Six
Derrick
The years passed, and eventually, Derrick’s heart healed. He had been brutally dumped, but that happened. He stayed away from home as much as possible and, when it wasn’t possible, he made sure to keep his visits brief and stayed away from Logan, who seemed only too happy to help him out with that.
It worked out. He built a life for himself, one that had very little to do with the ranch. He was happier that way, among people who were as cerebral as he was. He had finished pre-med, and next year, he would be going to medical school. He had already been accepted.
He could have gone his whole life with nothing more than duty visits back home. Yes, he had ties back on the ranch, he had never fully managed to shake the dust of the place from his feet, unlike his older brother Wyatt, but that was fine. The point was, he was over whatever ridiculous schoolboy crush that he had had on Logan.
He could have gone his whole life, but as it turned out, he didn’t. And it was all because of a phone call.
It came in when he was studying, not that that was surprising. He was pretty much always studying. At least he was in his room, and not in one of the campus libraries. He and Jessica were quizzing each other, as they did at least a few times a week, when his phone chimed cheerfully at him.
Only it wasn’t just a chime, the one that announced that he had a new text or an email. It was his ringtone, which he was pretty sure he hadn’t heard in months, if not years. The text, he could have ignored, but if someone was calling him, there was a strong chance that it was something major going on.
“Mal?” he said, surprised as the number came up on his call display. He and his oldest brother were not the best of friends, by any stretch of the imagination. Malcolm couldn’t understand why Derrick would choose to go away, and Derrick couldn’t get why Malcolm would be so devoted to staying on the ranch.
“It’s Dad,” Malcolm told him, not wasting any time in the greetings which would have come out overly formal and stilted between them anyway. “He’s sick.”
Derrick swallowed around the lump which suddenly rose in his throat. He closed his eyes, forgetting about studying, about Jessica, about everything else. His father was sick, and Malcolm wouldn’t call if it were just something like a cold. If Malcolm said that John Hart was sick, that meant it was something huge. Malcolm wouldn’t call about anything else.
“What is it?” Derrick finally managed to speak around the lump in his throat.
“Cancer. Pancreatic cancer,” Malcolm replied, and Derrick winced, tears springing to his eyes. He wasn’t a doctor yet, but he knew enough to know that, while cancer was never a good thing, some were worse than others. And pancreatic cancer didn’t have a high survival rate. He would look up exact numbers later because he was a glutton for punishment, but he remembered that much without needing to look.
“I’ll be there as soon as my semester is over,” Derrick told his brother. There was no question in his mind that he needed to be there, but he only had a few more weeks of school. He had to take his finals, or he would have to repeat the classes he had taken this term.
Malcolm didn’t like that. Derrick could tell from the long silence which stretched out between them, and then the frigid chill in Malcolm’s voice when he spoke, that he had offended his older brother. He never meant to do it, but it kept happening, anyway.
“Don’t worry about it. I know you’re busy. Don’t put yourself out or anything,” Malcolm said, and then he ended the connection before Derrick could try to explain. His brother had never been to college, he clearly didn’t understand the time commitment, but if Derrick could just explain to him, he knew that his brother would understand.
There was no question of his not going, of course. So he would talk to his brother in person, where the call couldn’t just be disconnected. He sighed as he lowered his phone and closed his eyes. His father had cancer. Malcolm might think that that meant nothing to Derrick, but it was the farthest thing from the truth.
The moment his last exam was taken, he would be heading back to Kansas, heading home. God help him, he would be going back to Logan, though he had done everything in his power to avoid that.
It had been a long time, though. Years. Surely he and Logan had both grown enough that they could be in the same place as each other without it being too awkward. Besides, Derrick was totally over Logan.
Derrick had grown in the time they’d been apart—changed. He was no longer the boy who had been so desperate for Logan, his big brother’s best friend, to notice him. He didn’t idolize the man anymore. If anything, he pitied Logan, who had nothing but life as a ranch hand to look forward to.
So let Logan try to start something. He had broken Derrick’s tender heart once upon a time, and Derrick had promised to keep his heart safe ever since then. It was a promise he had kept, and if Logan tried to worm his way back in there, Derrick would have some choice words for him.
Of course, Logan likely wouldn’t even try. After all, he had been the one to do the leaving, not Derrick. So, resolute, Derrick turned back to his textbooks and his laptop and ignored the question in Jessica’s blue eyes.
* * *
Derrick really, truly realized that he had been gone for a long time when the first person that he ran into was someone that he didn’t even recognize. A man who might be wearing jeans but who seemed like he would somehow be more comfortable in a suit. It was the way he stood or something—the slightly arrogant look in his big brown eyes. He was stumbling out of a cab, reeking of alcohol, and he looked every bit as surprised to see Derrick as Derrick was to see him.
As Derrick wondered what to do, the man looked at him, and his voice might be slurred, but there was nothing wrong with his eyes. The man immediately recognized him as Malcolm’s brother, and then nearly passed out on him as they introduced themselves. His name was Kyle, apparently, and Derrick found himself in a slightly awkward position.
He had only just arrived himself. No one knew that he was even here yet. He didn’t know who this man was, but he clearly knew Malcolm. He was taking a risk, and he knew it, but he shrugged it off and helped Kyle into the house, laying him down on the couch. The poor guy was going to have a hell of a hangover when he woke up, but Derrick wasn’t about to let him just lie in the yard.
He would watch, he decided. Make sure that the man, whoever he was, didn’t get up to anything in case he didn’t belong here. It wouldn’t be bad to watch his breathing, too, just make sure he didn’t have such severe alcohol poisoning that he stopped being able to breathe. It was the best he could do since it was definitely too late at night to ask anyone about this Kyle. Everyone would have been asleep long ago.
Derrick didn’t doze, but he did zone out a little bit. The long hours of the night passed slowly, and footsteps echoed through the house. Someone was awake, Derrick realized. His guess was that it was Malcolm, and he sat up straight, running his fingers through his hair, braced for this encounter with his brother.
Something told him that it wasn’t going to be a pleasant one.
Only it was far worse than he would have thought. The man who came down the stairs was not his broad, stocky, grumpy brother. That actually would have been better than the man who did come down, the tall, sharply handsome, still disheveled from sleep, man who had been in Derrick’s thoughts and, as much as Derrick might like to deny it, his heart, for far too long.
