Chapter Three

ON SATURDAY MORNING , Matts puts the address Sydney sent him into maps on his phone. When the route loads, under “places at this address,” there’s a business listed. Black Bull Ranch.

That can’t be right.

“Eli,” he yells over the music Eli’s playing in the living room. Alex and the team get back that night, and Eli has been hit by a sudden need to clean everything as if Alex is going to be looking at the counters after two weeks away from his husband.

Matts will not be spending the night. His bag and guitar are already packed up and by the door.

“What?” Eli yells back.

“What’s Sydney’s address?”

“Didn’t she send it to you? I don’t remember; just put in Black Bull Ranch.”

Huh.

Matts toggles to a new screen and googles it. “Black Bull Ranch,” he reads, “dedicated to producing top quality Wagyu, Black Angus, F1, and F2 cross beef.” He skims the rest of the website and can’t help but be impressed. It looks like a small but well-run operation. Commercial and direct-to-consumer sales. And their stock is good-looking, even if he’s used to Red Angus.

Thumbing through the pictures under the “Our Family” tab, he pauses.

Because there’s a picture of Sydney.

She’s on a dark quarter horse with a white blaze, grinning beneath a gambler hat, wearing black jeans, a brown canvas jacket and beat-to-shit work boots. Her reins are loose in one hand. The other shades her eyes as she laughs at the photographer.

The cognitive dissonance of Sydney on a horse is a little overwhelming.

Matts knows he shouldn’t make assumptions about people, but after their brief meeting and his not-so-brief time spent Spotify-stalking her, he’s put Sydney into a tidy little “rock star/city girl” mental box.

A box which is currently shattered.

“She grew up on a fucking cattle ranch ?” Matts yells. “Why did no one tell me this?”

Eli just laughs.

Asshole.

Matts tells Eli he’ll meet him there and drives back to his apartment to change. No way in hell he’s showing up to a ranch in boat shoes.

But by the time he’s tried on the only two pairs of jeans that are cut right to fit the one pair of boots he has with him in Houston, he’s already running behind, and it takes another five minutes to get the sleeves of his white button-down rolled in a way that isn’t going to drive him crazy for the next several hours. Matts chooses a plain brown belt to match the boots and decides against one of his belt buckles. He doesn’t want to look like he’s trying too hard. And then he messes with his hair for a few more minutes before giving up.

It’s the longest he’s ever spent getting ready for something that wasn’t a date. Matts chooses not to interrogate that.

He only hits minor traffic heading down I-10 toward Katy. Just past the city limit, he turns off the highway and then turns off that street onto a one-lane, pothole-choked road. Staring out at a rolling sea of yellow grass on one side and corn fields on the other, the sun bright on the asphalt ahead, dust in his rearview mirror, Matts gives in to the impulse that’s been sitting in the back of his head for the last week.

He rolls down the windows.

He puts on Black Sabbath.

He sings along.

When Matts arrives, the ranch gates are already open under an iron crossbar with Bbr welded to it and the silhouette of a bull hanging beneath it. He quiets the music as he drives over the cattle guard and starts up the winding gravel road to the house, where several vehicles are already parked on the front lawn.

It looks a lot like the house he grew up in—a single-story stone structure sprawling a little awkwardly in the scrubby land where it sits. Not impressive, but well-kept. Not large. Not small. Not new. Not old. It’s a ranch house. It serves its purpose.

When Matts slides out of the car, he can smell the cattle. Cattle and horses and heat and dirt. A tractor is parked off to one side of the house, a collection of trucks on the other, a horse trailer just visible around the corner. A barn sits farther down the hill, and a shop perches on the slope of the hill behind it. Hay bales and a slow-moving, content herd in loosely clustered groups spot the rolling open terrain. The familiarity is briefly overwhelming.

When he walks up the stone front steps, Matts finds a note taped by the bell that says, “Come in, we’re out back.” But he opens the screen door and knocks on the glass, just to be safe. When no one appears, Matts tentatively lets himself inside.

The long hallway off the entryway is dark and cool and cluttered with framed pictures. Matts gets distracted by a series of photographs that feature what appears to be Sydney and a boy who looks very similar to her, standing in a pothole in the middle of a country road. It’s possibly one of the potholes he narrowly avoided on the way here. The pictures start with Sydney around the age of nine or ten (tiny, mostly hair, tongue out) and proceed with annual updates until what appears to be a present-day version of her (destroyed black jeans, vintage band shirt, still mostly hair, tongue out), arm slung around the waist of the now also adult boy.

“Dad says we’ll take the picture every year until the city fixes the pothole or he dies. We’re still not sure which will happen first.”

The boy—now man—in the picture is standing next to Matts.

He’s got Sydney’s same dark eyes, mole-spotted skin, and wildly curling hair. But he’s dressed more like a cowboy than a rocker, which makes sense, considering. It seems Sydney’s style is the exception to the rule here.

“Hi,” the guy says, extending a hand. “I’m Devo. Sydney’s brother.” He pronounces it “Dee-voh,” and Matts is tempted to ask, but considering his own nickname and the story behind it, decides not to.

“Matts,” he says, accepting the handshake.

“Yeah, I recognize you from the video. That was cool of you, by the way.”

“I mean. It wasn’t anything. I just liked the song.”

The handshake seems a little tighter and goes a couple seconds longer than it should, but Matts has been over-analyzing the appropriate length and pressure of handshakes ever since he learned what a handshake was, so that’s not a new concern.

“Where’s Sydney?” he asks.

“Milk run. Literally. Though I think it was more an excuse for her to show off than anything else. Can’t imagine who she’s trying to impress though,” Devo says pointedly.

Matts doesn’t say anything, stymied.

“She just got a new bike,” Devo clarifies. “Going to the store is an excuse to arrive after the guests and park where everyone can see it.”

“Bike. Meaning, motorcycle?”

“Unfortunately.”

Matts needs a minute. He was just starting to get acclimated to the idea of Sydney on a horse. Adding a motorcycle to the mix just isn’t fair.

“Eli’s here,” Devo says, nodding down the hall. “You know Eli, right?”

Matts manages a return nod, still trying to decide if he should be picturing Syd on a cruiser or a sport bike or maybe a little café racer— It would have to be one of the latter. A cruiser would be too heavy, right? He looks back toward the door, like maybe she’s arrived in the last five seconds without them knowing. Beside him, Devo makes a noise that might be a suppressed laugh.

“Come on, kid. Let’s go out back, and I’ll introduce you around.”

Matts isn’t sure how he feels about being called “kid” by a guy who’s maybe a year older and several inches shorter than him. But he goes.

The back porch is almost entirely devoted to rocking chairs that have seen better days and a selection of barbecue grills. Matts recognizes at least two from his father’s similar configuration. There’s a narrow in-ground pool and scattered lawn chairs around a fire pit beneath a few scrubby trees that provide a respectable amount of shade for their size.

The people are mostly located on the porch, though Eli is standing by the pool, shaking his head at Hawk, swimming happily in the wake of a handsome cattle dog with a tennis ball in its mouth.

Devo leads Matts to the group around the largest grill. “Everyone”—he claps Matts on the back—“this is the man who padded our paychecks this month. Justin Matthews. But he goes by Matts, right?”

“Right,” Matts says faintly under the sudden scrutiny of all present.

“Matts, as in the plural of Matt?” a long-haired Asian guy with a full sleeve of tattoos asks. Matts recognizes him as the bass player in Red Right Hand.

“He contains multitudes,” Eli says, stepping onto the porch. “Also, those are brave words from a man who calls himself ‘Rex.’”

“We respect everyone’s chosen names and pronouns in this household,” an older woman says sternly. She has curly brown hair shot through with gray and a smile that makes Matts want to smile back at her.

“Tricia,” she says, offering her hand. It’s not a surprise when she follows it with “Sydney’s mother.”

Matts shakes it and then the hand of the man beside her who introduces himself as Sydney’s father, Ben.

Sky is Red Right Hand’s drummer, who seems to have carefully cultivated uncertainty about her gender from her undercut to androgynous clothing choices, but everyone else is using female pronouns to refer to her, so Matts figures that’s safe.

And then, he’s introduced to a growing collection of friends and neighbors, none of whom know who he is. It’s refreshing. He talks to an elderly bow-legged cowboy with a dip cup in his hand about the upcoming rodeo. He talks to a pink-haired boy with more piercings than Matts can count about the new bar that just opened a block from Eli and Alex’s apartment.

It’s a strange, friendly amalgamation of people. But after half an hour, as Matts ends up shuffled back to the porch with the main group of Sydney’s bandmates and parents, he’s feeling a little winded.

“Don’t let the band act like they’re moochers,” Sydney’s mom says to Eli. “They used one of their first big paychecks to sort out a new roof for the house, even though we told them we didn’t want any charity.”

“It wasn’t charity,” Rex says. “It was five years of deferred rent and five years of future rent for our practice space.”

“Please,” Sydney’s dad says, “you were doing us a favor. The horses are thunder proof now.”

Sky nudges Matts with an elbow. “We turned a section of the shop into our practice space in high school. At this point, the animals are all pretty ambivalent about loud noises.” She mimes playing the drums.

He can imagine.

Everyone pauses their conversation at the high whine of a motorcycle engine and crunch of gravel under tires.

“Oh, good,” Tricia says. “She’s still alive.”

Sydney is, indeed, alive, appearing moments later around the corner of the house and stopping just beside the porch. She pulls off her helmet while still straddling the sleek black sport bike.

“Show-off,” Devo mutters.

She shakes her hair out and somehow doesn’t look like a cliché doing it. She smirks at Matts, eyebrows raised, rocking the bike between her thighs, and he realizes, yet again, that he’s staring.

“Jesus take the wheel,” Eli mutters beside him.

Matts forces himself to look at Eli. “What?”

“Nothing. You getting overwhelmed yet?”

“Little bit.”

“Go sit by the pool and throw the ball for the dogs,” Eli says charitably. “I’ll send Syd over once she’s done charming everyone.”

He thinks that’s probably a good idea.

However, only a few minutes after he’s discarded his boots and rolled up his jeans to put his feet in the water, the dogs clamber out of the pool and flop in the shade, tongues out and panting hard from their exertions.

Matts relocates to a rust-spotted lounge chair near the dogs so he doesn’t look like a total loser.

Twenty minutes later, he’s half asleep.

The sun is bright behind his eyelids, and he’s on the edge of being too warm, despite the December chill in the air, but still unwilling to move to a more heavily shaded spot.

He opens one eye just in time to see Sydney throw herself onto the ground next to him in a way that looks painful.

“So,” she says as though they’re already in the middle of a conversation. “Why 72?”

It takes Matts a moment to parse the question. “What?”

Sydney taps his bare ankle with the cool, condensation-beaded butt of her beer. “Your number. Seventy-two. I know hockey players are all superstitious weirdos. It has to mean something.”

“I just liked it,” he lies.

She gives him an unimpressed look.

Matts sighs and sits up on his elbows so he can see her better. “You know Rubik’s Cubes?”

“The”—she mimes solving one—“puzzle thing?”

“Yeah. There’s a certain number of total configuration options for a Rubik’s Cube. And if you add the individual digits of that number together, it makes seventy-two.”

Sydney sets her beer down in the grass. “Hold on. How many different configuration options are there for a Rubik’s Cube?”

Matts sits up all the way, swinging his legs off to the side so he can face her. “It’s a long number.”

“I mean, I figured. What is it?”

“Forty-three quintillion, two hundred fifty-two quadrillion, three trillion, two hundred seventy-four billion, four hundred eighty-nine million, eight hundred fifty-six thousand.”

“Holy shit, dude. How do you just know that?”

“I was into math when I was a kid. I even did a couple Rubik’s Cube competitions before hockey took over my life.”

“There’s so much we need to unpack here,” she mutters. “Okay, you’re saying that at twelve years old, someone asked what number you wanted on your back, and your first thought was adding all the individual digits of the number of Rubik’s Cube configuration options together?”

“Nine,” Matts says. “I was nine.”

“How do you feel about Sudoku?”

He decides not to mention the app on his phone. “Um. Generally positive.”

“So, you’re good at math.”

“I’m pretty good, yeah.”

Sydney leans forward, drumming the fingers of one hand on his knee. “Okay, say that you and all your little hockey friends—”

“You mean my teammates? My professional, NHL teammates?”

“Sure, you and your professional, NHL teammates are all tied up at the end of a professional, NHL playoff game, and instead of going to a shootout, the deciding point goes to whomever can finish a Sudoku puzzle fastest. Each team can only nominate one person. Who would you nominate from your team?”

“…Me.”

Sydney slaps his thigh like she’s just won an argument. “Ha! So, you’re fuckoff good at math, then.”

“What does that even— Look, saying I’m the best at math out of everyone on the Hell Hounds roster isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of my abilities.”

“Uh-huh. Those competitions you did as a kid. You win any of them?”

“Not all of them.”

She grins and retrieves her beer. Her rings clink against the glass. “I knew there was more to you than just a pretty face.”

That makes Matts pause. “You think my face is pretty?”

Sydney’s mid-drink but still gives him a side-eye that rivals Eli’s at his most judgmental.

“Objectively, yes,” she says after swallowing and wiping her mouth on her wrist. “It’s not a compliment. I’m only stating a fact.”

“It feels like a compliment.”

“Well. Far be it from me to try and police how you feel.”

Matts has no idea how to respond to that, but says, “You have a pretty face too. Objectively.”

She laughs like he’s joking.

He isn’t.

“I know I’m not entirely unfortunate-looking,” Sydney says. “But your cheekbones are stupid. And I get the feeling your eyebrows probably just grow like that, am I right?”

Matts touches one eyebrow. “Like what?”

“I rest my case. I saw your face on a building last week. People aren’t asking me to be in stoic black-and-white ads for fancy watches.”

He knows exactly what ad she’s talking about. It’s a good picture of him. “Those ads are photoshopped.” He feels he has to point it out.

Sydney rolls her eyes and then pauses, head tipped to study him before putting down her beer and wiping her hands on her thighs. She sits up, bracing one hand on his knee, the other reaching for his face, slow enough that he could stop her if he wanted to.

He doesn’t.

Her first two fingers touch the skin under his ear, slowly tracing the edge of his jaw down to his chin, and for a moment, Matts feels like he can’t breathe.

He has no idea what’s happening, but he doesn’t want it to stop.

It does, though, when Sydney suddenly jerks her hand back with a soft exclamation, shaking it as if she’s been stung.

Matts reaches for her automatically, catching her wrist and pushing open her curled fingers to reveal—nothing.

“What?” he says.

Sydney grins up at him. “Sorry, I thought I cut myself on your jawline.”

He exhales, thumb moving absently across her unmarred palm. “You’re ridiculous.”

“I am,” she agrees.

Her fingers are long, slender, and capable-looking, with short nails and scarred knuckles. His attention lingers on her fingertips, on the calluses that thicken the pads.

“Guitar,” Sydney says quietly.

Her smile has dimmed into something contemplative. The sun hitting the side of her face highlights the tiny little line tucked in her cheek that was, moments before, a dimple.

“I know.” Matts lets go, but only to show her his matching calluses.

She takes his open hand as an invitation and similarly explores his fingertips.

“I play too,” he clarifies.

“Mm. I’ll be the judge of that.”

Sydney’s confidence is both slightly infuriating and terribly endearing.

“Will you?” he says.

“I have an acoustic guitar in my room.”

“You’re just assuming I don’t play electric guitar?”

“ Do you play electric guitar?”

“No,” Matts admits.

“Right. So, you’ll have to show me your acoustic skills later,” Sydney says, voice low.

She’s still holding his hand.

“Are we flirting?” he asks. “Is that what’s happening? Because it’s hard to tell.”

“We are, but it doesn’t mean anything. Keep your socks on.”

“I’m not…wearing socks. You’re confusing.”

“You like it.”

He does.

*

MATTS MANAGES NOT to embarrass himself or make any significant social faux pas through lunch, and by 3:30 p.m., he thinks he can leave without appearing rude. Most of the neighbors have already left, citing chores and early mornings. Eli and Hawk headed out at 3:00 to meet Alex. Matts is waiting for a break in the conversation with Sydney’s bandmates to make his move when the phone rings inside the house.

Sydney’s mom steps inside the propped open door to answer it, and when she walks back outside a minute later, she’s scrubbing an aggravated hand through her curls.

“Cows are out,” she says.

All conversation immediately stops.

“Mary just called, said she’d seen at least thirty past the creek, so I’m guessing the fence is down at the culvert again.”

Devo and Sydney both groan and roll to their feet in tandem with muttered curses.

Sydney’s mom studies the remaining group on the porch, sighing. “And naturally, all the useful people have already gone home.”

“ Hey ,” Rex says.

“No, no,” Sky says, “that’s fair.”

Sydney’s dad pushes himself to stand as well, and his wife immediately holds up a hand to stop him. “You’re still grounded for another month. We are not setting back your very expensive recovery.”

“I was just going to get some feed buckets and take the side-by-side over,” he says innocently. “See if I can coax any back through that way. Stop others from leaving. Be waiting to help push them in once you bring ’em back. And I’ll bring patch supplies.”

She studies him with narrowed eyes. “Fine. Go slowly.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Boogie!” she shouts to the cattle dog sleeping on the porch step. “Time to earn your keep.” She lowers her voice as the dog stretches and ambles over. “Syd, can you call around to the neighbors and see if anyone is free to help?”

“Um,” Matts says. “I can help.”

“Appreciate the offer, city boy,” Sydney says. “But there’s not much you can do here unless you’re secretly a practiced cowhand.”

“Well, I haven’t practiced recently , but…”

Arms up, Sydney pauses pulling her curls into a hurried knot at the back of her neck. “What?”

“I grew up on a ranch on the western slope, and I’ve helped move our herd to and from higher elevation grazing lands at least once a year every year since I was eleven. Point me toward a horse, and I’ll help.”

Sydney drops her arms. “Are you fucking with me?”

“Is that something people usually lie about?”

Sydney studies him a second longer and then shakes her head. “All right.” She nods down the hill. “Let’s go.”

Thirty minutes later, wind in his face, sun on his back, and the warm, familiar bulk of a horse beneath him, Matts has to admit his offer wasn’t entirely altruistic.

He’s missed this.

He’s missed the push and pull of moving animals, applying enough pressure to shift but not spook. He’s missed seeing a well-bred stock dog work, darting with ease where it’s needed, tongue out, euphoric at a job well done. Matts has missed the feeling of being in the saddle, shifting his weight with his mount, stopping and starting, and occasionally breaking away to chase a wayward young thing with escape on its mind. His body knows what to do—his legs and core and back falling into patterns they remember, one hand working the reins, the other slapping his leg as he yells the cows forward. He was a little concerned his knee might act up, considering he’d just been cleared to resume normal activities the previous week, but it doesn’t so much as twinge.

Matts feels good. Right. And he likes the way Sydney looks at him when she pulls back from the left flank of their little group and waits for him to draw even beside her.

She’s wearing the gambler hat from the photo he’d found earlier that day, and it somehow doesn’t look out of place with her jeans, combat boots, and cutoff band shirt plastered to the long, capable line of her sweaty torso.

Matts watches her bicep flex as she pulls on her reins.

“Well,” Sydney says, “I guess you do know what you’re doing.”

“It’d be a stupid thing to lie about.”

She considers him a moment longer, resisting as her horse fights for his head.

“Definitely not just a pretty face,” she murmurs.

And then she loosens her hold, and they’re jogging ahead again to push back on a few straying calves.

Matts finds himself smiling at nothing as they amble down into the culvert and across the rain-swollen creek, back onto the land where they started.

He offers to help Devo patch the fence because he knows from experience that playing with barbed wire alone, especially with night approaching, is a bitch. Devo tosses him a pair of gloves, and they work in silence through the sunset.

It’s only after they’ve finished and they’re loading up the side-by-side that Devo says, “So, can I ask about ‘Matts’?”

“Sorry?” Matts says.

“Your name. It’s fine if you don’t want to talk about it; I’m just curious. Is it a hockey thing?”

“It’s a ‘my stepfather was also named Justin’ thing. And my teammates were already calling me Matts when my mom married him, so.”

Devo drops the pliers into the back of the side-by-side and turns to face him, hands on his hips. “How old were you?”

“Eleven.”

“Kinda fucked you had to be the one to change your name.”

“Well. It wasn’t like they ever told me I had to change it or anything. It was just easier. And I prefer it now. My mom, uh, she passed a couple years back, and I haven’t seen the man since, so I could have gone back to Justin, but I didn’t. I chose to keep it.”

Devo makes a noise Matts can’t interpret.

“What about your name?” Matts asks. It feels fair.

“Ah, just a workaround for run-of-the-mill religious nonsense. The name on my birth certificate is Devotion.”

“Jesus,” Matts says.

“He was part of the problem, yes. Sydney’s deadname is even worse.”

Matts doesn’t ask.

After a moment of silence, Devo nods approvingly.

Matts glances at Sydney’s dad, who’s fiddling with the solar lantern in the driver’s seat. He wonders if he’ll take offense, and Devo laughs suddenly, loudly, in the stillness.

“Oh, no,” he says, “no, no, they weren’t— I’m talking about our biological parents. Mom and Dad would never inflict those names on us.”

“Truth,” his dad says. He finally gets the lantern to shut off, and darkness closes in around them, only disrupted by the side- by-side’s headlamps. “Looks like we’re good here. I’ll see you boys back at the house.”

He puts the UTV in gear, and Matts hurries over to mount his waiting horse before he loses the only remaining source of light they have.

He’s puzzled by the information that Ben and Tricia aren’t Devo and Sydney’s biological parents. Neither of the siblings favor stocky, fair Ben. But they’re close to carbon-copies of lean, dark-haired Tricia. Matts wonders if they’re still related. It doesn’t seem possible three people can share a smile without some biological intervention. He considers asking but decides against it.

They ride back abreast at a sedate pace, and Matts wishes he could drag it out, swaying in a creaking saddle under the broad expanse of a star-spangled sky.

“You miss it?” Devo asks.

Matts doesn’t ask for clarification. He doesn’t need to. “I do.”

“Well, any time you get the bug, I’d be happy to trade you a couple hours work for a couple hours horse lease.”

“Careful,” Matts says, “I might take you up on that.”

“Eh. It’d be cheaper than paying a part-timer and less annoying than getting Sydney to help.”

“Does she not pull her weight?”

“No,” Devo sighs, “she does. She just won’t shut the hell up. The only time she isn’t talking or singing is when she’s asleep. Or sick.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad.”

It would be a relief to let someone else handle the bulk of the conversational burden.

“I imagine you’re biased in her favor in ways I’m not,” Devo mutters as they step into the circle of yellow light from the halogen bulb above the open barn doors.

Sydney is coming out of the tack room when they enter, yelling something about leather cleaner to her dad who’s just inside the door. Ben stops Matts as he dismounts with a hand to his arm.

“Thanks for the help, son. I think you’ve earned at least one more beer.”

“I won’t turn one down.”

Ben pats Matts’s shoulder and ambles out into the night.

“Gross,” Sydney mutters.

“What?”

“My dad likes you.”

“And that’s bad?”

She purses her lips. “Yet to be determined. You still up for proving your musical prowess while you have that beer? Or do you need to get home?”

“No,” Matts says. “I’d like to stay a while longer.”