Burning Season Read online

  Burning Season

  Rachel Ember

  Copyright © 2021 by Rachel Ember

  All rights reserved.

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  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not meant to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, persons, or organizations is entirely coincidental.

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  ISBN (ebook): 978-1-954950-03-0

  ISBN (print): 978-1-954950-09-2

  Cover Design by Cate Ashwood Designs

  Beta Read by Blue Beta Reading

  Edited by Keren Reed

  Proofread by Shelley Chastagner

  Contents

  Mailing List

  About The Book

  Texas, 1972

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Epilogue

  As the Tallgrass Grows

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Also by Rachel Ember

  Mailing List

  The best way to keep up with Rachel’s writing is by joining her mailing list. Mailing list subscribers also get exclusive content like free short stories and advanced copies of Rachel’s new releases.

  About The Book

  The year is 1972. Dylan Chase is nineteen, and most days he’s lucky enough to ride a tough bronc, have a beer with his friends, and maybe even sleep under the stars on his family’s third-generation cattle ranch.

  Dylan’s life would be perfect if it weren’t for his forbidden itch. An itch he’s only scratched once, with Bo, a hitchhiker he never thought he’d see again. When Bo shows up as the new hire at a neighboring ranch, Dylan is sure his almost-perfect life is about to implode.

  After the calves are driven out to the spring pastures, Bo will move on to California. Dylan just has to hold it together until then…if he can.

  But Bo can soothe a restless horse with a touch and keeps a battered book of poems in his saddle bag. And the more Dylan learns about him, the more he wants Bo—and the less he wants Bo to go, damn the risk.

  Burning Season is the third book in the Wild Ones series, but it can be read as a standalone.

  Texas, 1972

  A mile east of Dallas, at midnight, a distant engine split the silence. Bo watched the headlights pour a widening band of light on the pavement, and squinted as the car shot past. The sound and light faded quickly, leaving him with nothing but his footsteps and the occasional growl from overhead, where building clouds suggested he might get wet before he reached Mesquite.

  When he’d set out, he’d been prepared to walk the entire twelve-mile distance. But now that it looked like rain, he was wishing for a ride. Maybe by tomorrow there’d be a steadier stream of cars putting some wear on the two-year-old pavement of the new highway 635—rodeo fans, a commuter or two—but tonight he had yet to see one traveling east.

  Bo paused to hitch his bag higher on his shoulder and glanced up at the spot where the moon would be if the clouds would get out of its way. Then he took a deep breath and kept walking.

  The next time an engine’s whine and the whir of tires stirred up the lonely quiet, the noise was coming from behind him. Bo turned and stretched out his arm, angling his face away from the headlights’ glare as the car got closer. But it never slowed. Bo felt the breeze of its passing on his face, and caught a glimpse of a late-model, ivory Chevelle.

  He hadn’t gone another twenty steps when the sky started to spit rain. He sighed and ducked his head so his face would be sheltered by the brim of his hat. At least it was a warm April night. He’d get where he was going without catching a chill. But as Charlie liked to say, just because cats could swim didn’t mean they liked water.

  As the rain laid its first layer of wet on the pavement, a stink of oil and whatever was baked into the asphalt rose up in Bo’s nose, seasoned by the sage and juniper of the brush clustered beyond the road’s edge.

  Another car appeared in the westbound lane, going slowly. So slowly, Bo paid attention even though it was going the wrong way. As it drew even with Bo, the car swung into a U-turn and pulled up alongside him. It was a Chevelle, ivory exterior glossy with rain…the same car that had just passed Bo a minute before, going east.

  The passenger door swung open, and Bo barely got a glimpse of a shirtsleeve before the driver pulled back the hand they’d reached across the seat. Bo ducked inside the car, lifting his bag into his lap and smiling at the driver. Faintly illuminated by the glow of the gauges on the car’s dashboard, Bo’s Good Samaritan looked like a teenage kid, freckled and sandy-haired. His unkempt waves fell past his chin, and he wore a polyester shirt with a sheen and an oversize collar.

  They were just outside Dallas, not some backwater small town, so Bo wasn’t taken aback by the kid’s too-long hair and the close fit of his shirt, or that it was unbuttoned to the center of his smooth chest. What did make Bo freeze, with the car door still open and rain coursing down his right shoulder, was that despite the dimness of the Chevelle’s interior, he could clearly see that the kid’s parted lips were painted red with lipstick.

  Apparently realizing what Bo was noticing, the kid jerked his head forward and dragged his sleeve over his mouth. Bo came to his senses for long enough to yank closed the door, noting with a grimace that the inside panel was dripping rainwater. He cleared his throat. “Appreciate this.”

  There was a half-second’s silence while the kid scrubbed at his face. Then, with his eyes averted as he let off the brake and eased the car off the shoulder, he said, “No problem.” He sounded older than he looked, his voice rough and low. “I’m just going to Mesquite,” he added, “but I can get you a few miles along this road, anyway, and keep you out of the rain for a bit.”

  “Thanks, man.” Bo fingered the wet canvas of his bag. He had his notebooks in there in addition to a couple changes of clothes, and he’d rather not find out if the bag would keep them dry. He wasn’t worried about the tin, at least; after he’d closed it up, he’d wrapped three strands of tape around the seam of the lid. “You in town for the rodeo?”

  The kid shot him a narrow-eyed look, and Bo held up his hands.

  “It’s just you don’t talk like someone from around here, and there ain’t a lot of other reasons to go to Mesquite.”

  The kid’s hunched shoulders relaxed. He was lean as a whip, but the shirt molded to his chest and arms made it clear there was more to him than skin and bone. Bo didn’t spend that much time around rodeo cowboys, but he thought the kid looked like someone who could throw a rope. The guys around the feedyard would scoff at rodeo men calling themselves cowboys. For men like Bo and the guys he worked with, cowboying was a job, not a sport.

  “Yeah.” His rough voice got rougher when it was soft. For some reason, that made Bo’s mouth a little dry.

  “What event?” Bo was just trying to put th
e kid at ease at this point, pretending he hadn’t seen the lipstick, so the kid could pretend too.

  “I’m entered in the saddle bronc riding.”

  Bo found himself grinning. “Really?” He looked the kid over before he could stop himself. “Broncs?”

  The kid shot him another glare, which Bo hoped meant he wasn’t too embarrassed. “Yeah. I’m not bad,” he said shortly. Now that he’d looked at Bo once, it seemed easier for him to look again. His eyes were blue, Bo thought, even though it was too dark to be sure, and they scanned Bo in a quick, assessing, detached way. The kid hadn’t gotten all the lipstick off. Or maybe it had just left a stain on his mouth. Either way, his parted lips looked dark and full. Bo shifted in his seat and tried to focus on the Chevelle’s wipers sloughing off the rain. But even with his eyes firmly forward, he could easily see the faint silver reflection of the kid’s face in the windshield.

  “What about you? You trying to get out to the rodeo? Like you said, there aren’t a lot of other reasons to go to Mesquite. ’Specially to hitch there in the middle of the night.”

  “Yeah, I’m headed out for the rodeo. Not the performance or anything, though I wouldn’t mind seeing it, but I heard the stock contractor’s out of California. Kinda hoping they’ll take me on.”

  “California, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Long way.”

  “Yeah.” Before he realized his fingers were moving, Bo had given the tin inside his bag a few taps with his fore and middle fingers. The thin layer of wet canvas muted the sounds of impact to faint thuds. Usually he answered questions directly, without offering anything more. Now, though, he had the unfamiliar urge to tell this stranger what he was setting out to do. Maybe it was the rain coming down. Or how the longer he sat in the car with the heat streaming out of the vents, the more conscious he became of the way the kid smelled. Like sweat and leather. And other ideas were creeping into Bo’s head too: the image of the kid digging his heels into a bronc, that same grim, intent look in those blue eyes; and the stain on his lips, how it looked and what it could mean. Bo was unsettled, almost like he’d had one of those funny cocktails the guy he roomed with used to mix up and sprinkle with more than just salt. “I’d like to get all the way out there,” Bo went on, hoping he hadn’t stayed quiet too long. He did that sometimes; he’d never been good at the rhythm of conversation. “I told someone I would.”

  “A girl?” the kid asked, the question coming so quick and sharp that Bo laughed.

  “Naw. My—” He paused when he realized he didn’t know how to go on. He rubbed a hand over his cheek, feeling more stubble than he’d expected. Until the last couple of years, he could go days without a shave and hardly anyone would notice. That was strange to him, to find himself still changing at twenty-five and counting. Wasn’t he supposed to be done? “My friend,” he settled for. “He died in the winter, and always wanted his ashes spread in California. Guess I’m the only one he thought would actually do it.”

  The kid’s hands jerked on the steering wheel, sending the car in a winding path toward the shoulder before he corrected, swearing. Still, he dared a glare at the bag in Bo’s lap. “You got…a fucking dead guy in there?”

  Bo hadn’t really thought of it that way. The ashes were just coarse gray stuff in a plastic bag. He’d put them in the tin because it hadn’t seemed right that they weren’t in something nicer than what you’d use to bag up the trash. “Yeah,” he said with a soft laugh. “I guess I do.”

  The kid shook his head slowly, and Bo noticed those red lips pulling up at the corners, and a hint of white teeth.

  Bo swallowed again. “What were you doing out in Dallas tonight?”

  The kid’s smile vanished, and his jaw clenched. “Nothin’.”

  “Oh.” Bo rubbed his cheek again. “Yeah. None of my business. Charlie, he always said I asked too many questions.”

  “You ask too many questions, and you read too many poems” had been Charlie’s exact, often-repeated words, but Bo was hardly going to cop to that last part. He already felt like he’d opened a vein with this kid, and for no good reason except the kid had been decent enough to give him a lift.

  The rain was stopping, the clouds had broken up, and a spill of moonlight fell over the empty brushland beyond the highway.

  “Fuck,” the kid muttered. “Sorry, it’s just that— But, it doesn’t— I was going to go to a bar,” he finally ground out. “And then I changed my mind.”

  There were bars in Mesquite, Bo might have pointed out, but then he remembered the lipstick, and the loose, soft waves of the kid’s hair, and something slid into place in his mind. He rubbed his hands over the damp denim covering his thighs. “Glad you did,” he said, and when the kid’s shoulders started to hunch again, he added hastily, “Since that meant you found me and kept my hat dry.”

  The kid breathed out. “Not quite,” he said, eyeing Bo’s hat pointedly. Bo skimmed his hand over the edge of the felt brim, and it came away damp.

  Bo took off his hat and turned it over once in his hands. “Hardly a sprinkle.” He tossed his hat on the car’s generous dashboard so he could lean against the Chevelle’s leather seat without the brim bumping against the headrest. He thought he heard the kid’s breath hitch. Bo’s heart kicked up until the car seemed too warm.

  Before Bo could think about how to ask him to turn down the heat, the kid reached out himself, knocking the dial all the way back to cool. He glanced at Bo again, and this time their gazes caught. For a long second, Bo’s stomach was in a slow twist. The kid’s eyes were so blue, like the ocean under a sunny sky in a postcard. The moment stretched out until Bo wondered if either of them would ever look away.

  But then the car jumped onto the shoulder, and the kid cursed and jerked forward to swerve back to the middle of the lane.

  Bo, euphoric in the wake of that charged eye contact, grinned so wide, he felt the strain in his jaw. “Surprised you made it all the way to Texas without putting some dents in this Chevelle.”

  The kid flashed a smile too, and it was about as heart-stopping as his blue eyes, as if the break in the tension a second ago had left him feeling as giddy as Bo. “Mostly, my buddy drove. It’s his car. He’ll kill me if I fuck it up.” He darted a look at Bo, the guardedness back in his eyes. “You can tell I’m not from Texas by the way I talk?”

  That wasn’t exactly it. Bo had met Texans who didn’t have an accent. But when it came down to it, he wasn’t sure how he knew, so he just shrugged. “Where are you from?”

  “Nebraska.”

  “Y’all farm?” Bo asked, but he already had an idea, considering there wasn’t much in Nebraska but cows and cropland, from what he’d heard. But the kid’s family, or at least his friend’s, must have a lot of cows or land or both if they had nothing better to spend their money on than a thousand miles’ worth of gas and rodeo entries.

  “My buddy’s dad has a really big spread, runs a bunch of cattle. My grandpa has a littler place right next to it that my dad and brother work.”

  That was pretty much the answer Bo had expected, and though he usually didn’t have much patience for spoiled kids, right now he couldn’t bring himself to feel any resentment. “Sounds pretty great.” He found himself catching the inside of his cheek in his teeth, and for some reason, he was blushing hotly as he asked, “So, what’s your name?” The fuck was wrong with him? It was an ordinary question.

  The kid’s hands tightened on the wheel, but this time he didn’t glance away from the road when he answered. “Dylan.”

  “I’m Bo.”

  The kid nodded and swallowed, like he, too, felt an unusual significance in this trading of names. “What about you? You from Dallas?”

  “Around there.”

  “And now you’re going to California? So nothing’s keeping you home? A girl or…?”

  Bo smiled down at his hands, which he’d rested on top of the canvas bag in his lap. “That’s the second time you’ve asked me about a girl. I a
in’t got one.”

  Dylan took a hand off the wheel and brushed his hair behind his right ear. With it tucked back like that, Bo could see the shape of his jaw and the curve of his lower lip. His mouth…now that it was on display, Bo couldn’t look at anything else.

  “Not one for the girls?” Dylan asked, too deliberately casual to fool even Bo, who’d been accused more than once of obliviousness.

  Bo didn’t want to lie, but he also didn’t want to break the fragile thread he felt spinning between them, fed by some magic of the dark car and the smell of sweat and leather. The honest answer would have been sometimes, or even usually…but what Bo decided to say was true too. “Not tonight.” He almost couldn’t believe himself when he asked, “Where were you headed in Dallas?”

  Dylan stole a glance at Bo and wet his lips. “I read about this place in a magazine—off Oak Lawn. Maple Avenue.”

  Bo knew more than one place fitting that description. Oak Lawn had a whole knot of places where a guy might wear lipstick. He just nodded.

  “I was going to go there, but then…” Dylan’s hands twisted on the steering wheel. “I chickened out.”

  “You ever been to a place like that?” Bo asked, his voice the same quiet murmur he’d use to talk to a skittish horse.

  Dylan shook his head, keeping his eyes straight ahead as he asked, “Have you?”