Chapter 15
Cade
I could help her.
The thought keeps crossing my mind in the most annoying way.
But I hear her out there, all alone, going through the motions of ranch chores. I know when she’s finished, she’ll go inside, make some stupid Betty Crocker meal that makes her dipshit husband happy, and then…
My mind flickers with the image of a man touching her, stripping her clothes off the way I started to.
Fuck. I try to push it away, my fists clenching at my hands, but the thoughts just keep hammering me.
A man has taken all her clothes off and had a kid with her.
She probably likes it when he touches her.
She probably screamed his name.
She lets him take off her clothes.
Jealously roars through my body in a way I’ve never fucking felt before. I squeeze my eyes closed, my heart now pounding in my head. What was that stupid coping mechanism Bradford said to do?
I don’t remember.
My head is swimming in the vision of that sheriff in his cowboy hat ramming into the back of Sadie, with her bruised face and wide eyes.
Stop. Please stop. But it just keeps playing.
‘Oh god, Clayton!’
“Shut the fuck up!” I explode, and my fist splinters into the wood beside me. White-hot rage drowns out the warm liquid pooling between my fingers and the throbbing beneath it. That stupid fucker might own the piece of paper that says she’s his wife, but I can be the man that makes her a widow.
She doesn’t even want that.
She’s pitying you.
I drop my head into my hands, my palms flattening over my ears. I sit there, trying to block out the voices that are coming from the inside of my skull. Three breaths pass, my chest rising and falling, when I start to feel the rumble of a diesel engine.
It rips me from the moment, and I spin on the bucket to peer out through the slats. A commercial rig rolls down the driveway, blowing up a thick cloud of dust. Behind it, is Clayton’s department truck. Behind that, is another truck and trailer with horses, already saddled up and ready to go.
There was a time all I wanted to do was cowboy.
But there was something about cowboying with my stepfather that never went over well.
I spin back around and rest against the slats.
“Where’s Sadie?” a voice calls out, followed by a door slam. “When Greg was around, we always had Sadie out here helping. She’s a hell of a hand.”
“She’s not feeling well,” Clayton snaps. Another door slams. “She’s gonna sit this one out.”
“Damn, hard to imagine her catching shit when she never leaves this place,” the voice drawls. I hear the suspicion in it.
“She ain’t helping, Josh.”
“Josh.” I commit the name to my brain, and peer back through the slat. A short man in a cowboy hat stands facing Clayton, his hand on the gate for the trailer.
My good leg’s knee bounces, considering what would happen if Sadie came out of the house. What if this Josh guy saw her face? Would he do something? Or would he buy the same drunk story?
Probably. No one ever believed me.
I pinch the bridge of my nose, and try to breathe, steadying myself. My mind jumps back to Clayton with Sadie. But then I think what I could do.
I could step out of this barn, and Clayton could be dead before he even knows what’s coming.
“That would be stupid,” I whisper, attempting to ground myself, staring down at my bad leg. There are at least three guys out there.
Without a bad leg, I could take them all.
But the loop in my head snaps the exact second the caliche outside shifts dangerously close to where I’m sitting.
It isn’t the heavy, flat stomp of Clayton’s boots, and it isn’t the structural rattle of a county truck. This sound is different in a way that vibrates straight up through the dirt floor and into my back teeth. The slow, deep huff of an animal breaking through the heat.
A horse.
And the shift of the rider in the saddle causes a leather squeal.
Why are they riding right here?
My body goes into instant combat lockdown, and I sink deeper into the shadow of the rear stall, wedging my shoulder against the splintered feed bin while my bad leg screams a silent, throbbing warning.
Through the horizontal slit in the weathered siding, the world is sliced into gold dust and shadow.
I can see the lower half of the horse—a stout buckskin, its fetlocks caked in pale Texas dust—moving slow along the outer perimeter.
It stops five feet away. The proximity is close, and getting closer.
Are they gonna use this barn?
A wet snort of the horse blowing grit out of its nostrils right against the cracked wood boards has me swallowing hard. The hot, grassy steam of its breath pushes through the gap in the plank, hitting the bare skin of my neck like a physical hand.
“What are you gonna do with this shitty barn?” the rider shouts, who I realize is not Josh or Clayton. It’s another man.
“Torch it eventually,” Clayton calls back. “Damn dog won’t leave it alone. I think there’s a bunch of varmints living in there.”
My fingers open and close against the dirt, finding a rusted piece of old baling wire, my knuckles locking around it.
“I kind of wanna see what’s in there,” the rider says, chuckling. He sounds young, real young. Maybe a teenager. His saddle squeaks. He’s shifting again.
One step closer, something whispers in the dark static of my skull. Just one more step and we tear the throat out.
“Nah, I wanna get this shit done. Come on, Billy!” Josh shouts from elsewhere. “Let’s get these cattle offloaded and head to the house.”
The horse hooves shift, crushing something loud, and then the shadow slowly rolls away, leaving nothing but the smell of horse sweat, lye soap, and the terrifyingly tight rhythm of my own beating heart.
Fuck me. I take a deep breath, willing my body to give into the heavy feeling drawing my eyelids close. I don’t remember the last time I really slept. I live in a state of alert all the time. I’ve done it my whole life.
If only I could sleep.
But while my eyes close, my body doesn’t rest. I listen to the men unload the cattle, throw curse words around, shout and slam gates, until finally it all fades to the quiet of the night, the sun long having disappeared from the sky.
I shift from the bucket to the matted hay on the ground once I’m certain they’re all gone, and no one is outside.
To think I was once a soldier, once a man with a real fucking bed, and a reputation of being good at what I do. Now, I’m a fucked-up fugitive sleeping in rotten hay in a rotten man’s barn.
“Cade?” a small whisper hits my ears.
I almost don’t think it’s real, because I’m certain that Clayton is inside that house, and when he’s here, Sadie doesn’t come out.
But then she nudges the boot on my good leg. “Here.”
I peer up, meeting her eyes in the near pitch black. “Why are you here?” It comes out defensive and fucking cold.
She doesn’t react to me. “Food.” She tosses me a protein bar and a plastic bottle of water.
I stare at her, taking in the swollen ridge of her little feminine nose. “You shouldn’t be out here.”
Her lips press together in a flat line. “Clayton is already asleep. He’s still not right from his drunken escapade.”
“Still ballsy of you.”
“That’s usually how I end up—”
“No,” I cut her off, my annoyance unable to be tamped. “You don’t just fucking end up abused because you’re a little ballsy. Even I know that, and I’m as fucked up as they come, Sadie.”
“Okay, thanks for that information.” She turns to go, and I can’t fucking help it. I’m not ready for her to go.
“My stepdad did shit no dad should ever do to his kid.”
Sadie turns back around, and her face is unreadable in the dark. “He beat you?”
I shake my head and force the fucking truth out. “No.”
“Oh.” The word comes out in a painfully sympathetic tone, similar to when I finally told the suicide crisis lady over the phone when I was twenty-three.
I want to scream at her, but before I can utter a shitty reply, she speaks, holding my gaze.
“Fuck that guy. Fuck him all the way to hell.”
Something erupts in my chest, and it makes me want to touch her. But I don’t. I don’t even know how to touch her.
So, I nod back toward the house. “Good night, Sadie.”
And I watch her leave.