Page 25 of Boston (Coral Canyon: Cowboys #12)

CHAPTER

SEVENTEEN

M averick Young slid open the back door of his house and went out onto the deck.

“Just Jem and Blaze,” he said to his wife still in the house.

They’d just gotten home from church a few minutes ago, where he’d informed her that his brothers were coming over.

He should have known to specify which ones, because Mav had eight brothers, and hosting all of them on a Sabbath afternoon required a lot more than a half-hour’s notice.

“Is this one of your cowboy-dad-therapy sessions?” Dani asked.

Mav chuckled to himself as he lifted the lid on the outdoor locker and pulled out the hammocks he kept there. “Yeah, let’s call it that.”

Sometimes he needed the therapy, but usually Mav acted as a sounding board for his brothers as they went through hard things with their wives and kids. Some of them had ex troubles as well, and Mav was exceedingly blessed in that regard.

Still, things with Beth and Boston could always be better, and he worried about he and Dani’s two oldest kids the most.

With his thoughts on his children, he set about hanging the hammocks in the trees in the backyard in anticipation of his brothers’ arrival. He’d just finished with the third one when Lars yelled from the back deck, “Daddy, Uncle Jem is here.”

“Well, send him on out, buddy,” Mav called, and wherever Jem was, Blaze was never too far behind. They both came through the back door and only Jem ruffled Lars’ hair and grinned at him.

Blaze looked like he’d been dunked in tar and rolled in the worst thunderstorm Wyoming had seen in decades. The bad energy flowed off of him, and he reminded Mav of the man he’d been in the rodeo—reckless, dangerous, angry.

Coming home to Coral Canyon, dealing with health problems, meeting and marrying Faith, and settling down with his kids had changed Blaze in immeasurable ways. But something had undone all of that, and no wonder Jem had texted during church to see if they could come over this afternoon.

“Hey, guys,” Mav said, stepping out from the trees. “I think we can probably make frozen raspberry lemonade in just a bit. Dani was just doing leftovers for lunch today.”

“Yeah, she said we could have some,” Jem said.

“I ain’t hungry,” Blaze grumbled.

“He’s not in a good mood either,” Jem said, and Blaze pierced him with a sharp glare. “I thought he might tell you why.” Jem gazed coolly back at Blaze, seemingly unfazed by his attitude.

He wasn’t, Mav knew that. But Jem had always put on a good front.

“Daddy,” Lars called, and Mav sighed as he rolled his neck and faced the house again.

“What?” he asked.

“Momma said she’s making frozen lemonade, if you want some.”

“All right,” Daddy said. “I’ll be in in a minute.”

Lars went back inside and slid the door closed again.

“How’s Boston doing?” Jem asked, and whether he knew or not that he was going straight for the jugular, Mav wasn’t sure.

Another sigh slipped out of his mouth. “Oh, you know,” he said. “I think he’s hiding something from me.” He chuckled, though he wasn’t kidding. “So about the usual.”

“What could he possibly be hiding?” Jem asked.

“I don’t know,” Mav said. “I try not to speculate too much, but I know he’s not telling me something, because he doesn’t answer my calls and he texts that he’ll call me later, but then he doesn’t.”

Jem chuckled. “Oh, I can’t wait for that. I just want to get my kid out of the house.”

“Still no job yet?” Mav asked, and he gestured to one of the hammocks. Blaze moved over to it, and Mav would be shocked if he got a word out of the man today.

“No job yet,” Jem said. “And it’s almost July. Who’s gonna give that child a job?”

“He said he was working on it,” Blaze said.

“Yeah, he says a lot of things.” Jem blew out his breath and collapsed into the hammock just a few feet away from Mav’s. That got Blaze to sink into the third hammock as well.

“He’s a good boy,” Mav said. “Someone will see that and give him a job.”

“He’s just so picky,” Jem said. “I told him he can’t afford to be picky when he has no experience.”

“Is he still set on working in the rodeo?” Mav asked.

“Yes,” Jem said. “He doesn’t want to ride, mind you. He wants all the things that people who have ridden do behind the scenes, but he has no experience.”

“He’s good with horses,” Blaze said.

“Yeah, well, it takes a lot more than being good with horses,” Jem said. “To get the kind of job that he needs to pay his bills. If he’s so good with horses, he can go work for Bryce.”

Mav smiled to himself. This idea of setting up hammocks so that he and his brothers could talk—pure genius.

This way they didn’t have to look at one another, and Mav had learned from raising teenagers that having to look someone in the eye and have a conversation with them was actually really difficult.

Most people didn’t want to do it, even his grown brothers.

“Anyway, I guess he’s got a job interview tomorrow,” Jem said. “I don’t know.”

“Where’s it at?” Mav asked.

“He refuses to get anyone’s help in the family, though we all know people.”

Mav waited another moment to see if Jem needed to rant some more, and then he tried again. “Who’s the interview with tomorrow?”

“Someplace up outside of Dog Valley,” Jem said. “I guess they train rodeo animals.”

“Oh, well, that sounds like it might be great,” Mav said.

“Yeah, anything sounds great about now.”

Mav chuckled and said, “Wow, I don’t think Blaze is the only person in a bad mood today.”

“I’m fine,” Jem said.

“Oh, yeah? Really sounds like you are.”

A few seconds of silence passed, and then the air filled with the low chuckle of Blaze Young.

“Laugh it up,” Jem said. “Maybe you should tell us what’s going on with you, so we can laugh about it.”

Blaze sobered, and he had one of the deeper voices in the Young family, so Mav had a hard time hearing him when he said, “Mine is no laughing matter.”

“We won’t laugh at you,” Mav said.

“Did you know that the older kids have a cousin night?” Blaze asked.

“Yeah,” Jem said. “Everyone knows that.”

“But do you know why?” Blaze asked.

Mav hadn’t really thought about it. “Because they’re the same age,” he said. “There’s a big difference between someone like Boston, who’s twenty-three, and Tyrone, who’s four.”

And Ty wasn’t even Blaze’s youngest.

“They do it,” Blaze said in his dangerous, calculated tone that Mav did not like. “Because they feel left out. They feel like they don’t belong in our family. They get together, so that they have somewhere to belong.”

“Oh, I’m sure that’s not it,” Jem said. “Cole and Rosie go to those. It’s like movie night, and Harry orders a lot of pizza.”

“I’m telling you,” Blaze said.

“Then why?—?”

“Why do you think that?” Mav asked, covering Jem’s argument.

His brother’s hammock shifted, and Jem looked over to him. Mav shook his head, and Jem nodded.

“Because my son told me,” Blaze said, the words almost a whisper. “He’s going to be in town in July. He’s not staying with us.”

Mav waited, because while he knew Blaze would like his son to sleep in the basement for a month, that couldn’t be the reason he was so angry. Mav had watched Tex go through something similar when Bryce had come home and stayed with another uncle, unable to face his parents on a daily basis.

Boston had lived in Harry’s basement because he didn’t want to be “in the way” at Mav’s house. Mav had never thought it was because he felt like he didn’t belong, but maybe it was.

“He quit the rodeo,” Blaze said.

“He did what?” Jem asked, his voice practically a bellow through the backyard.

“At least for this year,” Blaze said. “He doesn’t know what he wants his life to be. He’s got a lot of fear and a lot of anger in him.”

“The rodeo is a dangerous place,” Mav said. “You’ve both worried about your kids going into it and getting injured.”

“Yeah,” Jem said. “That’s true.”

“This is more than that,” Blaze said. “Cash doesn’t think he belongs here with any of us. He feels like we all have our new lives, and we don’t even think about him or any of our kids from our first marriage. That they’re lost to us.”

Mav’s mind rotated around Boston and Beth, his stomach clenching that they might feel like they didn’t belong in the family, to him.

“I didn’t know they felt like that,” Jem said.

“Maybe your kids don’t,” Blaze said. “You’ve got two, and they were pretty little when they came here. Cash was twelve, and he had a lot of anger at me for not being around for those years, and now he thinks I’ve swapped him out for a new family and that I don’t care about him.”

“He said that?” Mav asked.

“He said it,” Blaze said. “Just before he walked out on our dinner last night.”

Even Jem remained silent, and that said a lot.

“I’m real sorry, Blaze,” Mav finally said. “I’m sure he was just speaking from a place of hurt or anger.”

“Yeah, well, the most honest things come from those places, don’t they?”

“What are you going to do?” Jem asked.

“What am I supposed to do, Jem? I have a daughter who will be two in September. Am I supposed to leave Faith home with four kids to prove to my twenty-five year old son that he matters?”

“I don’t know,” Jem said.

“I thought I’d been there for him,” Blaze said. “I’ve done my best. Lord knows I’ve done my best.” His voice broke on the last word, and that carved Mav’s heart straight in two.

He expected Blaze to get out of the hammock and storm away, as that would be classic Rodeo-Blaze move. When he didn’t, Mav knew that he was not the same man he’d been back then.

“You can’t do more than your best,” Mav said.

“He’s so hurt.” Blaze sniffled, and even from several feet away, Mav heard him draw in a deep breath. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. A father is supposed to protect and care and love and serve his kids. Maybe it’s too late. Maybe I’ll never be able to fix this.”

It took a few extra moments and a lot of ab strength, but Mav finally got himself out of his hammock. He moved past Jem and over to Blaze, and he said, “I’m coming in there with you, brother.”

Surprise crossed his darkest brother’s features, and then Mav crowded into the hammock with him. “Sometimes it’s not up to you to fix it,” he said.

“What would you do?” Blaze asked. “If Beth came to you and told you that your actions have told her that you don’t care.”

Mav blinked, trying to find the right things to say to his older brother. “Well, I’d probably make a list.”

Blaze scoffed, the sound turning into a laugh. “Of course you would.”

“I’m serious,” Mav said. “I’d make a list of all the things I’d done, all the action things to show her that I love her.

And then I’d compare it to a list of the things she wishes I would have done that I didn’t do.

I’d try to find out for myself if what she was saying was true or not, and if it was, then I would try to make it right.

But if it’s not, then Blaze, brother, this is a problem for God and not for you. ”

“He’s right,” Jem said, appearing on the other side of the hammock. “I’m coming in, dude.”

“Jem, there’s no way you’re gonna fit in here.”

“Oh, I’m gonna fit. These things stretch.”

“How much weight can this thing hold?” Blaze complained as Jem jostled the two of them around.

Mav definitely felt like they were sinking too close to the ground, but he didn’t care.

He’d piled into beds and tents and the backs of trucks with his brothers before, and this only reminded him of that.

Of course, they’d been much smaller men then.

Teenagers, really, with Mav being one of the skinniest.

They swayed as they finally all got settled with elbows and knees in the right place, and Mav put one of his hands over Blaze’s heart.

“You’re a good man, Blaze,” he said. “You love your son, and he knows that.”

“I don’t know if he does or not,” Blaze said. “I thought he did.”

“You can’t be something you’re not,” Jem said.

“No, but I can change,” Blaze said. “I have before, and I can again if he needs me to be something different. I would do it for him.”

“Maybe he has to change too,” Mav whispered, almost expecting Blaze to throw shade at him and dump him out of the hammock.

Instead, he nodded. “Maybe,” he said. “But maybe sometimes you just need to be validated in how you feel, and I think that’s what those cousin nights are.

They show up there feeling lost and unanchored, alone and abandoned.

They think we’ve abandoned them.” He shook his head and made his voice quiet again as he continued.

“And they validate one another. They feel like they belong together. They remember they’re not alone. ”

“Well, we should be glad they have each other then,” Jem said.

“Doesn’t change the fact that they think we’ve moved on and replaced them.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Mav said, his thoughts on Beth and Boston, who had both attended the cousin nights.

They’d never said anything about them, just that they had a good time and they liked hanging out with their older cousins.

Out of all of them, Boston didn’t even have Young DNA , and Mav wondered how lost, alone, and afraid he truly felt. He’d never thought to ask him or find out how the boy felt.

“I’m going to go talk to Momma and Daddy,” Blaze said. “See if they can help me figure out what I should do.”

“This was just yesterday?” Mav asked.

“Last night,” Blaze said.

“Have you talked to Cash since?”

“I tried calling him, but he wouldn’t pick up. I texted him. I told him how much I love him, and that whatever he needed I would be there. He only answered with two words: I know.”

“You think he’s lying?” Jem asked.

“Yeah,” Blaze said, the word angry. “I think he’s lying.

I think he thinks I’m all words and no action.

Of course I’m going to say I’ll be there, but I can’t really be there because I have a baby and three other kids and a wife who need me.

So of course, I can’t leave them and choose him first.” He sighed, and Mav watched him close his eyes, and Blaze looked so, so tired.

“He said no one chooses him, and as I laid awake last night, I realized—he’s right. No one puts Cash first.” He exhaled heavily. “Not even me.”

“But you have in some instances,” Mav said, his own guilt kicking up against the back of his throat.

Every man in his family had been in Blaze’s position, with one kid from their first marriage. Then, they’d each gotten remarried and started new families.

Mav could definitely understand the younger generation’s perspective of the situation, but no, he had no idea what to do about it.