Chapter Twelve – Under The Weight
Chapter Twelve
Rafe
UNDER THE WEIGHT
Performed by Bobby Bazini
What the hell had I just offered up? What had I gotten myself into?
My pulse was pounding as if I’d just stepped out of a boxing ring as I strode past the barns to the small, single-room cabin tucked behind them that had belonged to Levi, our horse trainer, for as long as I could remember. Like always, it was unlocked, welcoming me in a way that caused more memories to bleed.
The darkness inside was almost blinding after the bright moonlight, and I found the light switch using old muscle memory. A soft glow filled the room from an old, cloth-shaded lamp, revealing little of the cabin had changed in the years I’d been gone. Levi had passed away not long after my father had, and Spencer hadn’t replaced him, saying he could do as good of a job breaking in the horses as the old man. It wasn’t the truth. The only one who’d ever been as good with the horses as Levi was me, but Spencer likely couldn’t have afforded to hire someone new. At the time, I’d thought it had been arrogance.
My forehead throbbed from my attempt at not feeling guilty over it.
A full-sized bed was shoved in one corner of the cabin, the frame made of simple pine logs that matched the two armchairs and side tables sitting in front of a small, river-rock fireplace. A small, two-seater table of cheap metal and green Formica was squeezed in front of a tiny, white refrigerator from the 1950s. The kitchenette had a chipped ceramic sink and a two-burner stovetop. The furniture was basic and worn, the wood floors scuffed from years of boots traveling over them, while an ugly, circular braided rug of mustard and camo green tried to tie the place together without success.
Levi hadn’t cared. He’d rarely been in here. In fact, I’d probably spent more hours of my life in the cabin than he had. The barn and the horses had received the majority of his time, and back when the bunkhouse had been full of ranch hands, he’d eaten his meals with them in the mess hall, mostly using the kitchen to make coffee or pour himself a finger of whiskey.
After I’d stayed here for Spence’s funeral, Lauren must have cleaned the place. It smelled of pine cleaner and bleach now instead of the dusty staleness that had greeted me after burying my brother. It was nowhere near the comfort and elegance I lived in at The Fortress with masterpieces on my walls, top-of-the-line linens welcoming me to bed, and furniture hand-selected by a very expensive interior designer. And yet, I felt a sense of home as I dropped my bag next to the beat-up dresser that had once held all of Levi’s worldly possessions.
A hand-carved wooden frame sat atop the chest of drawers, holding a photo of Levi and me on either side of Firestarter. He’d already been old and weathered by then, his cowboy hat hiding a mostly bald head with a single ring of gray hair. His visible skin was a deep tan, the color of dirt, even though his feet were as white as cotton balls the few times I’d seen him without his boots. I was only fourteen in the picture—the same age as Fallon, I realized with a start—and yet, I’d thought I knew everything there was to know about breaking and training horses. My hair was a mop, the shape of my cowboy hat embedded into it, with my hat thrown to the ground. I was smiling so large you could almost see my tonsils, full of pride and joy because we’d finally gotten the saddle on the stallion. The giant roan had given us a run for our money. It had taken every trick and both our steady hands to finally break him. And even then, he’d been sneaky and independent. But he’d been a hell of a horse.
It had been twenty-one years since that picture was taken. Sometimes, it felt like I’d barely blinked since then, and in other ways, it felt like I’d lived an eternity. I’d certainly lived a completely different life than the one that teenaged boy had thought he’d have.
What would Levi think of what I’d built?
He’d been around for four years after I’d left, and two years after Dad had passed. He’d asked me repeatedly when I was going to get my head out of my ass and come home, and I’d told him I didn’t have a home anymore.
Those words had wounded him far more than they’d ever wounded Dad.
Our father had invested his time and energy into his oldest son from the day my brother was born. Spencer was his legacy. He’d been just fine with me spending my days with Levi, learning a trade that was good for the Harrington name, but it had been Spencer he’d imparted his personal wisdom to. Maybe it was as much my fault as my dad’s that we’d barely tolerated each other. I’d always been more focused on the horses than the entirety of what needed to be done to make the ranch successful. I hadn’t cared about the cattle or the hay fields. On the other hand, maybe I’d had no interest in them simply because Dad had no interest in me. Was it the chicken or the egg that had come first? I’d never know.
I shifted my jaw side to side and pressed my fingers into the tightness at the joint, attempting to ease the clench sending spikes of pain into my temples. I wasn’t the teenager from that photo anymore. Nor was I the stupid young man who’d knocked up Lauren with pride, thinking I could keep her. I wasn’t even the angry, betrayed brother who’d stormed at Spence when he’d come back to the ranch from Vegas with a ring on the finger of the woman carrying my child.
I’d left all three of those versions of myself in my past. Buried them, just as I’d buried Dad and Levi.
But maybe you could never truly bury the versions of yourself that lived inside you. Maybe you had to meld them together rather than cast them out. Maybe fate was forcing me to do just that, face all my pieces so I could no longer lock them behind a door labeled Warning—Enter at Your Own Risk .
I stepped into the tiny bathroom. A stained white porcelain tub took up a good portion of the room with the shower curtain freshly replaced since I’d stayed here last. The pedestal sink was cracked, and the pull-handle toilet was barely functional. It could have been retro-cozy if it didn’t look so abused.
I dropped my clothes and stepped into the shower, trying to rinse away the day. The memories. The loss and heartache that threatened to rip me to shreds. The desire that still thundered from being so close to Sadie Fucking Hatley.
I had to duck to fit under the showerhead.
The water was cold and smelled of rust and ill-use.
It smelled of the farm.
I turned the water off and stepped out with demons chasing me. I pulled on a pair of boxer briefs and then landed on my back on the bed with my feet hanging over the footboard. When I’d stayed here for the funeral, I’d had a good chuckle at the realization of how short the man I’d looked up to had to have been to sleep without complaint in the little bed. As a kid, I’d thought he was the size of a mountain, and he’d turned out to be just a hill—one that had shaped me, but still a hill.
My phone rang, and I groaned but rolled out of bed to dig it out of my suit jacket. Steele’s number flashed along the screen.
“What?” I asked.
“The man following Sadie Hatley is Nero Lancaster. He has a long rap sheet of possible crimes but nothing that’s stuck. Almost did some time for a protection racket in Eastside LA before he moved to Vegas in the early 2000s. Technically, he owns an investigative firm—not sure how he got his license with his past, but he did. I’ll do more digging to see if Puzo is a client, but I doubt either of them have left behind a record of their business.”
“Where is he now?”
Steele hesitated. “I’d have to tap into some resources you don’t like me using to find that out.”
Meaning we’d have to illegally find the GPS on his phone or on his car, if the man even had any of it turned on. If he worked for Puzo as a muscle-for-hire, he’d know how to hide his tracks. And regardless, Steele knew I wasn’t in favor of bending the law.
“According to Adam, Puzo has land up here in Rivers,” I told him. “He’s been helping the local businesses. I want to know what that’s about.”
“Well. Damn. I’ll see what I can dig up that’s public record. One more thing. I couldn’t find a flight for Sadie Hatley that left yesterday.”
The warring parts of my body reacted at her name. “She’s here. At the ranch.”
It took him a beat to respond—and it took a lot to surprise Steele. “What? She’s there? Why the hell would she be there?”
I explained what Lauren and Adam had told me about the dude ranch exchange of information, as well as what Sadie had told me about her great-grandmother and the Puzos.
“Do you believe any of it?” Steele clearly didn’t.
I thought about Sadie’s face in the moonlight as she’d told me she didn’t believe in coincidences, but that was what this was. I thought of the way she tasted when I’d had my tongue tangled with hers. I thought of the feel of her body, and the way she’d all but run from me after I’d backed off, and the astonishment coasting her face when I’d suggested we spend a few nights twined together. She was either a hell of an actress, or she was telling me the truth. Or at least as much of it as she was willing to share at this time. She’d held something back. Her eyes had darted away before she’d told me about her great-grandmother.
“I do.”
“You think she doesn’t know the truth about Puzo?”
“I have no idea how much she knows about him. I do know that both times I suggested she was working for him, she was surprised and pissed.”
“Your judgment isn’t exactly clear when it comes to her.”
It wasn’t. I wouldn’t deny it. I was entranced. Captivated. And I desperately wanted for her to be telling me the truth. I wanted her to be exactly who she said she was, so I could lose myself in her skin a few times without regret. So I could get the taste of her out of my system and go on with my life.
“What else did you find out about the Hatleys?” I asked.
“They seem to be exactly who and what they say they are. Long-standing ties to the Tennessee community they live in. They had an ugly confrontation with the Laredo cartel a little over a year ago. The oldest brother is married to a former NSA agent who helped bring the cartel down. The other brother is the local sheriff.”
“So not the type to get in bed with Puzo.”
“On the surface, no, but who knows what goes on behind the scenes. Maybe the Laredos were muscling in on their turf. If they are into something dirty, they’ve kept it small and local.”
We let that set for a moment. “I may need some help with something else here, but I’m not ready to talk about it yet.”
There’d been something about Adam that had set off my signals earlier. Something more than the resentment he’d tossed my way since we’d been kids. Maybe it was what Fallon had told me about him and Spence arguing the night my brother died, or how he’d tossed Spence’s failure at me with glee. Or maybe I just wanted him to be involved so I didn’t have to live with remorse that was starting to find a home inside me. I wasn’t sure yet.
“You still planning on selling the place?” Steele asked.
My thoughts by the waterfall, of keeping the land whole and safe from developers, returned. Dad had seen it as a duty, keeping the ever-diminishing wild of California safe from the hordes that wanted nothing more than to tear her up and fill her with structures and people. I’d forgotten about it until today—or I’d let myself forget it.
“Unless this dude ranch idea can show me it’s salvageable,” I said and despised how mere minutes back on the ranch had me questioning my plans.
My father had been good at carving uncertainty and doubts into me. He’d taken Spence’s side in every argument, even when we’d all known Spence was wrong. Just like he’d taken my brother’s side over mine when it had come to Lauren. From the moment he’d caught me dating her, he’d told me I was in the wrong. He’d said you didn’t muscle in on your brother’s girl, and I’d known he was right and hadn’t cared. Truth was, my dad’s disapproval had made me all the more determined to win her love.
As I hung up with Steele, I wished for a rare second glass of bourbon. The one I’d downed in Dad’s old office had long since burned through me. My mind whirled with questions, memories of long-lost hopes, and unexpected grief until I finally fell into a fitful sleep where I dreamed of pixies.
They carried me off into the moonlight, spinning me wildly around the falls before dropping me from the clifftop. I landed in nettles that stung my entire body like a whip on bare flesh, and when I woke with a pounding chest in the dark, more memories I despised came with them. The one and only time my dad had used anything but a hand on me, and the way Mom had stepped between me and the horse whip. The way she’d grabbed it, and thrust it back at him, and told him if he ever touched me that way again, he’d lose everything he loved.
I bit my tongue that day, knowing it wasn’t me he cared about losing.
? ? ?
When I left Levi’s cabin the next morning, I was dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and scuffed cowboy boots I’d dug out from the back of my closet when I’d packed the day before. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d worn them and wasn’t even sure how I still owned them, but they would serve their purpose this week.
My head craved coffee, and my stomach was objecting to having missed dinner, so I was headed for the main house for food when I was frozen mid-stride by the view of Sadie Hatley sitting on the top rail of the nearest corral. Her face was sheltered by the brim of her black cowboy hat, body encased in jeans and a thin, cotton button-down in a shade of blue that would make those eyes even more vivid.
The sun practically shimmered around her. When I turned to look at what had brought a smile to her face, my heart grew a thousand times. Fallon stood on the back of her horse as it trotted around the ring. She was in jean shorts that barely covered her butt with a short-sleeved shirt knotted just below her chest. She wore bright-pink cowboy boots that matched the cowboy hat sitting on two long braids. Her smile was so large it could have touched the sky.
That grin, that happiness I rarely saw in her anymore, slammed into me, smoothing away the remnants of my sleepless night like a salve.
She spun a lasso above her head before sliding it down around her body and then jumping over it and landing cleanly on the horse’s back. The buckskin quarter horse never broke stride, steady and strong as it made its way around the paddock with its mane, done in a flourish of braids and ribbons, blowing behind it. My daughter moved fluidly from the jump into a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree spin, all while continuing to dance with the lasso.
I finally unstuck my boots, striding over to lean on the rail next to Sadie. I felt rather than saw her look down at me. But when she inched away, it made me want to put my hands on her waist and drag her back so our skin was touching. Instead, I let her go—at least for now.
The only positive of my restless night had been the renewed determination it had left me with when it came to Sadie Hatley. I’d break her just like I’d broken dozens of mares before her. Not brutally. Not even to prove I could. But simply so I could capture every moan and gasp she’d offer up. So she’d be mine, even if it was only for the handful of days she was here. And in those moments, I knew I’d find the truth of her. Good, bad, or ugly.
Fallon drew her horse up into the center of the ring where both she and the horse took a bow. Sadie clapped wildly, put two fingers in her mouth, and whistled. It took a whole hell of a lot of physical control to draw my gaze away from those pretty lips back to my daughter.
Sliding off her horse, Fallon walked over to us with a confident saunter that made me remember those conversations I wanted to have with her mom about dating—or rather, not dating. Her horse followed without even a command, devoted to my daughter. Did Fallon know I felt the same? Had I ever shown her that I would do just about anything to make her happy?
Anything but the one thing she wants the most , my devil taunted.
“That was incredible,” Sadie told her. “How long have you been doing this?”
Fallon took off her hat and placed it on the post rail. “I don’t know. Since I was maybe five?” She looked at me for confirmation, and I nodded.
I may not have been on the ranch, but I knew what went on with my daughter. I’d always made her my business. When Lauren had first told me Fallon was already doing tricks and wanted to take lessons with one of the instructors at the Western riding school, I hadn’t been sure about it. Sending her off to do stunts on a horse felt like the opposite of protecting her. It felt like throwing her outside at night when you knew the wolves were coming.
“Have you ever gotten hurt?” Sadie asked.
“I broke my arm once, and I’ve had lots of cuts and bruises and strains, but you know what they say, ‘No pain, no gain,’” Fallon said with a smile.
“Your mom said you want to put on shows for your guests,” Sadie said. It wasn’t really a question, but it encouraged Fallon to talk in a way I wasn’t good at doing these days.
“My friend, Maisey, and I have a whole act worked out. And some of the other students at the Western riding school would be happy to perform. We can easily put on a show a couple of nights a week. I figured we could set up bleachers on the south side of the corral and maybe even sell popcorn and soda, that kind of thing. Maybe donate the profits to an equine rescue.”
The hope on my daughter’s face and the pride I felt at her thinking of a charity rather than lining her pocketbook was enough to almost split me in two. That had always been the Harrington way—you helped out your community. For Fallon, that meant the horses she loved as well as the people.
“We just have to convince old stingy here that we can actually make a go of it,” Fallon said, elbowing my arm so it slid off the rail. What would it mean to the community if the ranch was running at full capacity again? If it drew people to the area? I bit my cheek, uncomfortable with the idea of the ranch digging itself into me again.
Sadie turned to me. “Did you ever perform like that?”
I raised a single, sarcastic brow.
When I didn’t answer, Fallon did for me. “He did. You should see this picture of him that I have. He’s wearing a white outfit with sparkles !”
Sadie’s mouth fell open, and her eyes glistened with humor. It had me fighting back my own smile.
“I lost a bet with Spence,” I explained. “Ended up in a Saturday Night Fever outfit—to which he added glitter, I might add—and then had to ride to the lake and back.”
“Did he make you do the one-handed handstand on the horse’s back also?” Fallon smirked. I reached out and tweaked a braid.
“That was so Suzanne Perk didn’t get the idea I was more interested in her brother than her. I’d say she understood the message I sent.”
“Dad!” she laughed, and for the first time since leaving the ranch fourteen years ago, I was glad I was there. Seeing her happy like this, enjoying herself…it was a gift. One I didn’t want to lose.
But the reality was, even I might not be able to sustain the ranch for long at the rate it was losing money. Not without making Marquess Enterprises bleed too.
As if she’d read my mind, Fallon’s smile faded.
“I gotta go rub Daisy down, make sure she gets a treat.” She grabbed the horse’s reins and took off toward the exit of the corral.
I watched her, and all the while, Sadie stared at me. When I finally turned my head to glance up at her, there was a look of something like awe on her face before she tucked it away.
I wanted it back. I wanted her to be in awe for more reasons than I could count and more than were healthy for either of us.
“You’re good with her.” The amazement in her voice bit at me.
“It’s easy to be good with Fallon. She’s always been an even-tempered and agreeable kid.” Even with her gloomy, teen years torturing us right now, she’d never been rebellious, never argued for the sake of arguing—at least not until Spence had been ripped away from her.
“But she lived here, and you didn’t?” Sadie said.
Curiosity rippled off her, as if she had a thousand questions to ask, and I realized that was the way she’d been since I’d first met her. Insatiable. I wondered if she was that way in every aspect of her life, and what it would take to try to quench her ravenous nature. A hint of panic spun through my chest because giving Sadie pieces of me, telling her my history, might not allow me to walk away without leaving a mark, and I hadn’t let anyone brand me in years. But I also knew I’d have to give her something if I expected her to trust me with those secrets she was still hiding.
“You want answers, and so do I,” I told her. “You come to my place tonight, and I might give you a few, but I’ll expect some in return.”
She caught her bottom lip in her teeth and glanced away. “With what you offered last night, I didn’t think we’d be doing much talking.”
“We’ll get to that too.”
Her skin flushed, turning a delightful pink I wanted to lay my hands on. Those bright bluebell eyes turned dark like the deepest parts of the lake in the sunshine.
I backed up enough to hold my hand out to her. “You have breakfast yet?”
She slipped one leg over the rail and then the other before taking my hand and jumping down. She pulled away as soon as both feet were on the ground, but her touch lingered on my skin.
“I tried to help, but Lauren shooed me out to watch Fallon.” We headed toward the house, and she added on, “I think Lauren might work harder than anyone I’ve ever met. Harder than even my brother, and I didn’t think I’d ever meet someone who worked harder than Ryder.”
I didn’t want to think about what Lauren was doing these days, so I didn’t respond.
As if she hadn’t noticed, Sadie kept on going, “I think she’s taken on all of Spencer’s chores in addition to her own. She doesn’t have the money to hire anyone else, so she’s trying to do it all. And grieving. And raising your daughter. I can’t imagine.”
I heard the judgment in her tone, and it took my good humor and sent it into the sky. She could be curious, and she could want to understand me and mine, but she didn’t deserve to judge me. Lauren had made her bed, just as I’d made mine. We’d all had choices, even Spencer, and now we’d been left to live with the consequences.