Chapter 23
Rocks pop and ricochet beneath the tires as Bellamy’s truck crawls through Braxton, and with every inch gained toward the bunkhouse, Grace can feel herself slowly reverting into the urchinly teenager she once was.
A wiry, malnourished beanpole of a girl, all knees and elbows and dirty fingernails.
She remembers baring her teeth when she first arrived anytime someone would get too close.
A feral animal in a cage, fending off fascinated spectators.
As an adult, she understands now that kind of resistance is futile.
With years of experience at Braxton under her belt, she knows intimately how much easier it is to just let them look, let them laugh, to remove the bars of the cage and let them poke and prod her.
Better to give them what they want than have them snarling and starving over the thrill of the chase.
The thought of walking back into that all-too-familiar pit of hyenas makes her sick to her stomach, and when they pull up to the bunkhouse, Trey is already waiting for them, cocksure and grinning. At the sight of him, Grace nearly doubles over and pukes.
“Well, well, well,” Trey says in a menacing, singsong voice when the truck comes to a halt and Grace pushes the passenger door open.
“If it isn’t Gracie Lou. Back from the dead.
” He closes in as Grace’s heels sink into the gravel, indecorous as ever without a bit of regard for her personal space.
He stands over her, staring down his nose at her with those empty blue eyes.
Grace holds his glare, even when his lips distort into a smirk and he huffs out a quick, barking laugh.
“Couldn’t stay away for long, could you?”
Grace feels the skin beneath her left eye start to twitch, but she doesn’t relent in maintaining eye contact with him. Best to show him right out of the gate that she will no longer bow to this false king. This detestable mountebank. “No place like home,” she deadpans.
Trey’s smirk blooms into a soulless, unsettling grin. “You missed me, didn’t ya?” He winks, reaching out to chuck her shoulder with his fist. Just shy of too hard.
Grace hums a vague assent, walking around the truck and reaching in for her bag. Bellamy’s dismounting the driver’s side and hobbling over to where they stand, lighting a fresh cigarette as he approaches. “Y’all get done what needed to get done?” he asks Trey.
Trey doesn’t look away from Grace as he answers.
His smile only grows, stretching out to either end of his face in a way that looks almost painful.
“ ’Course we did, boss.” His eyes flicker down her body, spending a second too long at her breasts, the tops exposed by her tank top.
“It’s Gracie’s homecoming party, after all. ”
At this, Bellamy snorts. “Good.” Gesturing toward the backpack slung over her shoulder, he says, “Take her shit.”
He must read the flash of confusion on her face as Trey rips her bag away, because he smiles and holds her eyes, as if daring her to question his command.
It’s a rare sight, that smile—easily the most off-putting of all his expressions, because having to look at his teeth without the cover of his lips is the visual equivalent of nails on a chalkboard.
Rotten, so yellow they’re nearly brown, uneven and crowded.
Neglected and ruined to the point that he’ll have none left by the time he dies.
In their place will be only a gaping, putrid maw. A vitriolic black hole.
“Let’s go,” Bellamy says, and he doesn’t wait for her to follow before he’s walking away, flicking a tube of cigarette ash into the brown, overgrown grass.
When they arrive at the clearing, the sun is teasing the horizon with its arrival.
It radiates its rays subtly, coloring the sky a muted indigo.
Just light enough to see the flat land stretched out before them.
It’s nondescript and unkempt, but even with the lack of visibility, there is one obvious characteristic of this piece of Braxton.
It’s covered in rocks.
An uneasy, fearful seed begins to root itself in Grace’s gut.
It spreads as she slowly swivels her head from left to right, estimating the clearing’s size—about a mile long, maybe a quarter mile wide.
When she spots a large bucket sitting at the edge of the clearing a few yards away, her hands fold into protective fists, like they know what is about to be asked of them, and they are prematurely recoiling from the task.
The thing is—she knows this piece of Braxton.
She knows every corner of Braxton like she sowed every seed, planted every blade of grass, dug every fence post herself.
She knows this part isn’t one they utilize; especially during the summer, its lack of trees and shade makes it basically unviable, and therefore, it remains overlooked and ignored.
But if the blaring alarm in her brain is correct, that is about to change.
“Gonna get some millet growing here this season,” Bellamy says.
He takes a moment to spit a thick, brown loogie through his teeth and onto the ground below.
“Seems like a loss to not use the space we’ve got.
But we can’t till nothin’ while it looks like this.
” He nods vaguely toward the field. “All them rocks…they’ll break the blades. You know that, don’t you, Gracie?”
Grace swallows, but it’s a dry, painful motion. She gives a single, curt nod in reply.
From the corner of her eye, she sees Bellamy pivot until he’s completely turned toward her, staring her down. “Clear them out,” he says, low and deep, but terrifyingly clear.
Grace’s nostrils flare. It will make no difference, this she knows without a shadow of a doubt, but she has to try—so she says, “The tractor has a rock rake.”
Bellamy’s responding laugh is a shade of familiar evil, full of spite and unhinged glee; he’s excited about what he’s about to do to her.
He takes a step closer, and his rank breath hits her face as he says in a cold, deep voice, “You think, after everything you’ve done, you’re gonna get the easy way out of this?
Out of anything?” He almost growls the last question, and the distance between them shrinks with every word out of his mouth.
Grace’s eyes squeeze shut when she feels the shift of the air at her cheek as he nearly presses his nose into her face, ready to enact revenge in the worst, most brutal way he can conjure up.
“You’re gonna clear out every goddamn rock from this field, and you’re gonna do it by hand.
If I find even a pebble by the time you’re done, I’ll break one of your fingers for each rock you missed.
Send you to clean out the snake pits with shattered knuckles. ”
It doesn’t make sense that less than twenty-four hours ago, she was sinking into the most comfortable mattress she’d ever felt, her bare, tanned skin wrapped in soft, warm blankets, and her cheek resting atop the chest of the man she loved.
Sharing secrets and confessions and whispered words of adoration, making promises through lovestruck smiles; she should’ve known she could never keep them.
Keep him. Now, standing this close to her uncle, picking up waves of his familiar, horrible scent—tobacco, crème de menthe, dirty water—it physically hurts to think of Crew.
It hurts the same way it does when a needle hits bone, that breath-stealing, all-encompassing kind of ache.
Because when she thinks of him now, the face that flashes through her mind isn’t the one full of reverence, or the one beautifully contorted in pleasure, or the one with that devastating half smile he seemed to reserve just for her.
Instead, it’s the one full of shock and disbelief, giving way quickly into regret and—worst of all—disappointment.
In her, for proving his initial suspicions right, and in himself, for being so naive—for thinking she was someone worthy of his devotion.
The vividness of that particular memory hits her directly in the center of her chest, knocking the wind out of her.
She won’t forget his face in that moment for as long as she lives.
To the grave, she’ll take with her the hardness of his eyes as he saw her finally for who she really was.
Burning, golden amber, turned crystallized and gelid.
A thunk of something heavy landing at her feet pulls her back to the present, tamping down the gnawing devastation of losing Crew with something equally as horrific: reality.
She looks down and finds a dented, metal canteen lying near her left boot.
The only life raft she’ll receive through this trial.
Food, a shower, a bed—she’s smart enough to know, been a prisoner of this ranch long enough to know those are luxuries afforded only to the deserving.
She’ll be lucky if Bellamy lets her dine on slop with the pigs.
“Get to work,” he growls in her ear, and then he stalks off.
He flicks the butt of his cigarette as he walks away, and Grace follows its arc until it lands upon the uneven, rocky terrain.
Its ember glows, the orange hue brighter amid the lavender haze of dawn.
The tiny speck of light begins to fade, and Grace watches, still as the thousands of stones that lie before her, until its fire has been snuffed out and all that remains is ash.