Chapter Eighteen
Grayson
Home.
That was the only word I could think of every time I looked over to Carrie, who was curled up in Mags’ guest bed, sleeping, my seed still inside of her. I went back into the hallway and grabbed my thermal and belt from the floor, putting them on quietly before going into the living room to get her clothes. As I walked back to the bedroom, my mind was calm for the first time in days. The fear was gone. The nightmare of my past had been shoved back down into the depths, and I felt like I could finally breathe again.
Once I was back in the bedroom, I folded her clothes neatly and placed them at the end of the bed. Then I pulled the thick quilt over her shoulders, brushing a curl back from her face. Her pink lips were parted, her cheeks still tinted red from our lovemaking, her lashes resting on the tops of her cheeks, her breathing steady. I leaned over and pressed my lips to her forehead, feeling the heat of her skin against them for a moment. When I pulled back, I whispered, “Sleep, gorgeous.”
Then, I was gone, closing the bedroom door softly and heading back down the hall and into the living room. The fire was dying now, and I shot a text to Mags and the boys before I tossed some more logs on the fire. Then, I took a seat in Mags’ armchair and waited, relishing the quiet of the cabin, knowing the love of my life was safe. Nothing would ever happen to her again. I would die for her, there was no doubt about that. There never was, but the thought remained in the forefront of my mind until I heard the rumbling of a truck outside.
I looked over my shoulder and out the window to find Denver’s old red Chevy pulling up. I watched as he got out of the truck and put his black cowboy hat on, his eyes scanning the cabin as he slammed the door. I looked back to the fire, watching the flames dance as his boots thumped up the porch steps. A second later, a single, hard, crisp knock sounded from the door and I rose from the chair.
Pulling the door open, I lifted my chin to the Hallow Ranch owner. “Denver.”
His eyes hardened as a muscle jumped in his cheek. “Grayson.”
“Where’s my team?” I asked, looking out to his truck and then to the black helicopter beyond.
“Up at the house, eating chili,” he answered bluntly, studying me.
Of course, they fucking were.
I couldn’t be mad. Those men hadn’t had a hot meal in days, and Valerie Langston was one hell of a fucking cook.
“You going to let me in, or we doing this outside?” the cowboy questioned, raising a brow.
I stepped aside. “This is your cabin, Langston. Do what you want.”
He stepped inside, and I closed the door as he said, “This isn’t my cabin. This belongs to Mags. I just own the land it’s sitting on. He’s the one who built it.”
I didn’t know that.
I tilted my head to the side. “I thought—I thought you gave him this cabin,” I told Denver’s back as he pulled off his Carhart and hat.
He looked at me over his shoulder. “After we took care of Moonie, he came to me asking if he could build a home on Hallow Ranch,” he explained, hanging his coat and hat on the hooks by the door as I walked into the living room, turning my back to the fire. Then, Denver looked at me, his features softening. “Who the hell was I to tell him no? Apparently, he’d been saving every single one of his paychecks. He chopped down the trees himself, sanded them himself, built this entire thing by himself, Grayson. He used Harmony’s computer to buy all the appliances and shit.” He gestured to the furniture. “He built that too.”
A new realization slammed into me and I looked outside. “He’s never going to leave Hallow Ranch, is he?”
“You and I both know the answer to that,” Denver replied.
I didn’t know how to take that. Eventually, I figured that after Mags healed and buried his demons, he would leave Hallow Ranch and start a new life. It never occurred to me that he came to Hallow Ranch just for that.
“Right, look. Mags knows you’re waiting, and he is holding off your boys for me,” Denver began, pulling me from my thoughts. I looked back at him. “I need to get this out, so just…shut the fuck up for a second, okay?”
I stiffened, knowing what was coming.
“The other day, I pushed you,” he started.
“Langston—”
“I said shut the fuck up,” he cut me off. “Look, what you did for me—for Hallow Ranch—I’ll always be in your debt, and I was ready to help you, Grayson.” He took a breath and looked down the hallway as his throat worked. “I was ready to help you get your happy ending, and instead of helping you, I fucking pushed you. Hayes told me I triggered an attack.”
“Denver—”
“I used to have them,” he cut me off again, his voice firm. My mouth shut, and I bit down. “It would be the simplest things that would trigger it, Grayson. When Valerie and I…when we…she triggered one, and suddenly, I wasn’t standing in my kitchen with the most beautiful, infuriating woman I’d ever met.”
I stared at him, waiting.
He looked at me. “I was back there, watching the guy next to me get shot in the head.”
“Jesus,” I murmured, closing my eyes.
“There was no stopping them, and I lived with that for fucking year s. I could never get them to go away, then after I saved Valerie from the fire…I knew I couldn’t go on like that. I couldn’t live like that, Grayson, and neither should you,” he told me, pulling out a card from his wallet and flicking it out to me.
I looked down at it and then back up to him. “What is that?”
“Someone who can help, brother,” he answered softly.
I thought about Carrie and the life I was about to start with her after all this shit was finally over. I thought about what I would miss out on if I was spending the rest of my days battling the demons day in and day out. I couldn’t shove them down anymore. I couldn’t hide them underneath my suppressed emotions. Carrie changed all of that for me.
Carrie, in some way, was healing me, but I knew she wouldn’t be able to heal me completely. I was going to need to do some of the work and that was okay.
I stepped forward and took the card, muttering a thanks. Denver tipped his head in return and looked back down the hallway again. “How’s she doing?” he asked.
“She’s sleeping,” I told him.
He nodded and looked back at me. “Mags saw her on the trail camera.”
My heart drummed in my chest as I listened to him tell me how Mags found her. “She was curled up against a headstone in the graveyard, Grayson.”
The image of her, bruised, alone, and utterly defenseless out in the bitter, relentless blizzard popped into my head, and my gut twisted. She had to use a headstone as a shield. I bent my head, putting my hands on my hips, muttering a low curse.
I was going to slaughter both of them like fucking dogs, and no one would be able to stop me.
“There’s something else you need to know,” Denver said, regaining my attention.
“What is it?”
He looked to the fire, deep emotions passing over his face. “It was Nancy’s headstone.”
I inhaled a deep breath through my nose and looked away from him as the knife in my gut twisted harder and deeper than before.
Nancy was Valerie’s mother.
She passed away from cancer not long ago.
I’d met her while I was helping Denver out, and when she died, I felt compelled to show up to her funeral. The last thing I expected was for Valerie to hug me, and tell me her mother would’ve liked knowing I was there. Nancy was a sweet woman, and she raised a strong fucking daughter. After the funeral, I flew back home to Charlotte and cooked my mother dinner.
“Fucking hell,” I breathed, pinching the bridge of my nose.
“It’s okay,” Denver urged. “I just wanted to tell you because there’s something about this ranch—this land.”
I looked back up at him, my brows furrowing. “What are you talking about?”
He chuckled, stroking his beard. “The ones we love have a way of protecting us, even when they’re gone.”
“Carrie’s not family to you, though.”
Denver cocked his head to the side. “Mags is family. You’re family to him, which makes you and Carrie, hell, all of Red Snake, family to Hallow Ranch. You understand that?”
There was nothing else I could do but nod.
Family.
“Now, about Chase,” Denver began.
I shook my head. “I know he is trying to help, but this needs to stay with Red Snake.”
“It can’t.”
“Why the hell not?” I shot back. I was already frustrated that Astoria PD was involved, and now, I was still going to have to make a call to the fucking FBI about Robert. Not to mention, I still had to tell the love of my life that her first husband was a fucking serial killer.
“Yesterday, after getting in contact with you, I spent the rest of the night trying to get a message out to Hayden PD. The Internet and cell towers were restored early this morning, around four am, and just as I was about to call Chase, he called me,” Denver explained, coming around the couch and taking a seat, resting his elbows on his knees. “There was a murder, Grayson.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, my instincts kicking in. This was about Carrie—Brandon and Monica. Denver raised his eyes, holding my gaze as he said, “Has Carrie told you anything? Mase and I tried asking her questions yesterday when we found out who she was, but Mags shut it down.”
Fucking Mags.
“A man and woman took Carrie,” I told him, answering the question that was on the tip of his tongue.
He nodded. “A woman in her mid to late thirties was found dead in a motel bathtub just a few miles outside of Hayden.”
I bit off a curse. “If it was Monica, then that means Brandon snapped.”
“Chase wants to question Carrie,” Denver said softly.
He was testing the waters—testing me.
Brandon was causing more problems for me, trying to catch up to his fucking insane brother. I nodded, giving permission. “I’ll go wake her up.”
Denver stood, pulling out his phone. “I’ll wrangle your bounty hunters.”
“What do you mean?” Carrie asked, clutching the quilt to her chest, her hair in disarray.
I’d just woken her up, kissing her softly for a few minutes while Denver stepped outside to call the boys. Now, I was sitting on the edge of the bed, wondering how the fuck I was going to pull even more of the curtain down from her past, revealing an even uglier truth than the one she’d just come to terms with.
“Baby, I need to find them,” I told her, trying to cover up the fury boiling in my gut. She didn’t need to see me like that. She needed me to be gentle with her. She needed me to protect her. She needed me to love her.
My sunshine chewed on the inside of her cheek, holding my eyes for a long time. “What did you find out?” she finally asked. “About Robert’s family? Did you find anything?”
My jaw tightened, and I held out my hand for her to grab. Once she did, I felt like I could breathe easier. “We found out a lot, Carrie. So fucking much,” I murmured, my eyes dropping to watch my thumb stroke her bruised wrist. “Did they cuff you?”
When I looked back up to her, she slowly shook her head. “Zip-ties, just like the ones Leo used.”
A sound came from my chest then at the sound of the piece of shit’s name, but I didn’t have time to daydream about killing him again.
“Grayson?” she called.
“Yeah, baby?”
Her brows came together, as if she was scared to tell me something. I leaned forward, cupping her face in my free hand, the tattoo of the red snake bright against her fair skin, reminding me of how I almost lost her. “Sunshine, you have to talk to me. I know you understand that. I wish you didn’t have to relive all the shit you’ve been through, I wish you never had to talk about it again, but I’m a certain type of man. I’m the kind of man who kills, baby. You know this.”
Carrie leaned into my hand, my thumb brushing over her bottom lip as she nodded, tears shining in her eyes. After this shit was over and every single mother fucker who hurt her or even thought about hurting her was in the fucking ground, I hoped I would never have to see her cry sad tears again. The sight of them gutted me from the moment I saw her in her darkened living room last year and that feeling would never go away.
“I’m going to kill him,” I promised her darkly.
“I know you are,” she croaked. “I tried—I tried to warn them, but they didn’t want to listen.”
Something bloomed in my chest as her words settled in the air between us.
She warned them about me.
She knew what I was going to do to them, and she wasn’t afraid.
“Wait—what do you mean, just him? What about Monica?” she asked.
My thumb moved up to her cheek. “The sheriff you met earlier?”
She nodded. “Yes, Chase. He wants to question me. I guess he wanted—”
“The body of a woman in her mid to late thirties was found in a motel bathroom just a few miles outside of town,” I explained, cutting her off.
Those baby blue eyes I’d become obsessed with widened. “He fucking did it. He fucking killed her,” she breathed, looking away from me.
“You knew he would?” I pressed.
She shot me a look. “Grayson, Brandon, and Monica,….they weren’t…They weren’t the smartest kidnappers on the planet.”
“Baby, most kidnappers aren’t,” I deadpanned.
“They constantly argued—well, one argument was because I instigated it,” she told me. “Brandon was getting impatient, and he had his gun pointed in my face—”
“I’m gonna burn him alive,” I muttered.
Her lips thinned, fear shining in her blues now.
My brows snapped together, reading her. “What?”
My woman broke our gaze, and she looked to her lap. “I don’t want to tell Chase this, but you, I have to tell you. The second it happened, I knew that when I told you, you were going to be the one to send him to hell.”
Every single muscle in my body tightened as my nostrils flared, my gut boiling. “He fucking touch you, Carrie?” I growled low, the words barely even words. I pulled my hands from her and stood up, needing to move. My hands started to shake as I paced back and forth across the room, waiting. I couldn’t push her, not about this. I had to wait.
I had to fucking wait for her to open up. If I pushed her, I wasn’t a good man. If I wasn’t a good man, I didn’t deserve her. And if I couldn’t have her, then there wasn’t any point in breathing.
“Carrie,” I grunted, stopping at the end of the bed, bracing my hands on the metal frame, my shoulders tight.
She looked up again, and my eyes dropped to her plump, trembling bottom lip. Her breath hitched as emotions overwhelmed her, and I dropped my head.
He fucking touched her.
He took advantage of my woman.
Suddenly, the demons of my past were banging on the door I’d locked them behind only days ago, ready to torture me again. My chest was heaving then, but I couldn’t close my eyes or I would see her being held down. Only this time, I feared it wouldn’t be the terrorists holding my sunshine down, it would be Leo, Brandon, and Robert. Robert would be the one holding the blade—
“Grayson?”
I felt her warm hand over mine then and my head shot up. “Sunshine,” I rasped.
I couldn’t push her.
I couldn’t push her.
If I pushed her, I would lose her.
She dropped the blanket, revealing her naked body to me once more as she moved closer to me, her knees on the mattress. I held my breath as she cupped my face in her hands, her eyes scanning my face. “Hey, hey,” she whispered. “I’m right here, Grayson. I’m right here. I’m okay.”
“He fucking—he fucking touched you,” I seethed through clenched teeth.
She shook her head. “No, Grayson. He didn’t touch me.”
The panic began to fade, and as her thumb brushed over my scar, she told me the truth. When she was done, I pressed my forehead against hers, banding both of my arms around her soft waist, holding her for a few minutes.
When we both heard the front door open, I knew we had to act fast.
Brandon was spiraling and if he was anything like his brother, there was no telling if he would hurt someone else while trying to get to Carrie.