Long Lost Winter, page 4
Nate shifted uncomfortably. Cal didn’t need to be a mind reader to have seen that Nate wasn’t happy about the lawyer going over personal family questions this afternoon. Build a sunny picture of their mother.
But she had been sun in all that dark. Cal assumed that his mother’s warmth was what allowed his father’s evil to hide in plain sight for all those years. And it had also allowed him and his brothers to survive—maybe they were three traumatized, broken SOBs, but they weren’t their father. There was something good somewhere in all of them, and it was because of her.
Cal looked down at his drink, any good mood soured at the memory of his mother and the way she’d died. So needlessly. So unfairly.
“I thought you weren’t worried,” Nate said after Cal downed half his glass in one gulp.
He motioned the bartender for a refill as he answered Nate. “I’m not. Not about the outcome.” Which wasn’t the total truth, but it was mostly the truth.
It was a solid case. Cal thought Vanderbilt was a better lawyer than Dad’s. Cal had made sure of it. It’d take quite the coup from the defense to wriggle Dad out of a guilty verdict.
“Then what are you worried about?” Sam asked. She took a dainty sip of her beer.
Cal took a long, long drink of his newly refilled scotch. Not high dollar, but it’d do the trick. “The shit sandwich that is going to be getting to the outcome.” And probably after the outcome.
He knew better than to wholeheartedly believe Dad would be convicted. It wasn’t that simple. Being guilty didn’t always land you behind bars.
Justice didn’t always work.
But even if Dad got put away forever, hell, even if he got the death penalty, this wouldn’t be over. Years from now, everyone in town would talk about it. Just like they’d talked about it when they’d thought Gene Price had been behind the murder.
And his mother would still be dead. And Cal would still have the image of that seared into his brain—something he’d forgotten out of survival or whatever the hell for fifteen years. And now that he’d remembered, he couldn’t seem to work his way around it.
He downed the drink. Alcohol wasn’t the answer, but there were no answers, so why not try to blot it all out?
“It’ll suck, but we’ll muddle through. We’re all on the same side this time.”
Cal wished he had Nate’s confidence, but at least it was something to agree with. Something to hold on to.
They were going to get through this—whatever shit sandwich it was—together. And maybe that didn’t fill him with any kind of joy, but it was right.
It was what their mother would have wanted.
When he finished his drink, asked for another refill, he didn’t miss the quiet look that passed between Nate and Sam around him. He didn’t know what it meant—pity, worry, something else?
It left him feeling like he did at the ranch. That the world was spinning on without him—and he was stuck, stranded. Lost in a past he wanted to leave very far behind and had to live inside in order to put his dad behind bars.
And, as his therapist claimed, heal.
He wasn’t convinced. But he hadn’t stopped going to therapy. Hadn’t stopped any of this. He kept all that halting progress moving forward, wondering why none of it seemed to do anything.
Since that depressed him as much as thoughts of his mother did, he focused on the world around him—one of those coping mechanisms his therapist was teaching him.
He listened to the chatter of conversation, noted the smell of alcohol and tobacco, and old building. He felt his body sit in the stool. Watched with some amusement as a drunk cowboy got thrown off the mechanical bull.
“Gonna hit the bull, Sam?” he asked.
She glanced at the mechanical bull in question. Then met his gaze with a sharp one of her own. “You first, Cal.”
“Can’t.” He patted his side. “Bullet wound.”
She gestured with her glass toward the crowd around them. “You should use that one as a pickup line.”
Cal surveyed the dim, thumping bar. Smoky and grimy. Not exactly his choice for pickup places. Not that he’d picked up anything in ages.
Impending father on trial for murder with Cal’s traumatic dissociative amnesia as the crux of the prosecution was probably not the time.
But since Nate was sitting next to him like a grumpy lump on a log—no doubt not having picked up anything in ages longer than Cal—Cal flashed a flirtatious grin at the woman no doubt occupying his brother’s thoughts.
“You looking to be picked up, Sam?”
She snorted out a laugh. “I think it’s time to cut you off, slick.”
Probably. But he’d earned a glare from Nate, and that was what he’d been going for.
There were still wins to be earned in this life, it seemed.
*
Nate might have indulged in one too many thanks to his idiot brother. He knew what Cal was doing. Cal did that kind of thing with Aly all the time. Flirt. Look for a reaction from Landon.
Well, Cal wasn’t getting one from him. Cal could flirt with Sam all he wanted, and if she wanted to flirt back…
He’d break Cal’s nose.
The little spurt of internal violence left him feeling like his dad, gross and slimy and tainted. He wasn’t going to hit his brother for flirting with Sam. He wasn’t going to get worked about it at all. Fake. Real. Didn’t matter.
He might have a lot of fucking issues, but he knew he didn’t have a right to jealousy—over Cal or Jake Hayes or any other damn guy who gave Sam a second look—when he wasn’t willing to do anything about his own … issues.
But all of that whirling around inside of him had left him a little too vulnerable and he’d taken that last drink Cal had shoved at him. Even knowing he should have stopped at one. Certainly two. Absolutely three.
Instead, he’d downed the fourth … or was it fifth? And now his balance was off.
Drunk. Great.
But Sam rounded them up into her tiny car. She drove them back to his rental cabin. Which meant she’d have to come get him in the morning so he could pick up his truck from the office.
When she pulled to a stop at his cabin, Cal was the first one to fling the door open. He got out of the car on a stumble.
“Icy as shit out here,” Cal muttered before slamming the car door shut. Nate followed suit. It was indeed icy, and his equilibrium was all off. But he didn’t go down like Cal did, swearing the whole way. Still, he slipped and slid and had to grab on to the gate for balance.
The car turned off and Sam came around to where they were both struggling for footing. Sam managed to somehow offer balance to both of them, even though she was small, and they were not. She got them up the porch, then took the keys from Nate when he fumbled with them.
She unlocked and opened his door, and Cal stumbled in first. “Thank Christ. What the hell am I doing in this frozen tundra when I could be in Texas?” he grumbled, moving inside.
Nate hesitated in the doorway. He hadn’t missed the way Sam’s gaze kept moving from the road to across the way where her aunt’s house stood.
She opened her mouth, no doubt to say goodbye, but Nate pulled the door closed—Cal inside, him and Sam out here on the porch.
“Maybe once this trial is over she’ll…”
“She won’t,” Sam said before he could figure out a good outcome for this. “She needs time to grieve it all over again. Maybe someday she forgives me, but it won’t be anytime soon.”
“She should.”
Sam shrugged. She managed to pull her gaze from Lisa’s house to Nate. “He’s her brother.” She said it like it was an excuse, when that was ridiculous.
“He’s your father.”
She inhaled sharply at that. “Yeah, well, she wouldn’t be the first to tell me that I care more about the truth than I should. Than what’s important.”
“You don’t.”
There was heartbreak in her eyes, or maybe that was just the moonlight and his own imagination.
“Thanks,” she said softly. She blew out a breath, and it puffed out between them illuminated by the porch light. She glanced at the cabin behind Nate.
“You’re going to have to tell them. About Bo. And we need to make a decision about … if we’re going to take him up on the whole … investigation for job thing.”
He knew that. He supposed she said it because she was aware he knew that. And procrastinating didn’t change anything.
Except not having to deal with it just yet.
“I will. I just…”
“Don’t want to?”
“Yeah, that.”
“I could tell them. If it’s easier.”
He studied her, because he couldn’t tell—was it selfless to help him? Or was it a way to keep that rift going between her and Landon and Aly? She said she was ready to move on, to get over everything that had come between them for fifteen years.
But he knew how much more comfortable rifts could be over fixing them.
“I’ll handle it. Tomorrow. Or this weekend. I just want the trial to be more a … thing we all know how to deal with.”
He could tell she wasn’t sold, but she nodded.
“I’ll hold Bo off until you tell them. I think once we hire him … it won’t be such a secret. So let me know when you do it.”
He sighed. He wanted to be resentful she was essentially putting pressure on him to do it. But he knew she wasn’t … being manipulative. Someone had come to her for help, and she wanted to help.
That was who she was. And no matter what shitty thoughts her aunt had put in her head, it was a good person who wanted to help. Who cared about the truth.
“Thanks, Sam.”
She shrugged, held out his keys for him to take. But he didn’t just take the keys, he wrapped his fingers around hers. He gave her hand a squeeze. Then ran his thumb across her knuckles before he’d fully thought the gesture through.
But it was a totally friendly gesture.
And maybe he was watching a little too intently to see how that friendly gesture was received.
She left her gaze on their hands for a few seconds. She didn’t pull away. Didn’t do anything.
Neither of them ever did anything.
“Since I’m already coming by in the morning, let’s just skip getting your truck,” she said, her hand still in his. “I’ll give you both a ride to the courthouse. United fronts and all that. We’ll get everyone’s vehicles sorted after.”
He didn’t want to make her feel like he was trying to get rid of her, because God knew it wasn’t that. He just … didn’t want her putting herself out for … well, him. “You really going to keep Honor’s Edge closed for the whole trial?”
“Not closed closed, but the offices don’t need to be open. Unless something comes up. I need to be at that trial too, Nate.” She made sure that was said firmly. “It matters to me.”
He supposed sometimes it was a little too easy to forget that. Since Benjamin wasn’t her father. His mother wasn’t hers. She didn’t have all the Bennet bullshit running through her veins. It seemed she was separate sometimes, or he let himself think that anyway.
But her life for fifteen years had been trying to prove this very outcome. It mattered to her in a deep, important way, even if she wasn’t a Bennet.
So, he went with instinct—an instinct he probably would have avoided if he hadn’t had that final drink at Cal’s insistence. He used the hand he was holding to pull her closer, then leaned down—because no matter how she exuded all that strength and confidence she was a tiny thing—and wrapped her into a hug.
It was a friendly hug. Nothing … sexual about it. Just two friends in the middle of a shitty year … hugging on a cold, dark night. A little beacon of warmth here in all this frozen. Because they were in the middle of some kind of shared trauma, and that was all a person could do sometimes. Hold on to the warmth.
Maybe sliding his hand down her spine was a little … more than necessary, but she didn’t stiffen or flinch.
If anything, she sighed. But she also pulled herself back on that sigh. Gently. An easing.
“Night,” she said, taking a step back without breaking eye contact, leaving the keys in his hand as the only point of warmth on his body now.
“Night,” he replied, not making a move to do anything but stand there.
For a moment, that was it. They both stood there, in one of those staring moments even an extra drink couldn’t convince him was something to handle.
Then she turned away and walked to her car, and he let out a long, slow breath. He’d taken a few steps before he’d realized it, then stopped himself. And watched her drive away.
“Don’t know why you’ve got to be so Landon about it.”
Nate slowly turned to Cal lounging in the doorway.
Everything inside of him was tied tight and tense and even the alcohol he’d ingested couldn’t smooth that out. Still, there was enough soldier still in him to sound blank. To appear blank. “About what?” Even though he knew about what.
“Her.”
“I’m not following,” Nate said, brushing past Cal into the warmth of the cabin.
“Yes, you are.”
But he wasn’t about to address that with his big brother, so he just walked to his bedroom to get ready for bed.
He wasn’t being Landon about anything.
He was just being … smart.
Chapter Five
The Bennet Ranch
Aly looked at her reflection. She’d done her makeup—a rare thing indeed—but now it felt like she was looking at a stranger.
Cal had said they should all look their best. Put together and impenetrable. Unflappable and sure.
She felt none of those things, but she was going to do everything in her power to exude that on the outside anyway. So looking like someone else only aided in that.
Or so she told herself.
“Was this really necessary?” Landon grumbled from where he was getting ready in the bedroom.
She looked out from the bathroom to where he stood glaring out the window loosening his already loose tie.
She crossed the room to him, reached out to tighten and straighten his tie. He looked so handsome, and so not like himself. She’d only ever seen him wear a suit at funerals, and that had been years ago. Not Landon as a grown man in a … well, it wasn’t an expensive suit by any means. But it was still quite different than ranch wear.
“Cal said it would be best to look as much like you take this seriously as possible. A suit is serious.” She patted his lapels, met his grumpy gaze. “You know, you’re going to have to wear a suit for the wedding.”
“Not this suit.”
No. Not this one. She sighed, any attempt at thinking about happy, positive things fading away.
Nothing about today was going to be positive. No amount of trying could change that. In the months leading up to it, she’d believed the trial getting here would be good. An ending.
And it would be, but she’d underestimated the time and pain it would take to get there. All these meetings with the lawyers had made her realize they weren’t just going to have to go over it all again, they were also going to have to pull out and analyze every terrible, traumatizing detail.
Landon put his hands over hers, gave them a squeeze, no doubt he knew the direction of her thoughts. “Come on. Let’s head out.”
She nodded, letting him wrap his arm around her waist and lead them out of the bedroom. If there was one positive to all this hardship and upheaval, she thought it was that they’d had to learn to lean on each other. It had stripped away a lot of their inherent and taught tendencies to isolate and handle things on their own.
A gift from Benjamin Bennet, among a whole heap of other traumas. The one ahead of them included.
But with deadbeat mothers who showed up out of nowhere, angry brothers of dead women, and now an awful trial to get through, she and Landon hadn’t been able to just isolate. They’d had to lean on each other. In ways they never would have otherwise.
All this bad had brought them closer, had made leaning on each other easier. Maybe she’d take a harder learning curve over all this, but she couldn’t control the world. Or people.
Thinking about control and people had her sighing. Worry cropping up. “I wish Cal would have stayed put.” He hadn’t said he was going to get drunk, just said he was going to meet Nate, but Aly knew.
Once in a while wasn’t cause for worry. And it wasn’t the act of getting drunk. It was that haunted look in his eyes. It was a reminder that she’d spent a lot of years pretending like Benjamin Bennet wasn’t an alcoholic.
She wouldn’t do the same with Cal. No, there’d have to be some stepping in. She wouldn’t let him slide away into his trauma or alcohol. And neither would Landon.
“Nate said he was all right and he’ll get him to the courthouse on time,” Landon said.
“I know. I know. And I know Nate will watch out for him, but he won’t think to make him eat or take care of himself. Maybe that bullet wound is healing, but…”
“He’s not a kid, Aly.”
She wanted to pout. Landon was right, but she just wanted to … smooth everything out and make it okay and she knew she couldn’t. What Cal was dealing with, none of them could fix. She wasn’t even sure Benjamin Bennet’s conviction would really help him.
Which was a worry that hung over all of them, Cal himself included.
Landon retrieved his keys and wallet, and Aly grabbed her purse. Before they could walk out into a frozen winter morning, Landon stopped her at the door.
“No matter what? We’re going to be okay.”
It wasn’t optimism. It was determination. That he would do everything to make it okay. One of the reasons she loved him as much as she did.
“Yeah, no matter what.” She lifted to her toes to press a kiss to his mouth.
When he held her tight, deepened the kiss, she let him for a few beats, then pushed at his chest and fixed him with a scolding look when he finally pulled away.
