Chapter 8 Lucas #2
“My name is Scarlett Arias, and I don’t need saving. I don’t need a single person on this planet to do a thing for me. I can, and have, done it myself for years. Whatever you think you’re accomplishing by ‘showing up’ isn’t my damn to give.”
“Jesus, Scarlett!” My palm hits the wall before I can rein in my frustration. She flinches, clearly caught off guard by my outburst, and guilt washes over me as I watch her wide eyes harden once again. “I’m sorry. I just–”
I let the breath leave me until my lungs threaten to collapse. “This is hard for me. You being here. I thought, hoped—” I swallow. “I thought it would feel like before.”
Her stare is flat, bored almost. “Sounds like a personal problem.”
Something in my chest tightens until it feels like it might snap, like standing on the edge of a cliff, wondering if I can trust the parachute on my back.
I slide my thumb along my chain before I stop and run it over the smoothness of my dad’s ring.
“The ranch is yours, but I don’t have to come with it. ”
She gave me a half-hearted shrug, one that has defeat bleeding from me. “Then don’t.”
There’s not a flicker of softness for me to hold on to. Is this who she really is, or did I spend twelve years believing in the girl who used to fall asleep reading fairy tales to me in the sunflower field? Deep down, I know better. I know my girl is in there, I know what we have, or had, is real.
I hold my hands up in surrender. “Got it. I don’t know what happened these past twelve years, but I’m on your team. Always have been.”
Her lip curls. “My team?”
I don’t get to answer before she’s out of her chair, stepping into me, and jabbing her finger into my chest. “Yeah? That why you were working with my father to take the ranch from me? You’re the buyer he had lined up, aren’t you?
” Her hands fly through the air, frantic and accusing.
“It makes sense. You’re here, already own part of it.
Was this your way of getting back at me for not reaching out after all these years? ”
My stomach turns violently. She couldn’t be more wrong. It was always about saving this place for her, even if she never came back. I promised I’d take care of it. “Scarlett, I’ve never spoken to your father.”
I haven’t. Everything that was lined up for this sale was handled by the same lawyer Scarlett used to claim the ranch.
I never spoke to anyone, and it was only because Ms. Anna had put in the will that, should Scarlett not claim the ranch, for whatever reason, by her twenty-fifth birthday, I had the opportunity to buy it before it went to market.
“Right.” She scoffs, rolling her eyes as she steps away. “You sound just like him.”
She turns, taking away my opportunity to say anything else. Storming down the hallway, she slams her door so hard the walls shake. I stare at the empty space she left behind, heart pounding, breath tight as I try to figure out what the hell just happened.
I shake my head, clearing the past half an hour from replaying yet again, and head out of the house. The clink of her screen door closing echoes behind me. By the time I reach the rehab, my pulse still hasn’t slowed. Miller’s head jerks up from behind a stack of paperwork. “Got a minute?”
His brows furrow. He knows the foundation kids are still here, and usually, there isn’t anything that can get me away from them. “Lettie said she saw someone cut the fence the other day, and he ran off to a white truck.”
He takes his glasses off, softly setting them on top of the stack of papers in front of him. “When was this?”
I shrug, “Don’t know. She tripped over a root trying to get back to the kids. Apparently, the truck drove by. Said she needed to be close enough to protect them. She’s handling it herself.”
His head shakes, groaning as he looks down at his desk. “She’s more like Anna than I’d care to admit. The only difference is that Scarlett’s seems to be out of pride. It’s as if she feels like she has something to prove. Anna just wanted to keep you out of whatever mess she found herself in.”
He drums his fingers against the desk, the long-forgotten coffee cup sitting in the corner ripples with each tap. “Do you know much about her dad?” he asks as he looks back up at me.
I sit in the big armchair in front of his desk, crossing my ankle over my knee. “No, but apparently she thinks I’m working with him to take the ranch from her.” I despised the notion that she’d ever think I’d take anything from her.
Leaning back in his chair, it gives a soft creak. “He’s what kept her from coming back, you know.” A wave of protectiveness rolls through me like it does on the ice. Scarlett loved this place. She always has. How could he keep it from her?
My jaw clenches. “What do you mean?”
“He told her it was sold after Anna died. She found out the truth by accident.”
My fingers flex against the smooth leather chair. I might need someone to confiscate my sticks before I bust one over his head. “Why?” I say through gritted teeth.
“Who knows, son,” he scoffs. “He can’t control his daughter, so he tries to narrate her story.”
The cows mooing in the pasture draw his eyes to the window over my shoulder. “Trying to earn approval from people like him first takes your voice, then your life.”
Before I can ask what he means by that, he hops up. “I’ll check the cameras. But in the meantime, let's go fix a fence, yeah? You’ll feel better if you’re moving.”
I slap the arms of the chair and stand. “Yeah.”
He claps me on the shoulder in a quick, familiar gesture as we walk toward the door. Pausing, he grabs a toolbox, lifting it from the floor with a grunt. We walk the fenceline, boots crunching over the gravel, the sharp tang of dust tickling the inside of my nose.
We find not one, not two, but three different holes in the fence, and we just checked it two days ago. I wipe the sweat from my brow with the back of my arm. Miller was right, I do feel better, always do after I fix something with my own hands.
I don’t know what her father’s reasoning was for keeping the ranch from her, but I can’t imagine it's a coincidence that the fence has been cut more in the past week than it has in all the years I’ve been here.
How am I going to keep her safe if I’m traveling?
How am I going to get her to let me keep her safe?
If he wants her to stay away from this place so bad, there’s no telling what he’ll do to get her to leave.
And that’s a thought that terrifies me to my core.