Chapter 42: Brothers in Law
The late afternoon sun bled orange and purple across the western hills, casting long, distorted shadows from the stable blocks. Damien stood by the infinity pool, its turquoise water mirroring the bruised sky, a cut-crystal tumbler of bourbon dangling from his fingers.He was waiting. He’d seen the look Beth had given him before retreating to her study—a look that was equal parts promise and postponement.He could be patient. He’d been patient for years.The scrape of a boot heel on flagstone made him turn. Jackson stood a few feet away, his posture the same relaxed alertness it always was, his eyes scanning the perimeter before settling on Damien. He looked like the land itself: worn denim, a faded plaid shirt rolled to the elbows, skin tanned to leather by a lifetime of sun.A man built from silence and slow-blinking assessment.
“Rossi,” Jackson said, a simple acknowledgment.
“Jack.” Damien took a slow sip, the liquor burning a warm path down his throat.“Come to throw me off the property? I’d almost be disappointed if you didn’t try at least once per visit.”
A faint smile, more a twitch of the mustache, touched Jackson’s mouth.“Thought about it. Daily, for a good long while.” He walked over to the pool’s edge, looking not at the water but at the darkening silhouettes of the live oaks in the distance.“Beth still pissed at me for that contingency plan. The one with you.”
Damien swirled the amber liquid in his glass. “She has a long memory for betrayal. Short one for apologies, unless they’re… thoroughly demonstrated.”
“She’ll come around on me. She knows why I did it.” Jackson’s voice was low, gravelly.“Wasn’t about trustin’ you. Was about protectin’ her.From everything.Even from herself.”
“I know.” And Damien did. In the bleak, angry aftermath of the divorce, when Beth was all sharp edges and cold fury, Jackson had come to him.Not as a friend, but as a force of nature. He’d laid out a brutal, simple plan: if Damien ever used his world to hurt Beth, if he ever leveraged their past to harm her future, there would be a price.A permanent one. It was the only time Jackson had ever threatened him directly.It was also the moment Damien had respected him the most.
“Thing is,” Jackson continued, picking a piece of invisible lint from his sleeve, “I never figured you for the type to hurt her on purpose.Not like that. Reckless, stupid, possessive… sure.But malicious?” He shook his head. “Saw how you looked at her even when you were screwin’ it all up. Same way a man looks at water in a desert.”
The analogy hung in the cooling air. Damien felt it hit something raw and true inside him.He said nothing.
Jackson turned to face him fully, his gaze direct and unsettlingly clear.“I get that.The… fear of it. Of being the drought.”
Damien leaned back against the glass balustrade. “This isn’t about Beth and me anymore, is it?”
A long pause. A cicada started its electric whine in a nearby juniper, then fell silent. “Dove,” Jackson said, the name exhaled like a secret he’d been holding for decades.
“Ah.”
“Been walkin’ a line so long I’ve worn a trench in the earth.” Jackson looked down at his own hands, at the scars and calluses woven across his knuckles.“Every day.For fifteen years. Since the day I realized she wasn’t just my best friend’s little sister, but… everything.”
Damien listened, the master of a thousand chaotic schemes rendered silent by this simple, monumental confession. He saw the man’s struggle, the sheer weight of years of unspoken words. It was a mirror, but clearer.His own passion for Beth had always been a wildfire, impossible to hide. Jackson’s was a deep aquifer, unseen, powering everything but never breaking the surface.
“You think you’ll hurt her,” Damien stated.
“I know I will.” Jackson’s head lifted, his eyes sharp.“Not on purpose. But this life, this ranch, the things we do… it’s hard ground.I’m hard ground.She deserves… softness.Light. Not a man whose hands are this dirty.” He held them up, then let them fall back to his sides. “But watchin’ you… seein’ you claw your way back from hell just for a chance to mess it all up again…”
“Thanks,” Damien said dryly.
“You love her out loud,” Jackson cut in, his voice gaining a rare intensity. “You always have.Even when it was ugly.Even when it was wrong.It was a fact. Like weather.She never doubted its existence.” He took a step closer. “That’s what I’m askin’.How do you… how do you just say it? How do you risk the whole damn world you’ve built with someone on the chance they might feel the same, when silence has kept that world standing?”
The honest question, from this rock of a man, disarmed Damien completely. He finished his bourbon, set the glass down on the stone with a soft click.“You don’t risk the world, Jack,” Damien said quietly. “You realize the world you’ve built is her.The silence isn’t holding it up. It’s just… the quiet before the storm.And the storm’s already here. You’re just the only one not getting wet.” He met Jackson’s steady gaze. “You think my way was brave?It was desperate.I’m a desperate man. You’re a steady one.Maybe Dove doesn’t need another wildfire. Maybe she needs a foundation that finally speaks.”
Jackson stared at him, the twilight deepening the lines on his face. He absorbed the words, turning them over like river stones in his mind.
“She thinks you don’t feel it,” Damien added.“She’s terrified of being wrong. Of ruining what you have.”
A flicker of something—pain, hope—crossed Jackson’s features. “She said that?”
“In so many words.” Damien pushed off the balustrade.“My advice? Don’t make a grand gesture. That’s my lane, and it’s full of potholes.Just tell her the truth.One true thing. See what happens next.”
Jackson was silent for a full minute.The first stars began to pierce the velvety blue overhead. Finally, he gave a slow, single nod. “One true thing,” he repeated, as if testing the weight of it.He turned to leave, then stopped.“She’ll forgive you, you know. Beth.For the old sins. Not all of ‘em, but the ones that matter.”
“I know,” Damien said.“I’m working on the new ones.”
Jackson almost smiled again. Then he walked away, his boots making no sound on the stone, melting into the gathering dusk toward the barns, toward the main house, toward Dove.
Damien picked up his empty glass, the condensation cool against his palm. He looked up at Beth’s study window, where a warm rectangle of light now glowed against the darkening sky.Inside, his desert.His only reason for rain. He pulled out his phone, thumbed a quick text.
Told your brother you’d forgive him.Told your other brother to stop being an idiot.My quota for good deeds is spent. Your turn.Come downstairs.He waited, watching the window. A moment later, his phone buzzed.I’m reviewing irrigation reports.He smiled, typing faster.Liar. Your shadow just moved away from the window.The three dots bounced. Then:
Give me five minutes.And pour me a drink.The good stuff.
Damien’s smile widened, a genuine, unguarded thing he saved for her alone. He turned back toward the bar, the ice clinking a soft promise in the quiet Texas night. Far off, near the stables, he saw Jackson’s broad silhouette pause under a security light, head tilted up toward Dove’s apartment above the old tack room.He was just standing there.Still as a stone. But for the first time, Damien thought, he looked ready to move.