The Ranchers Son (6 page)

Adam felt
compassion and wondered if it was at the story or at the fact it was his
brother at the center of it. “Are we close? Were we close, I mean.”

Ethan did that
shrug thing again, the one where he’d evidently decided not to impart all the
secrets in one day. “Close enough,” he said carefully.

“We hated each
other, I get it,” Adam joked, taken aback when Ethan winced.

“Not so much. You
just had a home life that meant you spent a lot of time at ours with Justin, or
in the summer camping out at the Nine.”

There was a lot of
loaded information in that sentence, but from Ethan’s closed expression, Adam
knew he wasn’t getting answers anytime soon. Instead he focused on the things
he could ask about. “What is the Nine?”

“Eastern part of
Crooked Tree, mostly trees, up into the mountain. Stunning place.”

The waitress came
over, hips swinging and a broad smile on her face. “Can I get you two handsome young
men anything else?”

They’d already had
the “oh my goodness, have you been in an accident?”
conversation
with the waitress, and she’d handled it like a pro when he said he’d been
mugged. She was a good waitress, and Adam didn’t want to be rude and say that
he was exhausted and needed to sleep.

I’m a gentleman
, he decided.

“Just the check,
please,” Ethan said quickly, a frown creasing his brow.

Was he pissed that
the waitress was being flirty? Or angry because Adam was asking questions about
the ranch?

“One last top-up
on the coffee,” Adam said firmly.

She looked a
little hurt at Ethan’s tone, and for some reason that made Adam feel defensive
of the poor woman. So he gave her what he imagined was his best smile, and she
winked at him. She topped up the coffee and walked back to the register.

“We need to go,”
Ethan said.

“Just one more
coffee.”

Ethan sat back in
his chair and crossed his arms over his chest, staring at Adam, enough that
Adam dropped his gaze. Something about the way Ethan was looking at him, as if
he was about to ask a million questions, made Adam want to get up and leave.

His coffee was topped
up.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,
sugar. You take care now,” the waitress said and dropped the check on the
table.

“So,” he began
carefully, “why was my home life interesting?”

Ethan sighed and
stood at the same time. “Finish your coffee. We’ll talk in the car.”

By the time they
made it back to the room, Adam was yawning again. Fucking meds might take the
edge off the raw pain but left him feeling as if he couldn’t achieve a damn
thing.

I’m not used to
this sitting around doing a fuck lot of nothing
, he thought.
I know somehow that the job I have,
the thing I do, is physical.

“Are you okay?”

Ethan’s voice
jerked him from his internal commentary. He’d stopped dead in the middle of the
foyer, right in front of the reception desk.

“Adam?” Ethan
asked again. He cupped Adam’s elbow and tugged him away from the desk where
Moira, as her badge confirmed, was staring at them.

“Can I help you,
sir?” she asked.

Ethan ignored the
woman, and Adam didn’t have the energy to even answer. He allowed Ethan to help
him through the door marked “Rooms,” and sagged a little into his hold as soon
as they were out of sight of anyone.

“What happened?”
Ethan asked.

“I don’t know.”
Adam yanked his elbow free, the momentum making him wobble dangerously. He
reached out to the wall of the corridor and leaned there.

“Was it a memory?”
Ethan pushed for an answer.

“Another f-f-feeling.”
Adam was shaky, his chest tight, his breath catching there. “Like… I knew where
I was.”

“What do you mean?”
Ethan stepped in close, one hand on Adam’s bicep, the other cradling his face.
“Talk to me, Adam.”

Adam stared at the
man who knew him better than he knew himself, the one with the memories of Adam
as a kid, as a teenager. The man who was demanding that Adam string a sentence
together, and all Adam could do was stand there and stare into his eyes.

They were darker
in the hallway light, the gray of them stormy, and Adam recognized fear in
them.

“Wherever I work,
it’s physical,” Adam said. He tilted his head a little, pressing his face into
Ethan’s hand, and closed his eyes. He could stay like this all day, with Ethan holding
him, embracing him, helping him. “I don’t remember anything else.”

“Okay,” Ethan
murmured. “Let’s get packed up and on the road. Yeah?”

Adam nodded,
finally opening his eyes and catching a glimpse of compassion in Ethan’s
expression. Unbidden, the need to explain his fears and thank Ethan rose up in
a wave of words. “Thank you, for knowing who I am, and for getting me out of
the hospital, and for driving so far to get me to a safe place where I can try to
remember.”

Ethan quirked a
tiny smile. “You’re welcome.”

“Can I ask you one
thing?”

“Go on.”

“If people come to
me and tell me they knew me in the time after I went missing, can you stay with
me when they want to see me? Will you promise you’ll be there for me?”

Ethan’s jaw
tightened, and then in a smooth move, he pressed a quick kiss to Adam’s
forehead. “Always.”

They picked up
what they needed from the room. Once back in the car, Adam allowed his body to
give in, unable to stop the sleep from happening. That was what the meds did;
they relaxed him, helped the pain and left him floating in a peaceful world of
cotton clouds and warmth.

Only this time,
his dreams became more.

This time there
were horses.

And fire.

Ethan stopped
driving after a while, because, whatever Adam had been dreaming about, had
pulled him from his sleep more than once and he was cranky and looked sore. He
didn’t tell Ethan he was in pain and didn’t complain once, but every time he
startled awake, he would curse in his half-sleep and tense in discomfort.

They stopped in
Wisconsin Dells at the first gas station Ethan reached, and Ethan helped Adam
out of the car.

Critically he
checked Adam over—he looked gray and lines of tension bracketed his eyes. “Did
you take all the tablets they said you should?”

Adam wouldn’t look
him in the eyes. “Most of them,” he mumbled.

Ethan didn’t press
for more; he certainly wasn’t here to tell Adam what to do, but he couldn’t
drive any farther with Adam in pain next to him. Anything but that.

They bought snacks—not
that Ethan was hungry, and given that all Adam picked up was a packet of Cheetos,
he clearly wasn’t interested in food either.

“How far did we
get?” Adam asked as they reached the car again.

“Not far. But we’re
finding somewhere to stay tonight, you’re taking all your meds, and tomorrow
we’ll push on.”

Ethan was
deliberately needling for a defense, but all he got was Adam slumping by the
side of the car, looking dejected.

“I don’t like the
way they make me feel,” Adam said.

“Pain-free, you
mean?”

Adam shrugged and
winced at the movement. “All I’ll do is sleep, and I don’t have any control
over….”

“Control over
what?”

Adam became
agitated and clenched his fists. “Over anything,” he snapped. “I’m just going
to end up sitting in the passenger seat sleeping and, the next thing I know,
I’ll wake up in Montana and I won’t have had a minute to process any of this.”

Fear crossed
Adam’s face as he talked about the destination they were heading for. Ethan
didn’t blame him for being scared; it must be hell not to have memories of any
of it.

“I get why you’re
feeling this way.”

Adam looked at him
in disbelief. “How the hell can you imagine even half of how I feel?”

Ethan sensed that
Adam was looking for something from him, but he doubted it was anything more
than a fight. And fighting with Adam was not happening today. Not on his watch.

“You need to
rest,” Ethan encouraged instead. He helped Adam in, then buckled up and started
the car, entered the highway and drove no more than five minutes down the road,
turning into the first hotel they came to. The front parking lot was full of
signs for various water parks, proclaiming Wisconsin Dells was the water park
capital of the US. They were seeing
all
the best places on this impromptu
road trip.

They booked one
room again, took the snacks and food to the room, and settled in as best they
could with the uncomfortable silence between them. Adam was lost in his own
headspace, his face set in a mask of concentration, and Ethan was happy to sit
in silence as long as Adam needed.

Adam had said that
Ethan didn’t know half of what Adam felt, and he was right. He couldn’t know
what it felt like to lose your identity. Or, to have no one looking for the
person Adam had been the last twelve years. Everything must add up to a sense
of despair in Adam, that Ethan hoped he’d never experience. He fired off an
email to Jen, asking if she had any more information for him, and another one
to Cole, on the off chance that Cole was able to receive them wherever he was.

“What are you
doing?” Adam asked.

Ethan looked up,
surprised at the question and equally surprised that Adam asked it so evenly,
without a trace of the anxiety and anger that had marked their earlier
exchange. The only thing that gave Adam’s inner turmoil away was the tightness
of his expression.

“I just sent an
email to Cole.”

“You had a smile
on your face when you sent it.” Adam reached into the bag and pulled out his
medication, placing it next to his bottle of water. “Are you close to him?”

That was an
incredibly loaded question, and Ethan took a few moments to consider exactly
how to phrase what he needed to say.

“We used to be
really close, me, Cole, and Nate. We were all born in the same year, went to
the same school, and made our kid brother’s lives hell. Usual shit.”

“So what
happened?”

You. You and
Justin disappearing happened.

“Nate loved his
horses, and his parents died. He was left holding the reins for his brothers,
Gabe and Luke. Then he turned to bull riding for a bit, came back home, and now
runs Crooked Tree. He was always the one who was going to stay at the ranch,
the one who had the earth inside him and loved it.”

“And Cole?”

“I shouldn’t be
telling you all this. They said at the hospital—”

“Fuck the
hospital,” Adam interrupted. “Who is Cole to you? To me?”

“I think he just
wanted to get away from Crooked Tree, when he and Mary separated he went into
the Navy, and we’ve not seen much of him since.”

“So distance is
what came between you. That’s all. Cole isn’t a bastard or someone I don’t want
to know?”

Ethan shook his
head and relaxed back in the comfortable chair by the desk. He looked out of
the window; the hotel had given them a room with a view of the rear parking lot,
which was a lot less interesting than a lookout to the highway, but he couldn’t
face Adam just yet. “Cole is a good man, he looked after you when your dad…
when he was angry.”

“Dad was angry, or
Cole?”

Finally he looked
right at Adam. “Your dad. You have to believe we didn’t know the half of what
was happening in your house. Cole never told us. The two of you were tighter
than tight, really close, and you both kept so much from us all.”

“Like what?”

Ethan’s chest
tightened at the memories of what he’d found out, at what Adam and Cole’s dad
had done.

“He wasn’t a good
man, your dad. That’s all I know, really.”

“You’re lying,”
Adam snapped. There was a hint of temper back in his eyes.

“The Adam and Cole
I knew,
had a dad
who kept control with a belt and not a lot of love,
okay? Then, when you disappeared,
the rest of the
family left
. That was… look…
Cole and I….” Ethan stopped. Familiar regret choked him. “I was handling my own
grief at losing Justin. I knew how Cole felt, to lose a brother, and we had new
paths—
Cole to
deal with his own heartache in any way he could, and me to become a cop,
always looking for you both.”

Ethan ran out of
steam. Adam stared at him, opened his mouth to say something, and then closed
it again. Was that the end of the questions for now? Because if Ethan wasn’t
careful, he’d blurt the whole lot out, including what they meant to each other
and how it wasn’t
just
losing Justin that killed him, but losing Adam and
the start of their young love.

Adam took the
pills and carefully eased himself up on the bed. “Does he look like me?” he asked.

“Same dark hair,
same brown eyes, but he’s taller than you are and built like a brick shithouse.
You wouldn’t choose to go up against him in a dark alley.”

Adam appeared to
think about that, closing his eyes and laying his arms flat out to his sides.
“I have muscles,” he near whispered. “I think I work with horses.”

Ethan said
nothing, waiting for more words or for the pain to ease enough so that Adam
could sleep.

Seemed Adam had
run out of things to say. His breathing changed from bordering on labored to smooth,
and the tension in his face eased. Finally he slept.

Ethan’s cell
vibrated with an email notification and Ethan checked it immediately,
disappointed that all it contained was a message from Jen saying they’d had no
hits on the artwork and there was still no missing person’s report that matched
the vague descriptions of Adam
. He guessed he’d need to take some new photos when
the swelling on his face subsided.

Who were you
for the last twelve years? Why does no one know you’re missing?

From here he had a
good view of Adam and the muscles he’d been talking about. Ethan shuffled the
chair a little closer, looking at Adam’s arms, at the definition there and the
rough skin of his hands. Carefully he moved the cover a little to see the
inside of Adam’s arms, checking for track marks or scars,
even
though
he resented
that his cop brain even went there. The boy he’d known wouldn’t have touched
drugs, wouldn’t have become something so different to the person Ethan had loved.

Surely that was
true?

The blemish on Adam’s
neckline, a faint darkening of the skin, was definitely some kind of burn scar,
and the edge of the shoulder tattoo was stark against his throat.

The same darker
skin was at Adam’s temples as well, disappearing up under his thick, near-black
hair.

What happened
to you? Was this why you disappeared? Were you both hurt?

His cop brain, having
searched for signs of drugs, switched to detective mode. Was it possible there
had been an accident, with Adam and Justin in a car or something? Had there
been a fire? Had Adam lost a first set of memories and not known to come back
home? But then, what about Justin?

Ethan realized he
was going around in circles, and he picked up his cell, connecting to Jen.

She answered on
the first ring, sounding out of breath. A quick look at his watch had him
realizing she was probably at her spin class, the one he covered her for on
this day and time unless they were actively out on a case.

“Allens?”

He could hear the
noise of the class behind her. “I’ll call back,” he said.

“No, hang on.”

The noise receded.
“I’m done. Is everything okay?”

“I have a new
parameter in the JA case. Could you run fires on and around 10 March 2004?” He’d
shared the Justin-Adam disappearance with her on day two of their partnership,
after she called him out on his misery and general fucked-off-with-life crap.
He loved her for it.

“That’s a mighty
big parameter. What kind of fire?”

“House, car, I
don’t have a fucking clue.”

“I’ll add it to
your search. Is that it? How’s he doing?”

Ethan looked back
at Adam, at the gentle rise and fall of his chest. “It’s not easy for him,” he
said quietly.

“Where are you?”

“Wisconsin Dells.”

“Where the fuck?”

“Not far past where
we got to yesterday.”

She snorted a
laugh. “You ever planning on getting back to Montana? Like, ever?”

“Fuck off, Jen.”

“Fuck you back,
Allens.”

They ended the
call with goodbyes. Ethan tapped his cell rhythmically against his thigh,
finally deciding that he might as well do his own more limited searches on the
web.

Adam slept six
hours, woke up grumpy, the crankiness wearing off as they ate at the burger joint
across the street from the hotel.

They went back to
the hotel and Adam didn’t hesitate to take more pills.

Within an hour the
room was in darkness, Adam was asleep and Ethan had selected a film from the pay-per-view
menu. Some mindless hero film, the kind of thing he loved, where the good guys
won and the bad guys ended up in prison or dead.

He didn’t watch a
single bit of it, but the noise kept him company as he thought about the Adam
he’d known as a boy.

And it always came
back to one thing.

Was he still in
love with the man Adam had become? And what would it take to ever lose the fact
that Ethan had been Adam’s first crush, his first love, and that Ethan had
loved him back.

I was only seventeen
what did I know about love? Hell, Adam was only fifteen when he vanished. We’d
only kissed once. What can that possibly mean in the cold light of day twelve
years later?

When Ethan lay
down to sleep, all he could think was one thing.

His love for Adam was
still there; it had never left. It was not like the love he would forever have
for his brother, for Justin.

The love he felt
for Adam dwelt in a very different part of his heart.