Page 72 of Something Tangled Something True (Rosa Ranch #1)
RUNNING FASTER THAN A CREEK AFTER RAIN
“I love you, darlin’,” I whisper, kissing the crown of her head where her curls are piled beneath her bonnet.
“I lufh you,” she whispers back groggily, rolling over and hugging her body pillow tighter.
It’s a quick drive to my brother’s cottage, but the elephant sitting on my chest is an unwelcome burden of my anxiety that makes it feel ten times longer.
Zeke is waiting on the porch for me when I arrive, having agreed to meet me this early despite not being a morning person. “Cup of coffee?” he asks, not bothering with pleasantries.
I wave him off. “No, thanks. I’m wired as is.”
His dark brows creep high on his forehead, and I’m met with a concerned scowl. “Wired? Ry, what’s going on?”
I shake my head, exhaustion weaving into every muscle as I drag myself up the porch steps to his black paneled, cottage-style home. The dark wood beams in front are the only hint of warmth surrounding my brother’s unnervingly tidy house.
“Inside, Zeke. We can’t talk about this out here.”
He has the good sense to listen to me for once, never having taken my role as his big brother seriously throughout our entire childhood.
His spine is ramrod straight as he leads me inside, his chubby calico cat, Cowgirl, making an appearance. She winds her body through my legs, purring when I scratch between her ears.
I do my best not to trip over her, taking a seat on the gray sectional sofa beside my brother.
“Do you have feelings for my ex-wife?” I ask, too worn-out to ease into this conversation.
His head rears back, light-blue eyes dimming to an eerie gray as he levels me with a glare. “Are you fucking kidding, Ry?”
“ Please answer the question,” I plead, dropping my face into my hands, releasing a low groan.
“No, I don’t have feelings for Lemmon,” he says, his voice chastising. “Actually—” My head snaps up to meet his glare, but my shoulders sag with his next words. “That was a lie. I do have feelings for her: disdain, resentment, annoyance, and, on my off days, pity.”
I can’t help but chuckle at that very “Ezekiel Lockhart” response. “Isn’t disdain your default emotion?”
He rolls his eyes, crosses his arms over his chest, and slumps against the couch cushions. “Ha, ha, ha, very funny . But also, yes.”
That gets a snort out of me, and the dark cloud looming over my head ever since I’d decided confronting my brother was the only way I’d be able to know he isn’t involved dissipates.
“Where is this coming from exactly?”
“A little birdy sort of mentioned you and Lemmon had a thing in high school, and I was afraid you thought I stole her from you or something.”
“Ah,” he says, shaking his head, his lips pulled up in a grin.
“And would this ‘little birdy’ be a drop-dead gorgeous, five-foot-six woman with dark wavy hair and a beauty mark above her lip?” He quirks a dark brow at me and rolls his eyes again when I don’t answer.
“You know, that woman’s mouth runs faster than a creek after rain. ”
“Hey, she did pretty good. Over a decade, as I recall.” He rewards me with a deep chuckle that nearly shakes me out of my boots.
“Yeah, for her, it certainly is. I never resented you for what Lemmon did, but I was pissed about it for a long time,” he admits, and my heart twists.
“What exactly did she do?” I ask, hesitant.
“She and I had been fooling around in high school. I thought we had something special; she treated me like a real person, something she didn’t seem to do with most everyone else. Hell, she even let that phony accent drop.”
My eyes bug out of my head, jaw scraping the ground as I stare at my brother in utter disbelief. After the last few months, this is the thing that shocks me most.
“And you never told me!? Zeke, I was married to the devious little thing for a decade , and she didn’t slip up once!”
He shrugs. “I figured if she kept on talkin’ like that long enough, it’d eventually become real.
Anyway, she told me about her dreams for the future, how much she wished she could find her mother someday.
Then, when she woke up one day and pretended I never existed, it became clear as day that she was using me to get to you, learning every detail about our family during the years we spent together.
I’ll admit, it grossed me out that she’d move on from kissing me to smacking lips with my brother, but I was too pissed off to talk to you about it.
After years of seeing how miserable she made you, I thought I could save you the added disgust of knowing how she’d used me.
Until recently, I hadn’t thought much about her, but clearly, she’s back to wreaking havoc. ”
After talking to Zeke about Lemmon, clearing the air, and discussing some thoughts he’s had about this whole mess, we have a more solid plan for how to tackle this situation.
I can thank Lemmon for something positive for once: acting as the catalyst that helped my brother and me start healing our fractured relationship, even if she may have been the one to break us in the first place.