Chapter 5 #2
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“Wake up, Grace.”
Grace doesn’t know who says the words. Frankly, she doesn’t care. Her eyelids make a feeble attempt to open but only flutter, too heavy to do anything else.
“ ’M sleepin’,” she mumbles, letting her drooping eyelids fall shut once again.
“Grace,” the voice repeats, tone firm enough to tell her it isn’t going to let up.
Grace frowns, coming back to full consciousness regretfully fast. Slowly, she forces her eyes to blink open, and then, for a fraction of a moment, she doesn’t know where she is.
What happens next feels like it’s in slow motion.
Still half-asleep, she reaches beneath her pillow with her good arm, somehow possessing the wherewithal to leave the injured one alone, and grabs on to the hilt of her knife.
Her grip is ironlike as she yanks it from its hiding place and swings it toward the strange, deep, stern voice.
Only when the tip of it is pressed into a tanned, stubble-covered neck does she fully come to, remembering herself and her surroundings.
Grace gasps, letting the knife fall from her hand and onto the bed with a quiet thump. She glances frantically around the bunkhouse, humiliation tempered only slightly by the fact that no one else seems to have witnessed such an outburst.
Crew is unmoved and weirdly calm, considering she had every intention of slicing clean through his jugular only seconds ago. His eyebrow is kinked, and he looks more…annoyed than anything else. Like she poses about as much danger as a Chihuahua.
“You oughta be careful with that thing,” he says quietly, evenly. “Could hurt yourself.”
Irritation flares in her belly right alongside the embarrassment. She lets herself lie back down, hoping he’ll take the hint and leave. When he doesn’t, she turns her head and maintains eye contact with him for a brief moment to utter, “Go away.”
“No.” He doesn’t move. Doesn’t look away from her. “You’re hurt.”
“So?”
“So, I’m going to help you.”
She nearly laughs. “That’s rich.”
“Sit up.”
“Go away.”
“Grace,” he says, and the second she feels his hand touch her arm, she can’t help it. It’s an old reflex, born out of necessity and anger and, presently, irritation.
“Don’t touch me,” Grace growls. Her voice cuts through the pleasant murmurs from the dining room, and all their conversations begin to quiet.
Crew’s hands fly upward as he backs away, completely removing himself from her personal space.
Maybe he’d been a little less unmoved by a knife at this throat than she thought.
He assesses her calmly for a moment before turning to look at the dinner table.
Grace keeps her stare trained straight ahead so she doesn’t see exactly who he’s looking to, but whoever it is, they seem to be able to read a silent command in Crew’s expression.
Within seconds, there are sounds of the ranch hands grabbing their plates and silverware and shuffling out through the swinging door; it closes softly behind them, and then Crew and Grace are completely alone in the bunkhouse.
A long beat passes and then his eyes soften—just a touch. “I’m trying to help you.”
Through gritted teeth, Grace spits back, “Why? Isn’t this what you wanted?”
His brow pulls together. “What I wanted?”
“If I’m hurt and can’t keep training, you’ll have your reason to kick me off the ranch. Isn’t that what you want? I’m no good, untrustworthy, a bad seed. Sharing blood with Bellamy Whitlock means I’m not worthy of Halcyon. Right?”
The recognition, the remembrance washes over his face slowly.
He sets both hands on his thighs and looks away from her.
For a moment, Grace is sure he’s about to reprimand her for eavesdropping, especially when his jaw moves in that way it does when he’s frustrated or growing impatient.
But then he says, “I didn’t know you were listening,” and his voice is raspy and sounds suspiciously close to regretful.
Grace swallows, grimacing at the dry, sandpapery feeling of her mouth. “Would you have said something else if you did?”
His lips twitch, and though she can see only one side of his mouth, the corner of it pulls up just slightly.
He says nothing, which is answer enough.
Grace shakes her head, sitting up fully in her bunk and grimacing as she pushes herself back against the slats until she’s completely upright and there’s a wide berth between them.
A tense silence settles over the room until she finally clears her throat and says, “I’m nothing like him.
” Crew looks at her. In this light, his eyes are deceptively soft.
Open. Thoughtful. There are flecks of green amid the amber and chocolate in his irises.
He hardly blinks as his eyes hold hers. His lack of response is unnerving, and, growing more irritated with every passing second, Grace adds, “You don’t know me. ”
He nods. “You’re right.”
“You don’t want to know me.”
At that, Crew’s nostrils flare. “Knowing and trusting don’t always go hand in hand. My first priority is and always will be the safety of this ranch and all the people on it.”
“And you think I’m a threat to that?”
“I’m not saying you are, but like you said: I don’t know you.”
“Ask me something, then.”
He tilts his head, a flash of amusement crossing his face. “What?”
Grace nearly shrugs but manages to stop herself before she lands in a world of hurt from moving her shoulder. Instead, she raises her brows questioningly. “You don’t know me because you haven’t tried to know me. Ask me something.”
He seems to consider her challenge for a moment, and then briefly looks like he isn’t going to give in, but then he scoots backward and settles himself on the opposite side of her bunk. He releases a long breath through his nostrils and then asks, “Where were you before Braxton?”
Grace is already starting to regret this little game she’s introduced, but it was her idea. “I lived with my parents until I was sixteen” is all she gives him.
Crew waits for her to continue, and when she doesn’t, he says, “And?”
“And what?”
“What happened when you were sixteen?”
There’s a thing that always happens when Grace thinks about that night.
Akin to someone leafing through a scrapbook, pictures with varying degrees of gore and terror begin to take shape and start shoving themselves to the forefront of her brain.
She can hardly even see Crew anymore, because her vision is too clouded by a red so dark it’s almost purple, viscous and rolling down the faded wallpaper in fat, slow drips.
It coats the rusty blade of the kitchen knife sitting atop a peeling vinyl floor.
“Grace?”
She comes back slowly and then all at once. The word falls out of her mouth before she has a chance to even process what just happened in her head. “What?”
Crew’s eyebrows tug together. “Are you okay?”
Grace clears her throat, glancing around the room quickly, assessing where she is. Halcyon. Bunkhouse. Bed. Safe. She nods, then turns back to him. “I left home when I was sixteen. My parents couldn’t care for me anymore,” she says.
It’s not a lie, but it also isn’t the whole truth. Besides her uncle, she’s never given anyone the whole truth.
Seemingly satisfied with this, and possibly—shockingly—emotionally intelligent enough to know not to poke that soft spot any further, Crew nods slowly. In a strategic pivot, he asks, “Why’d you stay at Braxton as long as you did?”
And there it is. The question she knew he’d ask, and the one question she can’t answer.
She reaches for the palatable, civilized answer that has gotten her through other probing conversations similar to this one.
“I wasn’t good in school. Dropped out when I was a sophomore.
Hal—Braxton’s horse trainer at the time—took me under his wing.
I was shit at math and English and science, but horses…
I understood horses. I never looked back after that.
I did leave once, but he—” Grace stops herself.
She blinks, looking away from Crew, and shakes her head.
A quick release of an onslaught of painful memories.
“My uncle has power in that part of Texas. I couldn’t go anywhere without people knowing exactly who I was, knowing exactly what was coming for them if they showed me any sort of kindness.
I ran out of money eventually, so I went back. ”
Crew listens quietly, intently. When she’s finished speaking, his eyes dart back and forth between hers—almost as if they’re seeing her for the first time. It’s oddly endearing when he responds not with sympathy or apologies, but with “He’s a piece of shit.”
Grace barks out a laugh. “Understatement of the century.”
A half smile forms on Crew’s lips. His eyes, sparkling slightly in the warm light of the bunkhouse, carry more of the joy of his smile than his mouth does. “Look,” he says, tapping his thumb against his jeans. “I don’t think you’re a bad seed.”
She huffs. “But you still don’t trust me.”
“It doesn’t matter. Not really,” he counters, but there’s no malice in his voice. He’s almost gentle about it, like he’s trying to—comfort her? A preposterous, pain-induced assumption. “The fact is, you’ve done well with the horse. Better than any of these idiots could do. Better than I could do.”
The honesty catches her off guard and makes her heart squeeze a little in her chest. She gives him a quick but sincere smile. “Thanks.”
“But you’re not gonna be able to keep at it if I don’t fix that shoulder,” he says plainly, all soft comfort gone. “Now, may I?”
She can almost feel the pain that’s waiting for her if she agrees to this, but he’s right. Irritatingly so. If she doesn’t regain full mobility, she can’t get in the pen with Waylon. The quicker it gets reset, the quicker she can recover and get back to work—so she concedes. “Fine.”