Page 22 of Baker (Bastian Brothers #1)

“ Half -brothers,” I snarled while trying to buckle my safety belt.

“Right. Half-brothers, and probably your recently deceased father.” My gaze dropped to the belt and then back to him.

I was not in the mood for a lecture. “That being said, I realize I don’t know your history with your dad or your siblings, but right now, you’re acting like a real dick.

Not only to that nurse, but to me as well, two people who have just been trying to help you out. ”

Shit. Shit. Shit. He was right. I was being a dick.

“I’m sorry.” I exhaled the words as I let the belt retract. “I’m just…”

He reached around me to pull the belt out and buckle it at my hip. I watched him being so kind, so gentle, and felt even worse about my behavior.

“I know you’re in pain. And I know that you’re feeling all the feels. I honestly think that your brother is just doing the best he knows how to do. Some people solve things with money. And he seems to ooze money.”

“Yeah, he had this big pediatric dental practice in Sacramento that he sold to come out west to pretend to be fucking Gene Autry for his kid.” I found myself lost in his jade eyes as words kept flowing out of me.

So many words. They just gushed out of me like a levee breaking.

He nodded along, patiently, as I vented about my brothers showing up out of the blue and taking the hell over.

He knew all the dirty parts already. About my dad, my mom, and my childhood.

I’d vomited dialogue all over him previously when he’d spent that night in the barn.

But here I was doing it all over again. What the hell was it about this man that made me want to lay every burden I had in his hands?

“Fuck. I’m sorry. This isn’t your worry.

Not your fault I have such a delicate ego that I can’t stand the thought of anyone helping me out. ”

“I’d call that an overabundance of pride,” he answered in a soothing voice.

“You’ve carried that ranch and its problems alone for a long time.

Alone, save for an elderly woman. Anyone would be resentful of virtual strangers moving in and tossing cash at everything while you worked your ass off to make ends meet. ”

“He means well,” I muttered as my sight flicked to the right as an ambulance rolled up to the hospital doors. Another person hurt or suffering from the storms last night, I assumed.

“I think so, yeah. They all seem like okay guys. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing to let someone else shoulder your burdens now and again?”

I knew all of that. Deep way down in my gullet, I knew it. But knowing something and accepting it were two very different things.

“I’ve never been good at handing control over to other people,” I confessed, even though it hurt my pride to do so.

“I see that. And I am more than willing to do what I can to help. I like you. I like what we have going here. And I like what we do atop my sleeping bag—a lot.”

“Me too.” I wish we were there now, him deep inside me, leading me with gentle but sure control so that I could just for a little while be lighter.

It was a magical thing to be given that freedom.

I’d not really understood it until now. I longed for a man who would run things in the bedroom.

Or tent. Wherever the place may be. I’d not really made that connection before.

I’d just shirked it off as wanting a dude to rough me up, bark a little, and tell me what to do.

And while I did enjoy being with a woman, most women were meek when it came to sex.

Not all, obviously, but most were waiting for the man to lead.

“I love how you free me from my fetters.”

“The magical power of a magnificent peen,” he teased, leaning over to press a kiss to my cheek. I folded into him as much as I could, despite having a seat belt around me and an arm in a sling.

“You do possess a glorious peen,” I mumbled into his collarbone.

“I know. It’s a hog.” He kissed my hair.

“All peen bragging aside, I see what you are struggling with and am touched that you feel safe enough with me to let go. It’s hard as hell for someone who had to assume the mantle of an adult as a child to let go.

Above all else, we yearn for what was taken from us at far too tender an age. ”

I let my eyelids close. I breathed him in, hearing his words as if they were being handed down to me atop Mount Sinai.

Of course there were no stone tablets. Only a parking lot filled with older cars and scattered bits of trash and tree debris.

Yet, it did feel like a bit of a revelation.

Something that I would need to accept and then absorb, not unlike the tenets of the program I was trying my best to work on the daily.

“You’re speaking from experience, it sounds like,” I replied, unwilling to poke at the open wound this little talk had carved in my chest.

“Very few of us have ideal childhoods. There’s a reason that I roam and rarely go home.”

I gathered myself. Sat back, rubbed at my weary eyes with my left hand, and then searched his face. “And that is not the talk we’re having now. We need to get your meds, get you home, and I have to head to my camp to see if all my gear was carried to Missouri.”

“Shit, yes, I’ve been keeping you from your stuff with all my stuff. Sorry.” He waved it off. “Sometime I’d like to hear tales of your youth. If you’re willing to share them with me.”

He smiled wanly. “I can’t think of anyone I’d rather share them with.” He stole a kiss and then cranked the truck over. “Now, where is the pharmacy?”

After we got the prescription filled at the lone drug store on the outskirts of Bastian Grange, we rolled on home, my arm aching like a kick to the balls.

My eyes saw little of the vast countryside we drove through as I let my mind drift back in time.

To when Mom was alive and all of that emotional upheaval.

Reflecting back, even though she was the parent, it was me who took care of her.

Granny, too, but back then Granny was trying to keep the ranch from sinking, so it fell to me to care for my mother on her bad days.

As time went on, the bad days outnumbered the good, and the ranch was losing ground as beef prices fell while feed costs soared.

I began to do more at the ranch to help my grandmother after school, which left Mom alone more in that old house filled with memories of fucking Cash.

If only Cash had stuck it out. Been a fucking husband, son, and father like he had promised he would be, but no…

“They’ve been busy,” Hanley said as the truck slowed. Shaking out of my trip into a not-so-pleasant past, I realized we were home. Christ. I’d not even seen or spoken to Hanley during the last twenty miles or so.

“Yeah,” I whispered as my gaze moved to the oak lying in the yard. Half the tree had been dealt with, big chunks piled up for splitting, while the brushy top had been trimmed and hauled off. “Shit, they’ve gotten a lot done.”

The relief washed over me. I’d have been at that job a damn week or more alone. The guys all paused, chainsaws quieting, and lifted gloved hands in greeting.

“Nice to have help, huh?”

I smiled feebly at Hanley. “It’s nice.”

Really nice. Just like the man sitting beside me. Hell, maybe the man in the seat next to me was too damn nice for a surly cowpoke like me.