Chapter 18
I don’t linger in the alley tonight once I’m out the door. Nor anywhere else for that matter. Not until the rain chases me back inside long after I’m sure everyone has either passed out in the street or in their beds.
While I never would have considered us to be on friendly terms, I still hadn’t expected Maddock to actually attempt to pull a gun on me. Even with liquor serving as his second, I’d thought he would know better, but my reputation must not be offering me the same protection it once did.
All the more reason to cut ties at the end of the week. If I make it that long. Christ, I might not have made it through the night if Cypress hadn’t gotten involved. And I have no doubt that’s exactly what he did.
What does he even want with me? What purpose is it serving him to try to gain my good graces? To risk his own safety in an attempt to protect mine? Is he really so desperate to have me in his debt? So worried I could thwart his plans?
How much is he planning to take?
The mustang greets me with a low whicker when he sees me coming down the stable aisle, his head bobbing up and down as if he’s excited to see me, and I have to admit, it’s kind of nice that someone is.
“Take it easy,” I say in reply, reaching out to give him a good scratch behind the ear before stripping off my drenched coat and hat and hanging them to dry outside the stall. “You been stayin’ clear of trouble?”
As if in answer, the dark stallion in the next stall also peeks his head over his door, bold enough to reach out his nose and inspect my pockets when I step closer.
Chuckling, I take the intrusion more kindly than the mustang does, his ears immediately flattening as he glowers at his neighbor, but the fact that he doesn’t try to also bite a chunk out of him tells me that at least some progress is being made.
I give the mustang a nudge to get out of the way before I go for the knot securing his latch, my fingers moving to pull apart the rope before I have a chance to notice it’s once again not the same one I tied this morning.
“Damn it,” I mutter, trying to remember how I’m supposed to get the knot to slip apart. “Told him not to be messin’—”
“Pass the end through the loop first.”
As if the rope scalded me, I jump back with a curse, pulling my gun and aiming it high and to my right where the sound came from. In response, all I see is a grin. “Hello, wolf.”
“Fuck’s sake.” I reholster my gun, but keep my glare locked on Cypress where he’s just swung himself up on the back of his horse so he can be seen over the wall, looking so right up there that I can’t believe I ever let myself believe that the horse wasn’t his. “The hell are you doing in here?”
“Needed a change of scenery for a while,” he says, making himself comfortable by flopping down and resting his head on the horse’s haunches. “Hotel was feeling a bit…confining.”
“Confining,” I mutter, taking a quick glance around our current close quarters to confirm we’re alone before I ask in a low voice, “Maddock happen to locate his gun?”
“In his room,” Cypress says easily while staring up at the rafters. “Where he appears to have left it.”
“Right,” I reply, knowing for a fact Maddock had it on him when he walked into the saloon, my tendency to count weapons coming in and out of a room a remnant from my old life that I haven’t bothered to shake.
“You didn’t have to do that back there. That was…
” I clear my throat once, twice. “Thank you.”
He turns his head to look at me, appearing amused by my struggle, though he doesn’t say so directly. “It was the least I could do.”
I roll my eyes. “You gonna tell me what it is that you want?”
“What I want?”
“What you’re after here? What’s your goal?”
“Is it not obvious?” he asks, frowning. “I feel like I’m making it obvious. Within the limits of my pride, of course. And general laws of decency.”
“Christ,” I say, huffing out a breath and choosing to ignore that last part before it can distract me like he wants. “I’m not going to tell him about the watch, if that’s what you’re so worried about. Or that you’re letting him win.”
He arches an eyebrow at me. “Am I?”
“Yes.”
“What makes you—”
“You’ve got a tell. A few of them.”
Both eyebrows shoot up now, and I feel no small amount of satisfaction that I seem to have caught him unaware given how many times he’s done the same to me. “And they are…?”
“Not sure I should tell you.”
He barks out a laugh, and I find myself suppressing a smile as he asks, “Why not?”
“Might need that information for later.”
“For later,” he repeats, and I don’t think I’m imagining the implication in his voice when he adds, “Sounds promising.”
I clear my throat again and look away, focusing once more on the knot that won’t budge instead of the fact that my skin suddenly feels too hot.
Absolutely fucking not. I’m not—no. It’s just been a long day is all. I’m tired. Excess nerves. And he’s fuckin’ irritating. And this fuckin’ rope has me at the end of mine.
“The loop,” he says, being helpful again. “Pass the tail through the loop.”
“I got it,” I snap, trying two other routes before doing as he suggested. As I had no doubt it would, the knot immediately comes loose with one sharp tug, just as I’m sure the identical one would do on his own horse’s stall.
“The knot is you, too?” I say, phrasing it as a question even though it really isn’t one.
“They’re an…interest of mine.” He shrugs, but something in his eyes tells me there’s more to it. “That quick release has all sorts of uses. Can come in handy if—”
“Yeah, I’ll bet,” I shoot back, finally letting myself into the stall so I can set about cleaning up for the night. “Why are you messing with my things anyway?” I ask as I grab a rake. “You always pester everyone like this or am I just the unfortunate exception?”
“You are most certainly the exception.”
“I’m afraid to ask why.”
“I’m afraid to tell you.”
For a moment, I go still, my rake hovering over the bedding I’d been about to turn over as I glance his direction. “That why you replaced my watch? I scare you?”
He sighs. “You don’t scare me, wolf.”
“Wasn’t so sure after last night,” I say, alluding to our exchange in the alley, half in an attempt to provoke some truth out of him and half due simply to curiosity. “You want to tell me why you’re more afraid of a knife than you are a gun?”
He’s quiet for a while, long enough that I wonder if he’s going to ignore me until he finally says, “More personal.”
I frown, not sure why I suddenly feel a wash of guilt.
“Suppose it is.” I go back to mucking out the stall, more hastily than I normally would with him there watching.
God knows he probably had one of the stablehands do his, the extra expense likely not even registering if he can lose as much as he’s been at the poker table.
“You didn’t need to replace it,” I say, doing my best to move around the mustang while looking squarely at the fresh straw I’m putting down instead of at Cypress. “The pocket watch.”
“Least I could do,” he says again. “Besides, the other one was broken, and I thought—”
“I would’ve managed,” I tell him. “I don’t need your pity.”
“Never said you did.”
“Good. Just so we’re clear.”
There’s a long pause, interrupted only occasionally by the soft sound of straw brushing across the stable floor, the crackling hum of the lanterns, the distinct patter of rain falling on the tin roof.
“I do still have the old one,” Cypress says at last, apparently unable to take the silence any longer. “If you want it.”
I should tell him to hand it over. Give him the other one when he does, no matter how much it’s worth. Have that, at the very least, stricken from whatever ledger he’s been keeping between us. But when I go to reach for it in my pocket…I can’t. Not after what happened earlier by the water.
It’s been so long since I’ve been able to remember anything but the end.
Besides, given how things went tonight, I’d be even more foolish to throw away a potential lifeline for pride. If nothing else, it’s an insurance policy should things go sour once again. Holding onto it is simply the sensible thing to do.
“You keep that one,” I tell him, purposefully not bringing up its replacement and putting my back to him as I toss down some more fresh straw.
“Perhaps you can convince some poor sap that it’s worth thousands if you ever get bored with pulling cards.
Or, sorry, what was it again…trains? That one of the lies I heard you tell Maddock? That you own a railroad?”
“First,” Cypress says, sounding so offended that I can’t help but turn my head again, “I did not lie. I told him I made my fortune with trains. Which is true. As for owning a railroad or cars or whatever else, he added that bit of flourish on his own. They always do.”
“Who is they?”
“Second,” he continues as if I hadn’t interrupted, “I only take advantage of people who already have far too many advantages to speak of. Far more than they deserve.”
The sudden coldness in his voice is enough to stop me from what I’m doing, and I let the rake rest as I study him. “And how do you determine that?”
“Apparently the same way you do,” he says, the darkness in his expression fading as quickly as it came. “I see their tells. The ones they never think to hide.” His eyes narrow, assessing. “Are you really not going to divulge mine, Aiden?”
I roll my eyes, hopefully covering the way my pulse skipped when he said my name, but I catch that grin of his before I get back to work, walking to grab a few big bales of hay from the aisle so I’m not sleeping on the wet floor if it floods with the rain.
“Considering those tells might be my only advantage, no, I still don’t think I will. ”
“Oh, I don’t know.” He sighs, continuing to watch me as I carry a large bale with each hand back into the stall. “I can make out at least a few other advantages from where I sit.”