Page 116 of Cowboy SEAL Homecoming

Chapter 26

“Emergency.”

Alex jerked at Jack’s flat, hard voice. He looked around the bunkhouse, trying to remember what he’d been doing. But everything was dim, and he just…didn’t know.

The flutter of panic at not knowing still existed, but it was so faint underneath all this exhaustion, this fog that had become something like a comfortable blanket he didn’t even fight it anymore.

Somewhere below, a dog whined, and Alex realized with another start that Star had been sleeping on his feet. How long had he been standing here?

Best not to dwell on that. “What kind of emergency?” he asked.

“Just come on,” Jack said. “Out in the north pasture.”

Alex frowned, but he followed Jack. “What’s the problem?”

“Hard to explain.” Jack nodded toward the stables, where his and Alex’s horses were saddled, reins tied to the post. “Follow me, yeah?”

He opened his mouth to say something about Jack riding, but it seemed such an effort to form those kinds of words, to press on what the emergency was. So, in the end, he simply got onto the horse and followed Jack on his up toward the north pasture.

Something eased inside of him, an odd tension he wouldn’t know how to name, wasn’t even sure he’d known it was there.

Here, on the horse, he was in control. He felt some stirring of that rightness he’d felt when he’d first arrived—fresh air and mountains, a trustworthy horse beneath him taking him wherever he needed to go.

When they reached the north pasture, Gabe was already there. Alex frowned a little because the fence seemed fine and the cattle were all a good distance away.

He got off the horse and walked toward Gabe, Jack falling into step behind him.

“What’s the emergency?” Alex demanded, something prickling at the back of his neck. An odd foreboding that reminded him too much of a desert road with these same two men. And one who was dead.

“Let’s call it less of an emergency and more of an intervention.”

Alex stopped walking, but Jack was behind him and gave him a little shove toward Gabe. Alex glared, but Jack only gave him another shove.

“Enough.”

“You’re right, Alex. It is enough,” Gabe said, that obnoxious grin spread over his face. The kind of grin he lobbed at anyone who crossed him.

“I don’t know what’s gotten into you two—”

“Friendship, I guess,” Jack said, still giving him little shoves.

“I’m warning you, Jack. Knock it off.”

Jack resolutely shoved him again. “Or what? Hell, Alex, you can barely walk these days.”

Alex stood to his full height, glaring as much down at Jack as he could manage. “I’m fine. Your limp is worse than mine.” Might be an unfair jab, but it was true.

“Fine.” Gabe laughed, that hard, sarcastic edge filling up this little corner of the pasture. The breeze was cool as the sun set in the west, an occasional cow’s moo breaking through the peaceful evening. Clouds billowed in the east, dark and angry.

“You haven’t been fine since that grenade blew up, and in the past few weeks, you’ve withered away into nothing. I could take you with one hand tied behind my back.”

“My ass.”

“Then let’s fight.”

“What?” Alex scoffed as Gabe held his hands up in fists. “I’m not going to fight you.”

“Scared?”