18. Ranger
Chapter 18
Ranger
Miles turned away from me, walking towards the only door of my cell. He didn’t look back as his hand turned the knob and he stepped through it. I screamed after him. “Don’t leave! Please, Miles! Please…don’t leave.” My throat was sore. Hoarse from the number of times I yelled his name.
Then Callie Rose appeared. Looking the same as she did the day I was sent away. Her long black hair in soft curls framing her face—our mother’s face.
“You did this,” she whispered. Her voice sounded like it was far, far away.
“I’m sorry,” I cried. “I’ll do better. I promise, Cal.”
Her eyes were vacant. Like what I’d done had robbed her of all the joy she had left. It was my fault. Everything was my fault. She’d already lost so much in life. First, our father. Then, our mother. Now, by my own stupid actions, she was alone again.
There was something eerie about the way she was looking at me as I called out her name. Begging her to stay with me.
Her head tilted to the side slightly as if she was assessing me. “You’re going to be alone in here forever because of what you did. You ruined us. You ruined the only family I had left.” Black tears rolled down her face before her body started to lose its opaqueness.
I leaped for her, trying to keep her with me. I didn’t want to be alone. I didn’t want her to suffer anymore. By the time I reached her, she was already gone. Her body turned into a swirl of mist around me.
The door Miles had walked through shimmered away and I was left in a dark gray box made of cold stone walls.
Alone . I was completely alone. Hurtling toward the wall, I led with my shoulder. I slammed into it and crumpled into a heap on the ground, my shoulder splintering with pain.
“No!” I screamed, again and again. Until finally, the walls started moving toward me.
“You’ll die here.” Callie Rose’s voice echoed against the walls.
I squeezed my eyes shut, curling myself into a ball like I’d done when we found out our father had died.
“No,” I whispered this time. And the walls swallowed me whole.
“Agh!” I jolted forward. Breaths heavy. My heart banging against my chest like a war drum. My fists were tangled in sweat-sodden sheets as I slowly oriented myself to my bedroom.
My breaths were ragged. I tried to slow them down. One breath in. One breath out. Over and over again.
Home , I told myself.
I was home and I wasn’t in jail anymore. I’d gotten out. My sister was here and I had Miles too. I was okay.
“Fuck.” I scraped a hand over my face before I untangled my legs from the sheets and slipped out of bed.
Moonlight spilled across the wood floor. I looked through the window and guessed it was probably around one o’clock in the morning by the location of the moon.
It had been a while since a nightmare haunted my sleep. When I first got out, it was almost a nightly occurrence. Wrenching myself free from that cell had been hard enough in real life. It was even harder in my dreams when I was confronted with my worst fears.
I switched my boxer shorts for another pair and tugged on some sweatpants and a sweatshirt before heading out to the back deck.
There was no way in hell I was getting any more sleep tonight. Not when the image of Callie Rose’s body misting away was still planted firmly in my mind.
I found my heavy winter coat hanging on the coat rack downstairs and slipped on my boots before I opened the door to the back deck. My breath fogged the air in front of me on the first step out. To my right, Callie Rose was bundled up in a quilted blanket, sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs around the firepit. Embers glowed as smoke billowed toward the open night sky.
“Couldn’t sleep?” I asked, sitting in the chair next to her.
“Not tonight.” She took a sip from her steaming mug. It was probably hot cocoa if the mound of whipped cream was any sign.
“Did you have another nightmare?” she asked.
I stared into the bright flames as they flickered and danced about. “Yeah. It’s been a while since the last one. Tonight kind of hit me by surprise.”
She shot me a look that said she knew exactly why I’d had a bad dream. I chose to ignore her.
“Tell me about it.”
I took in a deep breath and watched the air cloud in front of me as I let it loose. “It’s not really something I want my little sister thinking about. Especially when she has troubles of her own.”
She snorted. “Are you going to treat me like a child forever?”
I laughed. “Being a child isn’t a bad thing.” It was simpler. Easier. I often wished I could harness some of the childlike wonder I had about the world and let it wash away all the fear I experienced now.
“We share. It’s what we’ve always done, Ranger.” The fire reflected in her eyes. Such a stark contrast to the vision of her in my nightmare. Lifeless. Dull.
What she said was true though. Losing our parents had forced us to become close. We’d been one another’s confidants.
Things had shifted when I came back from prison. There was a part of me that had missed out on so many years. My wrong-doings had prevented her from having the big brother she deserved. So, I’d kept my demons to myself. Not letting her see the bruises hiding beneath the surface. But she did see. Even when I didn’t want her to.
And maybe that was the power of love. It doesn’t matter how hard we try to hide. Love exposes us to the ones who care. The ones who are willing to look beyond the facade.
“It was a different version of the same one I used to have. I was locked in a cell without bars. There was only one door and Miles turned his back on me and left. Then you…” I swallowed against the knot in my throat. “Then you appeared and told me I was going to die alone. That I’d be stuck in there forever.”
“Fuck,” she hissed. “Why do our brains torture us?”
I settled my right ankle over my left knee and sat back in the chair, looking up at the endless cascade of stars. “I’m not sure. All I know is that mine is a relentless fucker that doesn’t know how to turn off.”
That earned me a laugh. “Did the walls cave in on you this time?”
“Every. Fucking. Time.”
“Maybe we can get brain transplants or something. You know?” She sat up and turned towards me, eyes bright with mischief .
“A brain transplant?” I deadpanned. “Then we wouldn’t be who we are.”
“No. It would totally work. Our brains aren’t us . They’re the weird organ machine that controls everything.”
I chuckled. “I think you’ve lost a little too much sleep, sis.”
With an oomph, she sat back in her chair and stuck out her bottom lip. “You just crushed my dream of getting a new brain that’s not fucked up. I thought I’d solved all our problems and there you go, ruining everything.”
I winced. “Sorry for crushing your dream.”
Digging my hands deep into my coat pockets, I reached for any warmth I could find from the frigid air. We were quiet for a while. Only the wind whistling through the tree branches and the crackling of firewood sounded around us. My mind was loud and silent all at once. A stream of thoughts rushed in and then they were met with utter numbness. Like my nightmare had taken all the energy I had to give for the night.
“You never asked me what my nightmare was about.” Callie Rose was staring straight up at the stars, her words were gentle.
“I didn’t know you had one tonight,” I replied.
“It was about everyone in my life leaving me. In some form or another. Mom. Dad. You . It never feels like you three want to go, but something steals you all away and I’m left wondering why it had to be me.”
“I didn’t want to leave you, Cal.”
Her eyes were lined with red and I knew she was fighting back tears. “That’s not what I mean when I tell you it hurts, Ranger. This world…it’s brutal and unfair and humans are the worst of it. If people didn’t fight over their beliefs then our father wouldn’t have died in a war and our mom wouldn’t have left us stranded. If money didn’t corrupt, then my brother wouldn’t have spent ten years of his life locked behind bars for defending a young kid who was ganged up on and beaten in an unfair fight. And I hate it. I fucking hate that this world favors evil.”
She was breathless when she finished and I could feel the fury rolling off her in waves. There was so much emotion wrapped up in her tiny figure and it didn’t take me long to realize how much we were alike. The anger that led me to seek vengeance on those three guys was the same anger that had my little sister burning as bright as the fire before us. And that brightness only led to one thing—burning out.
I waited a minute or two until she’d calmed down enough that she could hear me through the rage. “I know it must feel like these things were done to you. Like you had no control over your own life or when people came and went. I know you must be scared that it will happen again.” I reached across the space between our chairs and placed my hand on her forearm. “But believe me when I say that living your life in fear is no place to stay. It’s lonely and only bitterness can come from it.”
She snorted and rolled her eyes.
I chuckled. “I get it. I don’t have much room to talk. I haven’t exactly been setting the best example since I got out. ”
Her brows shot up as she said, “You hardly left the ranch for the first six months after you got out.”
“Okay. Yeah. So maybe I was an awful example of how to live your life without fear. But I’m sick and tired of people in this family running away from the fight of life. There’s so much good in this world and who better to fight for it than us?”
A smile split her face and then she laughed. “What on earth has Sarah Williams done to my brother? You sound like an infomercial for a self-help book.”
I wasn’t sure if I could attribute the change to Sarah since we’d only been out together twice. But my sister was right. There was a shift happening in me. I was trying. And I couldn’t remember the last time I’d done anything but simply get through life. For so many years, I took each day as it came and tried not to go crazy behind those silver bars. And maybe it was even before then, when I was just trying to help Callie Rose feel like a normal kid.
Now…now I wanted more for myself. I wasn’t sure if the feeling would last. If I was honest with myself, I was still terrified that it would go away and I’d be left being the same miserable asshole who could hardly do much else than be around cattle all day.
“I don’t know,” I responded. “But I hope it doesn’t go away.”
“I hope it doesn’t either,” she said quietly before patting the hand I’d placed on her arm.
A few silent minutes ticked by and then, “Thank you for tonight. I think I needed to get everything out of my head?— ”
“And leave it to the wind,” we both said at once. It was the saying our mother told us anytime we were upset as kids. She would tell us to shake it off, or sometimes dance it off. Then she’d kneel to our level and press a kiss to each of our cheeks before telling us that the wind would always carry our worries away if we were willing to let go of them. There were even a few times when I saw her doing the same thing to our father when he was stressed about the ranch. And it worked. Every time.
“What do you think they’d say about us now?” Callie Rose’s words turned to fog in the cold air.
I took in a deep breath before I looked over at my sister. “I think they’d be proud of us.”
The warmth of her smile—so much like our mother’s—stayed with me for the rest of that bitterly cold night.