I tipped an imaginary beer at him. “Hell yes, it is.”
Chapter Four
EIGHT SECONDS OF glory. All a man like me could ask from life.
Clay had beat that phrase into me when most parents were teaching their kids the alphabet. With Clay, it was all about the most important eight seconds of a man’s life, the glory to be earned from it, and not resting until I’d given the best ride of my life.
In another life, Clay’d been a bull rider, too. From what I’d gathered in between benders and the few pictures scattered around the trailer, one hell of a rider. He’d even been a part of the pro circle for a while. Then he met my mom, knocked her up with the little bastard known as me, and had his kneecap stomped on by a two thousand-pound, pissed off animal. Clay’s riding career had ended that day in the arena a month before I was born, and even though he left it with his life, it wasn’t much of one. I’d never known the man he was before the accident, and what I knew of the man after didn’t make me want to know who he’d been. Clay could have been the f**king Dali Lami of Montana and it wouldn’t have compensated for the man I’d known growing up. Atonement just wasn’t in the cards for Clay Walker.
Other than our looks, Clay and I never had much in common. Rodeo was the one exception. I was trotting on a horse before I could walk, and Clay tossed me up on my first steer the summer before kindergarten. Bull riding wasn’t about a father bonding with his son. No, bonding was something Clay reserved for his whiskey. Bull riding was about one man living vicariously through another. It was about Clay living his eight seconds of glory through me.
Eight seconds of glory and a whiskey cap. That’s all the man who’d conceived me had left me with. Not even a nickel more. It wasn’t a big surprise Clay had never made out a will because, really, what was there to fight over when he died? The macrame pillow coated with years of smoke and whiskey fumes? The single dinner plate I’d glued back together so many times I’d lost count? The trailer I’d been too embarrassed by to invite a friend or a girl back to? No, there was nothing to fight over. Nothing to show for a man who’d lived forty years of life other than a whiskey cap and a son who gave his middle finger to life at every turn. Even if there had been stuff, there was no one to fight with. I was the only family Clay had. Or at least the only family he hadn’t severed all ties with. Talk about leaving a legacy behind . . .
o;Watch it, Black. I can put up with you insulting me all the way to the second coming, but I won’t tolerate for one fraction of a second you insulting Rowen.” He interrupted me before I could say what I was about to. “In jest or not. I’m protective like that.”
“Protective? You? No way.” As much as I loved giving Jesse a hard time —in fact, it was a favorite pastime—when it came to Rowen, it was only out of habit. “You know I like the two of you at least ten times more than I like myself, right? I might talk a lot of shit, but you know if either of you needed anything . . . anything . . . I’d give my f**king life if need be. Right?” I nudged him, making sure he was getting what I was saying. I’d shove him straight off the rock if that’s what it took for him to get it. “Right, Jess? You know that, right?”
Jesse’s face couldn’t have gotten more solemn. Then he grinned. “Are we having another moment?”
I should have shoved him off the rock. “Shithead.”
Jesse laughed, sending another rock skipping into the river. I was too pissed to count. “I know. Difficult as you are and as much as I know you’d rather chop off your left arm than show any real emotion, I know you’ve got Rowen’s and my back when and if we need it.” He paused just long enough to cue me in that he was winding up to say something big. Jesse loved using dramatic pauses. “You do know, though, that friends-through-thick-and-thin goes both ways, right? You need something, we’re a phone call or a five-hundred mile drive away.”
“So you shouldn’t be the first person I call if I sever my carotid artery?”
“Only if you’ve got a death wish.” That ever-present hint of smile fell clean off of Jesse’s face. “Shit, Garth. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that . . .”
“Walker, please, for the love of god”—I picked up one of the rocks just so I could squeeze it—“don’t start treating me like I’m some nut case about to stuff my head in an oven. Give me enough credit that I’m too self-centered to do something like that because really, I can’t take another person treating me like I’m going to implode if they say the wrong thing.”
Jesse stared out into the river before nodding. “I can do that. No imploding nut cases around here.”
“Ha. Other than the one beside me.”
“At least your warped sense of humor is still intact,” Jesse replied.
“In tip-top shape actually.” The rock I was squeezing was either going to break a few bones in my hand or crumble, so before either rock or hand broke, I hurled it into the river. No skipping that time.
“If you want to take some time off and come hang out with Rowen and me in Seattle—”
I lifted my hand, stopping him. “Again, your woman already beat you to the offer-the-loon-refuge punch. If I wasn’t terrified of the permanent damage that would be done to me hearing the two of your freaky mating sounds, I might actually take Seattle and your couch into consideration.”
“Green much?” Jesse quipped, unfazed.
“Gloat much?”
Jesse sighed. “Take it or leave it, just so long as you know you’re welcome whenever. Okay?”
I nodded my acknowledgement because I knew Jesse wouldn’t let it go until I did. Before he could get anything else out, because lord knows, that guy couldn’t not talk if his life depended on it, I took the conversation and ran with it. “So, what about you? How’s p**sy-whipped life . . . I mean ball-and-chain life . . . I mean married life . . . I mean engaged life treating you?”
“Just so you know, if you hadn’t just been at your dad’s funeral fifteen minutes ago, your ass would be off this rock right now.”
“Fuck, Jess. I thought I told you to stop treating me like a self-imploder?”
He shrugged. “Fine.”
Then before I noticed him move, my ass didn’t fall off that rock—it flew off. It was a damn good thing said ass landed on a patch of sand, or I would have paid back the favor and then some. “I sure have missed you, Jess. Kind of like the girl you screw once and who just won’t take a hint that you don’t want to slap a ring on her.”
“Missed you too, pal.”
“This summer, eh? You’re really ready to castrate yourself?” I’d almost climbed back on top of the rock when Jesse gave me a warning look. “I mean, you’re really ready to tie the knot?”
“I’m really ready.”
“My god, Walker. You are insane.”
“It’s a concept you will never quite grasp, I get it.” Jesse slid out of his suit coat and rolled up the sleeves of his dress shirt.
“What? Getting married?”
His head moved side to side. “No, loving a woman enough to even imagine getting married.”
“Ouch.” I thumped my fist against my chest. “I just ‘buried’ my father. Take it easy on me.”
“I thought you didn’t want me treating you any differently.”
“So did I,” I replied.
“Well make up your mind already.” Jesse smiled at me and hell if I couldn’t not smile back.
“What’s the rush?”
“I was planning on asking you to be my best man, but that seems wrong if you’re still under the belief that love and marriage are your arch nemeses. I need a best man who’ll support me and have my back, not one who’ll try to talk me out of saying ‘I do’ right up until I say it.” I glanced over at him, lifting my brows. “Or talk me out of it after saying ‘I do,’” Jesse added with an eye roll. “Not exactly the kind of stuff a guy needs in a best man.”
“But you and I both know no one is better suited to throw the bachelor party that would go down in infamy. We’re talking get Guinness on the phone because we’re going to break every bachelor party record out there.”
Jesse pitched another rock into the river. “Yeah, something else I’m really not looking for in a best man.”
“You suck the fun out of any and every situation, you know that?” Even though I was masking the whole best-man conversation with humor, I was honored as all hell that he’d even consider me his best man. We’d grown up together, but plenty of shit had gone down between us—thanks to yours truly—and I just considered myself lucky that Jesse still talked to and tolerated me. Never once had I guessed he’d consider me as his best man.
But he was right. I’d make one pathetic excuse of a best man with my ideas on love, marriage, and happily ever after. I could smile and get through the ceremony, but I didn’t believe in any of that shit. Kind of hard to when the closest thing to love I’d experienced with a girl had been not wanting to immediately toss her out of my bed in the morning. For Jesse, I got it. I understood why he wanted to marry Rowen. He had it so bad for her, his eyes were about to go crossed. Love and marriage made sense for Jesse Walker. Love and marriage made no sense for me. Arch nemeses may have been an exaggeration, but they were concepts I was definitely avoiding.
Or had they been avoiding me?
“Do me a favor and give it some thought, will ya? I’d love to have you as my best man, but I’ll understand if you’re not up to it.”
I nodded. It was a decision I wouldn’t make lightly. “There doesn’t happen to be a spot for a ‘worst man,’ is there? Because I can assure you that’s got my name all over it.”
Jesse laughed with me. I was about to climb off the rock and go in search of that whiskey—enough heart-to-heart for a lifetime—when his face got all serious again. Shit. “What are you planning on doing now?”
I knew what Jesse was asking, but hell if I was answering. “Getting rip-roaring drunk and finding a woman who can make me forget everything, including my name, for a little while. Or a long while preferably.”
He let out a long sigh. “And after that? Then what? Dad said he told you that you were welcome to move into the bunk house with the rest of the hands, but you said you were staying at a friend’s place for a while.” Jesse gave me a purposeful look. “What friend do you have that I don’t know about who’d give you the green light to move in with them indefinitely?”
“One you don’t know.” I kept my reply short and my eyes forward. Jesse was an expert at sniffing out my lies. Probably because he had fifteen years of experience doing so.
“Name?”
“I’ve got a name for you.” I lifted my middle finger at him.
Jesse looked like he was going to shove me off the rock again but stopped. That, right there, was the defining line between the two of us. Jesse thought first, jumped later. Me, I jumped first and maybe, maybe, thought later. I’d make an argument as to which was the better option if it wasn’t so damn obvious which one of us was winning at the game of life.
“Fine. Should you ever desire to move out of your ‘friend’s’ place, or should they decide to kick you out, you know you’re welcome at Willow Springs, right?”
“As welcome as the clap,” I replied.
Jesse let out another sigh. His and Josie’s reactions to me were lining up. “I already said I’ve missed you, right?”
“Yeah, yeah. And I think I forgot to say f**k off.”
“It’s good to have friends.”
I tipped an imaginary beer at him. “Hell yes, it is.”
Chapter Four
EIGHT SECONDS OF glory. All a man like me could ask from life.
Clay had beat that phrase into me when most parents were teaching their kids the alphabet. With Clay, it was all about the most important eight seconds of a man’s life, the glory to be earned from it, and not resting until I’d given the best ride of my life.
In another life, Clay’d been a bull rider, too. From what I’d gathered in between benders and the few pictures scattered around the trailer, one hell of a rider. He’d even been a part of the pro circle for a while. Then he met my mom, knocked her up with the little bastard known as me, and had his kneecap stomped on by a two thousand-pound, pissed off animal. Clay’s riding career had ended that day in the arena a month before I was born, and even though he left it with his life, it wasn’t much of one. I’d never known the man he was before the accident, and what I knew of the man after didn’t make me want to know who he’d been. Clay could have been the f**king Dali Lami of Montana and it wouldn’t have compensated for the man I’d known growing up. Atonement just wasn’t in the cards for Clay Walker.
Other than our looks, Clay and I never had much in common. Rodeo was the one exception. I was trotting on a horse before I could walk, and Clay tossed me up on my first steer the summer before kindergarten. Bull riding wasn’t about a father bonding with his son. No, bonding was something Clay reserved for his whiskey. Bull riding was about one man living vicariously through another. It was about Clay living his eight seconds of glory through me.
Eight seconds of glory and a whiskey cap. That’s all the man who’d conceived me had left me with. Not even a nickel more. It wasn’t a big surprise Clay had never made out a will because, really, what was there to fight over when he died? The macrame pillow coated with years of smoke and whiskey fumes? The single dinner plate I’d glued back together so many times I’d lost count? The trailer I’d been too embarrassed by to invite a friend or a girl back to? No, there was nothing to fight over. Nothing to show for a man who’d lived forty years of life other than a whiskey cap and a son who gave his middle finger to life at every turn. Even if there had been stuff, there was no one to fight with. I was the only family Clay had. Or at least the only family he hadn’t severed all ties with. Talk about leaving a legacy behind . . .