Page 51 of His Country

If there was one thing Aiden got from his father, it was the ability to work. Despite his shaking hands and the persistent urge to look over his shoulder, Aiden worked.

He fed the animals, patched the tractor, even managed to help a cow calve. The little guy was healthy with his spindly legs and wet nose. It was easy like that—one chore at a time. A twisted part of him might have even enjoyed the knot tightening in his chest. Just like the day he climbed into the back of a battered pickup, spitting dust out from between his teeth into the dry wind as they crossed the Texas border.

Hurting was easy. But it was also tiring. He’d forgotten that. The drag of his feet, the weight on his chest as he struggled to get a full breath. It was like treading water, and with every passing moment the urge to stop grew stronger and stronger. To close his eyes and drift down. Just for a moment. To rest.

But then a moment turned to two, and he’d have sunk too far, unable to reach the surface again.

Aiden wasn’t sure he wanted to. If he deserved to.

So, he just kept swimming. Paddling until he couldn’t anymore, until the call of moonshine was too strong, and he’d sink to the bottom of a mason jar and rest.

Billy and Everett were still on the farm, no doubt planning something for the wedding, but he didn’t dare stray too close to the house. Not that he thought Billy would try and talk to him again. He was persistent, but he wasn’t stupid.

And maybe that should bother him more, but Aiden was having a hard time caring about his argument with Billy. Aiden had been having that same argument with himself for years. Over and over again, and even if he could go back and do it all over, he wouldn’t. For right or wrong, Aiden had made a decision then and he still thought it was the best thing he could have done.

To avoid Isaac and his stories of a warm family holiday, Aiden found himself hanging out in the paddock with Eagle. His ass was damp, and his hands were frozen, but he couldn’t make himself get up. Head tipped back, he looked up at the stars and tried to count them all. Sometimes a shooting star would streak by. Aiden didn’t make a wish. He didn’t know what he’d wish for.

Sugar laid her head in his lap, and he warmed his hands in her fur. She’d been clingier lately, picking up on his mood. Poor girl should have been used to it by now.

She perked up a second before he heard the scuff of feet. He clung to her, hoping she wouldn’t leave him. The footsteps slowed for a moment before picking up, stopping beside him. Out of the corner of his eye, he could make out a dark shape. Breath plumed white from where he was hiding in the thick collar of his coat.

“You’re an asshole,” Everett said without venom. He said it in the same way he might have commented on the weather to someone standing beside him in line for coffee, with a twinge of frustration but dripping in inevitability.

Aiden had seen him from a distance a few times, but he had always been moving. Walking away. Now they were standingstill, pretending to look at the stars when the heft of their stares was palpable.

He’d seen him on TV a dozen times over the years, but nothing compared to Everett in person. Besides getting bigger, he looked the same. His face still boyish, eyes as blue as a cloudless Texas sky. But being handsome had its limits, and if Everett Reid was anything he was limitless.

He was a lot like those shooting stars up above them. The brightest streak across a sky full of stars. One you’d wait for hours just to catch a glimpse of. And when you did? All you wanted to do was close your eyes and make a wish, hoping for a touch of what makes it so special.

“I never meant to hurt him.” Aiden hadn’t spoken for nearly two days and his voice sounded strange to him. Dusty, maybe. Like the way it did after a long ride with no water.

“I know.”

Surprised, Aiden finally dragged his eyes from the stars to look at him. Everett had his hands in his pockets, rocking back on the heels of a beaten-up pair of Converse. The same kind he used to wear every day back in high school.

Everett met his gaze, his lips twisting into a wry smile. “You forget, I knew you first. You were my best friend too, Aiden. I know you’d never do anything to intentionally hurt Billy. Just like I know you’ll never tell us why you left.”

Aiden didn’t know what to say. If you’d told him Everett was coming into the paddock to talk to him, he’d have sworn he’d be getting hit. Or screamed at. Everett had always been passive except when it came to Billy.

But here he was, his face the same as it was in Aiden’s memories, with his nose buried in the lining of his puffy jacket and his stupid sneakers squelching in the mud, talking to Aiden like there wasn’t five years worth of misunderstandings and emotion gaping between them.

In all of Aiden’s heart break, he forgot that they started out as friends. That Everett had once been the person he sat in silence with.

“You’ve never been a big talker,” Everett continued breezily. “And I think that’s why our friendship always felt so one sided. I took advantage of your silence. Didn’t ask about what you had going on because it was easier not to. To focus on me. That wasn’t right.”

Aiden never thought of it that way. He’d never wanted to put himself first. Thought that was his choice.

“But I’m not going to apologize for that. Just like I’m not going to ask you to apologize for anything.”

He scuffed the toe of his sneaker in the ground, a nervous habit Aiden thought he would have outgrown. “You leaving hurt, but I figured you had a reason. All the stuff that went down with your family and the farm, Billy and I—don’t look at me like that, I know we can be insufferable—I knew you left because you had to. It sucked. But I accepted it.

“But Billy, you know him. He’s always been the touchy feely guy. Wants everything to mean something. That empathy is part of why I love him. He makes up for what I lack. He’d never let me get away with not asking.” His lips curled ever so slightly, lost in a memory that made him smile without realizing it.

Everything with Billy always came naturally to Everett.He makes up for what I lack.That made sense. Aiden had seen it the first night they met, when the night reeked of burning gasoline and tinny music playing from a car stereo.

They hadn’t seen it, so maybe to them it had seemed subtle. They took their time to fall in love. But Aiden was on the outside looking in, and it had been blazing.

Everett huffed, shaking his head. “Here I am doing all the talking again. Guess things really haven’t changed.” He took onemore look at the sky before unsticking his sneakers and turning to leave.