CHAPTER 23
Maxie
What if you own us? Arlo’s question banged around in my head as I worked on the fence in spurts while my energy lasted. After being sick for days, it seemed I’d have to build back up to my normal stamina. As it was, all the resting time was giving me too much time to think about the infuriating men working beside me.
They were workhorses, never slowing down. They’d each lost their shirt, content to work in front of me shirtless and sweaty. It was a lot of sweaty, tan, muscled man to just look past. And, thanks to Arlo, my defenses were shattered. I couldn’t manage to engage my Stepford shields. They left me burning up and slipping back into that icy place wasn’t something I could do.
I took a long drink of water and tightened my ponytail. The end of it stuck to my sweaty neck and I had to stop to lift it from my skin before I decided to cut it off. I stared out across the land and blew out a long breath. I was a mess. Emotionally. It was embarrassing to admit it but I was. I felt like I couldn’t hold myself together anymore and I knew it was the presence of Arlo, Shep, and Rhett that was threatening the carefully constructed life I’d built. I held myself together by holding everyone else away. It was easier not to feel the disappointment and anger that had once threatened to smother me with every breath. I knew if I let those emotions take over again, I’d never be able to drag all of the bullshit in and button it back inside.
“Is that your horse?” Shep grunted as he looked towards the house. “How the hell did he get here?”
I gasped as I saw Bob jump over a section of fence like it was nothing and charged towards us. I took off at a sprint towards him, my heart swelling with the peace of his familiarity.
“Bob!”
He let out his own excited call and stopped just before plowing me over. He nuzzled his face into my neck and shoulder, chattering the way he always did when he hadn’t seen me in more than a few hours. I felt him chewing on my hair but I didn’t even care about that as I wrapped my arms around the parts of him that I could.
“How’d you get out, Bobby? Huh? Did Jolene let you out? Were you driving her nuts? Huh?” I rubbed his face and peppered kissed over his nose when he bent down for me. “I missed you, Bob. You’re so handsome, aren’t you? Who’s the best boy ever? You are! That’s right!”
“Anyone else want to be a horse right about now?” Shep’s dry remark made me laugh but I didn’t pull away from Bob.
“Well, shit.” Rhett sighed. “Looks like it’s not just Bob here to cock block.”
I shot him a wide-eyed look before looking behind Bob. There was my brother, Mills, marching towards us like the hounds of hell were nipping at his heels. I held onto Bob a little tighter.
“Why’d you let him follow you, Bob?”
“Isn’t this a pleasant surprise? What can we do for you, Mills?” Arlo stepped forward but Mills was focused on me.
He closed the distance between us and slapped Bob’s back flank before looking down at me with haunted eyes.
“I’ve done my best to give you time to heal, Max, but I need to know what you meant when you told these assholes that Mom hit you.”
Rhett growled like a giant guard dog and stepped closer.
“Don’t upset her.”
“Tell me, Maxie. I can’t stop thinking about it and I need to know you were just having a fever dream or something. Tell me that you didn’t mean it.” He gripped his hair and tugged hard. “Tell me!”
I flinched but I didn’t allow myself to cower. Maybe I was done being meek Maxie. That didn’t mean I would be cruel, though.
“Go home, Mills. Have you been sleeping? Eating okay?”
He grabbed my shoulders and shook me.
“Tell me, goddammit!”
Arlo shoved Mills away from me and planted himself between us. I could see him vibrating with anger as he stared down his friend and my brother.
“Do not fucking scream at her.”
“Get out of my way! That’s my sister!”
“I don’t give a fuck who she is to you. You aren’t going to scream in her face!”
I couldn’t handle the shouting. I wasn’t sure how they heard me but I knew they did when they both went silent.
“Stop it. If you want to know the truth, Mills, I’ll tell you.”
The sky was such a brilliant blue and the sun was so bright and warm that it felt wrong to dirty it with the truth but one thing I’d accepted was that I couldn’t keep everything inside. It felt like there were millions of fleas jumping around inside me, looking for the last raw spot to latch onto to suck whatever peace I had left out of me. My insides crawled with the secrets I kept.
“Mom… Mom wasn’t nice to me, Mills. She…” I took a deep breath. “She was angry so much of the time. Dad, too, but he died before he could become cruel. Mom hung on, though. She just wasn’t nice, Mills. I don’t know what else to tell you.”
“She wasn’t nice? That’s all you can say? She was rotting away with cancer, Maxie! You wanted her to be nice ?”
I saw Shep scowling and stepping closer to Mills and held up my hand to stop him.
“She wasn’t just not nice. She was mean. If you want to know everything, that’s too bad. There are things I’ll never say out loud for as long as I live. She hurt me. She always hurt me. In the end, though, it changed from fat jokes and comments about how no one would ever love me to hitting me if her soup was a few degrees too hot or cold. It changed to admitting things, like the truth about Nellie’s father, because she knew it would eat me alive to hold that in.”
“No.” Mills shook his head hard and glared at me. “That’s not true.”
“She used to love to tell me you were never coming home. I was scared when you were overseas. I worried about you, Tate, and West. If I missed a spot while sweeping, she would taunt me and tell me she hadn’t heard from you in several weeks and she expected a few Navy officers to show up to announce your deaths any day. She wouldn’t stop until I cried. She recited a list of dead soldiers to me every time I took too long to bring her whatever lost thing she demanded I find instead of sleeping at night. She’d slip your names in while reading and then laugh when I broke down.”
“Maxie…” His face had gone pale.
“I tried to leave. Everyone else was gone, except Vera, and she was always having fun with her friends in town. I wanted to run away like I thought Nellie had. Mom told me she’d kill herself and make sure Vera found her body and the note blaming me for pushing her to it. She would just look at Vera sometimes and I knew she was imagining doing the same thing to Vera that she did to me. I couldn’t leave Vera to that. So I stayed and I took it all. I took it until the day she died. She was weak enough to lose her battle with the devil that day but not too weak to force me to wear loads of makeup and sunglasses to her funeral.
“Her knuckles were so sharp in the end, Mills. They didn’t just bruise.” I sucked in a sharp breath and frowned at the sky when I felt drops of what I thought were rain falling on my face. It wasn’t rain. I was crying. Again. I sucked in a painful lungful of oxygen and let out a shaky laugh while wiping my face.
“I hate her. I hate who she made me. This weak, pathetic shell of a woman who can’t say no without fearing she’ll die alone and unloved. I hate myself because of her, Mills. I want to be bold like Vera and Nellie. I want to be able to believe I’m worthy of the things they have. Instead, I have our mother’s voice in my head, living there like she never died.”
He took a step closer but I shook my head. I didn’t want to be held. I didn’t want his pity. I just wanted a different reality but no one could do anything to make that happen so I’d rather just be left alone.
“I never meant for this to come up. I was happy to take it all to my grave and let everyone keep believing that our family isn’t just as fucked up as the Mays.” I saw him flinch when I swore and it sent a shiver of something close to power up my spine. “I don’t think I’m going to come back to the ranch for a while, Mills.”
His eyes widened. “What? No, Max. Come home. I’ll make it right. I’ll figure out—”
“No. I’ve barely existed there for so long. I’ll be thirty in two years and I don’t have anything to show for it. No matter how much work I put into the ranch, you never appreciated it. I’m invisible to all of you. Just mousy Maxie fading into the kitchen cabinets. I don’t want to let Mom keep me there anymore. I don’t owe that ranch anything I haven’t already given it. I don’t owe you anything I haven’t already given you. I don’t want to but I think a part of me hates all of you for leaving me to rot with Mom. I just need a break from the family.”
“You don’t mean that, Maxie. We love you. We’ll make it right. You can’t just stay here. This isn’t your home.” Mills tried to step closer but Arlo was there, blocking him. “Get the fuck out of my way, Arlo.”
“I think it’s been a long time since I’ve had a home, Mills. Maybe it’s time I accept that and figure out where to go from here. Thank you for bringing Bob. I’ll have Jolene help me move him back and forth until I get a space set up for him here. Or wherever it is we land.”
“Here.” Rhett came forward and gripped the back of my neck. “He’ll stay here. So will you.”
I was all out of fight. I shrugged and looked down at my feet.
“I think you should go, Mills.”
For the first time, the numbness I always tried to exude wasn’t just an act. I felt cold to the bone as I went back to the fence and started working. I didn’t know when Mills left or when the guys started working beside me. I just knew that I’d been wrong. A part of me had believed if I ever had a chance to tell someone what happened to me that I’d be free of it. I wasn’t free of anything, though. I was as much a prisoner to my mother as I’d been before she died. Her cold grip just got a little tighter, if anything.