Chapter 49
FORTY-NINE
MADDOX
Cash’s ears flick away flies as I walk the fence line in the Western pasture.
The sun’s setting and I need to start heading back before I put us both at risk of becoming grizzly supper, but I’m putting off going home like time apart will change Austin’s mind about Quitter’s.
Like I’m not still going to hand her what she needs to leave me on a silver platter.
Hearing Austin felt trapped, like I was telling her what she could and couldn’t do, gutted me, especially now that I knew what she’d lived through her whole life.
I never wanted to make any woman feel like I was lording over her, whether that was one of my sisters or a woman I was sleeping with or a total stranger.
I was starting to think I might’ve made a lot of people I cared about feel that way. In an effort to make them feel happy and safe and cared for, I’d been undermining their ability to make their own choices and take care of themselves.
I’m sure they didn’t always mind. Hell, Kenny and Tate especially were more than happy to take my card and wreak havoc at the mall. And I’m sure they appreciated never having to worry about their trucks being properly maintained or dealing with a chilly house in the mornings.
But there was a difference, I think, between having the I know you can do it, but you shouldn’t have to because you have me mindset and steamrolling people to make sure things were taken care of the way I wanted because I thought I knew best.
Signing that paperwork had been a mistake.
Austin had turned Dale down countless times and just because I thought leaving Cedar Creek was pointless now that her dad was in prison didn’t mean it was to her.
Giving her the bar would be cruel. A gift in my eyes, but a manacle in hers.
She’d feel obligated to stay, and even if she did eventually come around to the idea that Cedar Creek wasn’t so bad without her dad here to bully her, that was a choice she needed to make on her own, not one I could make for her.
With a sigh, I tug at Cash’s reins, clicking my tongue and turning him around. I’m not in a rush to get back to the barn, but he seems to be. “Greedy bastard,” I grumble as he nibbles at my pockets while I de-tack him. “Tatum’s spoiling you.”
He huffs like he understands me, or maybe it’s just because he’s given up on finding treats in my pockets.
When I put up his saddle and reins in the tack room, I pour a couple of treats out in my hand.
“Don’t say I never did anything for you,” I tell him, smiling despite myself when he lets out a pleased nicker, his velvety mouth tickling my palm as he scarfs them down.
Tatum’s lying bareback on Jasper in the East Paddock, watching the stars. She drives me batshit when she does this. It’s riskier than she’s willing to listen to me gripe about, but I have to admit that horse of hers defies odds.
It’d been wild as hell when it got here. No one could gentle it—not Dad or either of us boys, not even the trainer at the time, Phil. It bucked and kicked and bit, used every bit of its body to fight, angry as hell.
Mama had only reluctantly allowed Jameson and I near it because by then we were twenty and twenty-two so she really couldn’t put her foot down about what we were and weren’t allowed to do, but the rest of the kids were chased away from the pen with a wooden spoon time and time again. Especially Tate.
We didn’t find out until she’d already gentled him. It was about four in the morning when Dad got up to start on the pre-breakfast chores, checking beds to make sure all of his kids were accounted for.
I remember waking up to Dad hollering. Tate was the youngest, so of course she was babied, but even more than that, she was Mama’s little miracle.
Born at 23 weeks with only a thirty percent chance of survival, when she finally made it home after almost four months in the hospital, Mama and Daddy hovered over her constantly.
I don’t think they even came outside with her until she was a year old, damn near.
Even then, she’d been obsessed with the horses.
That morning, her bed being empty… Mama’s only screamed like that one other time and I’ll never forget the sound.
Dad flipped every light in the house on, screamed until we were all awake. Every one of us was out looking for her and Mama called the cops the second Bailey pointed out that the kitchen door was open.
I was the first one out the door, shoving Bailey back.
To this day, I have no idea what called my attention to the East Paddock, but I remember how fast my brain seemed to catalog what I was seeing—quick enough that I had the sense to throw up my hand behind me to slow my dad and whoever else before we could scare the mustang.
Tate was lying on his back, forward this time, arms and legs draped over the sides. She was a small girl anyway, growth stunted by being born so prematurely, but I remember thinking how tiny she was compared to this massive, dangerous creature beneath her.
Getting her off his back is a bit of a blur.
My brain stored flashes of actions, but not the moments that tied them together.
I remember creeping forward, slower than I’d ever walked, keeping my hands up and talking to him like he could understand me.
I was terrified to wake Tate up, scared she’d roll off the horse and it’d trample her in its attempt to flee.
I swear the horse knew I was there to get Tate off of him.
Dad used to laugh at me when I’d say that, but I specifically remember him looking at me, bored as hell and flicking his tail when he dropped his head back down to graze like I didn’t concern him at all.
It was the complete opposite of how he’d acted around me for the months he’d been at the ranch by then.
I snatched Tate off of him and he huffed, stomping his front foot against the ground, showing the first signs of anger since I’d approached.
We found out over breakfast that Tate had been sneaking out to see the horse for months, almost as long as it’d been here. Mama chasing her away with the spoon had only made her even more obsessed with him.
The horse was never fully gentled. It still didn’t fuck with most of us and only truly cared about Tate. Mustangs couldn’t be broken like most horses. You might be able to train one, but it’d never be made domestic, only cooperative.
I’ve compared Austin to a mustang countless times in my mind, but somewhere along the line, I’d forgotten all of the reasons why.
Austin Taylor was wild. It was the most beautiful thing about her.
I’d tamed her a bit: earned her submission in the bedroom, gotten her used to kisses that didn’t come with expectations, and saddled her with a pet name.
But that didn’t change the fact that she was wild, and what was wild could not be bought or sold.
I could give Austin the bar and guilt her into staying here with me, try to break her like the thousands of men before me who thought breaking a mustang was doable, but I’d be smothering the thing I loved most about her. I refused to do that.