Chapter Twenty-Eight #3
“She’s saying we,” Peyton decides to chime in then.
“But she really means me. As I said before, she didn’t want to do this, and I mean it.
She mostly came to protect me because I have a habit of making questionable choices.
But I didn’t think we had a choice but to look out for ourselves and get leverage against you.
So if you want to hog-tie me, then go ahead.
But don’t blame Reverie. She’s already suffered enough because of me.
Because of this asshole here. She’s not even a Turner. She’s not in this.”
Arsen’s jaw clenches then. All this time, he hasn’t looked away and neither have I.
And it almost feels like we exist on a different plane.
On a different dimension than the other two people in this room.
Like we have a tether between us, secret and invisible.
A connection no one sees, no one knows about.
And why not? It’s because we’re branded.
So my question—that Peyton already asked—is just for him. “Who is this man?”
And I know his answer is just for me. “An inmate.”
My heart thuds. “An i-inmate.”
“Missing.”
Sweat is pooling in the small of my back, even though I feel cold. “Why was he… tied up and beaten?”
“Because he robbed a liquor store.”
“And then fucked up his girlfriend,” Rad adds, his voice laced with anger.
Peyton gasps.
“W-what?” I breathe out choppily.
“Only got convicted for the robbery, though,” Arsen adds. “Didn’t find out about the other thing until tonight.”
“T-tonight?”
“When I beat him up and tied him to this chair.”
I put a hand on my belly. “Y-you did it?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
He stares at me for a beat before shifting on his feet.
“Had a bad feeling about him the moment I saw him at the bonfire yesterday. Didn’t think he’d be a good fit for Rawhide.
Mars didn’t agree, so I took matters into my own hands.
Brought him out here, beat him like the little shit he is until he talked.
And told us the truth about what he really did the night he got arrested. ”
My heart is beating so hard that it’s a wonder I can stand all still like this without clutching my chest. “But I… I still don’t understand what he was doing at the ranch. W-why would he be here in the first place when he should be in p-prison?”
Arsen’s jaw starts ticking. And in the periphery, I see Rad looking up at the ceiling, sighing. Peyton is the one to break their silence. “What the hell is happening here? What’s this big secret?”
Still staring at Arsen, I whisper, “Please.”
His features tighten up at my plea. “Because Mars has a habit of pickin’ up strays. Or rather caged dogs like this motherfucker here. The ones who commit crimes and get sentenced. Only instead of doin’ time in prison, they pay their penance here. At Rawhide.”
“Penance,” I murmur, the word jumping out at me the most, for obvious reasons. He’s paying his own penance, isn’t he, in his own way.
His features tighten further, probably because he knows what I’m thinking. “There’s a system. A program. A series of hurdles they have to pass. To prove they’ve changed. To prove their loyalty to the ranch.”
“Wait, what?” Peyton exclaims in disbelief. “This is… It sounds insane. Like a training program?”
Arsen still doesn’t look at her, like no one exists except me, as he corrects her: “A redemption program. Rawhide Redemption. Mars picks men he thinks need a second chance at life, a clean slate so they can start over. Only they start over here. They make it out of the program, they get a new identity and a job at the ranch.”
“But that’s… That’s crazy,” Peyton repeats.
“It is what it is.”
“But you guys are lifting people off the prison system, right? That’s illegal. That requires some serious involvement from, God, I don’t even know from what. Like, every level of the law. Judges, cops, lawyers.”
Arsen’s jaw pulses. “Politicians. Probably the reason why your brother and your daddy are so concerned about it.”
But somehow I’m not concerned about all this. I should be, but I’m not. Not really. I have something else on my mind. “What happens to the ones who don’t make it through the program?”
Arsen studies me for a few seconds, his features tightening once again. “They disappear. For good.”
I somehow knew it. I’m having a hard time grasping what the program, this Rawhide Redemption, could even mean or what it entails, but I knew this.
I knew if you didn’t make it, you’d disappear off the face of the earth.
But even that isn’t something I’m concerned about.
Death doesn’t concern me anymore. I’m not afraid of it like I was before because of what happened to my mother.
It wasn’t love that killed my mother; it was my father.
I know now that I’m in love myself. And while love is certainly capable of killing, there’s something else that’s more important to me: him.
“Do you…” I go to swallow, but my throat is too dry. “Do you make them… Were you going to…”
Kill him?
I can’t say it, but he gets it. And locking his gaze tight with mine, he shakes his head. “Mars. He likes to do his own dirty work.”
At last, ever since we arrived at this cabin and saw that man tied up through the window, I breathe in a sigh of relief. It’s so huge that my entire body seems to have taken part in it. Even the tips of my fingers and my toes.
I don’t care what’s happening at Rawhide. I don’t care how many laws these cowboys are breaking, I just don’t want him involved in it. Not because him being a killer would diminish my love for him, but because I don’t think he’d be able to live with himself if he took a life.
I know he wanted to eight years ago, but I don’t think he’d ever be able to come back from that.
The reason that goodness in him survived the fire was because he failed to get the job done, and God, I’m thankful for it.
I am even if it makes me the most selfish person in the world, but I don’t want my Arsen changing, not even a little bit.
Which means it’s even more imperative that I find a way to stop him.
He’s the one who needs to be set free from this anger, this fire inside of him, this pain that’s making him do this.
“So now you know,” he says finally. “There’s your fuckin’ leverage. Keep it. Use it. Do whatever the fuck you want with it.” Then, for the first time since he arrived at the scene, he looks away from me and commands to Rad, “Take ’em back.”
With that, he heads to the door. Or starts to, but I say, “It’s my fault too.”
He stops in his tracks, his gaze coming back to me, emotionless now. Hard and dark. But still I continue, “I thought… I thought it was over.”
There’s nothing on his face or his body that says he heard me, let alone understood me. But I have to keep going: “When you dropped me off at the main house. This morning.”
Again, he gives me no reaction, and I’m hoping that’ll change soon because I’m blushing like crazy.
I can feel the other two people, Peyton specifically, staring at me with wide eyes.
Wide, questioning eyes. But I can’t think about that right now.
I have to forge ahead. “And then you didn’t show up for lunch or for dinner and…
You never came back to the main house and I thought”—a deep breath—“I thought after what happened this morning that it was over.”
Finally, he breaks his silence and utters one word: “Over.”
Oh, thank God. At least he’s saying something. It doesn’t matter that he still looks detached from the situation, aloof and cool. I’m just glad he’s listening to me.
I wipe my hands on my jeans. “Yes, I thought you didn’t want me anymore.
And Peyton’s right. I didn’t want her to do this but maybe somewhere in my head, I was m-mad at you.
I was mad that… you didn’t care. You didn’t…
You didn’t think about me all day like I thought about you and so maybe I came here because I knew it’d piss you off.
If you cared about me, that is, and… It was a mistake.
I didn’t think it through. I didn’t think things would end up like they did. So it’s my fault too and I…”
It is, and I’m only finding it out now. I’m finding out that when it comes to him, I’m all emotion and no thought. I’m all heart and no head. All love and no care.
“You what?” he prods, and I notice his stubbled—bearded now, actually—jaw clenching at the end of his question.
It makes me breathe easier, his outward reaction. “I’ll do anything.”
His eyes narrow a fraction. “Anything.”
And again, my words come easier, more confident the more he lets his emotion slip free, even if it’s anger. “To get you to forgive me.”
I know what I’ve done. I know I’ve handed him all the reins. And I know he’ll make me work for it. I want him to make me work for it after how I scared him.
He lets a few moments pass in silence, and I can hear the imaginary ticking of a phantom clock. Then he moves his eyes. His dark gaze travels up and down my body quickly and almost dismissively. Then, “Thought I said I didn’t want you to wear those clothes.”
My heart drops a beat, and I have to breathe for a second before I can answer. Because I think, I think, I know where this is going.
“You did,” I whisper.
His chest moves with a breath, swelling up, becoming larger, formidable. Like the rest of him as he decrees, “You’ve got five seconds to rectify your mistake and drop ’em on the floor.”