Chapter Text
The First Summer - June 2008
Shane Hollander pulled his canvas jacket tighter around his body as he swung the door of his truck closed behind him. It was unseasonably cold for June, even in the Canadian Rockies, where hints of winter seemed to linger well past the summer solstice every year. A cool breeze ruffled the ends of Shane’s hair that poked out from beneath his cowboy hat, and he shivered despite the sun hovering directly overhead.
He’d been surprised to see that his neat white pickup truck wasn’t the only one parked alongside the mobile home that was being used as the land foreman’s field office for the summer. There was another older model truck parked on the other side of it, closer to the trailer’s entrance, with a tall, broad male figure leaning against it, smoking a cigarette.
As Shane approached, he observed the man. He was probably about Shane’s age, around 19 or 20. He had golden curls that were tamped down under a black cowboy hat and wore a sherpa lined denim jacket and worn Wrangler jeans that Shane couldn’t help but notice hugged his muscular thighs and ass in an infuriatingly perfect way.
Shane gave his head a subconscious little shake, reminding himself he was not supposed to think like that. He couldn’t allow himself to have those thoughts, especially not here. That’s why he’d run away to begin with.
Despite his efforts, when Shane’s eyes met the man’s face, the first thing that crossed his mind was that he must have stumbled into some sort of Wild West-themed magazine photoshoot, because no cowboy Shane had ever met looked even close to that pretty. The man’s jawline was chiseled to perfection and his full lips and angular nose looked like they’d been carved out of stone by Michaelangelo himself.
The man nodded at Shane once as he approached, taking a deep inhale from his cigarette, and Shane nodded back in acknowledgement. Shane hated the smell of cigarette smoke, but growing up surrounded by cowboys, farmers, and ranchers meant he was used to it, even if it gave him a headache and clung to his clothes.
The foreman’s truck was missing from the gravel drive, so Shane assumed that’s why this guy was waiting outside. He decided anything was better than the stiff silence the two found themselves in, so he mustered all his social energy to introduce himself.
He walked toward the man with his hand outstretched. “I’m Shane Hollander,” he said, standing there a little awkwardly until the man finally met his gaze, using the hand not holding his cigarette to shake Shane’s. His palm was rough and warm, calloused likely from years working the land, just like Shane’s.
The handshake was firm and brief, but Shane couldn’t help feeling a little zip of electricity run up his arm straight to his chest at the contact. Shane didn’t touch others often, didn’t have the opportunity to. He didn’t have many friends, and his attempts at dating in the last few years had been embarrassing at best and traumatic at worst.
He’d always felt like something about the way he interacted with others was odd. He could never shake the feeling that everyone else had studied some sort of rulebook he’d never been given.
Because he never quite learned how to play the social game the way the rest of the world seemed to understand instinctively, Shane had spent years building a tall, impenetrable wall around the parts of himself that made him different. He moved through life alone, not allowing himself to bring anyone else near enough to see how strange he really was.
Though Shane tried to tell himself he wasn’t one of those people who needed physical contact to feel fulfilled, a deeply buried part of him was starving for it, so much so that this handshake with a stranger seemed to feed a hunger in him he’d rarely allowed himself to feel before.
When their hands came apart, Shane realized the man hadn’t introduced himself in return.
“You got a name?” Shane asked, trying to keep his tone light rather than let the annoyance he felt creep in. He already wasn’t great at leading conversations, and when people didn’t stick to the script of common niceties accepted by the average socialized human, he felt even more clueless.
And this guy was not sticking to the script.
“Rozanov,” the man mumbled.
Shane detected some sort of accent not commonly found in ranch country, not to mention the very much not-Canadian sounding name, but the one word didn’t provide him enough information to deduce where this “Rozanov” was from.
“Your parents stopped at Rozanov?” Shane pressed.
Rozanov smirked. “My first name is Ilya. Last name is Rozanov.”
Ilya. Shane had never heard that name before. He tried to memorize the way Ilya had pronounced it, as two syllables that almost flowed into one. He liked the way the man’s mouth had moved when he spoke it.
It was this realization that led Shane to the decision that he wouldn’t say his first name out loud. He couldn’t understand why, but something about it felt intimate. The man had first introduced himself as Rozanov, so that’s what Shane would call him.
Another rule he could invent for himself to follow, another way to keep himself safe.
Now that he’d heard more from him, Shane was pretty convinced Rozanov was some sort of Slavic, maybe Russian or Polish.
“Nice to meet you, Rozanov,” Shane said politely, stuffing his hands in his pockets and avoiding eye contact by looking across the dusty road to a train rolling along the tracks across a field in the distance. “Are you here looking for work?”
Rozanov just nodded.
“Yeah, me too,” Shane continued. “I usually work on my parents’ ranch every summer, but I wanted to get out and try something new, you know? I’ve never really left home till now.” The desire to “try something new” was far from the whole truth at what had sent Shane fleeing life on his family farm, but it was a tidy, unemotional explanation that wouldn’t lead to any more questions, so he ran with it.
At first, Shane didn’t think Rozanov was planning to respond at all. Finally, he asked, “Where is home?”
“Outside of Calgary,” Shane said. “I have a friend who worked for Crowell the last two summers who recommended I come here looking for a cowboying job for the summer. Are you from ranch people?”
Shane knew he was talking too much, but he couldn’t help it. He was nervous about leaving home, nervous about asking for a job, nervous about talking to this beautiful stranger. Nervous about finding this stranger beautiful.
And when he got nervous, he babbled.
Rozanov shrugged. “I have worked on ranches. Not for so many years, but enough that I am probably better cowboy than you.”
Shane raised his eyebrows. “I’ve been ranching since I could walk,” he said defensively.
Rozanov took a drag from his cigarette, blowing out the smoke in Shane’s direction and making him cough a little. “Russain cowboys are better than Canadian cowboys. We don’t complain about cold mountains like baby Canadians.”
Shane scoffed, offended. “I’m plenty used to the cold,” he argued lamely. “And I didn’t know there was such a thing as a Russian cowboy.”
Shane knew his statement was a little hypocritical, considering he was half-Japanese, and there weren’t many Asian cowboys in the Canadian Rockies either. It had been something he’d faced throughout his life. Though he’d spent years working on the ranch that had belonged to his white father’s side of the family for generations, his Japanese features had earned him plenty of scrutiny, slurs, and skepticism from others in their ranching community.
Rozanov grinned, and Shane’s stomach flipped at the way his face lit up when he smiled. “There are not many of them, which is why I am such a valuable find. Crowell will definitely hire me because I am so rare.”
Shane narrowed his eyes. “I have a friend who recommended me for this job, so don’t be so sure it’s yours.”
Rozanov exhaled another puff of cigarette smoke in his direction. “Ah, so you are cheating.”
“Having connections isn’t cheating!” Shane protested. “It’s called networking.”
Rozanov shrugged. “I guess we will see.” He finished the last of his cigarette, stamping it out on the ground, then picking up the butt to put in his pocket and dispose of later.
At least he doesn’t litter, Shane thought, fighting off the urge to laugh a little hysterically.
As if summoned by their topic of conversation, a rusty brown pickup truck began crawling up the dusty gravel drive, parking between Shane’s and Rozanov’s trucks. The foreman, Roger Crowell, exited the truck without looking at either of them, smoking the last of his own cigarette as he bounded up the steps to his trailer office and unlocked the door, slamming it shut behind him.
Shane and Rozanov glanced at each other with mirrored looks of apprehension, unsure if they should follow Crowell inside. After about five seconds, Crowell poked his head back out, shouting, “If you two yahoos are looking for work, best get in here in the next ten seconds.”
They took that as their cue, racing up the steps and into the office, shoving each other slightly to be the first in the door.
Rozanov won.
Crowell sat with his feet propped up on his desk, reading through what appeared to be some sort of complicated, wordy document and smoking a fresh, foul smelling cigarette. He didn’t look up as Shane and Rozanov entered, his ruddy red face cemented in a scowl as he read.
Shane had heard Crowell was an unfriendly bastard, but he didn’t do well with feeling disliked. So naturally, he turned on whatever miniscule amount of small-town boy charm he possessed to break the ice, trying his best to ignore Rozanov.
“Mr. Crowell?” Shane said, removing his hat and approaching the desk with his hand outstretched. “My name is Shane Hollander. A friend of mine sent me down your way from Calgary to hopefully join your ranch team for the summer.”
Crowell didn’t shake Shane’s hand, ashing his cigarette into a dirty coffee cup on his desk instead. He did, however, finally meet Shane’s gaze, giving him a once-over. “Who’s your friend?” he asked gruffly.
Shane dropped his hand back to his side lamely, finally accepting it was more embarrassing to continue holding it out expecting a handshake that would never come than it would be to accept the rejection and move on.
“Hayden Pike,” Shane answered. “He worked for you the last three summers and said you’d probably be looking for some new cowboys since he wasn’t coming back this year.”
Crowell’s face softened slightly and the mention of Hayden. “Pike was a good kid. Great cowboy, only lost a handful of sheep when he was on my mountain.” He grunted. “Was awful disappointed when he said he wouldn’t be coming back this year.”
Shane nodded. “He’s got a permanent position on his new wife’s father’s ranch,” Shane explained. “He wanted something more consistent, with a baby on the way.”
Crowell dropped his feet from his desk, leaning forward on his elbows and rolling his eyes. “Kid’s too damn young to be married,” he scoffed, “let alone havin’ a kid.”
Shane felt torn between his loyalty to his best friend back home and his agreement with Crowell that 20 was definitely younger than he thought was wise to settle down like Hayden was, so he just nodded.
“Hayden and I grew up cowboying together on my family ranch outside Calgary,” Shane explained.
Crowell raised his eyebrows. “Why aren’t you still working on your family ranch?”
Shane swallowed uncomfortably. “It was, uh, time for me to get out and make my own way for a while,” he offered, attempting to give just enough detail to shut down the conversation but not so much that led to any more questions, especially in front of Rozanov. He planned to take the real reason with him to the grave.
Crowell’s gaze shifted to the Russian man. “You looking for work too?” he asked.
Rozanov nodded, saying nothing. Shane wondered if he was deliberately avoiding conversation so Crowell wouldn’t hear his accent. Shane faced his own set of obstacles in the ranching world based on his appearance, but he couldn’t imagine it was easy to try to prove competency when likely no one in the entire province had even heard of a Russian cowboy, either.
After ashing his cigarette into his mug once again, Crowell folded his hands over his round stomach, leaning back in his chair. He gestured to the small window to the left of his desk that frames a view of the looming, snow capped peaks of the Canadian Rockies.
“Up on Wolfbird Mountain, the Forest Service got designated campsites on land allotments for herders. Now, these camps can be miles away from where we graze the herds. I lost almost 50 of my sheep last year because nobody was watchin’ them at night, and I can’t afford to lose that many again. If the shepherds are miles away, the coyotes and wolves will get ‘em.
“What I need,” Crowell continued, looking between Shane and Rozanov, “is two cowboys. One to stay at the designated Forest Service camp, and one to pitch a pup tent and stay with the herd overnight. The camp tender will cook, maintain the site, and do supply runs.
Shane’s blood ran cold. The whole point of this endeavor was to spend the summer up in the mountains, alone. He needed solitude, he needed wilderness, and he needed to not be sharing the mountain with the surly (and, as much as Shane tried to ignore it, hot) Russian man next to him.
Crowell was still talking, and Shane tried to shake off the ringing in his ears so he wouldn’t miss anything.
“Now the one of you who stays with the sheep,” Crowell explained, “you’ll be in camp for breakfast and supper, but with the sheep all other times. Never leave them alone for a night. No fires, no trace of you, just in case the Forest Service comes around and tries to fine you for illegal camping. You’ll have your dogs and your rifle, and you’ll keep those sheep alive.”
Shane’s stomach felt like it was full of lead. He didn’t like breaking the rules, no matter the reason. It’s not like he had much of a choice though, having come all the way down here to beg for a job, and maybe he could convince Rozanov to be the one to camp on the mountain so Shane wouldn’t be the one to technically be breaking the law. This way, at least, they wouldn’t be together for more than just meals and the daily grazing runs.
So he and Rozanov both just nodded. Crowell told them to report back with any personal items they’d need on the mountain the next day at 7 a.m. sharp, and he’d have the herd ready to be counted and supplies loaded for them to set off with. They’d have their own horses, two mules to pack in food and supplies, and two herding dogs. He dismissed them without any more details.
Shane and Rozanov filed out of the office to the sound of Crowell yelling and swearing at someone over the phone. Once the door shut behind them, Shane turned to face Rozanov.
“So, I guess we’re spending the summer together,” he stated, unable to keep the apprehension and borderline panic he felt out of his voice.
Rozanov shrugged. “We will see how long you last, Shane Hollander.”
Shane bristled. “Hey, can’t we at least start this off on good terms? It’ll be a long three months if we can’t even be civil.”
Rozanov just stared at Shane, directly in the eye, making Shane feel all hot and itchy under his deliberate attention. Finally, the Russian man turned to head back to his truck, throwing a “See you tomorrow, Hollander,” behind him before slamming the door shut and driving away, leaving Shane behind in a cloud of dust.