Page 19 of If You Loved Me

He snorted. “Like you have a nose good enough to smell mustard on me from that far away.”

“Dude, it fucking stinks!”

Miles just shrugged before he piled up the turkey and cheese and we headed out to the front porch. We both sat in the rocking chairs my grandpa had made for him and my grandma. The walnut had held up over the years with only a few dents and scratches that made them all the better in my opinion.

The sun was straight overhead in a cloudless sky that surrounded the rolling green hills of my family’s land. My mind brought me back to that night thirteen years ago. The night that almost stole this land from me.

Something heavy sat in my chest and my voice sounded thick as I spoke. “Hey, man. I don’t think I’ve ever told youhow much it means to me that you took care of this place while I was away. I don’t think I’d be sitting on this porch right now if it weren’t for you stepping up.”

Miles just smiled at me like it was no big deal that he’d put his life on pause to make sure Callie Rose and I had a home while I was gone. “This ranch might have your name on it, brother. But this is just as much my home as it is yours. There was no way in hell I’d let us lose this place. Not as long as I had air in my lungs.”

He was right. Miles had grown up on this ranch with me. I still remembered the first day I met him. I was nine years old when my father had taken me on a fishing trip to the lake when this scalawag-looking boy came barreling through the trees onto the shoreline. He was barefoot and covered in dirt, wearing only jean shorts that were cut off at the knees. He used a stick and an old rusty hook as a fishing pole that I’d thought would break the first bite he got.

But he ended up catching the biggest bass of the day and from that moment forward, we’d been best friends.

He lived with his dad who worked the night shift for a road construction company and he didn’t have a clue where his mom had gone off to. His dad never liked to talk about it. So he spent most of his days on the ranch with us, learning from my dad what it meant to be a good rancher.

When my dad died, Miles took it almost as hard as I did. We had our first fistfight as two angry teenage boys who needed to get out all the hate we had towards the unjust world. We pointed it at one another for a total of five minutesbefore Callie Rose started yelling at us and sprayed our feral spirits down with the water hose.

Every important memory I’d ever had was with Miles.

“And it’ll always be your home,” I replied. “I just wanted you to know how much I appreciate what you did, taking all this on by yourself. I know it wasn’t easy and there’s not a whole lot I can do to repay you for that.”

He rested his hand on my shoulder. “Just make sure I always have a chair on this porch and that will be repayment enough, brother.”

I smiled, feeling the heaviness in my chest dissipate. “That I can do.”

We sat in silence for a few moments before I leaned forward, my clasped hands falling between my legs.

“How’s Callie Rose’s orchard coming along?” he asked.

“It’s fucking impressive. She’s taken really good care of it and we were able to get all the wires set up last week, so she should be good to go for a while.”

“That’s awesome. I guess she has some pretty big plans for it, huh?”

“Yeah. She wants to eventually build a large barn to host wine tastings and maybe some smaller weddings. It’ll be a few years before she gets it up and running, but I know once she gets the vines healthy enough to produce wine, it’ll be a big hit.”

“I think she told me the closest vineyard is about an hour away.”

“She told me that too. All the biddies and fancy folk will love having a winery close to town. The perfect place forthem to spend all that cash since there’s not a place to do it downtown. Joanne’s Tavern isn’t exactly the place those people want to spend their Saturday afternoons.”

Miles chuckled, extending his legs out so he pushed the rocking chair all the way back. “We’ll have to make sure Callie Rose puts a decent price on those bottles when she gets started.”

“Oh, I’ll make sure of that.”

Miles pulled his legs in and leaned forward to look at me. “Speaking of rich folk…Callie Rose told me about LeRoy being back in town.” His gaze was steady and I already knew the question he had before he asked it. “Why didn’t you say anything to me after she told you?”

I stretched my arms out and interlaced my hands behind my head before leaning back in the chair. With a deep breath, I tried to still the anger that always had a habit of immediately rising to the surface at the mention of LeRoy Cummings.

“Honestly, I just wanted to forget about it. I’ve avoided going to town ever since she told me last week because the thought of running into him makes me so damn angry, I worry about what I might do if I see him. It’s not exactly the state I want to be in, but here we are.”

Miles took a moment looking out at the fields before he turned back to me. “What do you think it will take to forgive him?”

“Forgive him?” I spat.

“Yes,” he answered, a shadow passing over his face.

“Why the hell would I forgive him? He put me away for ten years, Miles.”

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