Serious Cowboy (Cowboys of Duncan Ranch #2)

Chapter 10

CHAPTER TEN

Zeke had been out planting a hedgerow along the edge of his yard to stay busy when his best friend’s Lexus SUV drove up. He hadn’t been expecting Tim, but his buddy did sometimes just show up with some random toy or piece of machinery for him to fiddle with. So his appearance shouldn’t have caused the hair on the back of his neck to stand up, but it did.

He discovered why within five seconds of his friend hopping out of his car.

“What is the meaning of you being with my sister?”

Ah. Should’ve known keeping this from him was too fortunate to last.

Zeke blew out a loud breath. “We were dating for a while.”

“So, even after I explicitly told you not to, you did it, anyway.” Tim was shaking his head back and forth like some possessed bobblehead. “Her, I could see pulling this. She loves to play games and see what she can get away with. But you? You I trusted to have more sense.”

“Yeah, well, it just sort of happened. I didn’t mean for it to.” Zeke could’ve gone on about how he hadn’t pursued her at all, but that would just make Callie out to be the initiator. And the last thing Tim needed to be privy to was that particular piece of knowledge.

“She started it, too, didn’t she?” Tim spoke the words as if reading them directly out of Zeke’s mind. Zeke didn’t dare answer him. He said nothing whatsoever. Yet Tim had already figured it all out. “I knew it.”

“You ought to let things be. I’ll apologize for going behind your back, but that’s it. The rest is none of your business.”

“Does that mean it’s over?” Tim asked him, and Zeke didn’t honestly know how to answer that.

He suspected that it was, that he’d pretty much sealed that vault shut. People—especially people you were dating—didn’t usually like it when you ordered them to get out of your house without an explanation. Zeke knew that.

Also, he hadn’t reached out to her since. He didn’t think he should. When he’d freaked out at Callie, she’d laid the frame with Maria’s picture in it on the top of his mattress, and he carefully set it back on the top of his dresser.

At first, he’d twisted it so it would face away like always, but at the last minute, he faced it out. Stared long and hard at it. At that image of the young woman he’d once believed he’d live the rest of his life with.

Realizing Tim was still waiting for his reply, he shrugged.

“Found a picture of Maria, didn’t she?”

Zeke opened his mouth only to close it again. He and Tim had met right before his life with Maria had detonated. Right before everything he’d known with her had been jerked away like a rug and brutally turned upside down.

“Look, you two are going to do what you want. I know that. But I don’t want Callie hurt. I don’t want either of you hurt.” Tim paused, but again Zeke said nothing. “It sounds like you might’ve broken up. At least that’s the impression I got.”

“I… I don’t know. Probably.” And it might be for the best if he never saw her again, even if being without her had been lonely. Lonely and more agonizing with each day that went by.

But did Zeke truly want to reopen that wound? Not the one that he’d created by ordering Callie away, but the one that remained from Maria?

“Well, do my sister a favor—do yourself a favor—and figure it out.” Doing an about-face, Tim departed on that cryptic note, and Zeke threw himself into more planting.

After that, he sought out some of the projects he’d been given but had been neglecting due to his time with Callie. He’d already started to work on a pile that had been left on his front porch, his mind mulling over what Tim had said.

Zeke had been fully aware of Callie’s attempts to contact him, but he had no clue how to respond. He’d never been able to fully disclose what had happened to Maria with anyone else, and closing that part of himself off had just become the logical choice. Falling back on that old go-to felt safer, so that’s what he did this time, too. That, in addition to throwing himself even harder into his duties on the Duncan Ranch. And that’s how he became the quiet man who kept to himself.

One of the first guys he bumped into upon returning to work the next Monday was Aaron Hunter, a guy the Duncan brothers referred to as “the newbie” despite him having been on the ranch roster for years now. He was a good kid.

Zeke overheard him getting out of his truck chuckling with glee while on his phone. Noticing Zeke, Aaron waved, disconnected the line, and indicating his phone, said, “My fiancée.”

The kid spoke with endless pride in his voice.

“When you two getting married?”

“Six months. Been a long time coming, though. We were high school sweethearts that didn’t work out.”

Zeke raised his eyebrows. He wouldn’t have predicted that. More curious than he thought he should be, Zeke pried further. “What changed?”

“Well, she married another man and moved to California. Had a little girl. Then, a decade later she moved back here and divorced him. We reconnected and that time around, everything finally fit.” Aaron looked dreamily off toward the acreage to the north. “Guess it wasn’t meant to be the first time, but it was the second. Glad I didn’t miss my shot after all.”

Aaron’s description of his relationship with his fiancée stuck with Zeke for days. He thought about the kid’s words nonstop no matter what he was doing. Still, Zeke didn’t return Callie’s calls, which had since turned into texts asking generic questions about his overall welfare.

He knew he wasn’t marriage material or anything material, really. He long been convinced of it. That was how it’d become easy to turn inward even more than he had before. He sunk back into a place he’d been prior to Callie’s entrance into his life, only lower. A lot lower.

But his biggest problem was that he didn’t know how to climb out of that place. Or if he even had the right to.