Chapter Thirteen
Mags
Present Day. Hallow Ranch.
Goodbye, Firefly.
Goodbye, Firefly.
Goodbye, Firefly.
Goodbye, Firefly.
Goodbye, Firefly.
Hallow Ranch was my sanctuary, the only place I’d managed to find a simple shred of peace in this life.
Diana had been here since the beginning, coming and going as needed, leaving me breathless each time I saw even a glimpse of her. And as much as I wanted to follow her, to know her, to hear her voice or the harmony of her laugh…I couldn’t. My place was here, on this ranch.
I’d been here for over a decade now, never once leaving the property—until two weeks ago.
I’d left my sanctuary, crossing the property line, to protect the woman I loved, but also to break her beautiful, precious heart. I hated every moment of it, from the sharp intake of her breath and the confusion in her hazel eyes to the pain in her trembling lip, and the loss of her touch.
I was gutted by every damn second, but the words I’d just whispered to her on the phone a second ago threatened to pull me under, the darkness clawing at my skin, trying to get a solid grip.
She needed closure—a push to move on from what never could’ve been.
I needed a fucking drink or a bullet in my chest.
I bit down, grinding my teeth to the point of pain as I stared at my phone, Midnight huffing with impatience underneath me, shifting her weight. If it wasn’t for the work that still had to be done, I’d retreat—disappear for a few days on the mountain to clear my head to contemplate which one I was going to give myself.
A drink.
Or a bullet.
I’d spent the most of my life hating myself, but none of that could compare to the absolute hatred brewing in my soul now. Most days, I couldn’t stand to look at myself in the fucking mirror, and now? Now, I had to go on, knowing I’d broken something beautiful, something filled with nothing but light and goodness.
My Diana.
My fuckin’ firefly.
“Yo!”
My head snapped up, finding Mason atop his horse, heading in my direction.
Years ago, I wanted nothing more than to break the bull rider’s jaw for all the shit he’d put Kings through. The longer I’d spent on the ranch as Kings’ ranch hand, the more I grew to hate Mason fuckin’ Langston. Then, when he showed up here after the fire with a way to take down Moonie, his new wife in his truck, things shifted between the Langston brothers. There was a lot of pain there, sure, but I never fully trusted Mason until he showed me the kind of man he was underneath that cocky, bull rider exterior. Thankfully, he was the kind of man to risk everything for the people he cared about—including Kings.
Now, Mason had not only my trust, but also, my respect.
When he was close, I pushed Diana away, shoved down the pain, and lifted my chin. “Something wrong?” I drawled.
Mason’s eyes flashed under the shadow of his hat. “Gonna ask you something. and I need you to be honest with me,” he started.
I stiffened, not liking his tone but saying nothing.
He looked away for a moment, his jaw jumping. When he looked back to me, he hit me with it. “Are you still up for killing the twins?”
I blinked.
Mason took off his hat and ran his fingers through his sweaty, dirty blond hair. “Cause I gotta tell you, Mags, I’m game if you are,” he clipped, his nostrils flaring.
This was the last thing I needed today. “What the fuck happened?” I growled.
“Just answer my question and we can go from there.”
“Ask me tomorrow,” I bit off, pulling Midnight’s reins. “Got work to do today.”
“There’s work to do every day,” he countered.
I looked over my shoulder at him. “Ask me tomorrow. If I answer today, then your brother would be down two ranch hands.” I left him with that, snapping the reins and taking off.
The small screen of my flip phone lit up, the device vibrating on my work table. The sound filled the space, breaking the deathly silence I’d been sitting in.
I’d been in my workshop for the last six hours, since the sun set. While the moon rose, I waited for this call—my lifeline. Slowly, I set the bottle of whiskey down next to my boots, the glass clanking against the concrete floor. As I rose from the rocking chair I’d just stained three days ago, my body ached, needing rest, but sleep was the last thing my mind needed.
If I went to sleep, I would be sucked into a new version of hell, the one where I break my firefly’s heart over and over, her tears a constant stream as she crumbled before me.
I swiped up the shitty phone, flipped it open, and put it to my ear, saying nothing as I stared the only project I’d never finished: the desk sitting in the corner.
“Mags?” Grayson called, concern laced in his voice.
“Sorry to bother,” I grunted, leaning back against my worktable.
“You never do,” my friend said. “What’s going on?”
There was so much I wanted to say, to confess to him. I’d told no one about Diana, which was typical of me, but not telling Grayson was something else entirely. Thankfully, my silence was all he needed.
“Distraction or mission?” he asked.
I couldn’t handle the mission right now. In fact, I had half a mind to tell him to drop it. Years ago, when Grayson started up his company, Red Snake Investigations, I’d asked him to find someone for me. Grayson and his team were the best private investigators and bounty hunters in the country. They had a reputation even in the most powerful of circles, and if I wasn’t so fucked in the head, I knew I’d be a part of his team.
But those weren’t the cards I was dealt.
And Grayson, despite being the best, still couldn’t find my half-brother. After pushing Diana away, I wasn’t in the mood for more disappointment.
My answer was rough. “Distraction.”
“Carrie wants to come see you.”
My jaw tightened as the knife in my gut twisted, my head dropping. I closed my eyes, seeing Grayson’s fiancée curled up in the snow, half frozen to death and leaning against Valerie’s mother’s grave. It was last winter when I found her, and Grayson, according to his team, fell to his knees when I radioed to tell them the news. Carrie was a light in my friend’s life, giving him something no one else could.
Love.
“She’s welcome anytime,” I replied. “You both are.”
Grayson was silent for a moment. “We were planning on dropping by in the fall…” He trailed off, leaving the option for them to come sooner hanging in the air.
“I’m alright,” I lied.
“I can send her down tomorrow morning, you know? She’s finished up the gallery wall for the bookstore yesterday, and her boss is finally back to work after her maternity leave,” he offered, clearly reading me. He didn’t want me alone. “I could come down on Saturday, but I gotta finish unpacking the Portland office.”
“Got plenty of company down here.”
He clocked me then. “But at night, you sit in the damn cabin with your demons and drown, Mags.”
“Been doing it for years now.”
“No, you were healing, Mags,” he argued, his voice gentle. “You were fuckin’ healing, settling into the life you’d built for yourself, and now—”
“—nothing has changed,” I growled, cutting him off.
Nothing had changed. All I did was close a door that should’ve never been open.
“Bullshit.”
My spine snapped straight. “Don’t,” I warned.
In the background, I heard Carrie’s sweet voice. followed by a loud meow.
“No, you little shit, it isn’t time for breakfast,” my friend clipped.
“You better be talkin’ to the fuckin’ cat and not your woman like that, Gray,” I grunted.
I heard some shuffling and then—
“Hi, Mags,” Carrie greeted softly, sounding tired.
It was late, and I knew Grayson had waited until she was asleep before he called me. After my call with Diana, I finished my work and ate dinner with Mason and Harmony at their place before riding back to the barn and getting Midnight settled. Then, I headed to my cabin, the place I’d spend the rest of my lonely, damned life, and called Grayson. All I could hear was Diana’s cracking voice, all I could picture were her tears.
Those were worse than the memories of war, worse than the sounds of bombs and guns going off.
I knew then, I’d take going back into a war zone over having to hurt her like that again.
But it was done.
She could finally move on.
“Mags?” Carrie called, snapping me out of it.
“Sorry,” I murmured. “Hi, Carrie.”
“You don’t sound like yourself,” she said. “Are you alright?”
I blinked. “What do I usually sound like?”
“Like my grumpy friend,” she answered immediately, her words striking me. “But you don’t sound like him right now. What’s wrong?”
I pushed off the worktable and bent to grab the near-empty bottle from the floor. “Long day, Carrie. That’s all.”
“You know you can talk to me, right?” she prompted.
If I wasn’t currently rotting from the inside out, I might’ve smiled. Carrie, the broken girl with a heart of gold.
“I’m alright. Promise.”
“Is this a bullshit promise or a serious one?”
“Considering you aren’t here to do the stupid pinky shit, I’ll let you take your pick,” I rumbled, taking my seat again. “Where’d your man go?”
“Pinky promises aren’t stupid.”
“Carrie.”
“Yeah?”
“Need a distraction, not an argument,” I told her before lifting the bottle to my lips, taking a swing. The liquid burned my throat, but I wasn’t fazed. This was the first time I’d drank this much in a single setting in a long time, the last time having been the night Grayson and I got our deployment orders.
“So you aren’t okay,” she surmised gently, knowing how it was between Grayson and me.
I tipped my head back, staring up at the metal ceiling, my eyes studying the grooves. The truth weighed heavy on my tongue, and yet? I couldn’t give it. If anyone else knew about her, my Diana, I would never be able to forget.
“Just haunted by the past,” I muttered, draining the last of the whiskey. It wasn’t the truth, but it sure as fuck wasn’t a lie.
“Well, we had another author signing at Rossy’s,” she began, and over the next hour, she told me about her job at Rossy’s Books, and the Portland office. I closed my eyes and listened to every single word, grateful for her friendship. She didn’t have to accept me, but she did. She accepted every aspect of Grayson’s life, including me.
When she was done, she asked, “Where are you right now, Mags?”
“Workshop.”
She was quiet for a few seconds. “Do you need me to come down there? I can make you my strawberry pancakes.”
“Probably would go into a diabetic coma from all that sugar, darlin’,” I drawled.
“Sugar is good for the soul, Mags. It brings light to it,” Carrie defended.
I said nothing, opening my eyes to stare at the desk again.
Light.
A little light was all I needed, something to guide me home in the dark, to pull me up when I was under.
Diana’s laugh rang in my ears then, and suddenly, I wasn’t sitting alone in the workshop. I was standing in the middle of Denver’s living room, watching Diana’s head fall back, a sweet melody of laughter coming from her as Mason and Lawson bickered back and forth. When she was done, the laughter transitioned into a soft giggle, and she wiped a happy tear from under her eye as she looked over to me.
The smile on her face stretched, beaming at me and only me.
“Mags,” Grayson clipped in my ear.
I blinked, shaking my head.
The desk reappeared in the corner, and I was back in reality.
“Here,” I answered, setting the bottle back down before rubbing my hand over my face.
“Christ, Carrie’s been calling your name for five minutes, man.”
“Must’ve dosed,” I rumbled, rising from my seat and taking one more look at the bottle.
That was it—I’d reached my limit.
One bottle to forget her.
One bottle to shove everything back down.
From now on, I wasn’t allowed to drink with the thought of her in mind. Social drinks only until the pain dulled and the gaping hole in my heart scarred back over. Leaving the bottle where it was, I walked out of the shop, locked up, and turned to looked up at the full moon.
“What’s going on, Mags? For fuck’s sake, talk to me,” Grayson ordered.
“Just dealing with another demon, Gray. That’s all.”
“What do you need from me?”
“All I need is time,” I murmured before hanging up.
Time.
That was all I needed.
Unfortunately, I didn’t know just how much I would need to get over my firefly, but as always, I pressed on.
Thankfully, I didn’t dream of her when I finally made it to bed. No, the horrors of war filled my mind, and when I woke the next morning, I could still hear the bombs, smell the scent of burning flesh, and taste the blood in my mouth.