Chapter Two
Chapter Two
Justice stacked rocks until his muscles ached. Until the tyranny of the night before released his hold on his head, and his
muscles. The only way to survive partying this hard was to work harder.
The older he got, the more that was true.
At thirty-three it wasn’t like he was an old man, but the hard living was definitely beginning to catch up with him. So he
was doing the best he could to outrun it any which way he could. Because the alternative was to grow the fuck up. And he wasn’t
planning on doing that anytime soon.
He wondered, not for the first time, what his life would be like when he was less tethered to Rue. Sometimes it felt like
she was the only thing holding him to basic human decency.
She was definitely the only and best part of his valor.
It wasn’t like she was moving away or doing anything drastic. Rue never did anything drastic. She was a constant. The eternal
port in the storm that he had grown up in. His best friend in the entire world. His better half, some might say.
She deserved the world.
He was happy as hell that she had found a man that made her happy. That she was moving on and having the kind of normal life that they hadn’t been able to imagine when they were kids.
Watching her win at this made him feel... He was proud of her. She deserved this. She deserved everything and more.
“You’re up early.”
He turned and saw his brother Denver standing there, staring at him. His tone was dry. Because it was 4:30 p.m., he was not
up early. He had gotten up early to go to Rue’s. But this was a normal time for him to be up and about.
“Fuck you,” he said.
“Good morning,” his brother returned.
“I’ve already run errands today. Don’t be so high and mighty.”
“Oh yeah? What were you up to?”
“I had to go to a tux fitting. The wedding is in just a couple of weeks.”
“Oh that’s right. The wedding. I can’t believe it.”
“Yeah. Me neither.”
“Do you ever feel weird about that? Like everybody getting married and moving on. Even Penny.”
They both shook their heads. Even Penny was off and married. Landry was, Daughtry was. And honestly, he felt much the same
about them that he did about Rue. It was good for them. It was good if you could run from the shit in your past and get some
more better.
“Yeah, I guess it’s a little bit strange. But... I don’t want to change anything. I’m happy.”
“Are you?” Denver asked.
“Yeah. I mean, I got laid last night.”
“Thank you for sharing, Justice, I really value knowing about your sex life.”
“I like to keep an open line of communication with us, bro. I feel like it is really good for the soul.”
“You’re bragging.”
“You could get laid if you felt like it.”
“Some of us work. I mean, we really work, we don’t stroll into the barn at our leisure.”
“Your thoughts on my life aside,” Justice said, “I’ve done what I set out to do. I never wanted to fuck anybody up the way
that Dad did us. The way that he did Mom. And here I am. I’m a decent brother, I like to think. I do help you on the ranch,
whatever you say, and I have a lifelong friend. And I have managed to maintain that friendship since I was eight years old.
Given our upbringing, I feel like that is winning. Great for other people if they want something that looks a little bit more
traditional. I don’t.”
“Can’t say that I do either,” said Denver.
“Yeah. I mean, that’s kind of a big hell no.”
“And that’s fine,” said Denver.
He couldn’t remember the last time he ever thought his big brother questioned much of anything, but he could see that he was.
“What’s got your panties in a twist?” Justice asked.
“We’re the last two,” he said.
“The last to what?”
“Everyone else on this whole fucking ranch is gone and gotten themselves married. The Garretts, the McClouds and the Sullivans.
All married.”
“Honestly, all I hear is that everybody went and stepped in a bear trap, and you’re musing about whether or not we should want to step in a bear trap.”
Denver laughed. “I dunno. I guess my concern more is that there is something eternally wrong with us.”
“Who cares if there is? We haven’t dragged anybody into our shit.”
“Good point.”
“Go out and get laid, Denver,” Justice said. “That will deal with all of your emotional turmoil. You’ll remember that there
are ways to connect with people that don’t require you upending your entire life.”
“Yeah. I know.”
In all seriousness, his brother was a good dude. But he was hard. And harder to know. They were all like that, he supposed.
They had a bit of a reputation around town for being... unsociable. Daughtry had made it his mission to improve the King
family name in town, after their dad had done a good job of running it through the mud. The rest of them... Their younger
sister, Arizona, had always been known to be prickly and mean. Landry was legendary if only for the explosion that had occurred
between him and Fia Sullivan when they were in high school. Denver was well-known for being a hard-ass of epic proportions.
And Justice? Well. He was known for having fun. He was a good time, not a long time, and everyone knew it.
He couldn’t say that it had earned him any respect around town, but it had certainly allowed the townspeople to see that the Kings could be harmless. Or if not harmless, something a little closer to fun than deathly serious assholes. Or scumbags.
So there was that.
Of course, Daughtry had gone and hitched up to a former convict, Landry and Fia had gotten together—but only after they had
revealed they’d secretly had a child together back when they were teenagers, who they were now raising together—and Arizona
had reunited with the love of her life, which had sorted her personality quirks right out. The Kings were on the straight
and narrow, except for Daughtry. Who had been kicked off of it a little bit. But honestly, it looked good on him. Happiness
looked good on all of his brothers.
He had been happy for a long time, personally. Because he had figured out the secret to that. He had a full life. A good family.
Good friend. And he had manageable expectations for himself. And that was the best a man could do in his situation, he figured.
The alternative was marinating in trauma and other bullshit and he wasn’t interested in that, thanks. Thinking too much didn’t
lead anywhere good.
“You coming out to dinner tonight?”
“Yeah, I figured.”
“Let’s head that way.”
He hopped in his brother’s truck and let him drive him across the property. King’s Crest was, in his opinion, the jewel of Four Corners Ranch. He knew that the other families would fight for that distinction. But Justice had never shied away from a good fistfight. So, it didn’t worry him any. His brothers’ trucks were sit ting in front of the farmhouse when they arrived. The stately old place had been in the family for generations.
Just like the ranch itself.
A collective run by the McClouds, the Kings, the Garretts and the Sullivans since the 1880s. It was the largest ranching operation
in the state of Oregon. They weren’t factory. They worked the land by hand; they had over a hundred employees. The employees
often lived on the ranch, worked on the ranch. Their kids went to school on the ranch. They were an ecosystem in and of themselves.
And it was only growing. The Sullivans had made a store on the property where they could sell their items directly. And the
Kings were in the process of working at diversifying their cattle operation.
They were building a venue so that people could have conferences, weddings, birthday parties. Guest cabins for people to stay
in. Justice was happy to go along for the ride. His favorite thing that they had started up was headed by his sister-in-law
Bix, who had an affinity for brewing, and had started a beer label for the place. They had all gotten together and come up
with their own distinct variety of beer, and it was about to go into stores, which was definitely a boon.
Bix had been a moonshiner prior to her marriage to Daughtry, and she was the cutest, scrappiest little thing. He really did
think his brother had won the lottery with that one.
Bix and Daughtry were about in the farmhouse when they arrived, and so were Arizona and her husband, Micah.
“Hey kids,” Justice said when he came in.
“Well,” Arizona said. “As I live and breathe. Justice King. Without a hangover.”
“Oh, I had one. I just worked it out.”
“Good for you,” she said. “Is Rue coming?”
“I expect so. Unless she has wedding stuff.”
Asher wasn’t back in town yet, so she was still spending most nights out at King’s Crest. But that was normal. She and Asher
had been together for eight years, and he had been deployed on and off for many of those years. He hadn’t been a Four Corners
Ranch kid. Meaning he hadn’t gone to school on the property, even though he was from the area. He had been bussed to school
an hour away in Mapleton, and so she hadn’t met him until she had started working at her grandmother’s store in town. She
had fallen for him pretty quickly. At least, that was how Justice had felt. She was cautious and sweet, was Rue. And she had
never been big into the dating scene. He couldn’t blame her.
Her parents had been a hot mess and a half. Certainly not the kind to give you aspirations of great romance.
So she’d been extremely choosy when it came to dates and all of that. He had actually been a little bit disturbed when she’d
gotten real serious about Asher. When they’d started... apparently sleeping together. It wasn’t like she had gone and announced
it; there was just a point where it was clear that was happening, and Justice’s initial take on that had been pretty dim.
Because she was like a sister to him, and it had felt like another thing he wanted to protect her from. He just wanted her
to not get hurt.
But she hadn’t gotten hurt. They’d stayed together. It was definitely hard on her when Asher was gone. But one thing he admired so much about Rue was that she was levelheaded even when she was falling in love. He had always heard that women got a bit loopy over that kind of thing. Hell, he’d seen men do it too. Love, he knew, was one of the single most dangerous things on earth. It gave people an extraordinary amount of power over another person. And it could create a hell of a lot of damage.
The way that Rue had managed to get into a relationship, and stay in that relationship, while maintaining her home, her career
and their friendship, had actually shown him something. But then, Rue had always been a window into some foreign, fascinating
thing. She had always been different. Different than what they had been raised in. Different than what they had been surrounded
by. A source of peace.
He had never been able to quiet himself long enough to learn anything in school. But when Rue taught him, he was able to sit
and listen. She broke it down for him in such a way that she made it all feel possible. He wouldn’t even know how to read
if it wasn’t for her. Forget algebra. So, if anybody could do love and marriage and make it all work, keep their sanity and
all of that, he really wasn’t surprised that it was Ruby Matthews.
His phone vibrated, and he looked down. Right on time he had a text from Rue saying that she would be there fairly directly.
He smiled. He didn’t respond. She knew he saw it.
And she wouldn’t expect for him to respond directly either. It just wasn’t how they did things.
They began to get dinner on the table—barbecue and all the trimmings, which was a staple of the King family diet. They did
beef. And they did it well. And anything the Kings did well, they did hard. From work to sex.
He liked that about them. They were definitely a better iteration of the family name than their father had been. And to that
he could raise a glass.
Rue appeared a bit later with a craft bag hanging off of her arm, and a folder under her other.
“Hey,” he said, moving to the door and taking everything from her, unburdening her immediately.
“Hi,” she said, smiling.
“Tell me,” Arizona said, sticking her head out of the kitchen, a mischievous grin on her face. “You are really going to get
my brother to wear a tux?”
“Yes,” said Rue. “Because I’m getting married in a church like a civilized person, and he has to dress like a civilized person.”
“The trouble is,” Micah said, “I’ve never had the impression that he was a civilized person.”
“I’m not,” said Justice.
Denver chose that moment to join the conversation. “Oh, he sure as hell isn’t. But he will move heaven and earth to make sure
that Rue has the wedding that she wants. He’s not civilized. He’s a damned good friend.”
“That’s the truth,” said Rue.
Rue, for her part, gave him a level of loyalty that he knew few people ever saw. He often wasn’t quite sure what he had done to merit it. Yeah, he’d been there for her. He was protective of her. He cared for her. But in comparison, he was an absolute disaster area. Walking caution tape. And she was... perfect.
“I will show up and do whatever I’m told to do,” he said. “This is her wedding, and the bride gets whatever she wants.”
“You’re a good man, Justice King,” Arizona said.
“Oh I’m positively great when I’m on loan. But I wouldn’t be any good long-term.”
Rue laughed. “I don’t know. We are pretty long-term.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah,” she said, wrinkling her nose. And that hurt a little bit, but it was fair. Rue was realistic about him. There was
nothing wrong with that. She knew him. She knew him well.
They served up dinner, and sat around the table. And he watched as Rue smiled and interacted with his siblings. Family, maybe. That was maybe what he offered. Because for all that they had been broken and damaged during their upbringing, the Kings had done a good job of rallying around each other, and holding each other tight. They had been through hell, in some regards. Their father had been a pretty high level narcissist who had done a lot of damage in the community. And had twisted up his kids all kinds of ways. It was what had given Justice a healthy distrust for love. Because he had watched their father manipulate how much they had loved him. How much they had wanted to please him. That was when Justice had exited people-pleasing stage left. It had been clear to him that there was nothing but danger in that. And that was when he decided the life of a hellion was the one for him.
It was safer. For all involved.
“He looks great in his tux,” Rue said. That knocked him out of his reverie a bit.
“Do I?”
“You know you do,” she said. “You know you always look good.”
“It is a tragedy,” Arizona said, shaking her head. “No matter how many times I warned the female populace about him, his powers
are too strong.”
He rolled his eyes. “Listen. We all have to play to our strengths.” The truth was, he knew that he was shaped the kind of
way women like. He was good-looking, he supposed. But more than that, he was fucking fantastic in bed. Because part of being
raised by a sociopath was making a decision about whether or not you were ever going to use people the way that he did. And
living the life of a man-whore meant engaging in behavior that could come across as using somebody. That was why he went out
of his way to be the best partner possible. A woman got a lot out of the night with him. He was not a selfish lover. If she
didn’t get off more than once, there was no point as far as he was concerned. He made it his mission to rock worlds. It was
his version of being a better man.
He might not be able to offer forever, but he compensated for what he couldn’t offer.
They finished dinner, and he walked Rue out to her truck. “I didn’t get a chance to show you all the stuff in the folders. I’m trying to choose flowers.”
“Oh. Did you want to come back to my place for a bit?”
“No,” she said. “It’s okay. I... Asher ended up getting delayed back at the base. So he isn’t going to be here for a couple
more days. Would you help out?”
“Whatever you need.”
“Well, I need help choosing some things for the bouquet. Not the flowers—I had to have those grown over a year ago, but she
thought that it was a good idea for me to hold off on ribbons and things until closer to the time, so now I have an array
of things to look at. Just fine details. And then, I need to do my final dress fitting with Sue. I was kind of hoping you
would come.”
“You want me at your dress fitting?”
“The final one. To make sure everything’s good to go. In case I lost weight or gained it, or whatever. Obviously most of this
was done a year ago.”
“Obviously,” he said.
There was nothing obvious about that to him. But then, that was Rue. Always prepared. And he couldn’t imagine that she actually
needed his input on anything. But, she did like to double-check a box, and so he knew it was important to her to make sure
that everything was thoroughly managed.
“What time do you need to meet?”
“I need to go to the florist at nine.”
He grimaced.
“Is that okay?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “I just won’t go out tonight.”
Because the truth was, he would do anything for Rue. She was on the path to her perfect life, and he wasn’t going to let anything
mess that up.
Copyright ? 2025 by Maisey Yates