Page 45 of The Cowboy's Best Friend

“Your mother thought I was a bad bet,” Zeke said into the silence.

Boone blinked, banishing his teenage memories at once. “What?”

Zeke nodded sagely. “Widower. Single father. So many red flags, according to her, that I might as well be a crimson tide.”

Boone laughed despite himself. “That does sound like mom.”

“She didn’t want to take a chance on me.” Zeke shrugged, and looked almost philosophical—an expression that Boone knew made his mother start in with her dark mutterings. “It took some convincing on my part. A lot of convincing to even get her in the game. What I’m trying to say is that there’s nothing wrong with a crooked path to get where you’re going. You get there all the same.”

Boone sat with that. He picked up one of the spurs that his father had made into art and looked at it from every angle. Unlike some of his family, it didn’t surprise him at all that this gruff, down to earth man had an artist inside of him. Somehow, it fit.

He had always seemed magical to Boone.

“I told her that we wouldn’t be able to go back, but that doesn’t mean that there’s a way forward,” he told Zeke, not looking up.

Confessions were always better when they were delivered from a distance.

“I get it,” Zeke agreed, warmly. “Got a little buyer’s remorse, do you?”

Boone’s head snapped up. “What?”

“It makes sense,” Zeke said placidly. “A man spends half his life building something up in his head, only stands to reason that when he gets it, might be a little bit of a letdown.”

“Yeah,” Boone drawled that out, shaking his head. “That’s not the case. At all.”

His father’s gaze sharpened. “So again I have to ask, why not put a label on it? Why not call it what it is?”

“Why hurry?” Boone shot right back. “There’s no rush. It’s been a lifetime already. What’s a whole summer, at the very least?”

“You think you have so much time,” Zeke told him, quietly. “We all think we have years and years and years. We think that forever really means forever, but if you’re lucky, it’s maybe a few decades. That might seem like a lot when you’re young, but it’s not. I promise you, it’s not.”

Boone ran a hand over his face. He thought about his father’s first wife, the lovely Alice, who was his older brothers’ mother and who had never been hidden away or whispered about in their house. It wasn’t until Boone was older that he’d realized how extraordinary his own mother was, to have included Alice in everything, even with the boys that weren’t hers. Boone and Knox pretty much thought of Alice as a favorite aunt.

And that was only one of the losses Zeke could be referencing now.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” he managed to say “Running out of time has got to feel—”

“I’m not dying,” Zeke said impatiently, and his gaze stayed hard on Boone’s. “No more than anyone else, anyway. While it’s true that I could drop dead at any time, so could you.” When Boone stared at him without comprehension, his father grunted. “I wanted my sons settled and some grandchildren to play with, so I did what I had to do.”

It still took Boone an excessive amount of time to process what he was hearing.

Boone couldn’t make sense of this. “You lied?”

“I did and I would again,” Zeke replied easily. “I sleep like a baby, before you ask. And I’ll also thank you to keep this information to yourself, because I have a feeling your younger brother is going to be a harder nut to crack.”

Boone was fairly sure his mouth was hanging open, though when he checked, it seemed that he’d managed to keep it shut. But itfeltlike he was never going to feel less winded than this. Itfeltlike his father had socked him a good one, straight to the eye.

“I can’t believe I’m hearing this.” Boone couldn’t figure out how to say what needed to be said. His ears were ringing. “You lied to all of us. You told us you had a year to live.”

“And look at me, defying expectations,” Zeke said. And even laughed.

Helaughed.

“You pretended to be sick!” Boone said, maybe a little loudly.

“I did,” Zeke agreed, and then he leaned closer. “And I also knew that when you found out, you’d be the one to take it the hardest, because you take honesty so seriously.”

Like that was a bad thing?

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