“Yeah,” Brandon sighed. “Yeah.”
“So you don’t wanna leave,” Alejo said. “I don’t, either.”
“Which means we’re just stuck.”
“Fun,” Alejo said. He laughed, and it was as quiet and easy as Brandon remembered. “I assume you’re telling me all this for a reason?”
“I…” Brandon rubbed the back of his neck. Talking was hard, and putting words to the unidentified years of tumult in his gut was even harder. What did he want? There was a reason he’d chased Alejo out here, but now that he was standing here in the rain, he couldn’t remember. The dark loneliness that always lingered in the ground under him was quiet around Alejo. “I remember you from before all this. You were … I don’t know. Everyone was always happy around you. You paid attention. It always felt like you actually cared.”
Alejo laughed. “Discriminated against one second and hit on the next. Snakebite is really full of surprises.”
Brandon flushed. “Oh, no, I wasn’t—”
“I wish you were,” Alejo said. His dark eyes warmed, just slightly. “If I don’t get murdered outside my motel room, let’s get drinks sometime.”
“I’d…” Brandon steeled himself. “I’d like that.”
And from there, it was as easy as breathing.
It had never seemed easy to Brandon before. In fact, falling in love had seemed like the most impossible thing in the world. He’d built fortresses on the concept of being alone; loneliness was his blood, his bones, his heartbeat. Without it, he wasn’t sure who Brandon Woodley even was.
But Alejo didn’t mind. On their first night out, he told Brandon he dreamed of a family and a house with a porch and a garden where he could grow “one good tomato.” On their second date, he held Brandon’s hand and asked if he thought there was anywhere in Snakebite that they could carve out for themselves. Brandon didn’t know the answer to that. After their third time out, Alejo walked him to his door, slipped a hand into his back pocket, and kissed him square on the mouth. Kissed him like he meant it. Like he wanted to.
Maybe it was a dream. Whatever it was, it didn’t belong anywhere near Brandon’s world. None of it was right. Brandon was Brandon—he was a stone knocking ceaselessly against the lake floor. He hadn’t expected Alejo to reach in and pluck him from the water like it was nothing. He hadn’t expected to feel the sun. Alejo pulled him to freedom and it terrified Brandon how easily he’d done it.
Outside, there was a swarm of people who hated them. Under his feet, there was a darkness that crept into Brandon’s bones. But for a moment, he wasn’t alone. The shadows were quiet.
Now that he knew what it felt like to be loved, he could never go back.
2002
It was strange how much could change over a single year.
Brandon was by himself and then he wasn’t. Alejo had a family and then it was gone. They were together, but they were completely alone.
Rumors about Brandon and Alejo curled through Snakebite like weeds, choking out everything else. For someone who’d been a ghost his whole life, it was a strange thing being the name on everyone’s tongues. Within a month, a new foreman was hired at Barton Lumber and his first order of business was cutting Brandon loose to save the face of the company. Without money, without allies, without family, Brandon was lost.
But heroes came from surprising places.
Their hero came in the form of the newly minted head of Barton Ranch. It was Tammy Barton, married and divorced with a blond infant permanently glued to her hip. It was Tammy who just happened to review her family’s books and find a patch of land her father had bought across the lake decades earlier. Who said, in her typical apathetic drawl, If you guys want the land, you can have it. Build something on it, I don’t care. I’m honestly just tired of seeing you around here.