Free Crazy Little Thing Called Love by Jess Bryant

in the kid. Even if she had been, outing
her sick Daddy hadn’t done Riley any favors. He’d have grinned at
the impossibility of his youngest brother even getting close to a
chance with a woman like her if it didn’t also make him
irrationally annoyed.
    “I’m going to head out. You want to go?”
    “Nah. Think I’ll have another beer.” He shook
his head.
    The idea of going back to the ranch still
wasn’t sitting well with him. He’d driven around for half an hour
earlier before his anger subsided and he retreated to the house to
apologize to his mother. She’d been long gone though so he’d
showered, changed and left again as quickly as he could.
    “Trolling? Want a wingman?”
    He snorted. The only woman in the room he’d
had even a slight interest in seeing naked his little brother had
just driven from the premises in a cloud of tears. He didn’t need
any more help in that department.
    “Nah, just a beer and I’ll head that
way.”
    Riley nodded and disappeared into the crowd
while he sucked down the last of his beer and headed to the bar for
another. He needed some time away from the ranch to think. He had
no intention of walking away from it but the more he had time to
think the more he wondered if it wasn’t the right decision to let
his brothers take the reins and guide the future.
    He could climb atop a stool and fend off the
advances of women he had no interest in or he could get out of
dodge. He ordered a bottle of water, washed it down and headed out
once he was sure Riley was long gone. He slipped into his Ford and
flipped on the radio at the same time he turned up the music and
rolled the windows down.
    There was nothing like the feeling of freedom
he got rolling across the highway just a little bit faster than the
speed limit allowed. It had always been that way. He liked the
freedom, though he’d never really felt free, not since he was a
teenager and the world was set in front of him like a pearl.
    It’d closed on him but he didn’t blame
anybody in particular for that. People died every day. People lost
their loved ones all the time. His dad had died and he’d stepped
up. It was just the way life worked out.
    He didn’t hate his life. He loved Fate. He
didn’t see himself ever living anywhere else. He never had. But the
fact he’d been given less of a choice in it had always irked
him.
    As long as he stayed busy, as long as he
worked and did what was expected it never overpowered him so that’s
what he did. If he was busy counting cattle, branding and working
he didn’t have to think about what he’d rather be doing. He liked
it that way.
    It was the slower times, times like now when
the ranch practically ran itself that he started to question his
life plan, that he started to get restless. That was probably a
decent enough reason for why he’d started carving up his childhood
home. It didn’t have to mean more than that.
    He caught sight of the night sky and felt at
home for the first time in a few days. Fate was always going to be
his home. This place with its silly gossip and small-town drama was
where he belonged. Hitting the road always reinforced that.
    Sometimes, when he set out for a drive in the
dead of night, needing to move, needing to be anywhere but sitting
still and thinking his thoughts drifted to that day. He’d barely
been eighteen and just a senior in high school when the call came
over the intercom that the principal wanted to see him. He’d been
in that office a half dozen times but he hadn’t skipped school or
been caught smoking in the bathroom in a while so he’d wrongly
assumed it had something to do with one of his brothers. Principal
Rangier had been the one to tell him to collect his things and go
to the hospital. It was his father.
    The rest of that day was a blur. Riley crying
in the hallway of the hospital. His mother collapsing when the
doctor gave them the horrible news. Devin turning to stone before
his eyes and simply sinking into a chair,