He turned to his friend with a shit-eating grin. “Still think I can’t shoot for shit?” he asked Cam.
Cam stood with his arms over his wide chest, his face stone cold except for the curl of his mouth. Yeah, game on. “It’s the gun,” Cameron responded. “My five-year-old neighbor could shoot with that thing.”
“Let me have it,” Matt demanded.
Brandon stood back while Matt moved to the next bottle that Cam had lined up on a downed log. So far they’d obliterated about half. Cameron had missed two bottles and Brandon had only missed one.
But Cam still insisted he was the better shot.
“The sun was in my eyes,” his friend had griped.
Sun my ass, Brandon had thought. His competitive friend couldn’t handle someone being better than him at anything. He’d been nagging Brandon for days, like a little old lady, to come shooting in the woods. Brandon had finally relented with Cam’s last text, which had read:
I’m assuming you’re forfeiting the trophy over to me if you bail on me again.
The “trophy” being a tattered one-dollar bill they’d been exchanging since college, that had dates scribbled all over it. Each one had tried to up the other with keeping the bill the longest. So far Cam had three weeks with the dollar bill tucked away in his wallet. Which he always “accidentally” let fall out so Brandon would be reminded that Cameron kept trumping him with his Winchester.
Well, not anymore.
Cameron had turned competitive but Brandon could dish out as good as his friend could.
Except he was about to be shown up by his seventeen-year-old.
Matt braced his feet apart, the butt of the gun tucked against his shoulder, and he lined the barrel up for his shot. With one eye closed, Matt squeezed the trigger and blew apart an old Pappy Van Winkle brand bourbon whiskey bottle.
“Damn, kid,” Cam muttered.
“Yeah, but do that again,” Brandon said.
Matt grinned as he pumped the barrel and moved on to the next bottle, a clear Old Tom Gin. He aimed for the shot and squeezed the trigger, sending more birds scattering all over the sky as the sound echoed throughout the mountains. Matt’s shoulders slumped as he missed.
“What I thought,” Brandon commented.
Matt handed the gun over. “Guy can’t stand being outshined by his own kid.”
“Damn straight.”
“Pathetic,” Cam commented as he yanked the gun out of Matt’s hands before Brandon could take the thing back. “Stand back, children, and watch how it’s done.” With laser-intensity focus, Cam shouldered the Winchester, closed one eye, and squeezed the trigger. He proceeded to shatter the next three bottles.
“Dude,” Matt whispered when Cameron lowered the gun.
“Show-off,” Brandon mumbled, but couldn’t help the grin that crept onto his face when Matt’s mouth continued to hang open.
“You want to shoot like a pro, kid, you know where to find me,” Cameron commented as he slung the gun over his shoulder.
Like the cocky bastard he was.
Brandon held his hand out. “Give me the thing.”
“Uh-uh,” Cam answered. “You know the rules.” He wagged his finger, then shouldered the gun again. When one of them missed, they had to pass over the gun to the next person. The game stopped when all the bottles were broken, and whoever broke the most won the dollar bill and wrote the date of the win down.
Cameron had written the last three dates down.
Time to take the guy down a peg.
Except he needed to miss first, which he apparently wasn’t planning on doing anytime soon. Brandon and Matt watched as Cameron blew apart two more bottles before aiming a fraction of an inch off and missing the third.
“Which one of you thinks they can beat me now?” Cam taunted. Similarly to how he used to egg people on in high school. Cam was the kid who used to throw the first punch for shits and giggles. His attitude had almost gotten him thrown off the football team multiple times. After being benched for several weeks their senior year, Cam had cleaned up his act and kept his nose out of trouble.
Didn’t mean the guy didn’t still love to talk shit, then grin his way into a good fight.
“Let me have it,” Matt offered.
Without a word, Cam handed the gun over and stood back next to Brandon when Matt lined up the shot.
“Too high,” Cameron coughed into his hand, but Matt didn’t hear or didn’t listen. Kid was stubborn like his old man.
Who are you calling old?
Matt broke one bottle and missed his second.
“I think it’s safe to say I won’t be getting that dollar bill,” Matt grumbled.
“Yeah, women have a way of messing with a man’s concentration,” Cameron commented as Brandon took the gun from Matt.
And then he wanted to knock the shit out of his friend.
“Um…,” Matt started, then swallowed so many times Brandon thought the kid would choke on his own saliva. “I wasn’t thinking about anything.”
“Save it, kid,” Cameron argued. “Anyone with half a brain can see how lovestruck you are over this girl. Just be careful with her.”
Then Matt rolled his eyes with the perfection he’d mastered by the age of ten. “Now you sound like Dad. I already told him Adrienne’s not that kind of girl.”
“That’s how they all start out,” Cameron pointed out.
Brandon shouldered the rifle and took aim.
You don’t want him to be like you.
Stella’s soft words intruded on his concentration just as he squeezed the trigger. And missed.
More birds took flight in the clear fall air, squawking at the intrusive noise, as though mocking him for being an idiot for allowing Stella to break his concentration.
And that conversation was weeks ago. Why was he thinking about it now?
Because you think about her way too much. More than you should.
More than what could be considered healthy, anyway.
“Like I said,” Cameron taunted as he yanked the Winchester from Brandon’s useless hands. “A woman has a way of breaking a man’s concentration.”
If Matt hadn’t been within listening distance, Brandon would have told his friend to fuck off. But he didn’t. Trying to set a good example and all that.
Matt’s brows tugged over his eyes. “Dad doesn’t have a girlfriend.”
Cam snorted as he positioned the rifle, closed one eye, and squeezed the trigger. And shattered a vintage Bacardi. At the moment, Brandon wished the thing was filled with liquor so he could chug the stuff down.
Instead of taking the next shot, and essentially finishing the game off with the last two bottles, Cameron slung the gun over his shoulder and grinned. One of his shit-eating, I’m-about-to-get-into-trouble smiles.
Brandon knew that look and steeled himself for the onslaught of ribbing in the name of brotherly love and good humor.
“Of course he doesn’t have a girlfriend,” Cameron agreed. And, yeah, we both know what I’m talking about.
The taunt was all over Cameron’s face and Brandon knew that if they’d been alone, it’d be no-holds-barred. The only reason Cameron held back was because of Matt. He knew Brandon wouldn’t want the kid knowing that he’d been walking around with a hard-on ever since laying eyes on Stella Davenport.