Chapter 20
ROWE
I’m driving too fast.
The truck’s speedometer keeps climbing, climbing over a buck-twenty.
I pass the eighty-kilometres-an-hour speed sign and ignore it, unable to ease my boot off the pedal.
With the windows down, the wind whips against my skin and fills the truck with so much noise I can continue ignoring the voices that were begging me to turn around.
Dim lights up ahead hold my attention, demanding that I let up on the gas.
The turnoff for Wickett Ranch is close enough that if I don’t stop, I’ll fly past it.
Wringing the steering wheel, I glance at the truck’s screen and see her name flashing again.
I’ve lost count of how many times Tilly’s called since I left, but each time riles me more.
I’m being a hotheaded fuck. My feelings are butthurt, and I’m doing everything in my power not to dig too deeply into why.
It’s what I always do. My father must be proud of how impossible I find it to reason with my own feelings instead of punishing myself for having them in the first place.
His short temper was passed down genetically, I’m damn sure of it.
I don’t care if that’s not technically biologically possible.
If I believe that Tilly truly didn’t get my last letter, then the better part of a decade I spent convincing myself that I hated her was for nothing.
I was only in my early twenties at the time and had spent months exposing my innermost thoughts to my best friend’s twin sister, only to have her reject the rawest version of myself I’d ever been.
Yeah, that stung. And it got worse when I got out on parole and was kept in the dark about the man she’d supposedly fallen in love with.
I built everything off my initial hurt and nurtured it into a resentment that I’ve let poison my mind.
She wasn’t supposed to come back here, let alone without her husband.
I wasn’t supposed to be stuck with her again, forced to get to know the woman she’s become over such a large portion of our lives.
And the worst part of it all is that if she’s telling the truth, she has more than enough reason to hate me right back.
Her call hits my voicemail box at the same time I turn into the ranch. The anger I’ve been carrying with me since I left home today reignites. It burns through me as I pull up in front of the house and get out, letting the door slam loud enough for Walt to hear from inside.
My steps are wide, pounding against the grass and then the porch steps. Not giving a shit about who he has inside with him, I rip open the screen door and slam my fist into the wooden one. I don’t stop until footsteps rush toward me on the opposite side.
Walt’s wearing only a loose white tank top and boxers when he answers, his eyes as round as saucers.
His lips part on words that don’t make it out before I’m fisting his shirt and shoving him inside.
I haul him up against the closest wall, and his leg hits a console table hard enough to make him grunt.
The vase of dying flowers atop it rattles before tipping over and shattering across the floor.
I crunch the glass beneath my boot and tug him into me before slamming him into the wall again.
Leaning in close enough that I can smell the booze and nicotine on his breath, I dig my forearm beneath his chin.
“Woah! Woah, what’s this about?” he asks, slightly breathless as I press my arm against his windpipe, flirting with the idea of crushing it. “I shouldn’t have called your old man! I apologize for that!”
“You think this is about you making a call?”
“It isn’t? Whatever the problem is, let’s just sit down and chat about it. There’s no need for all this!”
“You alone here?”
His cheeks pale considerably. “I won’t say anything. If you leave now, I won’t report this. I know what it’s like for someone who’s been away—”
“You know fucking nothing.”
I release his windpipe, and he sucks in a greedy breath.
He’s too distracted to prepare for the taste of my knuckles in his mouth.
His head whips to the side at the impact, coughing and choking on nothing.
I check his teeth for any missing and grunt my disappointment when I see all of them still there.
The searing pain in my knuckles is almost soothing.
I don’t think about it again before I’m hitting him a second time, aiming to knock a tooth out this time.
He buckles when the impact takes the strength from his legs.
I step back when he drops to his knees and cups his mouth, true fear finally sinking into him.
Walt pulls his hand back and stares at the blood staining it. I haul him back to his feet by the cheap fabric of his shirt and shove him into the living room. When I release him, he falls onto his ass, limbs splayed in front of the coffee table.
“Give me the keys to your trailer,” I snap, clenching and unclenching my fingers.
He lets loose a pained groan and tries to sit up. “What?”
“I want your fucking keys. The horses are mine now.”
The shit-for-brains just continues staring at me, his strength slowly coming back to him. I turn around, searching the wall by the door. The hooks there have me moving.
“Which one is for the trailer?” I ask, plucking the three keys from their hooks and holding them in front of me. “Answer me before I shove them down your throat and make you cough them back up.”
“The gold one. Fuck—the gold one!”
I shove it into my jeans and drop the others to the floor. When I move back in his direction, he scrambles back a few inches, but the coffee table traps him before he can get too far. The strained movement of his swallow is almost comical.
Once I’m no more than a foot in front of him, I drop to a crouch and grip his jaw. He fights me on it, trying to pull free of my hold, so I squeeze harder, and he hisses. The blood in his mouth drips down his chin when his nostrils flare.
“I’ve got pictures of your horses, Walt.
Unless you want to lose every inch of this place, you’ll keep mine and my family’s names out of your fucking mouth.
Test me and I’ll have a dozen peace officers out here before you can so much as take a breath.
You’ve got my word on that. I’m going to load up my horses into my new trailer, and then I’ll drive out of here with them.
Once I’m gone, you’ll go back to doing whatever the fuck it was you do in this shithole and forget I was here in the first place. Do you understand?”
With how tightly I’m gripping his cheeks, his reply is bloody and gargled. Sure sounds like agreement to me.
“Great.”
I release him and wipe my hand across his tank top, staining it with blood that doesn’t belong to me.
The cheque in my back pocket feels like it weighs a thousand pounds when I pull it free and unfold it.
The sum of money scribbled across it isn’t even a third of what the horses are worth, but I doubt that’ll matter to a guy like Walt.
My father’s name is signed along the bottom, and the moment I drop the piece of paper onto Walt’s lap, he pinches it between trembling fingers.
“What’s this for?”
“Consider it something to encourage you to keep your mouth shut. That’s for the one already at my ranch.”
“This is from your father?” His shock is genuine for good reason.
“That’s what it says.” I’ve been forging my father’s signature since I was a kid. It’s far too easy to pull off. “I fucking mean it, Walt. Keep your mouth shut, or I’ll come back here and feed you your tongue.”
His nod is instant, robotic. I straighten and leave him there. He doesn’t follow. Not on my way out of the house, or when I find his horse trailer behind the stables, and sure as shit not when I hook it up to my truck. With the door hanging open, I guide the gelding inside first.
He doesn’t fight me outright, but he hesitates. The trailer groans with the wind that’s picking up speed, and his ears flick as he stares into the dark interior. I’d guess he’s never left the ranch before, let alone seen a trailer up close.
I don’t push him or yank at his lead. My pressure remains steady on it as I wait for him to give it a chance. And a couple of minutes later, the ramp creaks beneath his weight. I walk him up slowly before latching the divider and listening as he lets loose a deep breath that seems to relax him.
The second horse is harder. He’s stubborn and angry. When I open his stall and try to approach, he dances sideways, the whites of his eyes flashing. I speak to him, low and deep.
“You can either come with me or stay here in this shithole. I can guarantee I’m the better option.”
His ears pin, and his hoof stomps. It’s a warning that I accept but push past anyway.
“I’m getting you in that trailer one way or another,” I grunt, showing him the lead in my hand. “There’s a woman waiting for us who’s going to go fucking crazy over you, and if you give me a black eye, I can’t promise she’s not going to be disappointed.”
Finally, he lets me put the lead on. The energy between us is tense.
I do my best to keep my steps as steady and silent as possible on the journey to the trailer.
He doesn’t want to step onto the ramp, but he does it anyway, and once he sees the gelding, he doesn’t seem all that bad anymore.
Once I’ve latched him in, I grab the mare left waiting.
She doesn’t need coaxing. There’s something ghostly about her as she lets me lead her out of her pathetic excuse of a stall and into the trailer. I don’t think this one has any fight in her at all anymore. If there ever was, it’s been either beaten out, or she’s just . . . stopped caring.
I’m tempted to go back to the house and hit Walt a few more times. Horses are wild animals. They weren’t ever meant to be made into pets, but like humans always do, we took their free will away for our benefit.
We force these animals to wear saddles and carry us around like that’s their sole reason for existing.
I pour so much of myself into helping and caring for them because it’s the only way I can convince myself that I’m deserving of them.
If they’re going to be here with me, following my instructions and losing their right to freedom, then I’m going to treat them with respect and care.
I’ve seen first-hand over the course of my life the bond we can share and how happy we can make them. That’s why I do what I do.
It’s the bare minimum. So, seeing pricks like Walt take advantage of them drives me to the end of my patience. He deserves nothing as far as I’m concerned.
With a parting look into the trailer, I grip the door and force my shoulders to relax.
I shut and latch it before grabbing our bin of supplies and getting into the truck.
The last thing I do before driving away is grab a smoke from the console and light it up.
It fills the cab with its stink, but it doesn’t linger long.
I take a few puffs for the first time in a year as I pull onto the road and then flick the glowing butt of it out the window so fate can decide whether or not Walt deserves to keep his ranch.