Three Brothers, Page 3

  He wasn’t doing a good job keeping that smile stifled. “Me neither.”

  Hopping off the pool table, I backed up toward the door. One brother accounted for, two more to go. “So when do I get to meet this ball-buster of a Mrs. Armstrong? Soon, I hope. I can’t decide whether to lead with the chest bump, high five, or fist pump. What would you recommend?”

  The smile slid from Chase’s mouth and left behind something that made me take another step back. When he stayed silent, his expression eclipsing further into darkness, I cleared my throat.

  “Where is she Chase?” I wasn’t sure when they’d been married or how long it had lasted, but clearly the honeymoon phase was long over.

  “On the mountain.” His voice sliced through the still air.

  “On the mountain as in the one right out front? Your wife is on Red Mountain?” I peeked out the window at the looming mass. It was dark, but that mountain pierced darker into the blackness.

  “She’s there.”

  “Like, by herself? That place is creepy in the day and just plain terrifying at night. What’s she doing there? What are you thinking letting her go there in the first place?” I was about to go shake some sense into him—if there was room left for some—when the eight ball dropped from his hands, rolled across the floor, and disappeared under an arm chair.

  “She’s dead,” he whispered, appraising the fire as though he wanted to battle it, along with everything else in the room and outside it.

  I froze in place. “She’s . . .”

  Chase finally looked me in the eyes. I wished he hadn’t. “Dead.”

  My heartbeat drummed in my ears. None of this was right, from Chase getting married to his wife dying. “But you just said she was on the mountain.”

  “She is on the mountain, the very top of it, save for about six feet of soil.” Chase glanced out the window, his whole face creasing in an anguish I’d never witnessed. “She’s up there with my mom, my grandma, and about every other female ancestor who had the bad fortune to fall for an Armstrong man from about 1850 on.”

  I couldn’t look at him any longer. The pain coming from him was too much to bear. I’d forgotten all about the cemetery near the top of Red Mountain. I’d only visited it once, and that had been because of a dare from Conn. He’d bet me I couldn’t spend half the night among those half dozen tombstones by myself, and I’d challenged him back, saying I could spend a whole night. I was seventeen then and had long ago lost my fear of this strange country, but we were both way off. I’d taken one look at those headstones staggered around the west side of the mountain, turned, and couldn’t get off that mountain fast enough. I hadn’t seen any ghosts or specters floating about up there, but the place felt haunted. The chills running like cold fingers down my back and the hair on my arms standing on end had been proof that whatever that place was, it wasn’t just where bodies were laid to rest in peace.

  “So if you want to meet her, you’re going to have to climb a couple thousand feet to do so.” Chase gave me a smile I’d never seen on him before, a tear streaming down his cheek. “Sorry if she’s not much for conversation these days. Don’t take it personally. She won’t talk to me anymore either.”

  When another tear slipped free, cutting a jagged line through Chase’s facial hair, I wasn’t sure what to do: wrap my arms around him and let him say whatever he needed to or leave the room and give him the solitude he so clearly sought.

  “What happened?” When it seemed he hadn’t heard my question, I took a step his direction.

  “I don’t want to talk about it. Living it was enough for me—I don’t want to recap it over and over.” Chase let his head fall into his hands and closed his eyes. “My wife’s dead. My dad’s dying. I don’t really feel like sitting and eating dinner while we all pretend life’s just fucking great. Sorry.”

  I swallowed the ball in my throat. It didn’t go away. “Is there anything I can do?” My voice sounded as small and powerless as I felt.

  “Just stay away from us. Keep your distance. We’re all cursed. Don’t sign your own death certificate by hanging around here. Get away and do what I know you were planning to do before Chance called you back—stay away.”

  His words weren’t unkind—in fact, I knew he’d said them because he cared about me—but that didn’t mean they didn’t make me feel bad. “Chase—”

  “Please go,” he said, pleading. “Please just go.”

  Holding back the ten rounds I still had in me, I backed out of the room until my feet landed in the hall. The air out there was easier to breathe, less like it was trying to choke me instead of revive me. My heart was still pounding, my head spinning, and my memories of that place teetered on a precarious ledge. I’d grown up believing John and Chase were invincible—monuments of men who couldn’t be broken. But one night had decimated that whole foundation I’d set my feet on. Chase had been broken by a woman’s death and John by a cruel disease. They may have been more invincible than most, but every man had a weakness. They each had a weak spot in their coats of armor, and fate had found John’s and Chase’s.

  The foyer was just ahead, and that meant a door leading out of this place. Perhaps if I left and fell into a deep sleep at one of the hotels in town, I could wake up and convince myself the entire night had been a dream. I could live and die remembering John and Chase as the men I’d known up until an hour ago. They could go on being invincible, and I could go on with my misguided beliefs.

  I was rushing to the foyer, through it, and through the front door before I realized I’d taken my first step in that direction. The temperature had dropped a good ten degrees since I’d arrived, and that chill, combined with the breeze just gentle enough to tease the ends of my hair, worked its way inside me and cleared out some of the haze. I stood there, sucking in deep breaths until I felt something that resembled calm. And that was when I noticed a faint red glow coming from one end of the porch. That I hadn’t smelled the familiar scent that came with it was an indication of just how not myself I’d been when I fled out that door.

  “You might want to keep running. Things are only going to get worse in there. There’s no happy ending waiting for anyone on the other side of that door.”

  His voice blew past the walls I’d been so sure had been impenetrable and threaded through me as it always used to. Instead of feeling like the twenty-five-year-old woman I was, I became that impressionable girl who had worshipped the ground beneath a boy who had no right to be worshipped.

  I closed my eyes and bolstered my strength. “You were always the one who was better at running, Conn. That’s more your style than mine.” Instead of down the stairs or back inside, I went toward him. I wanted him to see that he didn’t have power over me any longer. At least, I wanted him to see the façade of him not holding power over me.

  “Yet how long were you frozen on that first step when you arrived? I kind of lost count at five minutes.”

  His voice was just as smoky and smooth as I remembered it, and age had deepened it a key or two. The porch lights were out. With just the light coming from the buildings and barns dotted around and the orangey glow of his cigarette, I could barely make out Conn’s face. Not that I needed light to remember it. I’d memorized the perfections and imperfections of it years ago, and despite my efforts to forget, it had revisited my dreams too frequently.

  Where Chase had been big, blond, and beefy, Conn was the opposite. He was taller than me but only by a couple of inches, and his hair was the same dark chestnut John’s had been before the silver took over. Conn’s body could have been described as lanky and lean, and his dark long-sleeved shirts and pants gave off just the right degree of sinister meets tortured. That, matched with his brooding expression, had alerted me from the beginning that he was the kind of boy I should keep my distance from. The kind who had let so much darkness into his life that it suffocated all of the light

  “You were here the whole time? Camped out in your chair, smoking your cigarettes, watching me
, and you didn’t say anything?” I stopped when I was still a good ten feet back from him. Distance was a good thing when it came to Conn, both mental and physical. “I should probably be surprised, but I’m not.”

  Conn’s jagged smile crept into place, meaning there was still too much light. “So? Are you keeping your fingers crossed for a repeat of your sixteenth birthday?”

  I didn’t have to see the image flash through his eyes to know exactly what he was talking about. “Nothing happened.” I crossed my arms and stood taller, trying to convince myself at the same time.

  “And is that why you disappeared for seven years?” The cigarette dangled from Conn’s lips. The bottle in his hand was already a third empty, and even though I could barely see them, his eyes were both calling me closer and shoving me away. Everything about him flashed danger. Everything screamed stay away.

  I’d never read the signs when it came to Conn. This time, I’d promised myself I would. I’d promised myself that I wouldn’t come back here if I wasn’t sure I could keep him at an emotional and physical distance.

  “I came back because John, aka your father, is dying. I came to say good-bye.” I leaned into the railing along the porch, keeping a safe distance without making it seem as though I was concerned about how close or how far I was from Conn. “Unlike you, I’m not trying to discover what gives out first: my lungs or my liver.”

  “I’m hoping they go at the same time.” Conn plucked the cigarette from his lips long enough to take a pull from the bottle.

  Unlike his father, who was adamant that scotch was the only thing to drink when a person needed one, Conn chose tequila. It wasn’t a simple matter of a difference in taste. No, whatever John liked, Conn preferred the opposite. What was sad though was that in Conn’s effort to defy John at every turn, he was only proving just how significant a role his father played in his life. He was just as in tune with his dad as if he’d been mimicking him at every turn.

  “Why aren’t you at dinner?” I asked, reminding myself to keep our conversation short. Conn was a master at wordplay and could lure even the greatest of cynics to his side.

  “Because I don’t want to go.” He held out the bottle. When I shook my head, he let the bottle hang between us for a few moments before taking another long drink. At this rate, Conn would be shit-faced before that cigarette burned out.

  “That seems to be your go-to answer to every question.”

  “That’s because that’s my go-to feeling for most everything, family most of all.” Conn looked off into the distance where Red Mountain rested. Unlike the rest of us, who dodged looking at it or venturing up it, Conn seemed to view it as a refuge.

  “Still haven’t gotten over your daddy issues?” I closed my eyes, instantly regretting my words.

  I was just about to apologize when Conn leaned forward in his chair. All I could see were the whites of his eyes, but that was all I needed to see to know he was staring straight at me. When I’d been younger and under the impression that Conn could do no wrong, I’d measured my life in the moments when Conn had looked at me and me alone. There were only two ways he looked at me: straight through or straight on. Now I would have preferred he look straight through me because his eyes pulled things out of the place I’d buried deep inside myself.

  “I don’t know. Have you gotten over your Conn issues?”

  His words were biting. So much so I flinched.

  “Tell you what,” he continued. “I’ll get over my issues when you get over yours. Sound like a deal?”

  A decade ago, those words would have reduced me to a hysterical mess. “I’d tell you to go fuck yourself, but since I know that’s on your daily docket since you push everyone away, I’m just going to walk away.”

  My back was to him and I was striding away when his low, sharp laugh filled the night. I used to be able to feel that laugh in my every nerve, as if my body were hardwired to respond to it. It felt different now.

  “You’ve never been able to walk away from me. Not for very long anyway.”

  I blew a rush of air out of my nose. I spun around and flailed my arms at him. “What do you call seven years? And just so you know, had it not been for me wanting to pay my respects to John before he dies, I would never have set foot in this place or around you for the rest of my life.” I hated that he was getting to me, riling me up. Even from a distance, I could tell he was absolutely loving it. “So put that in your damn bottle and drink it.”

  Conn’s laugh restarted, but instead of marching back and slapping his face as he deserved, I kept going. Conn might have pretended to hate everyone, but he loved being hated. Ignoring him was the worst kind of punishment I could dole out. I was almost to the front door when a figure at the bottom of the front steps caught my attention.

  The instant my eyes latched onto him, I almost cried. But they would have been happy tears. Unlike his dying father, his mourning older brother, or his malicious younger brother, when I saw Chance, the first thing I wanted to do was smile. I didn’t run away or wonder where the person I remembered had gone or resist the urge to slap the smirk off his face.

  With Chance, Red Mountain Ranch was simple and beautiful.

  “Hey, stranger,” I said, feeling as though I could breathe again.

  Chance’s smile pulled up even higher, and he lunged up the stairs toward me. My surprised yelp didn’t have a chance to pierce the air before he had me in his arms, swinging me around as if I weighed twenty pounds. His laugh hit me differently than Conn’s. Instead of feeling like his laugh was grinding me into the ground, I felt like it was lifting me into the sky. It made me laugh with him.

  He looked the same, he smelled the same, he smiled the same. Chance had been the pillar I could rely on then and, not surprisingly, now. After a few more spins, he let my feet touch the ground, his laugh tapering back into his steady smile.

  “You better not call me stranger ever again,” he said, stepping back to look at me. Which gave me a chance to take a good look at him.

  He looked exactly like the boy I remembered saying a hard good-bye to years ago. He might have grown his hair out some, and his chest was a little wider from throwing around dozens of bales of hay, and the boyish softness of his face had worn away to reveal straight lines and sharp angles, but he was still the Chance I remembered. His hazel eyes still shone with hundreds of yet-to-be-lived adventures, and his smile still fired to life so naturally it was as if he’d been born with it on his face.

  I’d rarely seen him without one of his brothers close by, but on his own, he was capable of making a girl feel that tightening deep in her stomach. Why he’d never settled down or gotten serious with any of the five hundred girls just waiting for him to wake up and smell the potential was beyond me, but if he didn’t soon, he would become the most eligible bachelor in Jackson Hole. If he wasn’t already.

  “You really shouldn’t have let yourself go like this.” I waved at him. “I’m embarrassed for you.”

  He slid off his tan cowboy hat. His bronze hair was damp and matted down from what I guessed was a long, hard day of working a ranch. Really, though, every day on a ranch was a long and hard one.

  “Enough about me. Look at you.” His brows peaked. “You look—”

  “Like I really, really let myself go?” I glanced down at my worn-in jeans, simple T-shirt, and the boots Chance had mailed me for Christmas a few years ago. My hair was in a ponytail that had become a hot mess one layover ago, and my lip gloss had worn off before I’d gotten through baggage check. I liked to fly comfortably, but I was also dressed to un-impress because of Conn. I hadn’t wanted him to get the impression that I’d dressed up for him. That I’d highlighted my brow-bones for him. That I’d agonized over the right outfit for him. Because in my past life, I had. I’d agonized over nail polish color, sock thickness, and lingerie in hopes of impressing a man who was impossible to impress.

  “If this is letting yourself go, then sign me up.” Chance waved his hat at me as though he saw
something I didn’t. That was cool though. If he saw some vixen when I saw a slob, I’d take it.

  “So since I’ve interrogated your brothers with the same question, I’m going to fire it your way, although I’m pretty sure I already have the answer. And I’m guessing it doesn’t have anything to do with trying to grind an eight ball into powder or see which vital internal organ you can get to give out first.”

  He shook his head. “Sadly, my life isn’t that exciting.”

  “So why aren’t you at dinner?” I crossed my arms, but any attempt at acting stern with Chance was impossible. He was a goddamn saint who would stop traffic to make sure a couple of ducklings crossed the road safely. He’d missed dinner or been late plenty of times in the past, and every reason why could have been added to the Book of Exceptional Excuses for Missing Dinner if there was such a thing. “No, wait. Let me guess. More fun that way.”

  Chance made a proceed motion before sitting on the top stair to tug off his boots. I took advantage of his momentary distraction to assess him, what he was wearing, what he was covered in, et cetera. He was in his standard cowboy gear, so he’d been working with the livestock. However, which livestock? Chance wore plenty of hats at Red Mountain Ranch, and even though the Armstrong clan didn’t need to generate any more wealth, Chance ran the ranch as though they did. He acted as though every last steer meant the difference between starving and eating and made every last purchase as though pennies and nickels mattered.

  Which hat had he been wearing today though?

  “Branding day?” I guessed, although I knew that was wrong before he shook his sweat-matted head.

  “If it had been a branding day, I’d be sitting here with a beer in hand.”

  Chance twisted his forearm around, but I didn’t need to see the old scar to understand what he meant. Ever since the brander had slipped and bumped part of the brand into Chance’s forearm, who had been holding down the calf, Chance had been a little jaded about branding day. Conn had been the brander that day.