Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
HUNTER
By the time I drive back to the ranch, the party has moved inside. Most of the parents have taken the kids home, and the gravel lot that was packed an hour ago is half-empty now.
I spot my cousins’ truck parked up beside Ace’s. Jett and Tate Lawson. They own a ranch an hour away, but blood runs thicker than distance. They’re like brothers to us, always have been.
I kill the engine and hop out, and that’s when I hear the bleating.
Gary.
I grab the goat before I head in. As much as I hate this little shit coming inside the house, he ate the corner of my couch last week and took a dump on the kitchen floor the week before that. It’s Wyatt’s birthday. The kid’s been asking all day.
And I’ve got the cleaning staff coming in tomorrow. So what the hell.
It might be cool to get a picture of Gary with the cake, actually.
Which reminds me of watching Lola earlier, sneaking off between service rounds to take pictures of the ranch on her phone.
The sun cutting through the mountains. The horses standing still against the treeline. She thought nobody was watching.
I was.
She seems creative. The free-flowing type who sees beauty in things other people walk past without a second glance. I wonder if she’s a photographer. I wonder a lot of things about Lola that I have no business wondering.
Like why the hell Reese has got it in his head that he has some sort of claim over her?
What has Reese really seen? He turned up at the bar just after we had sex. He was here earlier. Does he know more than he’s letting on, and that’s what spurred his big performance?
With Gary trotting beside me like an overgrown lapdog on one side and Rex on the other. I push through the front door and into the chaos.
Music’s still playing. The kitchen smells like barbecue smoke and birthday cake.
My eyes find Wyatt immediately. He’s in the corner of the living room, trying out his new punching bag and gloves with Colten, swinging wild haymakers that wouldn’t hurt a fly but have the form of a kid who’s been watching his old man hit the bag since he could walk.
Jett hands me a beer the second I step into the kitchen. Doesn’t say a word. Just clinks his bottle against mine.
“Has something happened?” Ace asks, materializing beside me like he’s been waiting.
“No. Nothing bad. Just had to drop someone at home.”
I turn to face him, and he’s grinning. That wide, knowing, shit-stirring grin that tells me he’s already put the pieces together.
Ace doesn’t miss much. People underestimate him because he’s feral half the time—more likely to blow something up than have a conversation—but the man reads a room better than anyone I’ve ever met.
“Are you going to make me an uncle again soon?” he jokes.
I shoot him a glare.
But the thought doesn’t horrify me. The opposite, in fact. I love having Wyatt. I always wanted more kids. A full house. A family that felt whole instead of fractured down the middle.
Just not with Ashley.
I take a pull of my beer and spot Reese still sulking on the couch with his lawyer buddies.
He doesn’t even look over at me. Knows not to push me when I’m pissed off.
Over the years, we’ve had our fair share of differences.
We come from different walks of life, want different things, and handle situations in ways the other one can’t always stomach.
But he’s never pissed me off like he did today.
And the way he spoke to Lola? He deserved a lot worse from me.
But I need to play this carefully. Because he’s a friend I’ve had my entire life. He is like a brother to me. And I don’t take that lightly. I need to figure out a way where I can have both. Where I don’t ruin my friendship, but I still get the girl.
Because she’s made it more than obvious she wants me back.
“Daddy!” Wyatt shrieks from across the room. “Look!”
He starts wildly punching the bag, little fists flying, his whole body swinging with the effort of it. Colten holds the base steady and gives me a thumbs-up.
“Wow. Good job, bud.”
And the second he spots Gary, the gloves are off. Literally. He rips them off with his teeth, sprints across the room, and throws himself on the floor to wrap his arms around his pet goat.
We have four in total. But Gary is his. Gary is the pet. The others work. Gary gets cuddles and birthday cake and sneaks into places a goat has no business being.
“Can he stay in my room tonight, Dad?” Wyatt asks, using that cute, super polite tone kids use to get their own way.
I laugh. “Absolutely not. But he can stay inside for a while.”
He pouts. I ruffle his hair. “What about Rex? I’ll put his bed in your room?”
His eyes light up so fast it’s like someone’s plugged him into the mains. Rex adores Wyatt in a way that makes me think the dog understands exactly what that kid means to me.
“Yes please!”
I watch him scramble to his feet and tear off toward the back door to find Rex, Gary bleating after him, and for a second, the tightness in my chest loosens. This is what matters. This kid. This life.
I take another sip of my beer and lean against the counter, letting the noise of the party wash over me.
That’s when I hear the gravel.
Not a truck. Not a car pulling in late to the party. The slow crunch of multiple vehicles rolling up the drive with no urgency and no music. The kind of approach that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up before your brain has caught up to why.
Ace hears it too. His head snaps toward the window, and then he grabs Wyatt, moving him away.
Jett sets his beer down.
I push off the counter and walk to the front door. Through the glass, I can see the red and blue lights cutting through the dusk. Two cruisers. A black unmarked sedan behind them.
My blood cools by several degrees.
“Hunter.” Ace is beside me. His voice is low and stripped of everything casual. “What is this?”
“I don’t know.” But something in my gut does. Something buried and patient and terrible that has been waiting for this knock for a very long time.
I open the front door before they reach the porch.
Sheriff Dawson steps out of the first cruiser. I’ve known him since I was a kid; he coached Little League the same years my dad ran the concession stand. He’s flanked by two deputies I don’t recognize. Their hands are resting too close to their belts for a social call.
“Evening, Hunter,” Dawson says. He doesn’t tip his hat. Doesn’t smile. His face is carved from something heavier than I’ve ever seen on him.
“Sheriff.”
“Is there somewhere we can talk?”
“You can talk right here.” I keep my voice level. Keep my hands visible. “It’s my son’s birthday party.”
He nods. Like he wishes he’d come any other day. “Hunter Sterling. You are under arrest for the murder of Ashley Edwards.”
The words land like a bullet to the chest. Not just because they’re a surprise. But because Wyatt is twenty feet behind me.
My ears start to ring. Ashley is dead?
I can hear the party going quiet inside. The music cutting out. Someone shushing someone. The scrape of chairs. I can feel every pair of eyes in that house turning toward the open door at my back.
“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney—”
“I understand my rights,” I say, and my voice sounds like it belongs to someone else. Someone far away.
The deputy steps forward with the cuffs, and I don’t resist. I turn around slowly, hands behind my back, and that’s when I see him.
Wyatt.
Standing in the hallway. Rex pressed against his leg. Gary behind him. His new boxing gloves still dangling from one hand by the laces.
His face.
I’ll carry his face with me for the rest of my life.
The confusion of a six-year-old watching his father get handcuffed on his birthday for murdering his mother.
The way his bottom lip trembles before the sound even comes out.
The way his eyes go wide with a terror no child should ever have to feel.
“Daddy?”
The word cracks something in me that I know will never fully heal.
“Hey, bud.” I keep my voice steady. Somehow. “It’s okay. Daddy has to go talk to some people, all right? I’ll be home soon.”
Ace is already moving. He scoops Wyatt up and presses the kid’s face into his shoulder so he can’t see the cuffs clicking shut around my wrists. Wyatt fights it and pushes against Ace’s chest, craning his neck back toward me.
“Daddy! Daddy, where are you going?”
“I’ll be back, Wyatt. I promise.” The steel bites into my skin. “Uncle Ace is gonna stay with you. You’re gonna be brave for me, yeah?”
He’s crying now. Full, heaving, hiccupping sobs that fill the hallway and spill out onto the porch and echo across the fields like something wounded.
I look at Ace over Wyatt’s shoulder. He gives me a single nod. His jaw is set so tight I can see the veins in his neck. He’s furious, but he’s holding it together because the kid comes first. He knows that. We all know that.
Colten, Jett, and Tate have appeared in the doorway. Tate has his phone in his hand. Jett’s arms are crossed, his whole body vibrating with the effort of not stepping off that porch.
“Don’t,” I tell him with a look. Not in front of my son.
Jett’s jaw flexes. But he stays.
“I’m going with him.” Reese. His voice cuts through the chaos from inside the house, and then he’s pushing past Jett, past Tate, coming down the porch steps with his jacket already on and his phone already pressed to his ear.
He looks at me. Really looks at me. And whatever was between us an hour ago, it evaporates. What’s left is the kid I grew up with. The man who passed the bar for moments exactly like this.
“Don’t say a word,” he tells me as he falls into step beside the deputies. “Not a single word to anyone until I’m in the room. Do you hear me?”
“Yeah.”
“Hunter. I mean it. Nothing.”
“I hear you.”
They walk me to the cruiser. Dawson opens the back door and puts his hand on my head as I duck inside.
Through the rear window, I can see the ranch.
The warm light spilling out of the front door.
Ace bouncing Wyatt on his hip, whispering something in his ear.
The birthday banner is still strung across the porch, the letters sagging in the middle where the tape has come loose.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY WYATT.
I press my forehead against the window.
Reese slides into the unmarked sedan behind us. Already talking. Already building the wall between me and whatever they think they’ve got.
The cruiser pulls away. The gravel pops under the tires. The ranch shrinks in the rearview.
And the last thing I see before the road bends is the birthday banner, fluttering in the evening wind, still lit up by the porch light like nothing has changed.
Everything has changed.
I close my eyes and lean my head back against the seat.
Ashley.
I was at her house last night. When I left, she was very much alive. But I’m not a fucking idiot, I know this doesn’t look good.