CHAPTER SIXTEEN #2
Back when I was still learning to speak again, one of the therapists told me to picture the words in my head before I said them out loud, maybe spell them out too.
Needless to say, I fucking hated him because my head was already full of so many words I couldn’t say that I didn’t want to stuff my skull with any more of them.
But I try to do that now. I try to picture everything I want to say, everything that happened at the warehouse, because that may be the only way I’ll be able to make sense. And I need to make sense.
So I tell them everything. Everything from the first text I got about Lynnie to everything that happened at the warehouse.
By the time I’m done, I feel wrung out like I used to back then.
I’m sweating and fucking shivering. I didn’t think I could hate myself any more than I already do for what I did today, but this is the time for me to stay fucking strong, not shake like a goddamn child afraid of the dark.
There’s silence for a few seconds that’s broken with a vicious curse from Arsen. Followed by Mars’s words: “Why didn’t you come to us before?”
They are quiet words but full of meaning, and somehow, answering this feels just as hard as recounting everything.
“’Cause it was my mess.” I swallow thickly.
“Wasn’t it? It was my fault. If I hadn’t been such a fuckin’ pussy about my parents’ deaths, Lynnie wouldn’t have had to leave.
She’d still be here, safe and secure with her family where she belongs.
She was fuckin’ thirteen when Ma and Daddy died, but instead of bein’ a good brother and bein’ there for her, I took away the rest of her family too. So it had to be me. I had to fix it.”
Yeah, that’s what I thought. I thought Mars had already done his part, gave her care and warmth, gave her support when I couldn’t.
He found her a place she could go to when I abandoned her.
So it had to be me. I had to be the one to step up and bring her home.
For good. It was my job as her brother, and I was willing to do anything to complete it.
I was willing to drag an innocent girl into my shit, wasn’t I? The princess sleeping in the other room.
I was willing to use her to get what I wanted, to prove to myself I could be a good brother.
After all these years. And every time I felt conflicted about it, I told myself it was only fair.
Hank Turner took everything from me, so why shouldn’t I use his daughter to save my sister?
But the truth is she never felt like his daughter because since the first moment I saw her all those months ago, she felt like only mine.
I tried to fight it. I tried to push her away.
I tried to punish her for it, too, punish her for being Hank Turner’s daughter, for making me betray my dead parents, my sister.
I tried to punish her for making me feel this way.
Just like I had been doing with my little sister.
Not anymore, though. It’s not her fault that I’m a twisted angry mess, that I turned into a monster when I was fifteen.
What her father did to my family is not her fault.
And it’s not her fault that every time I think about her, my fucking soul sighs, my heart pounds, and my damaged head stops hurting.
It’s. Not. Her fault.
So I’m not going to punish her anymore. Instead, I’m going to continue to protect her. From everything and everyone, including me and her daddy, who forces her to do things she doesn’t want to do.
“So what’s the plan?” Arsen asks equally quietly.
“I need to know who these people are,” I reply, determination flowing through my veins.
“How they got to Lynnie. Only a few people knew where she was. It’s been years.
No one even remembers her, no more than in passin’.
So someone talked. Someone from the Grayson camp let it slip where Lynnie was. Has to be.”
“I can start askin’ questions,” Arsen says. “Start diggin’.”
“I looked through all the employee files, everyone related to Rawhide.” I shake my head. “Couldn’t find anythin’.”
“Well, let me take a second look. Maybe you missed somethin’.”
“But why pick you?” Mars asks, his voice grave. “Why go to all this trouble if they just want the girl? And if they want Peyton, then why try to ki—”
I cut him off before he can say the fucking word. “’Cause I don’t think that’s what they want. Or that’s all they want. There’s somethin’ else at play. Somethin’ bigger. Somethin’ I can’t see yet.”
This time, the silence feels charged and thick.
“Whatever it is, my money’s on Hank Turner,” Arsen says after a few seconds. “Bet he pissed off the wrong people.”
“Mine too.” This comes from Brecken, who’s been quiet through all this.
And then he continues, “It’s not a secret.
My dad hasn’t made the best choices. He has acquired a long list of enemies over the years.
Maybe he did piss off the wrong kind of people and it’s one of them. I can start digging too.”
“That easy, huh,” Arsen taunts.
“I don’t give a fuck about you or your ranch,” Brecken states. “I’d steal it from you the second I got the chance. But I’m not willing to sacrifice my sister for it. So yeah, that easy.”
“Well, that’d be a first comin’ from a Turner,” Arsen murmurs.
“That’s because you don’t know anything about me.”
No, we don’t. But right now, my only concern is to find that piece-of-shit fucker who’s behind all this. So I can make my peace with working with a Turner.
“But first,” Brecken goes on, “I need my sister back. Safe and sound.”
“No,” I say, without a pause, without a thought.
“Excuse me?”
“She stays with me.”
“And why’s that?”
Again, I answer without thought or pause, “Because she’s mine to protect.”
“Are you saying I can’t protect my own sister?”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m sayin’.”
“What—”
“You couldn’t protect her from me. I took her not once, but twice.” Then I add, “You can’t even protect her from your piece-of-shit daddy.”
“What?”
I shake my head. “Jesus, you don’t even know, do you?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Brecken snaps.
“Why don’t you go ask your daddy about that?
” I snap back, pissed off once again. “Along with the long list of people he’s fucked over.
And done it so bad that someone’s come back to destroy him and is startin’ with her.
But if you think, even for a single second, I’m gonna give her up or that you can take her away from me, I’m gonna put every name on that list to shame when I hunt you and your daddy down.
Do you understand? She ain’t goin’ anywhere until all threats against her are neutralized and every inch of this world is safe for her. ”