Chapter 21
An ancient black pickup rumbles and groans as it waits for Grace on the gravel shoulder of the highway bordering Halcyon’s left quadrant. It’s parked less than a mile from the entrance, and it takes her only fifteen minutes to reach it. A thousand steps between heaven and hell.
With her backpack slung over her shoulder and her eyes on the toes of her boots, she approaches the truck’s passenger side and finds its window down.
Bellamy Whitlock sits behind the wheel, wearing his standard uniform—black felt hat; once-black, now-gray jeans; and a crisp, salmon pearl snap, so stiff from being overly starched that it forms right angles at his shoulders.
Since she’s now seen firsthand what old Texas money looks like, it’s never been more evident to Grace that her uncle is anything but.
He reeks of newness, of try-hards and wannabes; he is a shade of green that is reserved only for snakes in the grass.
The thick, sweet scent of his cologne assaults her nose, and she suppresses the urge to gag.
A cigarette hangs from between his teeth, and he jerks an impatient nod toward the passenger door.
“Well, look who finally came to her senses. Let’s go.
” Grace tosses her backpack into the bed and opens the door, which greets her with a painful-sounding creak.
Across the seats, there are rips in the leather and stuffing threatening to spill out, and the whole cabin smells like cigarettes and mildew.
Grace folds her arms tightly over her chest as she scoots as close to the door as she can—putting as much space between her and Bellamy as is physically possible.
He says nothing as he shifts the truck into gear and sets off down the road.
With every mile driven, darkness envelops them.
Out here, there are no streetlights to guide the way—there is no reprieve from the unforgiving night.
Grace stares out at the void, face-to-face with oblivion.
Right here, in this moment, she wishes it would swallow her whole.
It looks almost peaceful in its endlessness—as if, perhaps, it stretches into a place where light can thrive—where things are better. Happier.
Bellamy’s throaty voice cuts through the rattling hum of the truck’s engine, reminding Grace exactly where she is—and also that better, happier things have never been within her reach. There’s no use in trying to grab on to them now.
“You’ll thank me for this later,” he drawls. “One day, you will.”
The urge to laugh in his face at the absurdity of the statement is overwhelming. Instead, Grace turns to pin him with a glare. “Enlighten me, please. Because I can’t fathom a future where I do anything but despise you.”
A dark, rumbling chuckle is his reply, and it quickly turns into an ugly, loud cough.
He has to roll the window down to spit, and Grace’s lip curls at the sight.
There is not a single iota of this man that doesn’t disgust her.
When he’s sufficiently cleared out, he sighs.
“Think about this rationally for a second, honey. Did you think you were gonna live out the rest of your days happily ever after at Halcyon Ranch?” He elongates each syllable, disdain dripping off his tongue.
Grace continues to stare at him, and as she takes in his graying skin and thick, uneven facial hair, it occurs to her that he’s not wrong. Halcyon had felt like home. She’d belonged there, among the sprawling hills and juniper trees. She’d belonged with the horses, and the ranch hands, and—
“You did, didn’t you?” Bellamy says. “You really did. And, what? You thought you’d tie up loose ends by telling that Caldwell bitch a bunch of lies about me, about my ranch?”
Anger sparks bright and red in Grace’s chest. “Don’t call her that.”
Bellamy barks a laugh, and the sound is more horrible than she remembered—sinister and piercing and the principal instrument in the soundtrack of her nightmares.
“She thought she could send the law after me and I’d go down without a fight—like I’d just roll over and let those sons a’bitches ruin everything my family built.
” He scowls at her. “You would’ve liked that, wouldn’t you? ”
“You did that yourself,” Grace spits. “You and your greed.”
“My greed? You just walked out of the biggest, most profitable ranch in the country and you want to talk to me about greed?”
“They aren’t making money by scamming people. They aren’t abusing their animals. They’re good, hardworking people—”
Bellamy cuts her off. “The Caldwells are a plague. All they do is take and spread.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Grace says tightly. She has to look away from him, can’t take even one more second of staring at his decrepit face.
“You don’t even see how they’ve dug their claws into you,” he says. “Made you into one of their little puppets.”
Nostrils flared, fists balled at her sides, Grace stares daggers into the windshield and bites out, “I’d rather be their puppet than your slave.”
Bellamy chuckles at this, and it’s a mocking, derisive sound.
Grace can see from her peripheral vision he’s shaking his head, then turning to look at her.
“My sister—God rest her soul—would be ashamed of what you’ve become.
What you’ve done.” He clicks his teeth in disapproval. “Braxton was her home.”
Grace growls, “Don’t. Don’t you dare.”
He shrugs. “It’s the truth.”
“The Braxton my mother called home is not your Braxton. You ruined everything that was lovely—everything good. It’s you she’d be ashamed of.”
The truck jerks hard, veering abruptly onto the surrounding expanse of brush and rocks.
It’s such a sharp yank that Grace’s head knocks into the passenger window, and she’s disoriented for a brief moment, unsure of what exactly just happened.
That is, until a clammy, calloused palm is pressed up against her throat.
Bellamy’s voice is low and menacing—it vibrates with vitriol.
“You’ve always been an ungrateful little shit, even after I did the saintly thing and took you in all those years ago.
Remember that? Remember when it was me, the system, or the streets?
” He squeezes, and Grace croaks, pushing at his arm and failing to gain purchase.
His hold is surprisingly firm for someone with such arthritic-looking hands.
Grace attempts to argue but her words come out stilted, spitting.
Bellamy sneers. “Remember how I kept your little secret from the cops when they came knockin’?
Coulda handed you over to ’em right then.
Coulda told ’em you stuck a knife in your daddy’s neck after your momma was already dead.
You didn’t do it to save her. You did it because you wanted to. ”
Tears begin to form in Grace’s eyes—from the lack of oxygen, from the abundance of shame.
Shame for having done it, and more shame for knowing she’d probably do it again if given another chance.
Though her father had never put his hands on her, she’d witnessed, up close, the abuse he subjected her mother to day after day.
The kind of pain he inflicted on her could’ve only originated from a soulless place—a place of bone-chilling indifference.
Grace remembers seeing her mother’s lifeless eyes staring up at the ceiling.
She lay sprawled out in a pool of her own blood on the kitchen floor; the skin on her stomach had been carved into bloody ribbons.
“But I didn’t, did I? I kept you from the streets and I kept you from getting locked up, and this is how you repay me. You try to rob me of my livelihood.”
Grace struggles against him, using her weakening arms to try to shove him away, but he retaliates by yanking her forward and then slamming her back, his iron grip fully robbing her of breath now.
Suddenly, he’s in her face, close enough that she can see her distorted reflection in his silver-capped tooth.
“Now, you’ve got about eight seconds left before you’re almost guaranteed brain damage.
So, you be a good girl and sit still, and I’ll tell you how this is gonna go. ”
Slowly, begrudgingly, she stills. Every part of her body goes limp, except her eyes, which are still blazing with contempt.
“Good,” Bellamy says, nodding slowly. His grip loosens just enough that Grace is able to suck in a vital amount of air, and it’s a glorious, short-lived relief.
“It’s a long drive back, as you well know.
You’re not gonna give me any lip. You’re gonna sit there and keep your goddamn mouth shut.
” There’s a dangerous promise in his words—she knows there’s more to them; whatever he’s cooked up for her will be brutal and merciless.
“And when we get there, you’re gonna get to work, and you’re not gonna complain.
You’re gonna listen to me and the rest of the hands, and you’re gonna make up for the shitstorm you caused while you were out gallivanting with that highfalutin cowboy family.
You hear me? Not a word, and not a single stone left unturned.
And if you don’t—if you defy me…” His voice is lower still, just on the verge of a whisper.
“I’ll make sure that Caldwell prince of yours gets the same treatment as his parents. But we’ll finish the job this time.”
Grace’s heart punches against her ribs. She wants to scream, to claw her nails down his face.
She wants to push him out onto the road and drive over him a couple of times in his own truck—but she does none of that.
She stays still, but her eyes must be bright with rage, because Bellamy smiles at her with a mirthless and horrible stretch of his mouth.
“Think I’m bluffing? Try me. Try one fucking thing,” he warns, eyebrows pulling upward, “and he dies. I can promise you that, Grace.”
She doesn’t. She won’t. If it means Crew stays safe, stays alive, she will do nothing at all.
And with each mile put between Grace and Halcyon, she feels the light inside of her grow dimmer.
With each mile that brings her closer to Braxton, she feels all the gifts Halcyon bestowed upon her—every ounce of hope, love, friendship, and belonging—begin to expire, until nothing remains but a rotten, festering crater in the soil of her heart.
Dawn has broken by the time they roll down the gravel road, under the rusty iron arch that used to bear the Whitlock family crest. The engraving is unrecognizable now, distorted by time and neglect and the elements; the structure looks, as it always has, like a gateway into purgatory.
Like something out of the most uneasy of nightmares, where there’s no sense of place or time, but there is certainty of one thing—only darkness lies ahead.