“I bet he knew.” Shane held back a yawn. This story was too fascinating to miss even if his eyes were still growing heavy.
“Maybe. He was the guy I most wanted to be.” Brandt adjusted his hold on Jewel, who was almost but not quite asleep. “Even visited him out in Colorado that winter, where he was from. Met his mama and the girl he wanted to marry. I wanted his family, that was for sure.”
“Yeah.” Lord, how Shane knew that mood. Wanting a family that stayed put in one place, owned a home, didn’t leave on a whim, parents who didn’t fight, siblings who stayed out of trouble. “Been there.”
“Anyway, when you write that song about him, you say how fearless he was. Never met a tree he wouldn’t climb or weather he wouldn’t jump in. Worked hard. Loved his family and his girl hard. Solid guy. You remind me of him, a little.”
“Thanks.” He didn’t quite know what to make of that. This story was sad and tender, a tribute of sorts, and he was already holding his breath for the inevitable ending, even before Brandt looked down at the hardwood floor.
“We lost him that next August. Him and a few other good ones.”
“What happened?” He didn’t like making Brandt relive a painful memory, but the songwriter in him needed to know, to understand, to be able to make sense of this pain.
“He and his crew were behind a fireline, doing their damnedest to slow the spread before the winds worsened. He was hell with a chainsaw, man. You should have seen him...” Brandt exhaled, long and heavy. “Anyway, winds shifted quicker than anyone was prepared for. They did their damnedest to outrun it, him leading the way, but then they had no choice but to deploy their fire shelters. Wasn’t enough.”
“I’m sorry.” The words were inadequate to the ache in his chest, the way his hands opened, wishing Brandt were close enough to touch. He knew loss, but not like that, not bone deep, the sort a person never came all the way back from.
Shrugging, Brandt stood with the baby. “Part of the job. Part of life. Maybe I wasn’t quite grown until that day. But that was also the moment when I realized life was too short to not live it. Go out there. Have fun. Don’t forget to play and enjoy it because the end might come before you know it. Don’t put it off.”
Brant punctuated his mantra by gently laying Jewel in her crib. She didn’t cry, but Shane was perilously close to losing it himself. Tired. Emotional. This gut-wrenching story. A glimpse into Brandt he wasn’t sure he wanted because now he had to see him as so much more than a partying sky cowboy good time guy. He wanted to ask about the emotions underscoring the story, if it had all been friendship and brotherhood or if there was something more there, at least on Brandt’s side.
“Brandt...” He started to find his way to the questions he wanted to ask, pausing to yawn as Brandt came and crouched next to him, setting a blunt finger against Shane’s mouth.
“Shush. Enough story time. You’re already mostly asleep. You rest now. Diva’s gonna wake up, and I’ll probably be gone. Early start for my crew.”
Stretching, Brandt pulled a cover from the end up the bed up and over Shane. Damn. The guy was going to get an hour or two of sleep at best, and here he was, taking care of the baby. And Shane.
“Sorry—”
“Don’t be.”
But Shane was. Sorry for Brandt, for his younger self, for the losses he’d had to endure. Sorry he’d never meet that Roger or the kid Brandt had been. His eyes fluttered shut as he tried again to hold emotion in.
And he had to be sleeping already because he could have sworn those were Brandt’s lips ghosting over his temple. It was a sweet dream, thinking Brandt might care like that, thinking there could be something here. And he knew it had to stay a dream, couldn’t be real for a whole host of reasons, but right then, he was going to snuggle into the pillow and pretend for a moment that he lived in a world where Brandt Wilder had just tucked him in.
Chapter Seven
“So how was your weekend?” Hartman, the jumper-in-charge on Brandt’s crew, was all conversational as they walked toward the hangar after finishing the morning briefing. Poor guy had no idea exactly what a weekend Brandt had had.
“Uh...” He did a fast calculation, trying to decide what to reveal. He hadn’t really thought through telling people, but he also wasn’t one to lie. And Hartman was a good guy, younger but not brash, the sort who honestly did want to know as opposed the type of leader who only made small talk to fill silence. Might as well get it out there. “Apparently I have a kid now.”