5. Kaitlyn
FIVE
Kaitlyn
I clean the kitchen before heading to the barn. After mucking out stalls and delivering breakfast to the horses housed within it, I take myself outside to watch the sunrise. Slumping into a hard wooden stool parked right outside the door, I stare into the dark and wait for the sun to appear while Two-tone finishes eating so I can saddle him up for the ride to Northpoint.
After the accident, my father refused to replace the ranch’s work truck. He said it was an unnecessary expense but I think it was just another way to punish me. I wish I could tell him that his efforts are useless. There’s nothing he can do to me that will hurt as much as what’s already been done. I’m punished and I’ll stay that way for the rest of my life.
There’s about fifty-yards between the house and the barn. Sitting in the shrinking dark, listening to the quiet munch of horses and hay, I hear the front door close and watch as my father leads my mother out of the house. Holding hands, they make the short trip across the grass, my father moving past my mom to open the passenger side door on his truck before helping her into it. Slamming the door closed, I keep watching while he rounds the front of the truck, stopping to aim a look at the barn before he opens his own door and climbs into the driver’s seat. Seconds later, the truck’s engine rumbles to life. I don’t bother to wave as they drive away because I know my father.
He's not looking at me.
Never does unless he absolutely has to.
Swallowing the lump in my throat, I look away from the taillights disappearing in the distance. Letting my eyes close, I feel that lump start to grow until it’s doubled in size and on the verge of choking me dead. Tilting my head back, chin tipped toward the sky while I press the crown of it into the rough siding of the barn, I fight the urge to break down and cry.
After nearly three years of dancing around each other, Mitch Morris and my father have finally settled on an agreement that will see Brock and I married. Seems old fashioned and borderline barbaric but it’s the way things are still done sometimes, especially when there’s tens of thousands of acres and five times as many cattle involved.
Barr TT is the largest ranch in Barrett Valley—just over twenty thousand acres. The Double M is half as big but we share a fence line that makes us neighbors. If family history is to be believed, the land the Double M sits on used to be Barrett, lost to a long dead Morris in a fit of hubris during a drunken game of poker. It’s been the Barrett’s mission to get it back ever since and it’s been the Morris mission to hold us at bay. When I was fifteen, Brock Morris asked me to his senior prom. My father started pushing for a match between us long before that and Mitch, Brock’s father, has been playing hard to get for just as long. Why he’s finally agreed to it is anyone’s guess.
You gotta get out of there, Kaity. You can’t just stand there like a dummy while Dad tries to auction you off like a prize heifer.
“Easy for you to say.” Eyes still closed, I sigh. “You got out, remember?”
You can’t give up. Not when you’re so close.
“Who said I was giving up? I’m not—”
“Talking to Luke again?”
Like earlier this morning, my eyes pop open and I lower my chin to see Damien Bravebird standing in front of me, an amused smile on his face.
Forgetting I’m mad at him for bringing his friend from California to Barr TT and messing everything up, I smile because it’s hard not to smile at Damien. “Maybe.” With anyone else, I might be embarrassed to be caught talking to my dead brother but not with him. In the past couple of years, Damien’s become just about the only friend I have left.
Still grinning, he nods like talking to my dead brother is perfectly normal behavior. “Your dad tell you about Northpoint?” Even though he can’t possibly understand how badly this whole thing has screwed me over, he sounds almost apologetic about it. Probably because he knows that it’ll be my responsibility to clean up after our mystery guest.
“That he rented it out for the entire month to a friend of yours?” I try not to sound bitter about it but the look on his face tells me I failed miserably. “Yeah. He told me. I’m waiting for Two-tone to finish his breakfast so I can head up there to give it a good cleaning.”
“I’m sorry, Kait.” He shakes his head on a sigh that confirms my suspicions. “I’d never have asked if it wasn’t completely necessary.” Damien winces when I give him an unladylike snort in response. “I’m actually headed to Helena to pick him up from the airport,” he says, gesturing toward his truck. “You want a ride to Northpoint on my way out? I’ll be back by noon or so. I can give you a ride back then.”
Throwing a look down the drive I think about it for a moment. It's creeping up on five AM. Noon would give me roughly seven hours. Plenty of time to get it tidied and do what I need to before Damien gets back from the airport with his friend.
Not to mention that saying yes to his offer will give me a chance to dig some information out of him. Information that might help me formulate a plan of attack because wedding plans or not, Luke is right. I can’t give up—not without a fight.
I give him a single nod before I stoop over to pick up my backpack. Slinging the strap over my shoulder, I leave Two-tone to enjoy his breakfast and the morning off. “Okay,” I say, accepting his offer before closing the barn door. “I’m supposed to get a grocery list from your friend anyway.” Following him to his truck, I start digging. “He’s not a vegan, is he?” I ask Damien while he pushes past me to open my door for me. “I mean, there’s nothing wrong with being a vegan—just that a long-term stay on a cattle ranch would be an odd choice for someone who doesn’t eat meat.”
My question stops Damien for a moment. Standing in the wedge of the open truck door, he shakes his head, mild puzzlement flitting across his face before he gives me a shrug. “I don’t know...” he tells me on a laugh.
“He might be. It’s been a few years since I’ve even talked to him.” Before I can ask him what that means, Damien slams the truck door closed in my face. Looking at the house while he rounds the front of the truck, I catch movement in one of the upstairs bedroom windows. Still watching, I catch it again—the curtains twitching against the glass like someone is hiding behind them, watching us leave.
The only someone in the house is Abbey.
She’s had a crush on Damien since my father brought him on to work the ranch and I don’t think the years and his repeated rejections have done anything to quiet those feelings.
I asked him once, not long after he got here, if there was something going on between them and he looked at me like I was crazy.
Jesus, Kaity—she’s fourteen. That might not matter much to some guys but it matters to me.
It might’ve been na?ve of me, but I believed him.
But Abbey isn’t fourteen anymore.
Turning away from the window when I hear his door open, I watch while Damien climbs into the driver’s seat and starts the truck, mouth open to ask him if what he told me four years ago has held true but quickly decide against it. Abbey is eighteen and truth be told, it’s none of my business. Besides, I have other things to worry about besides Princess Abigail’s love life.
“No.” Reading my mind, probably because he saw her watching us too, Damien gives me a weary sigh. “There’s still nothing going on between Abs and me. ”
Abs. No one else calls her that—just Damien. Instead of pointing that out, I give him a wide-eyed shrug. “What? I wasn’t even going to ask.”
“Really?” He cuts me a crooked smirk while he shifts into drive and points the nose of the truck north. “Because you were about to ask me something .”
I stare at him for a moment before blurting out, “Okay, I was wondering but I decided not to ask.” When he doesn’t answer me, I start to get antsy. Damien is really good at using silence as a tool. “I mean, she’s eighteen and it’s not like you’re that much older—it’s not gross or anything.”
His mouth twitches again before it falls flat. “Your father— her father is my boss, Kaity. Believe it or not, there aren’t a lot of ranches around here that are open to hiring someone like me.”
Someone like me.
He means half Native American.
Blackfoot to be exact.
He’s right. While we’d all like to pretend that prejudices and bigotry died in Barrett a long time ago, they didn’t. They’re just quiet—and as long as everyone toes the line and remembers their place, that’s how they’ll stay.
Like he’s reading my mind again, Damien flicks a quick look in my direction before refocusing on the dirt road in front of him. “Say what you want about your father but he’s always treated me decent. Fair, which is a hell of a lot more than I’d get somewhere else. I’d never cross a line he put in front of me.” He shakes his head at the road in front of us. “Never.” Mouth open to say more, it snaps closed when the sound of the truck tires rumbling across the cattle guard fills the cab.
Thoughts about my sister and her infatuation with my father’s good-looking ranch hand evaporate. So do the million and one questions I have about Damien’s friend—who he is and what he’s going to be doing here for an entire month because for the next few moments, none of it matters. Turning away from him, I hold my breath and stare out the window at the copse of spruce and pine trees, clinging to the side of the mountain we’re climbing. The clear-cut path cut down the center of it. Three years later and the trees still haven’t grown back.
“I’m sorry, Kaity.” Damien says quietly when we finally round the corner and Northpoint comes into view. Coming to a stop in front of the house, he shifts into park. “About Luke... I don’t know if I ever got to tell you how sorry I am that he’s gone.”
He did.
After Luke’s funeral, we had a wake. Other ranch families from around the valley, standing in clumps around the front yard, holding soggy paper plates loaded with smoked brisket and melting jello salad. All of them talking about Luke. How great he was. How much he’d be missed. How big a hole his death has left in this family—all the while, my father staring at me, his mouth twisted into a hard, bitter line, the look of it screaming at me from across the yard.
You don’t get to cry, Kaitlyn. You don’t get to miss him. You don’t get to miss either of them because you’re the reason they’re dead.
Damien found me in the barn, sitting in Two-tone’s stall—hiding while I cried over the loss of my brother. Two-tone was Luke’s horse until he enlisted in the Army. The day before he shipped out, he gave him to me.
He needs someone who’ll ride him, and we both know that’s not princess Abbey.
When Damien saw me sitting there, he didn’t slink away on a muttered sorry or rush past me to go on about his business like I was invisible. Even though he’d been working the ranch for less than a year and only met Luke a few days before the accident, Damien stopped when he saw me.
Leaning a shoulder against the stall door, he took off his cowboy hat and bowed his head like I was saying grace until my sobbing petered out. The silence that followed left me feeling hallow and empty. When I was all cried out and finally quiet, Damien raised his head and said— I’m sorry, Kaity.
Then he put his hat back on and went back to work.
“It’s okay,” I say, giving him a wane smile, opening my own door before he can get out and do it himself. “It’s been a long time.” Climbing down from the truck, I move to close the door between us.
Frowning at me, Damien shakes his head. “Kaity—”
“Who is he?” I blurt the question, looking up at him, hand still wrapped around the door handle “This friend of yours from California? Why is he coming here? What possible business could he have here for an entire month? ” I shake my head, suddenly desperate for answers. “My father’s made it clear that keeping him happy will be my responsibility, so if he’s some sort of sexual deviant or a vegan or an axe murderer, I deserve to know, Damien.”
Staring at me for a few moments like he’s trying to figure out how we managed to jump so far off the subject of losing Luke, so fast. Finally giving up, Damien sighs. “I’m fairly certain he’s not a vegan,” he tells me with a quick, side-to side head bob. “And he’s not my friend—he’s my brother.” The look he gives me when he says it makes it clear that my father doesn’t know that part—that no one knows that part. “As such, I’d like very much to believe that he is neither a sexual deviant or an axe murderer, but the truth is that before yesterday morning, I hadn’t heard from him in seven years.”
“He’s your brother,” I repeat back to him slowly. “Your brother and you haven’t talked to him in seven years.”
Damien winces slightly at my tone. “If you knew our family history, you’d understand.” Before I can launch my next volley of questions, he holds up a hand to stop me. “If he turns out to be a weirdo, I’ll take over caretaker duties. I would never—”
“I’ve been going to University of Montana online for the past two years.” I’m blurting again but I can’t help it. “I’ve been sneaking up here three days a week for classes because this is the only place on the entire ranch that gets a decent Wi-Fi signal and I have finals in two weeks.” Still blurting but there’s no stopping me now. “If I can’t come up here for classes and to study, I’m screwed, Damien. I need—”
“You’ve been sneaking up here to take college classes for two years ...” He shakes his head. “Does your father know?” The look I give him must clue him into how stupid his question is because his lips press together in a hard line. “Right... and my asking your father to rent the only place within a hundred square miles with a decent Wi-Fi signal means you’re—”
“Screwed.” I finish for him. Chewing on my bottom lip, waiting for him to make up his mind to help me or not.
“Has your father ever expressly forbidden you from going to college?” Damien asks. I understand why. Because he was serious when he said that he will never cross a line my father put in front of him. If I tell him my father told me I can’t go to college, Damien won’t help me. He might even sell me out and tell my father what I’ve been doing behind his back. In light of his plans to marry me off to Brock Morris, that could prove disastrous.
“No, I swear.” It’s the truth. My father has never told me I can’t go to college—but to be fair, he barely even looked at me since the day of Luke’s funeral. “My mother knows,” I tell him, hoping it will help solve the sudden dilemma I’ve thrown him into. “She helps cover for me when I’m up here and pays my tuition.”
Mouth pressed into a thin line, Damien’s shoulders slump. “Why are you telling me this?” he asks, even though he knows. He’s not stupid.
“I’ve got to come up here to make his bed and scrub his toilet anyway,” I remind him. “All I’m asking for is a few hours a day at the kitchen counter so I can Skype into a few classes, write some papers, and study for my finals.” I’m trying to make it sound like nothing when we both know it’s something. It’s a big something.
Damien stares at me for a moment before he finally speaks. “Okay, Kaity...” He gives me another nod before he sighs in defeat. “I can’t promise anything but I’ll do my best.”