CHAPTER TWELVE
IT’S BEEN WEEKS since I found out about his headaches because Haven dragged him into the kitchen, and I sing for him every night.
I’m not an expert or anything, but it’s something my mom used to do.
One of the things I remember about her. I don’t have a specific memory of her singing to me, but I do have pieces here and there.
Of her soft voice, humming around the house when my father would be at work or busy elsewhere.
She doesn’t sing anymore, hasn’t sung in years, but I know every time I think of it, I feel better.
So I do it for him. For his headaches. I’m not sure if the singing helps.
I’m not sure if he even listens to my voice.
But I know there’s a camera in my room, and I know he has a habit of watching me.
While I haven’t felt him out there in the shadows—not since that first night I was at Rawhide—I know he can still see me.
Maybe I should feel foolish about it all.
Singing to a man who’s always on the verge of hurting me.
He hasn’t yet, but in his own words, that doesn’t mean he won’t.
But I do it because of this connection we have.
The one that I thought was all in my head but he told me was real.
As real as my need to be the one. The one to soothe him, to take away his pain, his headaches, so he can sleep.
Not Haven or her various medications, not anyone else but me.
It’s irrational. Our connection doesn’t mean anything.
In fact, it’s cruel. Because no matter how much I want or how much he wants, I’ll always be the Turner Princess, not his Princess.
Our bloody history will always be between us.
So what I’ve been doing is really foolish.
But it’s fine, because it’s not like I’m going to do it forever.
Tonight is my last night here. At Rawhide.
The Graysons kept their promise after all.
They said if I cooperated with their plan, they’d let me go, and they are.
I didn’t think it would be so easy. I didn’t think they had it in them, especially Arsen.
Not after everything he’s done over the last few months; not after what he did at that cabin weeks ago, how he humiliated my friend, made her do things I witnessed through the window.
But then my best friend wouldn’t be in love with him if he didn’t have some redeeming qualities.
And she is. Irrevocably, unconditionally, and he is in love with her.
That much has been made clear in the last few weeks, given all the things he’s done for her.
Things that led to where Reverie is, with him.
So I guess I should let go of my grudge against him, for putting my best friend through all the shit, because he makes her happy.
Besides, all’s well that ends well, right?
But that’s not the point.
The point is I’ve been here for weeks now, and I kept my promise too.
Or rather, followed all the rules that were set for me: I kept my head down and stayed safe.
I followed Haven and did what she told me to do, went where she told me to, ate when she told me to, stayed in my room every single night.
I have to admit I liked it. As in being with Haven, helping her around the ranch, even riding on the ATV.
I didn’t think I would. I hated living at my own ranch, but I guess I simply needed better company.
Anyway, I didn’t wander off or put myself in danger, not after that disastrous night at the cabin.
And I didn’t go around snooping. Well, much.
I did snoop some because I’m not an idiot.
Or at least not a total idiot. But this time, I didn’t share my plans with Reverie—she was busy with Arsen anyway, and I didn’t want to burst her happy bubble, or worse, get her in trouble with him—and I was extremely careful not to get caught.
And now I’m leaving. Tomorrow morning I’ll be gone, and so I have to do this before I leave. Technically, this is breaking the rules because I’m not where I’m supposed to be: in bed. But it’s okay because I’m not exactly wandering off. I’m going to his barn.
When I reach his place, I find the big rusted barn door ajar and the yellow light slicing through the opening.
It’s like a beacon in the thick dark of the woods, guiding me the last few feet.
I stand at the door, clutching my dress with nerves and trying to pace my overexcited heart.
I’m still not sure how he manages to inspire both fear and excitement in me in the same breath, but I’ll chalk it up to this crazy connection we have.
I take a few seconds to myself before I peek through the door.
Just like last time, the upper level of his space is dark, while the lower is lit up with that lantern hanging on the wooden pole.
His walls are busy with various things, including the rope display, and I can see the steel table with his tattoo paraphernalia shining through the space.
But there are differences from when I was here the last time.
The wooden pole with the lantern also has his black Stetson hanging on it, and I see his leather boots, dirt-caked and large, resting by it.
And of course, the space isn’t empty because he’s here.
He’s at the far end, by his bed, with his back to me, and he has a sleeveless white undershirt on over his usual washed-out jeans.
It’s important to mention that because for the first time ever, I can see his bare arms. I can see the globes of his shoulders and the rippling muscles of his back, and I don’t think he’s ever looked bigger or more muscular than he does in this moment.
He doesn’t even have to flex for those hills on his biceps to form; they’re already there, pulsing and powerful.
So tanned. They shine in the yellow light, his skin all smooth.
My eyes glide down from his fanned-out shoulders to the tapering line of his waist, and with only a tight undershirt on, the difference in the breadth is stark.
That’s not to say his waist is any less muscular; it’s simply sculpted differently.
Plus, his butt. For some reason, I hadn’t noticed how muscular it is, how rounded and how his jeans hug the shape of it.
Every inch of his body is so beautiful and perfect, and I commit it to memory.
Because this is the last time I’ll ever see it.
This is the last time I’ll ever see my Phantom.
The scarred and silent, heartbreakingly beautiful cowboy who was sent to hunt me down.
Just then I hear almost a whistle slicing through the air, followed by a thump, and I realize, in all my ogling, I forgot to pay attention to something important.
As in, what he’s doing, standing there, facing away from me.
From the looks of it, he’s throwing darts at a dartboard.
Only the darts are knives—the size of pocketknives—and the dartboard is that freestanding mirror of his turned backward.
Or at least that’s what I think it is. There are rows of knives laid out on his desk, all silver and gleaming beside his books.
He throws another one, his muscles twitching and rippling, and it goes whooshing through the air, making the same whistling sound in the pin-drop silence, and hits the board on the upper left side with another thump.
When he picks another knife from his collection and throws it at the board, I flinch.
I think I should leave. This doesn’t seem like a good time, definitely not when he’s playing with knives.
But I can’t make myself move; I’m mesmerized.
By the play of those muscles on his shoulders and back; by how graceful his movements seem, how practiced and skilled.
“You plan on just starin’ at me all night?” His words make me flinch again, and he finally turns to face me. “Or you wanna come in.”
It’s not as if I haven’t seen him around for the past couple of weeks.
I have, but only in passing. Either coming out of Mars’s office after a meeting or riding around the ranch on his white horse that I still don’t know the name of.
One time I saw him with other ranch hands, working on repairing the fence.
I was, as always, with Haven, passing through in the ATV, and even though those were just glimpses, I noticed that most of the time when he’s around other people, he keeps his face covered with a bandanna—which made me really angry because I know why—and he’s always busy with one task or another.
People are always coming to him for problem-solving.
He’s their leader, their safe space, even though they’re afraid to look at him directly.
And his family? They love him. He might be the silent one, but they always make sure to include him in some way.
Oh, and no matter how busy he is, he always seems to know when I’m close.
Because at every single sighting, without fail, his eyes have found mine and locked in across the space.
All this to say, I’ve seen him, yes. But not like this, never like this.
With his arms and shoulders bare and golden, wearing a T-shirt so tight that I can make out every ridge and groove of his torso.
Not to mention his chest hair. Something I had no clue he even had.
But I can see the dark sprinkle of it peeking over the neck of his shirt.
“Thought I told you to stay put,” he continues when I just stand there like an idiot, perving over his sexy chest hair.
“I have,” I say, shuffling my feet.
He looks down, noticing my squirming. “Until tonight.”
“I had to come see you.”
He keeps watching me for a few beats. “Well, can’t call it wanderin’ off when you knew where you were goin’.”
“I—”
“Although, whether you’ve stumbled upon danger or not, that remains to be seen.”
I take a step back.
And he notices that too. “If you’re thinkin’ about runnin’, I wouldn’t advise it.”
“I wasn’t,” I lie.