Page 11 of His Country

The man followed, smiling down as Sugar wagged her tail at him. “You can’t run from me.”

“I hate to break it to you but you’re not important enough for me to run from.”

He laughed, his voice echoing around the dark farmyard. “I’m Ethan. Dr. Ethan Landry. Frank just hired me as your new vet.”

Aiden’s feet stopped so fast his knees almost snapped off. His throat was dry.

Suddenly it all made sense. Why he was up for forty hours, why he looked at the colt’s leg, why hewas fucking examining Sugar.

God played favorites and Aiden was not one of them.

He wanted to scream.

Finding his mouth too dry to speak, he forced his feet to move and continued to the bunk house. Now that he was paying attention, he could see a truck parked with a veterinary logo on the side.

“Why do you hate them?”

Three days of sleeping in the cold wet, one day without food, and the stress of seeing Billy and Everett again had him answering when he normally wouldn’t.

“I don’t hate them. I don’t hate anyone.”Except myself.

He didn’t say that.

“You sure act like it.”

Ethan was so casual. Like he didn’t know exactly what he was doing, and he absolutely did. He might look aloof, but there was a glint in those eyes. A shine of intelligence that he tried to hidebehind an easy grin and slumped shoulders. For reasons Aiden couldn’t fathom, Ethan cared about his answer.

“What do you want me to say? It’s none of your business? Because it isn’t. It’s not yours, or Billy’s, or Everett’s. Why I do what I do is my?—”

“He said you were his friend.”

That stopped him like a car crash.His friend. Aiden had been Everett’s friend. Before Billy, before his life went tits up, they had been friends. And it had been enough for Aiden.

The companionable silences, the shared homework, the lunches. All of it. Aiden had felt comfortable with Everett. He’d been the first person Aiden told about the farm, about what it meant to him. They’d gone swimming together in the stock tanks and watched football games, trying to predict the outcome like they could put the ESP in ESPN.

They had meant everything to Aiden. They still did. Just in a different way.

“I…we were.”

“So that wasn’t a lie?”

“Fuck you.”

Ethan shrugged, crossing his arms.

He was pushing him. Pushing for some kind of confession. Like this was some goddamned Hallmark movie. He wanted Aiden to fall into a puddle of tears, scream out his reasons, and have some kind of catharsis.

Fuck that.

Aiden stomped away. He wasn’t even hungry anymore. He slammed open the door of the bunkhouse, ignoring the way it sent Isaac flying off the bunk. Without taking off his boots he grabbed the first thing he saw when he wrenched open the fridge with the burned out bulb.

Fingers wrapped around the moonshine jar, he left the bunkhouse and found his way to the barn. Crawling over thestall, he dropped into the corner. Spinning the lid off the mason jar, he inhaled the fumes and shuddered as they curled the hair in his nose. Smelling a lot like paint thinner, he wasn’t drinking it for the taste.

Putting the wide lip to his lips, he chugged.

Cold. He was cold.

“—damned idiot.”