Page 17 of Unruly

He came home changed, but the ranch was still here, still waiting, and Grandpa never let him forget how much he’d disappointed him. Now Dad’s trying to break that same cycle with me, except he doesn’t see that he’s repeating it. He just sees me acting like the version of himself he hates most.

“Enough,” Grandpa says. “That’s enough out of the pair of you.”

Dad exhales hard through his nose, still staring at me.

Grandpa looks at him. “Go on inside, Eli. I’m spending time with my grandson.”

For a second, it looks like Dad might start picking a fight with Grandpa too. Then he pushes to his feet, gives me one last hard look, and heads for the door. The screen door shuts hard behind him.

He’s been trying to hammer that lesson in my skull since I was a kid. The problem is, he’s never figured out how to do it without pushing me right toward the same fate. The only person who keeps me grounded is my mother.

She told me no felonies. And I keep my promises to my mother.

I peel at the label on my beer, jaw still tight.

He wants me to be better; I know that. I’ve always known that. But it doesn’t make it better to accept.

Grandpa doesn’t say anything for a while after Dad leaves. Eventually, he reaches down and drags his knuckles slowly across the top of Pixie’s head. She sighs without waking up. Then he opens the cooler beside his chair, pulls out a beer, and holds it across the gap between us without looking at me.

I take it.

“You remember that mess that happened when you were seventeen?”

My thumb stills. Memories of the night rush to my brain. I had drank way too much at a bonfire that eventually got rained out. I was in no business to drive, but I had to make curfew because Dad was already on my ass about getting caught shoplifting at some Wal-Mart a few towns over. The rain was coming down so hard it washed me off the road, and I ran into a ditch.

“I didn’t cover for you because I thought you didn’t deserve it. I did it because I know who you are and can separate that from what you did.”

“Yes, sir,” I say.

“You could have killed others or even yourself for that stupid mistake. Why you called your Uncle Luke, I’ll never understand. That man would never bail you out of jail—for the record. He wanted to leave your ass out there and make you call your father. But instead, I found a buddy and we pulled your truck out of the mud.”

I look out at the tree line. My throat feels tight. I want to say something, but there isn’t anything worth saying. I fucked up that night. Bad. Grandpa saved my ass when nobody else would have.

He leans back in his chair, the wood creaking under him. “Your dad would have seen that and it would have proved everything he already thinks. I just saw a dumb kid who made a mistake and still had enough sense to call family instead of trying to hide it.”

“Thank you…for that night. I never really said it back then.”

“You don’t have to thank me. Sometimes, I feel like if your dad had had someone to call, he might never have wasted all those years locked up,” he says, then pushes himself up onto his feet and heads toward the door. “You’re not lost, Cash. You’re just loud…and that ain’t the same thing as being a bad man.”

Grandpa goes into the house, leaving me alone.

Benjamin Thornwood is the man everyone looks up to. Loyal to his family, dedicated to his land, honest to a fault in a way that should be annoying but somehow isn’t because when Ben tells you something, you know it’s true, and you know he means it. He has never known a stranger. Never turned away someone who needed something. Never once in his life walked into a room and made it smaller.

I am nothing like my grandfather, which is why I choose to go by Cash instead.

I drink too much, cuss too much, fuck too much, and follow up too little. I have never once been described as dedicated to anything that required sustained effort or a clean record.

“—I don’t care what the timeline looks like, Dawson. You don’t put a sick bull back in with the herd because it’s inconvenient to wait⁠—”

“I’m not saying it’s convenient, I’m saying we’re already three weeks behind on vaccinations and two hands short, and at some point, you have to make a call with the information you have⁠—”

“The information I have is that Colt hasn’t cleared him yet⁠—”

“Colt is here for an internship, Rhett, not to make ranch management decisions for⁠—”

Both of my brothers come around the corner mid-sentence, still going at each other. I watch them for a second before they notice me. Rhett’s walking fast, shoulders tight, while Dawson trails a half-step behind with his hands in his pockets like he’s done with this conversation but knows it’s not over.

“Rhett, you really just need to get laid, bro,” I call out.