Chapter 54
Jacob hadn’t meant to do this. He just hadn’t. It wasn’t like what he’d imagined it would be. It wasn’t like that at all.
It just happened. Kameron had just sort of paused there, in one of those suspended animation kind of moments. It wasn’t like what it was in movies.
All of that ran through Jacob’s head after he’d pulled the trigger. He didn’t even remember pulling the gun out of his pocket, either. It had just…happened.
He’d pointed it at his brother and pulled the trigger. Just like that.
He’d been arguing and it had just happened.
And now, Kameron was falling. And looking at him. Like he’d betrayed him or something.
He’d never wanted this.
“Why would you do this?” His brother’s words came out in a whisper. “I’m your brother. And I love you. I’ve always tried to help you.”
That was a lie. Perfect Kameron hadn’t ever cared about him. Ever.
“Bullshit. I am just the nobody you have to share Dad with. You have always thought you were better than me.” What should he do now? A part of him wanted to go to Kameron and help his brother somehow. Another part was smirking at the red.
Kameron didn’t look so perfect now.
He’d really fucked up this time. Jacob hadn’t meant to do that. Hell, for all that he didn’t like that shithead, Kameron was the only brother he had. This was going to kill his dad, to know Jacob had done this.
Even if Kameron had driven him to it after all these years. His brother just acted so fucking perfect all the time. Mere mortal men couldn’t compete. People would understand.
And he’d just snapped, that was all. The gun had just been there. He always carried. There was a bunch of shit going on in Masterson. Drug runners, and that asshole Bruce Tyler who had been involved in tricking his father into selling the ranch for so cheap back then—that guy was crazy.
Going around stealing things and shooting people. People in town were saying Bruce Tyler was the one who’d almost killed Calloway out there on that highway. No one had thought it was Jacob at all. Everyone thought Bruce had done it because Calloway Grady was fucking Bruce’s oldest daughter.
He had laughed about that for days. Everyone had thought it was that Tyler girl’s asshole father after that girl’s boyfriend or something.
Rumor had it Tyler was still around somewhere too. Crazy as a rabid dog, he’d heard.
No one ever paid attention to Jacob when he was working, he’d been practically invisible for years. Not like Kameron, who had all the attention now.
Kam and Calloway Grady had the money rolling in. Jacob had to practically prostitute himself to get a decent amount of money each month.
Jacob had had the world against him from the very beginning. From the time he’d been just a kid and Jasper Grady and Bruce Tyler had stolen his dad’s ranch from him.
They had taken everything.
Jacob looked down. He still had blood on him. Everywhere.
His brother’s blood.
It was like his brother’s blood was crying out to him.
Wasn’t there a damned bible verse about that? There was a bible verse for everything, right?
He’d never forget the red. He hadn’t meant to actually hurt the idiot. He’d just…been so angry. Maybe the beer hadn’t helped, but he was so damned tired of Kameron being so smug all the damned time. Didn’t that count for something?
Jacob knew guns, he’d always known guns. And they were just tools, it was the man who used them that was the real problem.
He’d shot his own brother.
People would know.
If Kameron died, it would kill their father. He was going to have to face that. Probably in the morning.
Ugly trash was always worse in the morning. The night…the night hid the scars. Softened them somehow. He had always thought that. They all had scars. Hell, he had more than his share.
His hand rubbed across the one on his cheek. The one that asshole Holton Tyler had given him years ago. When they’d been in high school. That girl had been there.
Tyler girl.
Calloway’s girl now.
He didn’t care about some damned Tyler girl now.
He’d shot his own brother. What kind of loser did that? Even though Kameron had deserved it. His brother was probably going to die. Jacob would go to jail, and get the electric chair. Did they still do that in Wyoming? He had no clue.
But he didn’t want to die.
He didn’t want Kameron to die, either.
That would just destroy their father. His father loved them both. Jacob knew that, he had always known it.
But he didn’t know what to do about this now.
He was going to go to jail for killing his own brother. Kameron was almost dead there. His eyes were just staring. Glazed over.
His brother was bleeding to death on that fucking 90’s shit linoleum Kameron had talked to their dad about replacing when he could. Shit.
Jacob had killed his brother.
There would never be a way or time for him to make this right. He couldn’t make it right for his dad ever again. He couldn’t fix anything. Couldn’t make anything out of himself now at all.
He had ruined everything.
No…they had. The men who had taken his father’s ranch from them all those years ago.
If that had happened, they would have had better opportunities.
He would be working the ranch that had been in Neilson hands since the very beginning of this fucking county.
But the Gradys and the Tylers and the Talleys—they had all conspired to take it away from them.
And they just kept living their lives now.
Not caring about the people who had been hurt so long ago.
His brother wasn’t any better.
His brother had been friends with those Grady bastards for years. Didn’t that show him what his brother was really like? Just a traitor and an asshole.
Kameron didn’t really care about their father at all. He never had. Or he’d have asked Calloway Grady for the answers all those years ago.
Calloway had to know what his father had been up to back then. He’d been fourteen or fifteen. Not a kid; not really. He could know.
Hell, it could be in that house of his. Gradys had grown up there, and everything. Jasper Grady had been the mayor of Masterson. He would have kept things at the house. Where the evil in the world couldn’t find it.
Jacob couldn’t fix what had happened with his brother. No biblical redemption would be coming his way any time soon. Not for…this.
It was his father who was the praying man, not him, anyway. He was going to burn in hell for what he had done to his brother.
But maybe…he could make things a little easier for his father.
Maybe…
He had to make it look like someone else had done this.
Hell, it wasn’t even his gun. He’d found it in the fucking trash more than a year ago. There was nothing to tie him to it but fingerprints, maybe.
He still had the gun. He could wipe it clean.
And everyone knew Bruce Tyler was still out there. With a grudge against the man fucking his daughter.
Jacob had one more thing to do.
He would just go there and wait. And figure out what to do.