that. By the time Alex had met him, his mother had been sick for most of his life. They’d both enlisted in the military at eighteen. And when they were twenty-two Jason’s mother had passed away.
When Jason’s father died, he’d left the military for a year, returning home to take care of his sister. But once Clara had reached age, he’d enlisted again. Ultimately, Alex and Jason had found themselves on the same base over in Afghanistan. At first, he had imagined it would be a good thing to be out there with his buddy. A guy who had his back.
Of course, now he would give a hell of a lot to make sure that Jason was never there. Or to take his place if it were possible.
Jason had more than had his back. Jason had been a friend, a brother Alex had never deserved.
On summers spent in Copper Ridge Jason had been the one to bring him into a group of friends. To treat him like he belonged. His own father hadn’t had an interest in him. A group of strangers actually wanting to spend time with him had been healing in a way he hadn’t known he needed.
And it had been because of Jason.
He stopped thinking about his friend then. About the differences between him and his sister. Jason with his dark hair and gray eyes, and Clara with her pale beauty and sparkling baby blues.
He had to focus on the present. Focus on this fence.
“I suppose I could help,” Clara said, looking stubborn.
“Better get some work gloves. You don’t want to tear up your hands.”
She rolled her eyes. “I do know how to do basic ranch work, Alex. I grew up here.” She walked to a wooden box that was up against the wall and opened it, taking out a pair of leather gloves and smacking them against the edge of the box. “I do not need to put my hand in there and grab a spider,” she muttered, smacking them a few more times.
Then she put them on, curling her fingers as if to signal her readiness.
“No spider?” he asked.
“Am I fetal and weeping on the floor and threatening to amputate my own hand?”
“Doesn’t look like it.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “Then no.”
“Excellent,” he said.
He walked over to one end of coiled-up fence length and picked it up. She grabbed the other. Granted, she wasn’t contributing a whole lot, but there was something he enjoyed about goading her into helping out. They lifted the fencing into the back of the truck, then repeated the process with the next roll of metal. When they finished with the fencing, they began to move the posts. They worked in silence, and there was something oddly companionable about it.
He looked up, and noticed that some pale wisps of hair had escaped the braid, falling into her face. As they worked, she would stop and shake her head sometimes, trying to flick the hair out of her eyes. But she never stopped. Never stopped working. Never asked for a break. Not even to fix her hair.
Clara was soft in a great many ways, and she was hurting. That much was obvious. But she was also tough. Determined and stubborn. A whole host of big, deep things were contained in that petite, compact frame.
“Okay, that’s enough for now,” he said, when they had the bed of the truck mostly full. “We can drive out and get the lay of the place. Start replacing some of the fencing. Should go pretty quick since we don’t have to dig new post holes.”
“Right,” she echoed. Still wearing the leather work gloves, she opened the passenger-side door of the truck and got in. She grabbed hold of the handle just above the window, as if she were bracing herself for a bumpy ride. And right then she looked like some kind of ranching wet dream. Pretty and soft, but ready to work with those gloves and that very practical flannel top.
He nearly grabbed a wire cutter to cut his thumb—anything to redirect that line of thinking.
He got into the truck and started it, hoping she wouldn’t notice his momentary distraction. His moment of lecherousness.
She didn’t, and the fact that she didn’t was a testament to just how messed up it was that he would think of her in any way other than as Jason’s little sister.
“So...do you have some kind of rancher fantasy or something?” she asked after they’d been driving along the dirt road for a few moments.
Judging by the way he’d been reacting to her, he apparently did have some kind of rancher fantasy, but presumably not the kind she was asking about.
“No,” he responded. “But I made my life about the military. About brotherhood. That’s what Jason and I had. Brotherhood. You don’t leave a fallen brother, Clara. You don’t.” He kept his mind purposefully blank when he spoke the words, because he didn’t want to relive that moment. Didn’t want to see it in his mind. “And when he’s gone, when you can’t help him anymore, you do what you can for those he left behind. It’s the right thing to do.”
He heard her swallow, looked over and saw a tear slide down her cheek.
“I really do miss him,” she said, her voice soft.
“Me too,” Alex said. “He was the first friend I made here during the summers I spent with my grandpa. Do you remember that red Jeep of his?”
“Yes,” she said.
“We used to stand up in the back while he drove.”
“That was stupid,” she said.
“Yeah. We were stupid. We were sixteen.” Invincible. Damn. Why hadn’t Jason been invincible?
“It’s funny,” Clara said. “I would go so long without seeing him while he was on deployment. And I was kind of used to that. He joined the military so long ago, when I was so young. And when our parents... Well, he came back for a while. And that was nice, but I’m used to doing things on my own, and when he left again, I just got accustomed to it all over again. But knowing he won’t come back is different. It feels different. It’s so final. Sometimes I try to pretend he’s just on a really long deployment.” She took a deep, choking breath. “That he’s just still out there riding around in a Jeep, looking badass.”
He didn’t know how to do this. He didn’t know how to be there for someone. But he was the only one who was here for Clara. The only one who was left. So that meant he had to step up.
He looked out the windshield, eyes fixed on the dirt road. “The good news is,” he said, speaking slowly, “that he’s doing something better than that right now, I’m sure. Because trust me, a guy like that gets ushered right into the good part of heaven.”
Clara laughed, the sound shaky. “You think so?”
He wanted to think so.
“Oh yeah,” Alex said. “God probably showed him where all the good fishing holes are. And he’s not driving around some barren desert breathing in dust and hoping today is not the day you get mortared. No. He’s not worried about that anymore.”
Alex fought to keep his throat from closing up, to keep a wall of emotion from crushing him beneath its weight.
