Chapter Nineteen
KINLEY
I DON’T expect him to call. I’ve been telling myself since yesterday that I shouldn’t even hope for it. But I have been hoping, ever since Mason pulled away from his house with my stuff in the back of his truck.
So, I do what I always do when I want to forget - I blaze up and put a fresh canvas on my easel.
Today felt like a charcoal day, so now my fingers, and part of my leg where I habitually tap my finger when I step back to check my progress, are different shades of black and gray and I’m looking at the devastatingly handsome face of the man I want to forget, perfectly sketched on my canvas.
Damn it.
What a waste of a perfectly good canvas.
Grabbing my journal, blunt, and my lighter, I go out to the deck on the side of the cabin and listen to the water run over the rocks and through the grass on the edge of the narrow bank.
The cabin was initially built for the ranch foreman, who used to live on the ranch. For almost twenty years, Dad hid a Native American man who had several warrants out for his arrest. I never knew what his warrants were for, but Dad always said they were ‘bullshit’.
He built the deck on the cabin close to the water because he said it soothed him, and sometimes I could hear him singing the saddest chants at night. He always said the land was blessed by the spirits and being close to the water brought him closer to them.
His wife had died in childbirth on the reservation, and he and his son, Mato, lived here for most of my childhood, so we just kind of accepted him as a sort-of brother.
Plopping down in the lounger, next to the firepit on the deck, in my tank top and shorts, I pull my knees up as I light my blunt and inhale the earthy flavored smoke.
Opening the spiral journal on my legs, I write a letter to Mom. I usually write her a letter a week, but I didn’t last week because I was at Rhys’ house, so I start with an apology.
Then I tell her everything. All the feelings and insecurities I’ve felt the past week and a half are scribbled onto the blank pages.
Some people say that after a person dies, they forget the sound of their voice, but I can still hear Mom’s voice in my head.
Most of the time, it’s just me telling myself what I want to hear in her voice, but I can hear her just the same.
“You’ve been quiet since you got back yesterday.” Marley’s voice is behind me by the deck stairs.
Without stopping, I finish scribbling my thought on the page before I answer her. “I’m always quiet, why is today any different?”
All my siblings know I write to Mom and burn the letters every week. Even Sloane started doing it after I almost set my cabin on fire a couple of years ago, and she helped me put the flames out. Both of her parents died in a car accident when she was in college.
Marley sits on the lounger next to my feet, she smells like baby powder and spit-up, and there’s a dried stain on the shoulder of her shirt.
Her eyes connect to mine, the same blue of my dad’s eyes looks at me with all the love in the world. “If Dad smells that, he’s gonna be pissed.”
The ache in my heart is just strong enough that I chanced Dad smelling the weed, not caring if he got angry. “I know, I finished the butt. I won’t bring it outside again.”
“Something is bothering you, and I think it has something to do with the commanding FBI guy who is suspiciously absent.”
I shrug my shoulder and wave my hand toward the front of the ranch where the driveway is.
“Why do we need him when we have the infallible protection of a most likely, lower-ranked agent, who is oh-so-happy to sit in a car all day in ninety-five degree heat at the end of our driveway? There is no bad guy in the world who would dare cross that glowing beacon of protection.”
Her eyebrows lift, and she smiles as she points at me. “I knew it had something to do with him. Spill.”
Leaning back, I let my head rest on the lounger, I look across the narrow stream at the never-ending sea of green trees and take a deep breath. “Nothing to tell, really. I let myself see something that wasn’t really there, and I just have to come to terms with the fact that he’s no different.”
“Ouch.” She sets her palm on my shin. Marley is one of the gentlest people I know. “So, he really pissed you off, huh?”
With a sigh, I say, “I’m more pissed at myself for hoping than anything. He was just being himself.”
She clears her throat. “Did you and he…?”
Marley is reserved, the opposite of me. I can’t help my teasing smile that forms from her question. “Did we what? Do the deed? Knock boots? Roll in the hay? Get jiggy with it? Go to pound town?” I cock my brow at her.
She smacks my shin with her hand and laughs. “God, you’re so crude. Yes.”
I laugh and nudge her leg with my toe. “No, we didn’t. But he for sure knows his way around a woman’s body, I had one hell of an orgasm on his hand while standing in his kitchen.”
Her eyes flare. “Then why are you here?”
“Because he was about to tell me he needed to back off to put his job first.”
Disappointment crosses her eyes, and she shrugs one shoulder with a sympathetic wince. “A good work ethic is an admirable quality in a man.”
I point my finger at her face. “There! I saw that flash of disappointment. That reaction right there is exactly why I left.” Dropping my hand to my lap, I sigh and look at the trees again.
“Do you remember when Mom was alive and Dad was always hugging her and kissing her? She sent me to the barn more than once to ‘go get my father’ so he could help her with something, and no matter what, he would drop what he was doing to see what she needed. He always put her first.”
Marley is smiling as she listens to me talk about our mom. She died after she gave birth to our younger sister, Breanna. She had a quiet infection that spread through her body for a week after she got home from the hospital. It was too late by the time they took her back.
Marley’s eyes take on a dreamy look. “I used to walk in on them dancing in the kitchen in the evenings. They would look into each other’s eyes like the rest of the world didn’t exist. She was the center of his world.”
“Does Jax make you feel like that?”
She smiles again. “Yeah, he does.”
Looking down at the journal sitting on my legs in front of me, I try to push away my hurt feelings. “I won’t be benched until a more convenient time comes along for me to be put into play.”
She laughs. “It’s not baseball, Kinley.”
“No, it’s not, but I refuse to be made to feel like I’m part of a game or strategy. I want what Mom and Dad had. I want what you and Sloan and Elly have. I want to be everything to someone, too.”
“Kinley!” Hallie yells from the corner of the garden, and we both turn to look across the short yard at her.
She waves her arm in a ‘come here’ motion. Hallie has been our live-in help for Sloane for the past two years. She also helps Marley with her rehab horses for an hour or so every day.
When we walk across the grass and are a few yards away from her, she says, “There’s a guy from the FBI here to see you.”
My heart leaps in my chest, the feeling of relief washing over me, but it pisses me off that I feel so happy to hear those words.
I turn to look at Marley, who is smiling, but she rolls her lips together to smother it when she sees my face.
She loops her arm through mine with sisterly affection and support, and we walk side by side to the house.
I get increasingly nervous the closer I get to the front foyer, but when I see who is standing there, my heart free-falls into my stomach.
A man with dark blond over-styled hair, dressed in a long-sleeve henley shirt, and looking like he likes himself a little too much, is standing in the foyer with his hands in his jeans pockets. He looks familiar, I think I saw him the night that man got killed.
He sees me and turns on a very practiced, suave smile. This guy is a douchebag.
“Ms. Harlow, it’s good to see you again.” He steps toward me and holds his hand out for me to take.
That voice. I know that voice, but I’m having trouble placing it.
Looking at his hand, I don’t reach to take it. I don’t like him, but I’m not sure why. “And you are?”
He drops his hand and takes back the step he just took, sliding his hands back in his pockets. “I’m sorry. I’m Special Agent David Sanders. Special Agent Abbot asked me to stop by and check on you.”
That’s the voice I heard on the conference call, the one that asked Rhys if he ‘had that at his house twenty-four-seven’. Two things happen. My skin flushes in anger because this man is in my house, and then my heart splinters because Rhys sent him.
He said he would shield me from those men. And I believed him.
I was so fucking wrong about him.
Swallowing around the lump in my throat, I stare at the asshole in front of me. “As you can see, Agent, I am fine. You can report back that there is nothing to report. Have a nice day.”
As I turn to leave, he calls out. “Wait.”
Turning to face him again, my patience wearing thin, he says, “Abbot asked me if I could take you in to get a report on file. Would you have time for that today?”
A report for what? There isn’t anything to report.
He sent this fucking asshole to pick me up and force me to be stuck in a car with him?
I’m practically vibrating with anger. “I’m sorry that you came all this way, Agent, but I won’t be going ‘in’ anywhere.
If the FBI wants a report, they can send someone, not you, here to get it. You can see yourself out.”
Not waiting for him to say anything else, I turn and retrace my steps back to my cabin.
Stupid asshole.
Fucking prick.
Goddamn liar.
Once I’m back at the cabin, my bare feet bang on the hardwood as I speed-walk to grab the canvas with the charcoal portrait on it, I walk to my firepit and toss it into the ashes left over from previous fires.
Tearing the pages of the letter I wrote to my mom out of the spiral notebook, I set them on fire with my lighter and set the pages under the canvas and watch the black scorched circle appear right in the middle of his face.
My new phone dings in my pocket, and I pull it out, even more pissed because a part of me is hoping it’s Rhys. If only to tell him to go fuck himself and never call me again.
3:46 pm: Allison
Whatcha doing tonight?
3:46 pm: Me
You tell me.
3:47 pm: Allison
(Wink emoji) I’m sending a pin. It’s a new club in South Tulsa, meet me there at 8.
3:47 pm: Me
(Kissing emoji) See ya then.