Sleighed by the Farmer’s Daughter (Sweet Christmas Kisses)

Chapter Eight

Resigned to being transparent and seeing how things developed, Seth opened up his heart. “I’d love to say that I outgrew my need to compete with my younger brother, but… I didn’t. Not for a long time, anyway.”

He paused to transition one batch of cookies out of the oven and a new batch in. “Eric and I are only a year and a month apart. He was the oops baby, the one that wasn’t supposed to happen, and everyone knew it. I’m not sure how that made him feel, but from the outside looking in, it seemed like he had this need to prove himself. Though, to be honest, I don’t think he ever directed that at me as the firstborn. But I might’ve let it make me feel inferior.”

“How so?” Mackenzie asked gently.

“Little things, really, that added up over time, exacerbated by our parents fighting as we got older. I was tall and thin, a bit of a nerd, and had better grades. Eric was an inch taller and always thicker than me. He was better at sports and anything physical. He was really close with our grandparents, who I idolized. Not that they didn’t love me equally, but I just didn’t have the same connection to them as Eric did. They lived up on this mountain outside our hometown, living a rather rustic life. Eric thrived on that stuff—hunting, cooking from scratch, canning with Grandma, and building anything and everything from wood with Grandpa. He was in his element while I was still trying to figure out what I wanted from life. We all had a challenging relationship with our mother. She was a very unhappy person, and I spent my entire childhood trying to make her smile. Eric kept to himself and didn’t seem to let the family issues bother him. It was like he was oblivious to them. Mom had her eye on the city lights and everything that came with them. I thought maybe that’s where I was meant to be, too.”

Seth took a tray of frosted sugar cookies to the dining room to dry.

“How did all that turn out?” Mackenzie asked, raising an eyebrow. “You seem to be on a different path now, considering you’re living in a camper and not in the city.”

“Ah, not well,” Seth admitted, a wry smile on his face. “Turns out I have more mountain man in my genes than I thought. I graduated a year early and immediately left for college, pretty much blowing off my family. That no doubt hurt my brothers more since they’d already been abandoned by my mother, and my father turned to a bottle for comfort over the years. Then Eric joined the Army and excelled like he did at everything else he tried. When I graduated with my Electrical Engineering degree, I decided to join the Army as well. No one knew about my enlistment. They still don’t.”

“Why not? What happened?”

“I was injured during basic training. My foot caught under a root during one of our running exercises, and my ankle was obliterated. The Army docs put me back together with a bunch of metal, but then they medically discharged me, and my military career ended just four weeks after it began. My little brother Eric went on to be a Staff Sergeant in the Army Rangers and a war hero. He has so many medals on his chest it would knock over a smaller man.”

“You said he doesn’t even know about your enlistment. How does his success in the military impact your relationship?”

“It was just one more perceived failure on my part. I’m the oldest, yet I’ve walked in my younger brother’s shadow all these years. Like I said, it has nothing to do with Eric; the big lug is totally unaware of the inferiority complex I struggle with. I’m sure if he knew about it, he’d give me a good punch and tell me I was being stupid. After all, I went to college, and he never did. He’s told me numerous times how proud he is of me for doing that and for opening my own business. My brothers love me, and if I could just get over myself, we could have a really great relationship. Especially now that Eric’s home from the military and has settled down on Grandpa’s mountain with a growing family.”

“Why is he home? It sounded like he was a lifer.”

“He would have been, no doubt about it, but… there was a mission a few years back that nearly killed him and his team. He and my sister-in-law’s brother made it out alive, but they got really messed up. Eric could have stayed in and been a training officer or something, but he’s definitely more of the knuckle-busting, door-kicking, boots-on-the-ground type. So, he took a medical discharge and started the second phase of his life back at home. From what I hear, he’s turned his little mountain into a bit of a veteran retreat, helping other soldiers deal with their PTSD.”

“That’s amazing! What an honorable thing to do. You must be proud to be his brother even if you struggle comparing yourself to him.”

“Yeah, Eric’s a great guy.”

“So, what are you going to do to fix things? You said yourself this is more of a you problem. What are you waiting for?”

“It’s one of those things where the distance had become so far and comfortable that I wasn’t really sure how to close it. I made an effort to talk to my brothers every few months, even when Eric was in the Rangers. I’d see him once every year or so, and we always had a good time, but the visits had a time limit—usually no more than a meal, and then I was free to be a lone wolf for the next year or so. Then Eric married Sarah, who is determined to get the family back together. She’s working very hard to make that happen. We speak once a week, and she expects us all to be together at least twice a year.”

“Sounds like my kind of woman. She took the pressure off you to put things right. How’s it going?”

Seth rubbed the back of his head. “I’m not sure. Our communication has definitely increased, but this is the first time since their wedding that I’ll have made it home. The first time in over a decade that I would have been around for Christmas, and like always, I blew it getting stranded by this storm. All their friends put this huge Christmas gala together for our little hometown, Hickory Falls. It’s in a childhood friend’s mansion and was this big celebration of things to come, and I’m not going to make it. Not a great start to knitting the family back together, huh?”

Seth took two more trays of decorated cookies to the dining room and switched out the cookies from the oven, rotating the cooled cookies to his decorating station.

“They’ll understand. What did you mean when you said, ‘Like always, you blew it?’ You don’t seem like the type of guy to mess things up, at least not on purpose.”

“No, not on purpose, but this isn’t the first family Christmas I will ruin.”

“I know I’m being horribly nosy, and if you don’t want to talk about it, I understand. But if you care to share, I’m a willing listener.”

Seth’s thoughtful green gaze connected with Mack’s welcoming brown eyes across the large kitchen worktable. “That’s the funny thing. Over the past two days, I’ve told you more about me and my family than I’ve ever told anyone. I don’t know what it is about you, but I feel like we’ve been friends for years.”