Met got back out of his truck and headed into Cody’s once again. He needed another drink. He had promised not to drink while he was around Daphne. That did not include the time before and after he saw her. Somehow while he was with her, he didn’t want to drink anyway. There was no need. He felt comfortable and at ease. Then her little compact car pulled onto the highway and it was like reality came roaring back with a vengeance.

His shoulder felt as though there was yet another bronc trying to wrench it out of the socket. His ankle could barely hold his weight. And right now, he could feel his right hand beginning to shake because he wanted a drink so badly.

Pushing his way back into the restaurant, he bypassed the tables altogether and headed straight for the bar. “Give me a triple bourbon,” he called out to Cody. “And just leave the bottle.”

Cody chuckled. “Wondered what had gotten into you, Met. That’s the smallest liquor tab you’ve ever racked up in my bar.”

“I was being good for the lady.” Met climbed onto a barstool and flexed his foot to stretch the ankle a little bit. Then he windmilled his arm to try and loosen up that shoulder. “Now I need to be good to myself.”

Cody snorted as he set the bottle of bourbon on the counter with a glass. He already knew that it was best to just let Met pour his own drink. No bartender was generous enough for Met’s taste.

“There he is.” The waitress from earlier—Met thought her name was Natalie—sidled up to him and rubbed her hip alongside his. “I wondered what you were doing in here with that uptight little girl. Business dinner?”

“Sort of.” Met didn’t like someone calling Daphne uptight. There was no need to be rude. “She’s a good friend.”

“A good friend, hmm?” Natalie stood on tiptoe and whispered in his ear. “Well, if you want someone good enough to warm up that bed of yours, just give me a shout.”

Met nodded but didn’t feel the usual shot of lust and need that would have once hammered him because of such an offer. Maybe he was just hurting too much to care about those other physical needs. It was difficult to imagine wanting to physically pleasure anyone—even himself—when he was so sore that the idea of moving his hips was an agonizing thought.

“What’s going on with you lately?” Cody asked. He was still mixing drinks, but business was slowly dwindling as the hour grew closer and closer to eleven o’clock. It was a Monday night. The bar would close at midnight, and the kitchen had already closed at ten. “We haven’t seen you around. How’s the family?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know how my family is,” Met snorted. He lifted his glass to Cody. “The Hernandez family is always a train wreck. I think everyone knows that.”

“At least you guys have enough cash flow to make it worthwhile.” Cody shrugged and held his arms out to encompass the bar. “Want to buy in?”

“I might consider it,” Met mused. “I need a career now that I’m done riding broncs.”

“You’re twenty—what are you? Twenty-one?”

“Twenty-two.” Met sighed. “I have the body of a sixty-year-old. I’m apparently not good enough at the rodeo career to keep myself put together into my thirties like some of these guys do.”

“They’re wearing helmets and body armor nowadays, you know?” Cody bobbed his head up and down. “You should have started that trend all those years ago.”

“My father would have beat me senseless if I had showed up in the ring in a helmet,” Met snorted. He downed his drink. The familiar burn of the liquor going down his throat was followed by a lessening of the burning in his shoulder and leg. That was good. It was exactly what he wanted and needed.

“Slow down there, cowboy,” Cody muttered. “You’ve gone through half that bottle in less than five minutes.”

“I need plenty to keep me from feeling anything.” Met could tell he was slurring his words. He felt as though he were on the verge of passing out. He was aware that he had to drive, but surely if he just sat here until the bar closed he would be sober enough to get home.

“Hate to tell you, brother,” Cody drawled. “But that’s pretty damn bad for you. Your liver or something.”

“What liver?” Met hollered as he lifted yet another glass to the rafters. His vision was blurring now. “I think a bull stomped that right out of my back before I turned twenty.”

“Whoa there.” Cody had to reach across the counter to catch Met by the arm and keep him from plunging off the stool and hitting the floor. “I think I’d better call Laredo.”

“Not Laredo.” Met pointed at Cody and accidentally spilled his drink on the bar. Met tried to shake his head from side to side to indicate just how bad it would be for Cody to call Laredo. “Laredo is sober now. You know? Those sober people don’t know how to appreciate drunkenness.” At least that was what Met thought he said. It was possible that those words did not all come out sounding like he wanted them to. His lips and tongue weren’t moving right. They felt stuck.

“All right, buddy.” Cody did not sound like Met ever remembered him sounding. His voice was all wrong. And Cody leaned across the bar and picked up the bottle of bourbon. “I think you’re done.”

“What?”

“Man, as much as I love you, I can’t sell you any more liquor. You’re drunk. There are laws against that.” Cody wagged his finger in Met’s face. “I’ll lose my liquor license.”

“I don’t think I can be a bartender.” Met flopped down on the bar. The wood was cool under his cheek. “I would drink until I passed out and forget to serve anyone.”

“I could actually believe that.” Cody was laughing. “So, who do I call, Met? Darren? Cisco?”

“Oh God, not Cisco.” Met was moaning now. “Darren is good. Darren used to drink.”

“Used to?” Cody snorted. “What is wrong with you Hernandez boys? I should call your pops. He still drinks. In fact, the man can close the bar and still walk a straight line.”

“He cheats.” A huge burp slipped out of Met’s mouth. Wow. He was really classy right now.

“How does he cheat?” Cody was dialing the cordless phone.

Met burped again. Was he actually in danger of vomiting? Hopefully he wouldn’t do something stupid like that. His steak had been far too good to waste like that. Then he remembered Cody had asked him a question. What was he talking about? Right. His father’s cheating.

“My father puts ice cubes in his alcohol,” Met burst out suddenly. “That’s cheating. He’s watering it all down.”

“Right.” Cody bobbed his head up and down. Then suddenly he was talking to someone else. “Yeah. You need to come get him. I can’t let him leave.”

“What?” Met shouted.

He was staring at the ceiling. How had he managed to look at the ceiling? Where was he anyway? He should be on the barstool. His cheek had been on the bar. The wood felt good. Or at least it had. He wasn’t lying there anymore. He was somewhere else entirely. It was cold and hard at least. Except the hard part was hurting his hip now. Why did he even feel that? He shouldn’t even realize that discomfort was a thing. He should have been able to climb on another bronc.

The thought made him nauseous. Met rolled onto his side and retched. He took a deep breath and swallowed. He did not want to throw up. He hated that feeling. It was disgusting. Not to mention the taste. How could things that tasted so good going down taste so very horrible on the way back up?

At least thinking about vomit made him stop thinking about Widowmaker. The big black devil horse had been born and bred on the same ranch where Met had started his life. It seemed poetic that one of the broncs bred so carefully by his own brothers had been the horse to end Met’s career. Sometimes if Met closed his eyes he could still feel the animal’s hoof digging into his right shoulder. That had been the last straw for his body. That shoulder injury had rendered his arm and his hand incapable of holding tight enough to the rigging to stay on the horse. If it had been his left shoulder, he would have still been able to compete. He wouldn’t have been useless. Met could almost believe his eldest brother, Cal, had whispered in that damn horse’s ear and told it to end his career.

“Hey, baby brother, you ready to blow this place and go sleep it off at home?”

Who the hell was that? Met managed to flop onto his back and stare up toward the ceiling. Only he could not see the pressed patterned tin ceiling of Cody’s anymore. Now all he could see was a familiar face looming over him like some kind of heavenly messenger.

“Darren,” Met grunted. “At least he didn’t call Laredo.”

Somewhere behind him, Met heard Cody’s laughter. Then Darren grabbed Met’s left arm and began pulling him up off the floor. Met wasn’t surprised that Darren knew not to grab the right side. Darren had a blown knee from his football career. If anyone knew what it was like to have an injury that completely altered your way of life, it was Darren.

Somehow, Darren had made things work though. Met could not help but think that it was probably due to the fact that Darren hadn’t destroyed himself so completely. Football was not bull and bronc riding. A three hundred pound linebacker did not do the same amount of damage as a two thousand pound bull or a twelve hundred pound horse.

“Damn, little brother,” Darren grunted. “Either I need to start working out or you’ve gained some weight.”

“You need to work out,” Met mumbled. “You’re completely wimping out as Gym Teacher Man.”

It was funny to Met that they all called Darren that as though it was his superhero name. Maybe it was, in a way. And maybe the reason they all called him that was that they were secretly jealous. Darren had found his own niche that had little to nothing to do with the Hernandez Land & Cattle Company.

“Yeah, probably.” Darren did not sound as though he particularly cared. “I’ve been doing kiddie workouts for a few months now. Maybe I need to do the grown-up version during my lunch break.”

“You’ve been working out on Maggie!” Met did not know why he found that so hilarious. “Bow chicka wow wow!”

“Dude, I’m going to dump you on your head if you do that again.” Darren sounded distinctly pissed off all of a sudden. Then he cranked his head around. “Cody, can you get the damn door?”

Wait. Was Darren actually carrying him? Dammit. Met could barely even process what was happening. He knew his body was sort of hanging. He had not realized that he was currently slung over his brother’s shoulder in a fireman’s carry. That was just embarrassing!

“I can walk,” Met assured his brother.

“Oh, really?” Darren stepped back to let Cody open the door. “So, a few seconds ago, when I pulled you off the ground, do you remember almost falling back onto your ass?”

“Uh. No.”

“Exactly.” Darren moved out of the bar.

The cool air was reviving, but it didn’t make Met feel any better. In fact, it made him feel a little bit worse. As in he felt as though he were honestly in danger of puking all over the place.

“I have my truck,” Darren informed Met. “And if you puke inside it, I’m going to tell Dad that you’re the one who made it necessary for me to trade this in and make the company take a loss on it.”

“Screw you,” Met slurred.

But then he really had to press his lips together and squeeze his eyes shut when Darren flung Met into the air in order to get him upright and on his feet once more. The dizzying sensation of flight was enough to make Met feel genuinely ill. He choked and gagged but managed not to throw up. He didn’t want to. That was a big deal. It was.

“Oh God.”

Met bent at the waist as the overwhelming urge to vomit overcame him. He retched and heaved there in the gravel parking lot a few feet away from Darren’s truck. Reaching out, he grabbed whatever was close enough to keep him from falling face-first into the mess. It took almost a minute to realize that he was holding tight to the rear wheel well of Darren’s white truck.

“I didn’t puke in your truck,” Met pointed out as he managed to stand up. He swiped the back of his hand over his mouth. “You got any vodka or anything?”

Darren shook his head and sighed. “No. I don’t have a bottle of vodka stashed in my truck. Because, unlike you, I don’t have a drinking problem.”

“I don’t have a problem.” Met felt extremely tired of people telling him this. “It’s just pain management.”

“That’s not a long-term solution, little brother.”

“Laredo had a drinking problem,” Met shot back defensively.

Darren nodded. Then he opened the passenger door of his truck. “Yes. Our older brother did, in fact, have a drinking problem. He is currently sober. I think he will remain that way unless Aria leaves him high and dry, which will probably not happen because she’s a better woman than that.”

That got Met thinking about Daphne. For some reason, he could not stomach the thought of her finding out that he had gone back into the bar after she left only to get so drunk that Cody had to call Darren to come and fetch him, and then he’d puked up his dinner in the parking lot. That wasn’t the way the Met wanted Daphne to think of him. Plus, he had a feeling that would only increase her bad opinion of him.

“Let’s get you to bed, little brother.” Darren went around to the driver’s door and climbed into his truck. “I need to get back home to my sweet Maggie and my little boy.”

Met knew that Darren hadn’t meant anything by that statement, but it was hard not to feel like a total loser knowing that he was going “home” to his borrowed empty house full of the trappings of a successful life that his eldest brother didn’t even want anymore. Failure upon failure piling up until there was nothing left in Met’s life but the bottom of a bottle.