Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 83379 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 417(@200wpm)___ 334(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83379 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 417(@200wpm)___ 334(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
I stepped inside the coop and sprinkled feed for the chickens, still thinking about my brother and his little digs. My hand closed into a fist as I remembered the argument that’d broken out around the dinner table after I’d come out to my family three years ago. By that time, Sienna and I had already turned a hundred acres of the ranch into Firefly Farm, which Hunter thought was pretty useless too. Raising cows, goats, and chickens wasn’t “real man’s work” to him, and then hearing we’d taken in rehabbed horses and sometimes entertained kids and families with a makeshift petting zoo in the summers had sent his head spinning.
So breaking the news that I was gay and Sienna was divorcing me was only icing on the cake.
“You’re a regular black sheep of the family,” Hunter had said under his breath.
Sienna always complained I was too passive, that I needed to finally have it out with my jackass brother, but it wasn’t in my nature. I’d learned over the years to keep my storm of emotions neatly tucked inside. Like if I let it all out, I might fall apart at the seams.
My mother and Travis had been stunned at the news I’d delivered like a wallop and sat motionless across the table, staring at me.
“How could this happen?” Mom had asked, as if it were something that had befallen me, like the cancer my daughter had been diagnosed with only a couple of months later.
Damn, the guilt of it, as if my confession had somehow caused it, still ate away at me.
“I was born this way, Mom,” I had responded, knowing it would be a foreign concept to her. Definitely not what they’d taught us in church on Sundays.
My father’s eyes had narrowed in frustration. “Nonsense.”
Hunter had trouble meeting my eye, his face all twisted, which didn’t help our already rocky relationship. We were just too different and always had been. I was closer to Travis, but I was the oldest son and had more riding on my shoulders when it came to my parents’ expectations. Travis and Hunter would probably die with the ranch, but I had always wanted out, and the idea likely went along with how stifled I’d felt about my sexuality.
I had been living a lie and thought I could pull it off, that I could ignore that shameful part of myself forever. I’d been slowly dying inside, but I couldn’t disappoint Sienna, not after we’d had what others called a fairy-tale wedding right out of high school. Christ, we were so young. Too young. But I needed to be the husband she deserved. So I’d put the question of my sexuality on the back burner to give our marriage my all while we worked on opening the farm, and that, at least, brought me solace. The idea that Sienna had the same vision as me, of a smaller patch of land we could call our own. We were friends first in high school, so we had that foundation.
And it had almost worked. I had almost started believing the lie, until one night my urges got the best of me, and she caught me looking at gay porn on my laptop. Something had broken inside me that night, had burst through the surface like a geyser, and I couldn’t live with myself or the secret anymore. And fuck, hurting her had been brutal, and Sienna wanting a divorce was what I’d deserved. But then Ainsley got sick, was diagnosed with leukemia just as we were finalizing the paperwork, and suddenly nothing else mattered.
All bets were off as we desperately clung to each other, to that underpinning of friendship, to help Ainsley fight through it. I’d never forget her night sweats and the bruises under her eyes as she fought off one fever after another.
Once she went into remission fourteen months ago, we agreed to not physically break up our family, while making sure Ainsley understood we were no longer together as a couple. Then we threw ourselves into making the farm what we’d always dreamed. The dairy farm was mutually beneficial to the Carmichael Ranch, at least when it came to trading heifers and calves and harvesting hay, though our numbers never made a dent in their business.
Despite sticking together, we still had our rocky moments, our hurtful arguments, where Sienna admitted that some things made sense to her now that she knew about my sexuality. And fuck if that didn’t make me feel even guiltier. But we had a beautiful child together, and after almost losing her, I had to face up to some hard truths and finally move forward, no matter how shaky those first steps were.
By the time I got back to the house, Ainsley was seated at the breakfast table near George, whose truck I’d spotted parked in his usual spot near the horse stables. He always came inside first to steal a biscuit or two from Marta, our housekeeper, who was currently standing at the stove, whipping up scrambled eggs, Ainsley’s favorite.