CHAPTER 9
COLT
I slammed the post driver down, my shoulders burning in protest. The fence post sank another quarter inch into the hard ground, then stopped cold.
The section of barbed wire that should have been repaired last week was now a full-blown replacement, and I’d already cut myself half a dozen times as I hauled the damaged section from the ground.
Sweat traced a salty path between my eyes and stung like hell, but I was grateful for it.
I was grateful for anything that pushed Blaire out of my mind.
I exhaled, wiped my brow, and rolled my shoulders. Then I slammed the post driver again, and it budged a little more. The post finally gave in, sinking deep enough that I could move to the next one. I flexed my hands and let the soreness ground me. It was the only thing that made sense.
Fences were simple math. The rest wasn’t.
The feed bill was due Friday, diesel had gone up in cost again, and I needed to call the vet and have him come out to look at one of our horses.
Dad’s cardiologist appointment loomed like a storm cloud on Mom’s calendar, each of us pretending we weren’t terrified of what they might find this time.
And Ruby—Christ, Ruby’s dance class started soon.
Last night, Ruby was almost asleep before she whispered, “Can Blaire come to my dance class with me?” Not demanding, just hoping in that fragile way that made me want to promise her the world and tear myself apart when I couldn’t deliver it.
Ruby’s mother walked out when she was three, leaving my daughter with a wariness in her eyes no kid should have.
Yet, she’d clung to Blaire without second thought.
I wanted to hate Blaire for it, for already carving herself into Ruby’s life like she was already meant to be there, knowing damn well she’d hurt her when she inevitably left.
But then I’d remember her in my mother’s kitchen, shoulders rigid, eyes haunted by something she wouldn’t name, and I could feel my anger dissolve into something worse.
This desperate need to protect her too. There had been so much hurt in her eyes, then she blinked, and her mask slid back into place, all easy smiles as she sat beside Ruby at dinner.
The transformation was so perfect it made my hands shake—half with frustration that she could hide so well, half with the urge to reach across the table and touch her face, to see if I could feel the seam where the real Blaire disappeared.
Memories of her stalked me, ambushing me at every fence post, every water trough, every patch of dirt where I’d once chased her through these fields. There wasn’t a single acre of this ranch that didn’t remember her name.
I couldn’t shake her. Not from my head or the thin space behind my ribs where all the anger I’d ever carried got swapped out for something more desperate.
I wanted to pull Ruby back from hope. I could survive another break if I had to. I’d survived Blaire before, but I wasn’t sure my girl could.
The next post came easier. My palms were already numb, and my mind finally slipped into that cool nothingness that came from hard labor. I relished the sense of control, the reliability of the wood and the wire.
No one could mistake a fence’s purpose. Keep things in, keep things out.
I knew how to build a fence, and how to keep things locked up tight. I kept Ruby safely tucked behind the wire while I took the barbs. It worked fine until Blaire walked back into town. She’d always found the gaps in my senses, slipping through them before I’d even realized she’d done so.
When we were kids, the world seemed so simple.
There was this land, my family, Blaire, and a future so vivid I could close my eyes and see every goddamn detail.
We’d drive down the back roads with the windows down and my hand on her bare thigh.
She’d rested her head on my shoulder and said she’d never wanted to be anywhere else.
I’d believed her because I wanted it, too.
I wanted it more than I’d ever wanted anything, but that was before everything got complicated. Before our land started slipping from my hands, before my dad’s body had weakened, before I realized that love alone couldn’t keep her here.
I hit the post again, setting the second one in place, before I lowered the driver to the ground and lifted the hem of my shirt to wipe my face.
I moved on to the wire, pulling it taut and twisting it with my pliers.
A barb bit into my wrist as I worked carelessly, but I welcomed the bite of pain.
I welcomed anything that kept me in the present and didn’t let me linger on what could have been.
But my mind was a mean bastard, and it didn’t care that I didn’t want to think about her.
I couldn’t stop it no matter what I did.
I could still see myself at seventeen, wrestling with a length of wire just like this one, except back then, I had Blaire in cutoff shorts balanced on the hood of my truck.
She stretched her legs out in front of her, and her laughter floated around me.
She’d heckle me for every curse, every sour mood, and when I’d finally snapped and told her to come over and prove she could do it better than me, she’d do just that.
But somehow the fence would never get fixed because I’d grabbed her by the waist before she could do anything and kiss her senseless.
We’d spent a thousand afternoons like that and a thousand nights beneath the same stars with her skin pressed against mine, her curls tangled in my fingers, and both of us promising to never let the world pull us apart.
But promises were just words, and those words fell apart when her father showed up with an offer of a life I could never give her and threats to take everything away.
I closed my eyes, and I was back in that summer, the one where Blaire’s world and mine got turned inside out.
Her mother had only been in the ground for a few weeks when her father called and wanted her to move in with him.
He didn’t want Blaire in the way a father should want a daughter.
He’d spent most of her life somewhere else, and he didn’t start calling until his campaign for senator began.
First every other week, then every Sunday, always asking Blaire what her plans were after graduation, always trying to convince her to come live with him, to enroll in school.
And she would always look over at me as she told him no.
He didn’t give a shit about her, not really.
He cared about how she looked at his side.
He cared about the stories that were printed in the paper that smeared his perfect family man image.
He wanted Blaire because she was his, and because in the tight, cold world of politics, that’s all family ever really was—possessions to leverage, assets to display.
Blaire had believed that if she kept saying no, kept holding on to me and this place, he’d drop the legal battle for custody against June and disappear like he always had before.
But that summer he came in person, all expensive suits and calculated smiles, and he didn’t waste a minute before making it clear what he wanted. She was going to college, and she was going with him. And when that still hadn’t been enough, the threats began.
That was when I learned how little power I really had in this world.
Dad was already in and out of doctors’ offices back then though we hadn’t realized how serious things would get, and every day on the ranch felt like I was waiting for the next bad thing to tip us over the edge.
I was barely keeping myself together, barely handling the pressures I knew my family needed me to take on, and then Blaire’s father showed up on my land with a deed in his hand and a smug smile on his face.
I’d never forget the way he looked, leaning against my fence as he tapped the folded paperwork against the wood.
“You know, Colt,” he drawled. “It would be a shame if anything happened to all this.” He turned his head, looking out over the horizon at the land my dad had practically killed himself for.
“It doesn’t matter what you say.” I had been so sure then, so foolish. “Blaire will never go with you. Willow Grove is her home. I am her home. She’s almost eighteen. It’s her choice.”
He tapped the papers again before he held them out to me, my hands shaking as I took them.
“One lawsuit, one challenge to Mae’s will, and it all gets tied up in court. June’s place, your parents’ too, the land Blaire is supposed to inherit.”
I stared down at the deed to June’s property and a lien that had my parents’ signatures right under June’s. Dated shortly after Blaire’s mother had gotten sick, right before her treatments started.
I felt the blood leave my face as it all made sense.
My parents had co-signed on the loan, probably to keep June and Mae afloat during the worst of her cancer.
It all fell into place right before me: the tightness in my father’s voice, and the acreage to the west they’d sold when they swore they never would.
Blaire’s mama and mine had been friends for a lifetime, and my parents had done whatever they could to help her until the very end. But it hadn’t been enough.
That night, I started running numbers nobody asked me to. Extra calves, second shifts, and quiet deposits against a note that wasn’t mine.
“You will not win this, Colt.” He shook his head as if it hurt him to say it.
“How long do you think Blaire will stay once I’m through with this place?
You’ve got nothing to offer her but a dying ranch.
She wants to go to college. She wants a future, and, son, you can’t give her that.
” He took the paperwork back from my hands and slipped it into his jacket.
“Blaire is coming with me. It’s just a matter of whether you make it easy or I make it hell. ”
And God help me, I believed him.