Chapter Ten
Mags
Year Ten. Hallow Ranch.
The smell of smoke still lingered in the air, ashes spread over the ground, covering the green pastures in soot. Valerie was still in the hospital, and Kings…Fuck me, Kings was about to crumble. It had been two days since Tim Moonie’s men kidnapped Valerie, left her on the mountain, and set it on fire.
We nearly lost her—Kings barely got to her in time.
I pulled my gaze from the scorched side of the mountain, shoving back my own nightmares of the past, and adjusted my hold on Midnight’s reins as Beau’s called my name. Looking back over my shoulder, I found him leaning on the corral fence, his jaw set. I clicked my tongue and tugged on the reins.
“Come on, girl,” I muttered, turning her to head towards Beau.
Once I was close, Beau asked, “What’s the plan?”
“Plan?” I parroted, flicking my eyes up to the main house and spotting Valerie’s mother, Nancy, sitting on the porch swing with her nurse.
“Yeah. To finally kill this motherfucker and be done with it.”
I looked down at him, seeing him in a different light now, the need for revenge flashing in his blue eyes. Every inch of him was drenched in anger, toxic and lethal. It was an anger I was all too familiar with, and after years of fighting it, I was finally in control.
“It’s too soon to make a move on Moonie, Beau,” I told him as Midnight shifted.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“You know damn well what it means. It’s too soon. We have things we need to focus on here that are more important than going after that fucker.”
He scoffed, pulling off his hat and using it to gesture to the ranch. “We were attacked, Mags!”
“Affirmative,” I clipped, memories of the war crawling back to the surface.“We were fucking attacked, and we nearly lost a good woman.” I leaned forward, baring my teeth. “Our priority right now is taking care of us. We heal. We regroup. We do not, under any circumstances, fucking go after the man who set this ranch on fire half-cocked.”
I could still feel the heat of the flames, and I was barely holding on. Beau glared up at me, his nostrils flared. Rage consumed him in a way no one on this ranch could understand but me. He’d lost the woman he loved, and his home, his only source of comfort, had nearly been taken from him.
Hallow Ranch was my sanctuary.
I’d found a family here, and I’d be damned if anything ever happened to it. I’d spent the first half of my twenties in a fucking war zone, fighting nameless strangers with a specific strategy and set of skills I had to teach myself. Right now, Hallow Ranch was in the middle of war, and we’d just lost a battle. We needed to regroup.
Fighting, at least right now, wasn’t a fucking option.
“Take a breath, Beau,” I instructed, and Midnight neighed.
He looked away from me, his eyes on the mountain as his jaw jumped a few times. “This is my home—our home.”
“Yes.”
“We can’t let anything happen to it.”
“Correct.”
He twisted his head back to me and took a deep breath, rolling his neck. “Fuck, I feel useless.”
There was a lot of that going around right now.
“It’s okay to feel that way, Beau,” I assured him. I’d found the man in the middle of the field where he’d proposed to the love of his life, Abbie, and she said no. He was standing, looking up at the moon with a bottle of Jack in one hand and his daddy’s pistol in the other, ready to end it all. If I hadn’t spotted him, the ranch would still be in mourning today. “I need you to keep your feelings in check. Get a lock on them.”
He ran a hand through his golden hair, his eyes on the ground. “Know that, Mags.”
“Promise me then,” I challenged.
Beau’s head shot up. “I promise.”
Good enough.
“Is Kings still at the hospital?” I asked, changing the subject.
When everything went down, I was ready to go to the hospital with Kings, to be there for him like he had for me all these years. He told me to stay.
So, as always, I stayed.
That didn’t mean I wasn’t desperate to know how Valerie was. She was a good woman with a heart of gold. All her life, she’d known nothing but struggle and pain, until she came to Hallow Ranch. I got to witness Kings fall in love with her, open up to her, and start to heal—all because of her.
They deserved nothing but the best, and yet?
I looked over to the mountain as violence seeped into my thoughts, the craving of revenge on my tongue.
“Yeah, they’re releasing Val this afternoon,” Beau answered, pulling me back into the present. “Diana hasn’t left, though. She didn’t want to leave Caleb.”
I looked up to the house again, noting Diana’s Mercedes was still in the same spot I’d found it in early this morning. Of course, she hadn’t left Caleb. She loved that kid like he was her blood.
She loved that kid just like I loved him—with everything I had.
“Take the day, Beau,” I ordered, looking back down at him. I didn’t need to be thinking about Diana right now—or ever. The last time she was here a few weeks ago, she’d shown up at the main house for a meeting. It was the first time I’d seen her in over seven months. “The work is done.”
“The work isn’t done,” he argued.
“Your work is,” I corrected coolly before jerking my chin. “Go.”
He dropped his arms from the fence, twisting his neck to look up at the house. “Caleb hasn’t come out today, has he?”
“No, he hasn’t,” I answered, my gut twisting. The boy hadn’t been outside since Valerie went to the hospital; this entire shitshow probably traumatized the boy more than he was willing to admit to anyone, including himself.
“I’ll go spend time with him,” Beau said. “Get his mind off all this.”
“Good idea,” I muttered as he turned to walk away.
I needed some fucking time to think.
It wasn’t until he was at the top of the hill that I dismounted from Midnight and walked her over to the water bin, tying her to the post. I walked into the barn, needing some fucking silence. Once I was in the shade, I pulled off my hat and ran my hand through my hair, knowing damn well I needed to cut it. I just couldn’t bring myself to. Hair held memories, and I just wasn’t ready to let them go.
“You can’t dictate my life anymore. I’m a grown woman,” a female voice echoed from the other side of the barn. “I don’t have time to talk about this. I have a client who needs me.”
Diana.
I put my hat back on, my eyes searching for her.
“Cuss at me again, and I’m hanging up the phone. I don’t have the time or patience to entertain this,” she said sharply.
Who the fuck was cussing at her?
I moved then, my boots hitting the floorboards of the barn, not stopping until I spotted her in the last horse stall—the only empty one we had. She stood in the middle of it, wearing a gray pencil skirt, black heels, and a white blouse.
No color.
She wasn’t wearing any fucking color—again.
For the last month, every time I was blessed with a glimpse of her, she wasn’t wearing her usual bright colors. I detested this new monotone look she’d adopted. I needed her color, her flicker of light.
She shifted her weight, putting her hand in her now--blonde hair and gripping it like she wanted to pull it out. “Mom, I have a life here.”
I took a step into the stall and didn’t move another inch as she whirled around to face me, her eyes widening. “Mags,” she breathed, dropping her hand to her chest.
On the other end of the phone, the female voice was yelling.
“Hang up the phone,” I ordered gently.
She pulled it away from her beautiful face, swallowing as she looked at the screen and then back to me. “It’s my mom.”
“Mothers don’t talk to their daughters that way,” I replied gruffly. “Hang up the phone.”
Diana didn’t move.
Instead, she stared at me in a way that made me want to take her into my arms and tell her everything was going to be okay. She’d had a hell of a fucking week ,and the day of the fire, she’d arrived just after Denver and Valerie were pulled out. She ran out into the field and dropped to her knees behind the crowd, crying out for Denver and Val. If one of the twins hadn’t gone to her, I would’ve lost my mind. I had been too busy holding Kings back so the medics could do their job.
Exhaling through my nose, I stepped forward and gently pried the device out of her hand, ending the call.
“We were in the middle of a conversation,” she murmured.
“About what?” I asked.
Before she could answer with her words, her body did. The tears pooling in her eyes overflowed, spilling onto her heated cheeks, and that damn bottom lip of hers began to wobble. My body reacted before I could stop myself. My hand shot out, my fingers gripping her chin firmly as I stepped closer, tilting her head back.
“Your tears add to my agony,” I confessed softly, my voice rough.
“I don’t want you in agony,” she whispered, her tears still flowing.
A day without agony would be my death, but she would never know that.
“Talk to me,” I demanded. This was the first time we’d spoken in over eight months, and damn it all to hell, it felt too good to have her hazel eyes on me, her chin in my grip, her body so close to mine.
“My mother hates the woman I’ve become.”
I said nothing, holding her gaze, patiently waiting for anything she would or wouldn’t give me. I’d wait a lifetime for her to say just one word to me.
She inhaled an unsteady breath before giving me the truth. “She hates the woman I am because I’m the woman she wasn’t strong enough to be.” Her words hit me in a way I wasn’t expecting. My jaw hardened, but she continued. “I was supposed to grown up, find a husband, and be a good little wife. I was supposed to have babies and cater to my husband’s every need.”
I grunted, not trusting myself to speak. I didn’t want to offend her, but her mother sounded like a cunt.
“She’s been calling me all week. I was supposed to go home last weekend, after years of my parents convincing me to visit them. They’ll never come out here, because they refuse to acknowledge the life I’ve built for myself, to see how far I’ve come,” she explained, her voice shaking. “And then all this shit with Hallow Ranch happened, and Cathy is God knows where. But today, I had to give in. I foolishly answered the call, hoping she would ask if I was alright or at least pretend to give a shit.”
“They don’t.”
She flinched in my hold, her eyes snapping up to mine. “You don’t—”
“Stop letting people into your life who only see you as a tool. They don’t care about you, Diana. They want to control you. When you were born, they made a mold for you, and you, being the amazing woman you are, refused to fit into,” I said.
As my words hit her, she blinked, and then, suddenly, she was looking at me different. “You’re talking to me again.”
I hadn’t spoken this much to her in years, doing my best to avoid her. I’d hoped she’d moved on from her shitty ex, forgotten this connection between us, and found a man worthy of her time.
“Why are you talking to me again?” she whispered.
I jerked her closer to me, my voice low as I gave her the truth. “To remind you not to take any shit from anyone.”
She sniffled. “Does that include you?”
“Especially me, Firefly,” I murmured, scanning her face.
“Diana!”
Jig’s voice echoed throughout the barn, and a part of me was grateful for the interruption. I was a second away from taking her mouth, the craving for her nearly consuming me. She jumped away from me, yelping.
The tips of my fingers burned from her absence, the same burn radiating in my chest.
I heard the old man’s footsteps, and then, “You alright?”
I stood there silently as she stammered, “Y-yes, Jigs. I was just on a call.” She didn’t look at me when she passed, leaving me in the stall as she attempted to fix her hair. “Did you need something?” she asked, smiling towards the front entrance to the barn.
“Den is at the house. Said you had some documents for him to sign,” Jigs explained.
Diana nodded as I stared at her profile.
Fuck, why was she so beautiful? Still, after all this time.
“Right,” she breathed, still not looking at me. “Walk me up to the house?”
The old cowboy chuckled. “Sure thing, doll.”
Then, she was gone, the sound of her heels echoing throughout the barn, leaving me alone.
I bent my head and rubbed the back of my neck. “I’m never going to be free of her, am I?” I rumbled to the empty space.
As usual, I didn’t get an answer. Instead, the phantom pains returned, full force, eating me alive as the memories of the flames danced in my mind.