Chapter 24
Twenty-Four
Carter
Umm. What?
My brows dip in confusion, but I step out of the side-by-side, the headlights shining in front of us and the spotlight resting in the seat, lighting up his face. I see pure rage in his eyes.
“What did I tell you when we first met?”
I blink.
What is he talking about?
“Don’t play coy with me, boy. I warned that if you hurt my daughter, I would ruin your fucking life, you piece of shit. You turn up here, and she has a goddamn bruise on her cheek?”
“Rhett . . .”
I didn’t even think about the bruise on her cheek that’s starting to change from green to yellow.
I swallow hard, my lips parting to explain, but before any words come out, he lifts his rifle and fires a shot.
I jump at the pop and hear the bullet whiz by my head.
Warm blood trickles down the side of my neck, and the tip of my ear feels like it’s on fire.
“What the fuck?!” I yell, holding my ear as he aims his gun at my knee. My heart slams in my chest. “Goddammit, Rhett. Jaxon broke into our home and attacked River. I thought she told you.”
Eyeing me skeptically, he lowers the gun. Holy shit. He was seriously gonna take me out. Crazy fuckin’ bastard.
“You were gonna kill me.”
“Don’t be dramatic. I told you I wouldn’t kill you,” he sighs. “Fuck. No, she didn’t tell us. Knowing her, she probably didn’t want to worry me or her mother.”
Pacing back and forth, I tell him everything. I still feel uncomfortable with the gun in his hand, even if it’s not aimed at me.
“I have a private investigator looking for him and a security detail on her.”
Rhett gives me a curious look. “Does she know about the security detail?”
I shake my head.
He chuckles and jumps back into the Polaris, releasing the brake and shifting it into drive.
“God help you if she finds out you have people watching her. You did good, son,” he says as I slide in beside him. Pointing to a compartment in front of my seat, he smirks. “Sorry about your ear. You might find a band aid in there.”
“I’ll be alright,” I grit out, dabbing the tip of my ear with the end of my shirt.
I’m not about to put on a band aid like a fucking pussy in front of this man.
That crazy fucker can lie all he wants; I know he would have killed me.
We take off and head right. As we approach a fence, he shines the spotlight on the cows, finding them all doing well.
He pulls away from the fence, heading left, then cuts back until we’re deep into the woods.
“We need to check the deer feeders. You hunt?”
“No, sir.”
“You do now. We roll at 4 am. Know how to shoot?”
I shake my head.
Rhett huffs. “Alright, City Boy, let’s see if we can’t find those coyotes lurking around the feeders and make them into target practice before they get ahold of my animals.”
The coyotes haven’t made a peep since he fired that shot at my head. We come into a clearing and stop. Rhett kills the engine and lights. My eyes adjust, and I can finally make out the deer feeders in front of us.
We wait for what feels like forever before he taps me on the arm. He hands me the gun and silently walks me through what to do without saying a word. There are five of them, wandering around, sniffing the ground, and looking this way and that.
Looking through the thermal scope, I line up the shot. I’ve never done this before, and I only know what I’ve seen in movies, but it can’t be that hard. The coyote is right in the center target of the scope, looking around with its ears perked up. I take the shot and miss causing them to scatter.
“Dammit! Sorry.”
After the way he’s treated me, I shouldn’t want to impress him, but I guess there’s just something in me that wants my father-in-law’s approval. I didn’t want to let him down.
“Don’t worry. They’ll be back. They like to prey on the fawn. Give ‘em a few.”
We sit and we wait. And wait. And wait.
Howling echoes in the distance, and I lift the gun to look through the scope, then nudge Rhett with my elbow. Nodding my head to the coyotes, I try to hand him the gun, but he pushes it back to me. I hold the rifle against my shoulder and take aim.
“Breathe in and hold it . . .” he whispers. “Now, take the shot.”
I do as he says—my heart pounding at a million beats per minute—and pull the trigger.
One drops—legs up—and the other four take off.
Rhett takes the gun from me and starts toward the coyote.
He fires another shot before getting out and throwing the coyote in the back.
We spend another hour hunting, then take off towards the front of the property.
He must see the look on my face as he hops out of the vehicle to hang them on the fence because he turns to me.
“It’s not for nothing, son. These things prey on our livestock, and they carry diseases. Don’t feel bad for protecting the farm.”
Rhett jumps back in beside me and takes off to tend to the rest of their animals—chicken, pigs, goats, and horses.
Seeing they’re all fine, we park back in the barn and head inside the house.
River sits on the couch she previously swore off, talking to her mom.
She takes one look at me, bloody and probably looking like a mess, and she’s out of her seat.
“What the hell happened to you?”
“Uh.” I look at Rhett, and he smirks. “Your dad was teaching me how to shoot, and one of the shells clipped my ear.”
Not a complete lie, but not the complete truth either. She leaves and comes back with a first aid kit, setting it on the table. Marcy grabs my arm and leads me to the dining room table, sitting me down in an old oak chair.
Turning my head, River checks out my ear.
“This isn’t from a casing,” she says, taking gauze and an alcohol pad out of the box. “It’s from a bullet. Dad, what the hell?”
Placing my hand to her face, I caress her cheek, my eyes tangling with hers.
“He thought I did this to you,” I tell her.
She shakes her head in disgust and dabs the wound with an alcohol swab causing me to hiss.
“Ow. Fuck, that burns.”
She cuts a glare her dad’s way.
“What? It’s only a little nick. Don’t look at me like that. You’ll understand why I’m so protective when you two have kids,” Rhett says.
“Yeah, well, we won't be having any of those for a long, long time,” she counters.
Something about her comment sits heavy on my chest. Just like it did when she took that morning-after pill on Saturday afternoon. Stupid, I know, especially with everything going on right now, but that doesn’t keep me from asking, “How long are we talking?”
River laughs it off, but I’m not playing.
“I’m thinking maybe a year. You know? Give us some time together, just the two of us,” I say and toss Marcy a wink. “What do you think, Grandma?”
River’s mom looks at her daughter and laughs, pointing her finger at me.
“Oh, I like him,” she says.
“Anyways.” River rolls her eyes and places a butterfly stitch on my ear, then covers it with gauze. “It’s late, and I feel like I could sleep for a week straight.”
She closes up the first aid box, throws the trash away, then grabs my hand.
“Night, Mom . . . Dad? You going home soon, or are you gonna stay here all night and traumatize me some more?”
He scratches the back of his neck. That’s not suspicious as hell.
“Think I’ll just crash here. Carter and I are getting up in a few hours to go hunting anyways. Isn’t that right, son?”
“Yep.”
That fucking rat bastard. Using me as his scapegoat.
River leads me down the hallway and into a room, flipping on the light.
A queen size bed with a fluffy white duvet and a bunch of frilly pillows sits on the left.
She crosses the room and begins tossing the pillows onto a chair in the corner.
I look around and walk towards a corkboard with pictures of her, Aspen, and Tucker pinned to it.
She saunters over and smiles, pointing at a picture of her and Aspen playing in a sprinkler in front of a different farmhouse.
“Aspen used to live about a half a mile down the road. We were six years old here. We spent most of our summers together.”
She points to another picture, this one of her and Aspen in their teens, sitting on the tailgate of a pickup truck.
“I remember this one like it was yesterday. We were all at a bonfire, drinking and living what we thought was our best lives. Much too young to drink but you know, teenage shit and all that. Anyways, that’s the night she started dating Jason.
And as much as I hate the douchebag, he brought us Tucker, so I guess he did something right. ”
I stare at her as she smiles, her eyes roaming over the pictures.
“When Tucker came along, it wasn’t only Aspen’s life that changed.
He became my world. I know I’m like the fun aunt, but sometimes I feel like a bonus mom, you know?
Like he’s also mine. I held her hand as he came into the world with his great big personality.
The doctor even allowed me to cut the cord. ”
She beams as she turns toward me. “I do want to be a mom one day. I want to fill my home with so many kids I won’t even know what to do with myself.
I want messy hands and growth chart marks on door frames.
Game nights. Dinner at the table every night.
A home filled with laughter. I’m thinking of like, six, or maybe even eight kids.
Needs to be an even number. You can keep me pregnant until I’m forty if you want to. ”
“Seriously?”
“No. I’m fucking with you, Elmer,” she laughs. “But you set that up so perfectly.”
Tossing her ass on the bed, I tickle her. She kicks her feet, laughing uncontrollably as I dig my fingers into her ribs.
“Stop. Stop. Stop,” she wheezes. “You’re gonna make me pee my pants.”
Wrapping her in my arms, I roll us onto our sides. “Four,” I tell her.
“Huh?”
“Four kids. Starting next year . . . after the season ends.”
She laughs, but realizing that I’m not kidding, her laughter dies, and she gazes into my eyes.
“You’re serious.” She frowns. “But next year after the season ends is in like, six or seven months.”
I kiss her, mumbling against her lips. “You’re so smart. Our kids are gonna be so smart.”
“You’re crazy.” She giggles. “But I’ll negotiate. Two full years.”
“One and a half. That puts us at the end of next season,” I counter.
“Deal.”
What?
I can’t believe she’s even entertained this conversation.
A part of me worried that when our year was up this might be all over, but here she is, lying in her childhood room with me, making plans for our future. Her entire face lights up. When she smiles . . . God, when she smiles, it’s fucking breathtaking.
“I love you, baby.”
“I love you, too.”