This Cowboy's Son

The old confusing, crushing amalgam of feelings flooded him—love, hatred, admiration, sorrow, hero worship. Disappointment.

Matt stared at the child on the veranda.

I am a father.

His body couldn’t decide what it wanted to do, whether he should run scared or cry like a baby.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, his voice as cold as the water at the bottom of the well he was drowning in.

“I know you, Matt. You don’t have staying power.” Jenny looked stoic, heartless, so sure in her opinions of him.

“You never gave me the chance,” he said.

“Sorry, Matt. My first responsibility is to Jesse. If that means protecting him from his own father, I’ll do it.”

Matt’s chest burned. She thought so little of him. Who had ever had faith in him? So few people.

Angus. Jenny at one point, but no more.

Maybe he should leave, figure out another way to pay Angus back. But he knew he couldn’t leave.

He had a son.

He shouldn’t have come here. Life was too complicated here, even worse now that he knew about Jesse.

“You can’t tell him,” Jenny said.

“What?”

“You can’t tell him you’re his father.”

Something inside his chest ached. Pride, he guessed, or was it something deeper? Ownership?

“If you tell him and then leave,” Jenny continued, “he’ll be so badly hurt.”

He shouldn’t have come back to Ordinary. And if he’d had any other option, he never would have.

A thought occurred to him. “Wait a minute. You’re marrying Angus. Were you just going to let him become the boy’s surrogate father?”

“Yes. We both know he makes a good one.”

“Why wouldn’t you tell me first before doing that?”

Jenny bit her bottom lip and appeared to be struggling with what she had to say. “I need a dependable man to be Jesse’s father.”

“And I’m not,” Matt said bitterly.

Jenny clenched and unclenched her hands. “No,” she said. “We both know you aren’t.” That hurt.

She must have realized it because she stretched one hand toward him then let it fall. “Angus will be a better father than you. He’s the better man for Jesse, Matt.”

Jenny seemed regretful, but Matt couldn’t stand to look at her a second longer, to stand in the same yard with her. Even if he was a coward at heart, even if she didn’t respect him, she should have told him the truth.

He should have known he had a son.

She shouldn’t be giving his child to another man to raise.

On one level, he barely recognized that he was angry with her for getting pregnant in the first place, for making him feel responsibility when he didn’t want to, as if there hadn’t been two of them having sex that night.

Matt turned his back on Jenny and strode to his truck, angry, afraid, too unsettled to know exactly what he was feeling. Shocked, definitely.

Man, oh, man, he hadn’t been prepared for this kind of problem. Since that scare with Elsa, he’d been really careful with birth control. So what had happened that night with Jenny? He hadn’t given it a single thought—had only felt that he needed her, and that he had to have her.

He’d lost control.

He started the engine, made sure the kid was still sitting on the veranda and then took off down the driveway, not caring how much noise he made. When he hit the highway, he revved the engine and burned rubber.

He didn’t know where he was going, only knew that he had to get away to clear his head.

I am a father.

As Matt neared the turnoff to his parents’ house, he slammed on the brakes, hitting the gravel shoulder in a spray of fine stone and dust, and fishtailing. He missed the dirt road that led into his property.

Breathing hard, he took off his hat and threw it onto the seat beside him.

He didn’t have a clue where he needed to go or what he needed to do, but maybe it was no accident that he’d braked before he’d made any firm decisions.

Putting the truck into reverse, he backed up and turned onto the old road. Rainstorms had washed ruts into the dirt, and the truck bounced off them as he drove.

He approached the house and tried to dredge up a memory, any memory, that wasn’t bad. Not of Jenny and him and their night together, though. That memory was good and bad and insane. At this moment, he didn’t want to think of her, not when he wanted to hurt her so badly for the way she’d hurt him, for what she’d taken from him.

His boots rang loud and hollow on the porch floor, and he sidestepped a hole. The door groaned like an old woman. Then he was inside the house and lost in memories of his childhood.

He closed the door behind him, to keep the bugs out and the really tough memories in. On second thought, he opened it again, hoping against hope that all the memories would fly out, leaving nothing more than a house. But they refused to leave. They buzzed around his head like mosquitoes ready to draw blood.

The stone fireplace still dominated the small living room and open kitchen.

An ancient Christmas tree, brown and desiccated, stood in the far corner. Silver balls and bits of tinsel hung on it. His mother’s last attempt at making this place a home?

Matt held himself rigid, afraid of the emotions that would flood out of him if he let them. They threatened to drown him.

Keep it cool, Matt. Keep it cool.

He spotted a bunch of dust-coated mail on the Formica table by the door. Matt had left it there, unopened, after his parents had died. Other than he and Jenny that one night, no one had been here since then. He flipped through what was left of his parents’ lives.

He picked up one large manila envelope, then stilled. He didn’t have to guess what it was. He already knew. The autopsy. No, thanks. No, no, no. He dropped it back onto the table and stalked into what had been his bedroom. Not one clue to his personality existed in the room—no posters nor CDs nor photos. Nothing. No Matthew Long. He’d spent his adolescence avoiding the homestead.

Kyle’s room had been messy, with football posters on the wall and a computer and his own TV and Playboy magazines under the bed.