Chapter 1
Collin and the great painted goat
“…twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eigh—”
“Meehhhhh.”
His grip on the bar weakened, and he dropped to the floor, the cold piercing through the bottom of his bare feet. Collin braced himself just before the firm strike of an impossibly hard, furry forehead hit his calves, sending him stumbling a few feet through the doorway.
It had pissed him off once upon a time, but now it made him smile as he turned to see the small pygmy goat staring at him with a single baleful eye, the rectangular pupil narrow and calculating.
“Let me guess, you want your brekkie?”
The rest of his pull-ups could wait.
Collin grabbed his t-shirt, the air too cold against his sweat-soaked skin as his body wound down from his morning work-out. The mountain air was always a bit frigid before sunrise, but the spring rains were just starting to take shape, making everything damp and chillier than they would be with the soft summer air. Not that Collin hated any of the seasons there in the preserve.
He’d begun coming there as a boy, soaking up every single moment he was allowed to trail at his dad’s knee. His summer life was such a far cry from the stuffy, uptight London streets, and he would spend hours at school fantasizing about what it would be like to ditch his mother’s place in upright society and spend his years following in his father’s rugged footsteps.
Funny how things changed. He hadn’t even noticed how quickly his life had gone off the rails until he was taking the podium in his first-ever lecture hall at King’s. Somehow, his fussy, city-boy brother had taken the reins of his father’s work, and Collin had taken his forestry and zoology doctorate into a classroom instead of the field.
It wasn’t a bad life. At least, not at first. Collin stayed active even without the preserve. He wrote his thesis with his research on mountain goats, worked part-time at the London Zoo, then spent six months in the Amazon tracking moth migration patterns, and he loved every second of it.
Then Grant walked into his life and wanted stability. Collin was willing to compromise, was willing to give up things that made him happy, because Grant made him laugh, and cry, and gave him bloody good orgasms.
His brother, Charles, was seven years younger and completely obnoxious, and wasted no time taking the piss every single time he called. “Smokey the Bear wasting away in his office, found dead on a pile of paperwork.”
Collin rarely gave the idiot a second thought—just like he’d done through their childhood—but the more dull his life got, the harder it was to withstand his brother’s harsh sense of humor. Collin had made it a point not to check up on Charles and their father apart from holidays and birthdays. He had walked away from the preserve after Charles took over, and he was happy with that decision.
But as his marriage became strained, as he realized it had been seven months without even kissing his husband, he started to wonder if maybe he’d made all the wrong choices.
He was forty-eight when Grant walked out on him and didn’t come back. He was fifty-two years and six months old when Charles called him with their father’s terminal diagnosis. “He’s got six weeks left and I’m in over my head here, man. I never planned to do this on my own. I was just trying to help Dad out. There’s so much going on over here. I need you.”
Collin hadn’t hesitated to put in a leave of absence and buy the plane ticket. He assumed he was rescuing his brother from emotional turmoil, but that all quickly unraveled when he met Charles in the preserve gift shop and saw the posters.
Take a rafting tour and see the rarest species in the world: The Painted Goat
“What the bloody hell is that?” Collin demanded, pointing to the scenic view with the smallest white speck etched on the side of a cliff.
Charles snorted. “The Painted Goat.”
Collin narrowed his eyes, then he realized what exactly he was seeing. “That’s an actual painted goat, isn’t it?”
Charles couldn’t seem to help his laugh. “It wasn’t really my idea. Brad and I were stoned a few years ago and he told me it would be a good way to make some cash. He actually broke his arm right after he finished when he slipped, like, twenty feet down the cliff.”
“For fuck’s sake, Charles,” he started, stopping himself as he pinched the bridge of his nose. The place looked like it had been vomited out of some American tourism magazine. Everything had either the state flag, the American flag, or the business name etched in too bright colors. The tour was a sham, the information was all false, and nothing benefited the environment. None of it was his dad’s plan--was their plan, when it first got started.
“We were doing well at first,” Charles eventually said, sinking into the chair behind the register. “I mean, we had a great web presence and yeah, it was kitschy, but people wanted that. It just…didn’t last. Now we’re barely above water. We barely get two tours a week, if that. I can’t keep this place afloat.”
Crossing his arms, Collin let out a sigh. “I wonder why.”
“It’s not my fault people started giving an actual fuck about nature,” Charles complained. He rubbed his temples, then gave his brother a pointed look. “I was hoping you might help me out.”
With a snort, Collin turned away, fingering a row of popular name keychains. “With what? A new marketing plan? More rubbish to sell at the shop?”
Charles cleared his throat, then pushed to stand, leaning over the counter. “It’s just…with Dad dying,..” Collin barely hid his wince, “I think it’s time to move on. I think we should sell the land. I’ve got some great offers--the National Park Service or whatever they’re called--they’ve been interested for years. I’ve already put a down payment on a house in Rhode Island. Christina’s family’s from there and she wants to settle down, you know?”
Turning, Collin felt rage rushing through his veins. “Hang on. You bully Dad into running this place into the ground, and when you’ve completely and thoroughly fucked yourself in the arse, you want to fuck off to Rhode Island. And you want me to clean up your bloody mess?”
“I mean…you’re into all this rubbish, Coll. Nature and everything, innit? It’s all...plants and animals and mountain air. You like it.”
“I did,” he said. “I liked it when Dad was running a sanctuary, protecting wildlife, and using the hiking tours to raise money for preservation. Not…not this. Not fake tours to swindle people out of money!”
Charles didn’t even have the decency to look ashamed. “Dad was skint way before I got here. Living off old oatmeal packets and beef jerky, mate. He barely had his head above water. The tours got us both a nest egg for a while, but it didn’t last, and it’s not worth much now. And anyway,” he hesitated, and this time he didn’t meet Collin’s eyes, “he left it to you. So it sort of is your responsibility now.”
In the end, Collin knew he could have contested the will. He could have paid for a lawyer to prove that his brother should be saddled with the burden of the land, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. The place had meant something to him once. The place had been his sanctuary away from his hateful mother and disinterested husband, and the concrete jungle that had slowly sucked the life out of him.