The broken boy - healed by innocence

What’s with Chase

*Cooper*

Faith Moonshadow has a habit of speaking her mind and taking me by surprise. Based on the

speed and force behind the punch, she has been saving it up for six long years suddenly all those months away seem an eternity and seeing her again is a balm to my soul.

My laughter is a bark, filled with pain and a bit of self-loathing. "I deserved that."

"I wouldn't have hit you if you didn't. Why did you leave, Cooper?"

"You know why, Faith." I say softly.

Her cheeks flame red. "I was drunk."

I shake my head, struggling not to drop my gaze to the toes of my boots. "I wasn't."

Thank the Goddess for that, because otherwise, there would be a hell of a lot more friction between us now.

"I hadn't expected anyone to be meeting me here," I say. If I had known she would greet me, I could have prepared myself a bit more, although I knew eventually we would cross paths. I hoped for later, at the ranch, without witnesses and gawking strangers. For some reason, I expected tears, but the she-wolf standing before me now isn't the girl I walked out on.

She is wearing a dress of navy blue with a narrow skirt that doesn't leave me guessing at the width of her hips. They have broadened a bit over the years, but then she has a little more meat on her everywhere.

Suddenly, the awkwardness is back because I shouldn't be noticing all that, shouldn't notice how maturity has added grace to her features, or how grateful I am that the buttons go clear to her throat and that her puffed sleeves narrow at her elbow and travel down to her wrists, so I can't skim my gaze over her bared flesh.

At a jaunty angle, she wears a small bonnet with light blue flowers, and I don't want to think about removing it and unpinning her ebony hair to see if it's as long as it was when I left.

"The buggy's over here," she says, as though acutely aware of the discomfort threatening to resettle between us.

"Let me get my horse. He's in the cattle car." I tell her.

She half rolls her eyes, "Trust you to go to the trouble of bringing your horse when Uncle Wade could provide you with one easily enough."

Wade Moonshadow has made his living breeding, raising, and selling horses. I figure few in the state don't have at least one stallion, mare, or gelding that came from Moonshadow stock, including the one that's waiting for me.

"Why leave a good horse behind?" Especially when the stallion and I are comfortable with each other, and know each other's quirks. I bend down to retrieve my saddle.

"Cooper Rawley!"

I barely have time to plant my feet and prepare myself before Maggie May Moonshadow has launched herself at me. I catch her and swing her around, relishing the tight band her arms make as they circle my neck, sending my hat flying. Wade's oldest daughter has taken after her mother, small and petite. If I hadn't known how stubborn and determined she could be, I might have feared I could break her, towering over her as I do.

"Put me down, you fool. I'm not a little girl anymore." She laughs.

She certainly isn't, but I knew that before I left. I do as ordered, then reach down, snatch up my hat, and settle it back on my head, grateful some things never change. Based on what I think my age is, she's five years younger than I am, had clung to my shirttails until Faith had come along and become our little shadow.

"Brat," I grouse, teasing her with the pet name I had bestowed upon her when we were kids, gamely taking the smack to my shoulder she delivers before stepping back.

The hem of her slim black skirt dusts her ankles, and a neat black bow is knotted at the collar of her white shirtwaist. Atop her pinned-up blond hair sits a small, undecorated black hat, that of a she-wolf with a mission. Her green eyes twinkle. "I was afraid I was going to miss you."

"How did you even know I was coming in?" A stupid question in retrospect. The members of this family keep no secrets from one another, which is the reason I always hold my own close.

She gives me a pointet look. "I'm a reporter. It's my business to know what's happening around here. The family is going to give you a chance to settle in tonight, then we will all be over for dinner tomorrow."

"I'm looking forward to it." And I mean it. The Moonshadow clan is an immense, rowdy, rambunctious group of people who know how to make a person feel right at home.

Reaching out, her brow furrowed, sadness mirrored in her eyes, she clutches my arm, her fingers creating shallow dents in my jacket. "I'm so sorry about Uncle Chase."

My gut clenches as though she delivered the words along with a solid blow to my midsection. A cold shiver of dread skitters up my spine. I haven't experienced this level of trepidation since I was a boy and had been unable to defend myself. "Chase? What happened to Chase?"

Her eyes widen with alarm, she looks at Faith. "Y'all didn't tell him?"

"Ma didn't want him worrying when it wouldn't change anything," Faith says, her face a mask of guilt.

"What the hell is going on, Faith?" I demand, watching as emotions war over her features whether to be belligerent because of my tone or sympathetic to it… but I also spot the worry, the concern, and maybe even a measure of fear. She crosses her arms over her chest as though needing to gird herself against whatever is going to roll off her tongue.

She sighs, "Pa's been having some pains in his chest. You know they have to be bad for him to mention them to anyone. Doc thinks it's his heart. Pa thinks it's something he ate. But he passed out on the range a few days ago. Doc says he has to take it easy."

Which is the reason I had been sent the telegram… because I am well and truly needed here. Suddenly, I'm hit with guilt for ever leaving in the first place. "I will get my horse."

I say my good-byes to Maggie before reaching down to snag my saddle. With long strides that eat up the distance between me and the rear of the train, I approach the pinto that has already been unloaded for me. I've always been partial to the spotted ponies ever since the Moonshadow brothers gave me one the first Christmas I spent with them more than a quarter of a century earlier.

This latest, Shadow, I had gotten from Wade shortly before I left. I flip two bits to the station attendant before taking hold of the bridle. "Thanks, Charlie."

"Good to have you home, Cooper." He says.

"Good to be home." A bit of a lie as I wish the circumstances were different.

I catch up with Faith, already sitting in the buggy tugging on her gloves, and toss my saddle and saddlebags in the compartment at the back, securing Shadow there.

The vehicle rocks as I climb up onto the bench seat beside the girl who constantly trailed after me when I was a boy. Without thinking, I reach for the reins, my hand brushing against hers as she does the same. We both freeze. I hate our twin reactions because there was a time when she’d nestle her hand snugly in mine, when all I ever wanted was to protect her.

“I can drive,” she says tartly.

“I know you can. I’m just being a gentleman.” I mumble.

She turns her head and holds my gaze. “I have gotten used to doing for myself.”

“You’ve always done for yourself, Faith. You’re the most stubborn gal I ever met. You don’t have to prove anything to me.”

Fire darts out of those dark brown eyes and is quickly extinguished. She primly folds her hands in her lap. “Go on then.”

I don't argue further, don't want to take time for it, but simply snatch up the reins, slap them against the rumps of the two horses, and feel the tension ease a little as we get underway. “I’m anxious to get to the ranch. How bad is Chase really?”

“Why won’t you call him Pa?” She asks.

Because the man I had known as Pa when I was a boy had been a mean, vindictive son of a b***h who had taken advantage of my mother, abducting her from the Shawnee people and getting a child on her that he hadn’t wanted.

Even after all these years, even knowing the man is dead, I still recoil and feel sick to my stomach when memories of him and that time in my life surface. Chase might have raised me, but Chase isn’t my pa. In my eyes, he had always been too big, too bold, as majestic as the land. I have never felt worthy of acknowledging the man as my father. “He’s not my pa,” I say simply.

“But you call our mother Ma.” She points out.

For the longest, I had simply known her as the pretty lady. When she had opened her arms and heart to me, I had gone to her with all that I was, desperate to fill the ache that lingered after my own mother… a kind, gentle soul who had loved me… died. “That’s different.”

“Care to explain how?” She asks.

“Not really. How bad off is Chase?” I ask again.

She sighs heavily, obviously not pleased with my response or dogged determination to get back on topic, and I almost smile because she has always had far less patience with me than I have had with her.

“Mostly he is just ornery because the doc doesn’t want him doing anything strenuous. You know Pa. I don’t think he’s ever sat still for a moment in his life.” She says.

Except for the time when he had almost died, but that was before Faith had come along.

“Is he sitting still?” I ask.

“Mostly he is wandering through the house, but at least he is not out riding or running the range. He was by himself when he toppled from his horse. We don’t know how long it was before someone ran across him.” She says.

Once more, my gut tightens. I don’t want to think about Chase passing over to the great beyond. As though sensing the direction of my thoughts, Faith pats my knee. “He claimed it was just the heat and maybe it was. To look at him, you wouldn’t know anything had happened.”

But something significant happened, and I was not there because of the she-wolf sitting beside me. Inappropriate thoughts and feelings have blossomed for her, and I'm not sure I can keep them in check. When she challenged me one night, I realized my restraint was thinly tethered and could easily snap. Where would we be then?

I have grown up in the bosom of her family, knowing myself not to be worthy of her. So I had left. To protect her, to protect myself. Yet I can't tell her all that. Instead, I settle into mentally berating and beating myself up for making myself even more unworthy by not staying and being the man I need to be, the man Chase Moonshadow has raised me to be.

Glancing over at her, I am struck by how much I have missed her, how very little I know about what has transpired with her since I left. It seems no matter how far or fast I travel, she is always there.

During the years I have been gone, I have only ever written letters to Ma, received news from her. Whenever I arrive at the next town, I send her a telegram to let her know I'm doing all right and a postcard to give her a sense of my surroundings.

It became easier three years ago, when Alpha Congress authorized using half of the back of the postcard for scrawling notes. I no longer had to sit down and write out a lengthy letter to her. A few lines, short and sweet, is all I needed to keep her apprised of my situation.

"What are you doing these days, Faith? Your oil wells come in?" After Spindletop, she had been optimistic they might find oil on some of the Moonshadow pack land and has begun working with oilmen who have the skills to help her locate it.

"They never amounted to much," she says. "I lost interest in them. These days I'm mostly just looking after the ranch."

I'm not surprised she is in charge of the pack. She's the logical choice, and will inherit all of it someday. "How's that going?"

She latches on to the opportunity to talk about something other than ourselves, to wax on about the cattle, the goings-on with the men, the ones who have passed, the ones who have retired. Listening with interest, absorbing the sound of her voice, warms me in ways nothing else does.