43. CT
43
ct
Some might say this was a bad idea. Some would warn me away from it, would tell me not to risk what I’ve just recently started to earn back, to not let hate enter my heart.
Those some did not include my brother.
Graham sits in my passenger seat, not saying a word. He’s in a mood that tells me he’s here to help, here to give me backup should I need it.
I didn’t say much when I showed up at his and Quinn’s place tonight.
He knew I’d been out of town, doing what was necessary to earn Dani back, but one thing I had to do, one thing that I couldn’t let go of so easily, was letting some fucking coward get away with the shit he has been.
One look at my face and he grabbed his coat, giving Quinn a kiss on the cheek and followed after me. Quinn gave me a nod like she knew what I was doing.
There was no way for her to know, but I think, in some way, she knew I was trying to find a way to deal with the clusterfuck that has been my life for the last few weeks.
The drive is long, and we make quick time of it, pulling up to the barn well after dark. There is only one single bulb lit through the wide-open barn doors, only two trucks parked in the courtyard.
“Cade,” my brother finally says. “Tell me what we’re doing.”
His first words to me, and I wasn’t surprised he wanted to know what we were walking into. What we’d be doing here.
“Tommy Smith,” is my blunt answer.
Graham sighs, knowing from our past what a fucker Tommy was, and grasps the handle of the door, hopping out before I can say another word.
I slip on a pair of worn leather gloves and step out, my boots silent on the dirt ground and shut my door quietly.
Tommy was the kind of rat who would scurry away if he heard us coming.
I hear a woman moan through the open barn doors, and Graham gives me a hard look when the moan turns from passion to distress .
Our pace quickens, the single bulb doesn’t light much, but the light in the tack room spews out into the alleyway, and when I turn to look, Tommy’s back is to me, his belt hanging open and a woman is pressed onto a desk.
Her eyes meet mine over his shoulder, and they widen, either in warning or fear, neither of which I pause for.
I grasp the back of his shirt, yanking hard enough that he stumbles away from her, falling against a wall that holds his bridles.
“What the fuck!” His shock quickly turns to a sneer when he sees me there, and I smirk at the fucker.
“Zip up your fucking pants, you prick,” I spit at him, my fists clenching at my sides.
“Sweetheart, you should make yourself scarce.” I hear Graham tell the woman behind me, and I wait while she takes his advice.
Leaving the three of us alone.
“You can’t just fucking show up here, Trevors. This is private property.” He looks around me and rolls his eyes, barking a humorless laugh. “This is priceless. You brought your big brother for backup.”
The words don’t piss me off, but I grab him up by the shirt, shoving him into the wall of bridles and getting in his face. “I brought him so I wouldn’t get carried away.”
“Oh really?” he quips, and quickly, he sends a punch to my gut, catching me off guard for a moment.
But the angle of his punch is weak, and I don’t waste time before dragging him out in the alleyway, finding his crossties and grabbing one, wrapping it around his wrist. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he snaps, yanking at the ties. “You can’t fucking do this.”
Graham already has the other, and I snatch it up, tying his other hand up as he struggles.
Once they’re tied, he hangs there, laughing like this is some fucking comedy special, and he looks at me. “It really got to you, didn’t it?”
“What’s that?” I ask casually, my mind plotting what I’m going to do to him.
“That that bitch came to me instead of you, that I fucked up her mare on purpose.”
I raise a brow at his bravery. “On purpose, huh?”
He scoffs. “I knew if that slut got her way, she’d get you back in the ring, and then all my fucking hard work would be for nothing.”
“Dani and I weren’t even speaking then,” I reply, not giving a shit what he knew. “If anything, your little stunt brought us back to showing, not Dani. So…I guess that’s your fault, huh?”
“You think you’re so much better than me,” I didn’t answer because I was starting to think it was a little too obvious. “Both of you always did. The fucking royalty of the show world. You’ll both end up disappointing everyone who comes to train with you, just like you did before.”
I purse my lips, thinking not only was he a fucking psycho, but he was grasping at straws.
“What did you do to Lady?”
He chuckles, his hands wriggling against the bindings. “What didn’t I do to her?”
That’s that then. I pull my arm back, letting it fly with a hard thump against his face.
He groans at the contact, turning to face me with a smile again. “Is that the best you got, Trevors? You did worse in Denver.”
I hit him again, watching blood pour from his nose with satisfaction.
“Fuck,” he grunts, being far less of a pussy this time than he was at the show.
I don’t waste time before I send two hard hits to his gut, making his knees buckle.
I let out a breath and say, “What did you do to Lady? ”
“You two are lucky I didn’t do worse to that sorry excuse for a mare.” He spits on the ground and looks at me with hate in his gaze.
Sorry excuse is a bit of a stretch. If she was bad, he wouldn’t have done shit to her.
I let my fist fly, one, two, three times into his face, enjoying the way his panting increases, his face starts to become red from my fists, and I take a step back, turning to face Graham.
“He’s not going to say it,” Graham murmurs to me, and I nod my head. This fucker and his ego were too fucking big.
We already knew he drugged them, already knew he did some fucking thing to Lady, but I had no proof. And beating it out of him wouldn’t work.
I wasn’t opposed to taking this further than a beating…but I wouldn’t do that to Dani. The risks were too big.
I turn back to him. His head hangs, and I push the thoughts away that form in my mind of hurting more than his face.
“Your days are numbered, Smith. I’ll make sure you never see another show again. You have my word.”
Tommy’s head lifts, and he spits near my face, and my anger that I’ve previously tamped down flares again. “You can’t do shit. You and your little whore think you are hot shit, but you’re nothing.”
I take a moment, wondering how broken I should make his nose before I stop myself and take a step back, letting him hang there with his pride on the fucking ground. That probably cut him deeper than my beating the shit out of him.
“It doesn’t matter what you think, Tommy,” I say condescendingly. “You think you’re special, that you’re God’s gift to horse training, to the people around you, but you’re not.”
“Fuck you.”
I rear my fist back and slam it into his nose one last time. He grunts in pain and doubles over. I catch my breath and grip his chin in the same manner that he gripped Dani’s and say, “You’ll never speak to us again. Understood?”
His eyes burn into mine, but when I squeeze hard enough for him to feel it in his jaw, the damage I could really cause, he gives a jerky and pained nod. I pull out my knife, enjoying the fear in his eyes for a moment before I cut the ropes holding him and watch him fall onto the dirt floor.
Then, with Graham at my back, I walk out and don’t look back.
graham
I always knew there was something darker about my brother. There was some sort of protectiveness that he held on to that went above and beyond the natural order of things.
I’d always been grateful that he never joined the military, that he never had to go through the things I’ve witnessed and seen. If he had, that lingering darkness that was in him would have expanded andmay have taken over his entire being.
I didn’t want that for him.
I glance at him as he drives us back home, his posture relaxed, but his fist tight around the steering wheel, and a memory comes to me.
When we were kids, there was a boy who went to our school. We were all farm kids, kids of manual workers who earned every dollar brought home, and therefore, just a little bit tougher than kids should have to be.
Especially us boys.
But there was one boy who wasn’t like us in that way. He was an artist, someone who found his purpose outside of everything we were ever taught.
For that, he was bullied.
Bullied so much, there were days he would walk down the halls of our school, flinching whenever someone came near him, even by accident.
He never snitched. Never told his teachers, our principal, or his parents where the bruises came from. He didn’t tell them that as soon as teachers weren’t looking, the bullies descended like a rough and tumble pack of wolves.
Cade woke up one day and had enough.
I wasn’t in his grade.I was above both him and the boy, but it was a small enough school that I knew what was going on.
Cade was only ten years old when he beat up a ninth grader. He had taken him by surprise, came up behind him when he was bullying that boy, and tapped him on the shoulder.
When he turned, Cade let loose—as far as I knew—his first-ever punch.
The bully didn’t take kindly to that, taking the punch as an invitation to pick a real fight against someone who was asking for it.
And that was the first time I saw my baby brother come undone .
When the fight was overand the bully was on the ground bleeding, Cade held out his bruised hand to the boy and helped him up.
Warren Blake never left Cade’s side after that, and they formed a long friendship.
Cade wouldn’t let other people hurt those he loved.
When it came to protecting Dani, whether they were together or not, I was both afraid and proud that Cade would do anything for her.
Anything for our family.
Which was why I didn’t say a word. Which was why I went with him without a second thought.
Cade didn’t need protection from the outside world.
He needed protection from how far he was willing to go.
cade
I stand proudly with my hands on my hips, staring out at the stretch of land. Henry Blake stands beside me and nods his head. “It’s a good spot, to be sure. Plenty of space. You could start with something basic, then add on later if you so choose.”
I nod my head, my mind spinning with the thought of adding more and more rooms to the house I was planning on building. The idea of having babies with Dani and growing our very own family is as exciting as it is terrifying.
If she took me back.
Don’t sabotage yourself, CT.
Yesterday and the day before, I’d done a few things.
One was seeing a therapist for the first time in my life.
There was the one time I met with one at the hospital, who offered to talk with us after Mom had passed, but that didn’t really count because I had told her to get lost.
After thinking about it, I knew I couldn’t keep ignoring my issues, and even though I desperately didn’t want to go to therapy, I also couldn’t lose Dani again. I’ve fucked myself over twice now, and I am ready to put in the effort it would take to keep her, to be better for her and deserve her.
My therapist tells me I have anxiety and haven’t dealt with Mom’s death well, which makes sense. So, I’m working through it slowly but surely.
The second thing I did over the last couple of days was contact Henry Blake and get him contracted to build the house I’ve always wanted.
Over the years, I’ve put all money earned into the ranch, into paying off loans so our ranch would never be in trouble again like it was when Graham came home. But with new clients and the festival the last two years, we haven’t had money problems like we did, and I’ve been able to put money away from different investments and earnings, so I had enough credit to get myself a loan and start building this house.
No, this home .
If I can convince her, if I can show her, I’m in this one hundred percent, come hell or high water, then this place will be our home.
“I think that sounds like a great idea,” I tell him.
“Just let me get some measurements of the area, and I can have a jump-off point for the designs.”
“Sounds good,” I say and watch him walk off. I take a step back and lean against my truck, checking my phone for any calls or messages.
I’m about to call Logan back when I hear someone coming and see him walking toward me. He nods at me and comes to lean an arm against the bed of my truck. “Blake Construction?” he asks, looking at Henry’s truck.
I nod. “Yup. Gonna get that house started that we always wanted,” I say, not feeling any need whatsoever to hide what I’m doing.
“‘We?’”
I detect a hint of anger behind his words and turn to look at him, a frown on my face. “What’s wrong?”
He shakes his head and sighs. “Man, what the fuck are you doing?”
I stand up from my leaning position and face him. “I’m getting my shit together. I’m trying to show her that I’m ready for this, that I’m in this thing. That I can provide and take care of her the way she deserves.”
His eyes narrow, and he throws a hand out at the sight. “You’re doing shit without even talking to her?”
“This is what we’ve always wanted.”
“Maybe.” He nods. “This might even be a good gesture if she didn’t think you once again dumped her ass.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask, confused. We’re not on the best of terms right now, but we can work through this— I can work through this. “I know we’re not in a great place, and I’m going to fix that, but she needs more than words.”
“No, she doesn’t. She needs both, to be frank.” Logan shakes his head and looks over toward the barn. No one is here right now, but I have that new client coming in an hour for his first lesson. “She’s coming tomorrow to get Lady.”
I turn to him sharply. “What? Why?”
“Graham doesn’t need her anymore, told her himself. So, she doesn’t see a reason to keep Lady here when she can’t afford you.”
I pinch my lips. “Fucking Graham,” I mumble, wishing I had told my brother to draw it out.
But no, that wouldn’t be fair. She deserves fair.
“When is she coming?”
“After work,” he says, looking over at me. “She tells me she’s going to take that job in Texas.”
My stomach plummets. “What?” My question comes out on a breath.
He nods, his expression grave. “Yeah, says she needs a change. That she can’t stick around here.”
“Well.” I lick my lips quickly, my heart pounding in my chest so hard that I can barely hear myself talk. “What did she say? What did you say?”
He shrugs, his thumbs tucked into his front pockets. “ What am I supposed to say? ‘No, Dani. You can’t leave. You should stay here and be stuck forever?’”
“She’s not stuck,” I argue.
“She is stuck!” He raises his voice. I take a step back, startled. For all the years I’ve known Logan, he’s the last person to lose his temper. It’s what makes him such a great dad, his ability to be calm and rational. “She is sitting around, waiting for you to get off your ass.” He pokes a finger into my chest. “When are you going to see that? Huh?”
My vision blurs for a moment, and I bend at the waist, feeling the rising pressure building in my chest. My mind races, and I pinch my eyes closed, trying to breathe through this. I’ve had three panic attacks now, all stemming from not being able to handle riotous emotions and anxiety. According to my therapist anyway.
I hear Logan ask if I’m okay, and I hear him tell me to breathe.
Several minutes pass, and I’m able to open my eyes again. I’m able to clear my vision enough to see Logan’s concerned expression. “You okay?” His voice still sounds like it’s in a tunnel, and I nod slightly, standing and taking another deep breath.
Thankfully, he doesn’t press and lets me have a minute to compose myself again.
When my vision is clear and my breathing has returned to normal, Logan presses again. “Are you really going to say what you mean with her, or are you going to drag this out for another few years before you get cold feet?”
I glare at Dani’s cousin, still slightly disoriented from my attack, but I can also see where he’s coming from. They may be cousins, but she’s more like his little sister, and all four of the Cash brothers treat her that way.
“I’m not going to get cold feet,” I growl, pissed that I’m still having to defend myself. But…I also get it, and I’m more than a little thankful that Dani has both of our families backing her. “I’ll be here tomorrow.”
“Good.” He nods, kicking the dirt at his feet.
This mountain range transitioned quickly from green to gold and red to brown. The cold had settled in, and we now just had to wait it out until we got our warmer weather again. “I really don’t want her to move, CT, but if it’s what’s best for her, you have to let her go.”
I close my eyes, and the thought of her leaving me, leaving Colorado altogether, has my chest pinching in fear.
“I don’t want her to leave either. I’m not trying to hurt her,” I admit to him, only because he is my friend and will be family someday. Otherwise, I wouldn’t feel obligated. “I love Dani. I always have, always will. But I’m not fucking perfect, and I have some shit I have to work through. I’m just hoping she’ll be willing to stand by my side while I do it.”
He smirks, a little scoff exiting his mouth. “I don’t think you have to worry about that. That girl is as loyal as they come, and when it comes to you?” He waves his hand in the air like it is a no-brainer.
I wasn’t so sure, but I am willing to try if it is the last thing I do.
She is loyal. He was right. She is one of the best people I know, her temper and all, and I am proud to love her, proud to have her by my side.
I just hoped that she could—and would—say the same thing about me.
Logan crosses his arms and stares me down. “But don’t fucking hurt her, or I’ll have to kick your ass.”
I nod. “If I ever hurt her again, I’ll let you.”
He scoffs out a laugh and socks me in the arm. “Smart-ass.”
We chuckle, but I’m not kidding. If I ever hurt Dani again, I’d take every punch thrown my way.
But no, it won’t happen. I won’t let her get hurt again.