Six
Montana
One more day, and I’d get out of this cabin. Going to a new school this close to finishing my senior year was daunting, but it wasn’t like I could go back to Monroe. This was my only option. My babysitter was not required, and I didn’t want him here just as much as he didn’t want to be. He hadn’t even attempted to whisper last night when he talked to Jayda. The walls weren’t that thick, and neither was the bedroom door.
I’d waited for three hours this morning to see if he’d leave or go outside at least so I could go get something to eat and drink. After I took my time in the shower, drying my hair, getting dressed, and making up the bed, he was still here. I could hear the television, and he’d just gotten something out of the fridge.
Deciding that I could go outside if he wasn’t going to, I slipped on a pair of my tennis shoes, so that I could explore the property. But first, I needed coffee and some fruit at least. Making myself a scrambled egg and toast meant being in the same room as him for too long. I’d rather just grab a banana and go.
Preparing myself for whatever insult he tossed at me today, I opened the door and walked into the room, barely glancing at the back of his head. Thankfully, he was seated on the sofa and not in the kitchen. Continuing in our silence, I made myself a cup of coffee, then picked up a banana from the bowl that sat just below the microwave. I could smell the bacon he’d made himself, and my stomach growled. But staying in here long enough to make my own wasn’t happening.
When I reached the door to go outside, his gruff voice stopped me.
“Where are you going?”
I didn’t want to turn around and look at him, but talking to the door seemed silly. Sighing, I faced him. He was shirtless with his bare feet propped up on the coffee table and a mug resting on his denim-covered thigh. I should have kept looking at the door. Snapping my eyes up from his ripped abdomen and the tattoo on his sculpted biceps to meet his annoyed glare, I felt my cheeks get warm.
“Outside.” I stated the obvious.
“To do what?”
“Walk around.”
The distrust in his gaze made me roll my eyes.
“Fine,” he muttered, standing up.
After one glimpse of his jeans hanging low on his hips and the defined V cut that disappeared beneath them, I swung my gaze to the television. More baseball. That seemed to be all he watched.
“How long is this going to take?” he asked.
“Uh, I don’t know. Why?” Did it matter?
“Because there is a game coming on that I don’t want to miss.”
Frowning, I looked back at him, and he was pulling on a black T-shirt, which was too small for his thick arms and wide chest. That wasn’t much better than being shirtless, but at least the bottom part was covered up, and I wouldn’t keep looking at it.
“You’re going with me?” I asked, realizing that he was bending over to put on his boots.
“Yes,” he clipped.
“Why?” That defeated the purpose of my leaving.
“Because that’s my job.”
His irritation with that fact was clear. Not my fault.
“I can’t go anywhere on foot. What do you think I’m going to do?”
He finished putting on his second boot and shrugged. “Hell if I know. I just have to make sure you don’t do it.”
God! I wanted to groan in frustration. “Can you call Linc and ask if I can go alone? You don’t want to go, and I don’t want you to. My reason for going for a walk is to get out of the cabin, get fresh air, and get away from you. You don’t like me. I don’t like you. We could both use a break.”
He stood there, staring at me as if I were about to commit some felony with my coffee and banana in hand.
“Where’s your phone?” he asked.
“In the room.” Why did it matter?
“Go get it. Take it with you.”
“If I take it, then you’ll stay here?” I asked hopefully.
He nodded his head once.
Thank the Lord. I strode back to the room, stuck my banana under my arm to hold it, then snatched my cell up from the bedside table before returning to the living room. I held it up to show him as I passed by and then stuck it in my pocket.
“Am I good now?”
His eyes traveled down my body again, like they had yesterday when I came out of the room. It made my stomach feel funny, and I didn’t want to react that way. Not to him.
I was getting out of here. I didn’t wait for a response. When I opened the door, he said nothing, and I hurried out before he changed his mind.
With a sigh of relief, I went down the steps and stopped to take my first sip of coffee before scanning the sprawling acres around me. This land was beautiful. If it wasn’t for the warden living with me, then I’d enjoy staying here. Even if it wasn’t home. But after Momma had taken her last breath, I realized home had gone with her. Without her there, that house wasn’t home, and neither was Monroe. It was just all that I knew.
I decided to walk farther away from the cabin before finding a spot to sit and peel my banana. The breeze was cool, but spring was already here. Rarely did it take until the actual first day of spring for the South to feel warmer. By noon today, it would be in the mid-seventies. Perfect weather to stay outside. I might not have to see Than, except to get food and water.
There was a small hill that I headed for because whatever was on the other side of it couldn’t be seen from the house. Then I could sit and enjoy my morning without feeling as if I was under constant surveillance. Correction: judgmental surveillance.
Than Carver thought he knew me. He’d placed marks against me before ever meeting me.
He knew nothing. None of them did. They were friends of Jericho. They hadn’t been his unwanted child. The little girl who had looked forward to any attention he threw her way until, one day, she was old enough to realize how unimportant she was to him. That moment was forever etched in my memories.
It had been on my ninth birthday party.
He’d come to visit Momma. I understood now that was why he’d come around. It was never to see me. She mentioned my upcoming birthday, and he smiled at me. Back then, I soaked up any attention I could get from him. He asked me what I wanted, and all I could think of was to blurt out that I wanted him to be there. He had never been at one of my birthday parties. When he said he would come and bring the biggest present, I had been so overjoyed that I squealed and ran to hug him. Looking back, I realized it had been awkward. He’d patted my head, not hugged me in return.
I’d had friends at school whose fathers would pick them up in the afternoons. They’d be beaming with happy smiles at the sight of their children.
One girl had a tall, handsome dad who would always hold out his arms, and she’d go running into them.
Then he’d pick her up, swing her around while she giggled with glee, and ask her, “How was my princess’s day?”
My heart had literally ached for a father like that. But I had Jericho, and my momma was just another one of his affairs—not that I’d realized it at the time.
He hadn’t shown up for my special day. Although Momma had warned me several times that week not to expect that much from him, I had. I was going to have a dad at my party. Someone to show my friends. He’d have a big gift for me, and they would all see that I was special too.
Momma baked my favorite strawberry cake, and she set up games for us to play in the yard. I could see the apology in her eyes every time she looked at me. Which made it hard to keep from bursting into tears. I’d told all my friends that my dad was going to be there with the biggest gift. The humiliation of his not showing wasn’t the final straw. It was when he didn’t even call to explain or simply wish me a happy birthday.
When I lay in bed that night, I listened as Momma yelled at someone on the phone, and although I couldn’t hear what she was saying in the distance with the door muffling the sound, I knew. She was yelling at Jericho.
That was the last time I’d wished for a father.
Shoving all those thoughts aside to think of something else, I crested the hill and stopped as I looked out at a stable up ahead. Moving closer, I searched for any sign of someone else, but only found a horse. A bluish-gray horse with a mane and tail as black as coal. I checked the acres and acres of fenced-in land that I could see, but the horse appeared to be alone.
The closer I got to it, the more stunning it was. Not wanting to upset it or cause a problem, I stopped several feet away and found a grassy spot to sit down. The horse and I stared at each other as I peeled my banana. I wondered if it was male or female and what its name was. I wouldn’t be asking Than. That would require talking to him.
Momma would have loved this. She’d always talked about how, one day, we’d save us enough money to buy a house in the country. She’d learn to do more than bake a cake from the box. She wanted to have a garden and grow her own vegetables. That had made me laugh because Momma couldn’t keep a house plant alive.
“I miss you,” I whispered, then took another bite of my banana.
Loretta Carrigan hadn’t been what most folks would call a normal mother. Many frowned upon her way of doing things. My third-grade year, she’d kept me out of school too many days despite the warnings that had been sent home, and I had to redo that grade. She was so mad. I could remember wincing as I listened to her cursing out the principal. It was a mistake she never made again though. I might have been tardy regularly—that was, until she finally started letting me ride the bus—but I was rarely absent. Regardless of what the world thought and saw, she was mine. She loved me unconditionally. She had been both mother and father to me.
A laugh bubbled out of me when I thought about Chad—whose last name I couldn’t remember—coming to pick me up for my first date. I’d been fifteen, and he’d been sixteen. Momma met him at the door with that bright smile of hers that men loved, then pulled out her pistol and asked him what he thought of it. She told him she had been thinking of getting a pink one, but that hadn’t seemed real intimidating at all. And she wanted to be sure to get the point across if she ever had to pull it out somewhere other than at the shooting range. She told him she was a real good shot too.
I had been horrified back then, but now I’d give anything for her to pull out her gun, which had never once been loaded, and try to threaten one of my dates.
As I finished off the banana, I heard the crinkle of grass caused by footsteps, and I glanced back over my shoulder. Than had come to look for me, it seemed. Make sure I wasn’t secretly plotting his precious governor’s demise. With a sigh, I turned to look back at the horse. I’d had some peace for a little while at least.
“Am I not allowed near the stables?” I asked, annoyed, not looking at him but straight ahead.
“Linc asked me to let Diane out. She’s ornery, and she doesn’t want to go graze as early as Jack does,” Than replied as he walked past me.
“Jack and Diane? Those are the horses’ names?” I asked, just on the verge of laughing.
Than nodded his head. “Yep.” And kept walking.
I pressed my lips together to keep from letting out my amused laughter. Although Jack and Diane did not sound like names you’d give horses, I thought it was creative. When Than reached the wide barn-style doors and slid them open, he glanced back at me. My smile faded as I prepared for some scathing comment.
“The foal’s name is Heartland,” he called back to me. “Want to see it?”
Foal? As in a baby horse? Did I want to see it? Yes! But that meant going with Than. He’d asked me though. Deciding this might be the only time in my life I got to see a baby horse or foal up close, I put my banana peel into the empty mug, then stood and dusted off my bottom before heading down the slight decline toward him.
When I reached the doors, I hesitated.
“You’re not trying to lure me in here to lock me in some storage shed and leave me to starve, are you?”
He rolled his eyes and went inside the stables. “Not my job to kill you. I’m just here to make sure you keep your mouth shut.”
Right. Like I wanted to tell the world my father was Jericho Baskin. I’d rather claim a random inmate in the nearest prison as my father.
Slowly, I stepped farther into the building, taking in its well-kept, rustic appeal.
“Over here,” Than said, nodding his head toward a stall he was standing in front of.
Anxious to see the foal, I forgot about my trepidation and hurried over to where he was standing. When I could see around the corner and into the cozy, hay-covered space, there was a beautiful, full-grown horse the color of desert sand. This must be Diane. My eyes dropped to search for the foal when I saw it standing up in the corner. It wasn’t blue gray or the pale gold of its mother. Instead, it was a light reddish brown with a black mane and tail.
“Is it a boy or a girl?” I asked.
“Filly. You don’t name a colt something like Heartland.”
I glanced over at him. “Filly is female, right?”
He nodded.
“She’s a different color.” I’d expected a mini Jack or Diane.
Than leaned against the door of the stall and ran his hand over Diane’s neck. “She’s a bay, but her color will be darker when she sheds her foal coat. Shedding will start soon. She’s almost three months.”
I went back to watching the foal as she came up to her mother, looking at us with curiosity.
“Does she go out to the field too?” I asked him.
“Right now, she goes where her momma goes,” he replied. “Once she’s weened, she’ll start going out to graze with Jack in the mornings. This the first foal you’ve seen up close?”
I laughed lightly so as not to startle the foal or her mother. “They’re the first horses I’ve seen up close.”
“You never wanted to ride a horse?” he asked me.
I cut my eyes at him. “Where was I gonna find one to ride?”
He shrugged. “I figured you’d have dated enough guys that one of them was bound to have horses.”
I let out a sarcastic laugh. Oh, he thought he had me all figured out. Smug bastard.
I had dated three boys in my life. The first one, Momma had scared off with that gun stunt. He never asked me out again. The second one lasted a month, but when I wouldn’t have sex with him, he cheated on me with another girl. And lastly, there was Bray Hark. The one guy I thought maybe I could love eventually. I almost gave him my virginity, which I’d held close because I didn’t want to end up pregnant at seventeen. He was romantic and sweet. I enjoyed being with him. He made me laugh, and we had fun together.
Then Momma got sick, and the more her health declined, the more I didn’t want to leave her side. She needed me, and I knew I wanted every second I had left.
Then, scanning Instagram one night while I sat in a hospital room, watching Momma sleep, I came across a photo at a party, posted by a friend. She was sticking her tongue out with rock on hand signals and a bottle of tequila in front of her. In the background, however, there was Bray with Hazzie Noel’s lips locked on his and his hand down the back of her bikini bottoms, gripping her ass.
I simply took a screenshot of the picture, texted it to him, and said, We’re done.
He showed up with flowers, begged me to forgive him, blamed it on being drunk, and tried for a couple of months to get me to take him back.
Normally, I thought text breakups were tacky, but seeing as he’d been making out with another girl while I watched my momma slowly slip away from me in a hospital room, I didn’t much give a shit. He deserved it.
And that had been the end of Bray and me.
“If you can behave and be a good girl, we will see about getting you on Jack for some lessons.”
My head snapped around to look at Than. Had he just tried to bribe me to be a good girl? I was insulted…and maybe a touch turned on. The way his voice had sounded, saying good girl , sent an odd rush through me.
“What? Is that too big of a request?”
I narrowed my eyes, not sure if I was more annoyed with him or me. “You assume you know me, but you don’t.”
“I know enough,” he replied in a clipped tone.
No, he didn’t. He didn’t know nearly enough. And he never would.
I would probably love riding, and this might be my only chance. But I wasn’t doing anything that required I spend any more time with this man than I had to.