Chapter 45
FORTY-FIVE
Hazel
I’m standing under a hot stream of water, scrubbing my skin clean with soap, still processing how this morning took such a sharp turn. It’d started out so well—having breakfast with my brother and planning to come back home and finally sort things out with Ramsey. The two of us were gonna tell Curtis to fuck off for good, and then we were gonna get started on a plan for rebuilding the ranch—and us.
Instead… it turned into a nightmare. Curtis’s cruelty running so much deeper than I thought possible. The flash of the gun and the spray of his blood plays like a loop in my head when I close my eyes. I don’t regret killing him. I should… I should feel guilt or sorrow or something that makes me feel like I should be on my knees begging for forgiveness. But I don’t. Not if the alternative was that Ramsey died right in front of me. I’d pick the same option every single time .
But my heart still hurts for it, and I’m terrified about what it means for all of us—that I pulled the trigger and that I’ve made my husband and my brother an accomplice. Ramsey’s brothers too, since they showed up just as Bo and Ramsey sent me to get cleaned up. They insisted I needed to get changed, try to make myself look normal in case anyone at the inn needed me.
Grant and Levi had just nodded at me like it was nothing, but then I imagine this isn’t their first rodeo. The people in the inn on the other hand… I’d have to come up with a story. That Bo was running off a coyote that he thought had rabies or something that could explain away the gun shot. I can’t imagine Grace or Kit would ever look at me the same if they knew the truth. Albert might have a heart attack if he found out. And that’s just my employees… Amelia? She’d probably never speak to me again if she found out that I killed the man she was rooting for me to marry in order to save the one who had left me.
But she didn’t know Curtis—hell, I didn’t know Curtis. I couldn’t have dreamed he’d turn out this twisted and sick. But then I don’t suppose he guessed I would be the one to take him out of this world either. I imagine he would have left like I asked this morning if he had a second chance.
I run my fingers over the bruises he left on my arm. I’ll have to hide them with a cardigan even though it’s still a little too warm on these early fall days to justify it. We’ll have to figure out what to do with his car. With all his stuff that’s in my house. How we’re going to explain his disappearance.
I hadn’t even met his family yet. They were always on one trip or another—and now I wonder if I was ever going to meet them. If the people who were helping pay for our wedding were even his family at all, or more likely, whatever criminal element he was involved in. I blink and shake my head. Our wedding. That was probably never happening either. Not if he was only using me. Just coming to terms with all this makes me feel ridiculous. How gullible. How much of a fool he made me out to be. He must have been laughing every single night.
He certainly was convincing when he was using me. I believed he really loved me right up until this week. I thought I meant something to him. There were date nights and flowers and a ring, big shows of affection, but there were also quiet nights alone together, and tender kisses and inside jokes. We’d started planning the wedding, reserving all the chairs and tents and tables we’d need. I’d picked out a dress, and he’d picked out a suit—more things I’ll have to burn right alongside my clothes that are covered in his blood now.
But it was all a lie. All a lie so he could find something that the Stocktons supposedly stole. The last forty-eight hours replay in my head like a movie reel, and then my heart stops.
He said it wasn’t safe for me here. That she could change her mind. Who is she? Who could have that much control over him that he’d be scared of her? Another woman? His boss? Did they have eyes on the ranch? My heart skips in my chest as I hurry to finish my shower. I need to tell the brothers the rest of what I know.
As I towel off, I keep racking my brain for anything else Curtis said or did that didn’t make sense, anything that set off my senses when I’d seen him in the last couple days.
It hits me hard now. The thing he said that I hadn’t thought much of at the time. He’d said the horses were hurt. Except, I never told him that. I never said a word about the horses being hurt—just that the barn had burned down, and we were worried that arsonists had done it. I didn’t want to elaborate, and when he said it, I figured at the time that he just assumed that the horses had gotten hurt, but now I wonder if he knew it. If he was repeating something someone else had told him. Someone who was already here.
There’s only one person on this property who’s a bigger Curtis fan than I was. I throw my clothes on and take off running.