Chapter Thirty-Two The Dark Stallion
THERE ARE THINGS about her she didn’t know until I told her.
Secrets of her body. Like a mole on the small of her back that she didn’t know existed until I traced it with my tongue one night and showed her in the mirror when she asked me what I was doing.
Or that the back of her left knee is more ticklish than the right.
She didn’t know her belly button could be so sensitive that me playing with it would make her come until I did it twice in one night.
She didn’t know she frowns when she’s rereading for the tenth time the little notes I leave for her.
Or that every time she laughs, her nose crinkles a little.
If she’s trying to sass me but is turned on, the base of her neck will flush with heat as she glares at me.
There are a million other things I could list, and I do as I make the call and hear it ring. They come and go through me like flashes as I wait for him to pick up. Like how your life flashes before your eyes when you’re about to die. Given that she is my life, it makes sense.
It makes sense that when he does pick up, I growl, my words low and vibrating, “Where is my wife?”
“She’s safe,” Brecken Turner tells me.
“Where,” I ask again, as in my head I watch her giggle over something I said. “Is. My. Wife.”
“As I said, she’s fine,” he says in a calm voice. “And I’d like you to remember that you didn’t afford me the same courtesy when I asked about my sister a couple of weeks ago.”
I breathe in. I breathe out. Then I fist my palm around my open pocketknife, cutting my skin. I keep doing it, breathing and cutting my skin, until I can see clearly. Until it doesn’t feel like my world is on fire. That my insides are split open and I’m coming apart.
It’s important.
That’s the first thing that came to mind when I went back to the barn after cooling off.
After riding Rebel hard for hours. After mucking the stalls and wielding the axe to cut down enough timber to last for the next six months.
After all of that, when I went back and found her gone, I knew I had to keep my cool.
At first, I thought she did it.
She did what I told her to, so I went to the main house.
I went so I could apologize. For real. With words.
By saying sorry. Like other men do. Normal men.
Men who care about their wives, not motherfuckers like me who don’t know what that word sounds like in their voice because they hardly ever use it.
And then I was going to sit her down and tell her everything about Annie.
I was going to tell her what she’s been dying to know all this time.
What I’ve been too afraid to say because then she’ll really find out why she doesn’t belong here.
Why she doesn’t belong with me.
I know I’ve been acting like a big man, a big fucking noble man, these past couple of weeks, asking her to leave.
Demanding that she run away from this ranch, this town.
Me. But if I really was so noble, I would’ve told her about Annie.
I would’ve told her the entire truth. But I didn’t.
And then when she confronted me with the truth, I flipped out on her.
So when I didn’t find her in the main house, either, and she wasn’t in any of the other barns and stables where Rad looked or other places that Ax and Haven and Peyton could think of to search, and after all the phone calls that Mars made, I knew that keeping my cool was what was going to save my life and quite possibly her life too.
I couldn’t lose it like I did that night in the cabin.
I couldn’t lose it like I did eight years ago either.
I needed to be smart. I needed to be levelheaded, because for the first time in my godforsaken life, I can’t be selfish.
I have a responsibility. She’s depending on me.
And I can live through anything, any-fucking-thing, any failure, all the broken promises, but letting her down is not something I’m willing to do.
What that says about me in regard to Annie, I don’t know.
I’ll let her be the judge of that when I tell her, but for now, I need her here. I need her safe.
I need her.
“What do you want?” I ask Brecken as calmly as I can.
“I think you know what I want,” he says. “I want my sister back. Who by the way isn’t really your wife.”
“You—”
“One piece of advice: If you’re going to leave your enemies alive, make sure they don’t know your secrets,” he says, cutting me off.
“The man, the one you booted off your ranch last week, he ratted you out. He came to me and told me about how two Turner girls are living on the Grayson ranch, and how you were sweet on one of them. Not my sister though. The other girl. That you keep calling your wife. I was getting close to cracking it all open anyway but he made it easier. Not to mention, he had a lot to say about your little prison program.”
The fire is threatening to overcome me, so once again, I wrap my hand around the knife and inject a dose of pain to keep myself sharp. “Let me talk to her.”
“No,” Brecken states, and I open my mouth to argue, but he keeps going.
“Because you aren’t making the rules anymore.
Here is what’s going to happen: If you want your wife back, you’re going to bring my sister back to me and you’re going to dissolve this sham of a marriage and your bullshit power of attorney.
And then we’re going to sit down and have a conversation about your dead girlfriend and this decades-old feud between our families.
How if it ever comes up, I’m going to make sure you lose every bit of that land you stole from my forefathers. Is that clear?”
I feel the blood dripping down my palm and plopping onto the hardwood floor as I warn, “If you touch her, I—”
“I have no interest in touching her,” Brecken says smoothly. “All I want is my sister back and this land business over with. You have twenty-four hours.”
With that he ends the call, and I spring up from my seat. Twenty-four hours is too long. Too fucking long for her to be on that ranch. Where her daddy abused her, beat on her, fucking terrorized her.
She needs to come home right the fuck now.
And this is her home. With the Graysons.
Who care about her. With Haven, who became her friend on day one and has been distraught ever since I showed up at the main house looking for her.
With Ax even, who looks fucking traumatized by her disappearance and thinks it was somehow his fault because he was supposed to be watching.
With Rad, who’s been on her side since the beginning, since before I even brought her here.
“What do you need?” Rad asks me, reminding me that I’m in Mars’s office.
But I focus on Marsden, who’s sitting behind his desk. “Let me know when the lawyer calls back. I need to know when it’s done.” Before he can respond, I turn to Rad. “Peyton.”
“Peyton.”
“What about her?” he growls back.
If I tell him, he’ll lose his shit. But he needs to know so I growl, clutching the knife, “Peyton’s gonna help us get her back.”
We’re both at the door when Marsden’s voice halts me in my tracks: “She loves you.”
I turn around to face him. Sitting at his desk, he looks every inch the landowner he is.
His shoulders straight, his eyes hard. “You know that, right? ‘Cause if you don’t, then you’ve gotta be the blindest fool to ever set foot in Black Rock.
Everyone at Rawhide knows. She loves the Dark Stallion and he’s been toyin’ with her.
Haven thinks you’ll come around, but I know how stubborn you can be.
How fuckin’ hardheaded. And now there’s a chance you’re gonna lose her.
You’re gonna lose the girl who somehow, some-goddamn-way loves your fool, reckless ass, all because you can’t let go of the girl you loved eight years ago. ”
He’s right. I can be stubborn. I can be hardheaded. But I’m no fool, and I’m not blind. I know she loves me. I knew it before she told me tonight.
I didn’t want her to love me, though.
So I kept reminding her, kept telling her she shouldn’t.
I’m not the man for her. I could never be the man for her.
Her future is elsewhere. My sins are too big.
My crimes are too harsh. I just wish now that instead of being a selfish motherfucker, I had told her the whole story. She would’ve known then.
To stay away. To keep her heart safe from the likes of me.
“I know you looked into Annie,” I tell him. “I know you’ve got a file on her and I know you think I’m a fuckup. But if you don’t butt out of my business, we’re gonna have a big problem.”
I’m going to tell her now, though. I’m going to tell her everything. Because she has a right to know everything about the man she loves. And because if I knew how to love, she’d be the one for me. But first, I need to get her back to where she belongs.
In her home.
Safe.