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Boom! Boom! Boom! I fired and roared, “Get the fuck out!”
Chubs laughed. “Time for you ‘cowboys’ to go, I reckon.”
In no time, diesel engines fired up, and trucks pulled away trailers—minus the hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of prized horses and stallions.
Watching the duallies race off, Chubs teased, “I wonder how long them trucks will run with sugar in the tanks?”
Red started to fade from my tunnel vision as I wondered if I’d been in the barn long enough for such a stunt. “You didn’t.”
He batted his eyes. “I’m too sweet to do something as awful as that.”
“The fuck you are!” Roamer chuckled. “By the way, we need to buy more sugar.”
ELEVEN
WHISTLING GHOSTS
Rya
In the shower, resting my hands on the white tile Mama had picked out for me, I prayed for the water to cleanse me like Jesus swore it could. Yet the water splashed, rolled, and dripped from my body without me feeling the slightest bit cleaner.
Every part of my body had been touched. Hurt. Violated. Only once had it known a sexual touch that was gentle. Not only had Thunder made love to me, but he vowed we would never part again. I knew the omens I dreamed had brought me to that very night.
Now, as the water in my shower failed to cleanse me, I was consumed by a storm of guilt. My soulmate had killed my daddy, and I was full of shame because I was thankful for it. Murder is a sin, yet I willingly held Thunder–no, I held Hellion—when he pulled that trigger.
I can still feel the heat radiating off his bare chest, the one I was clinging to, hoping to be saved. Hellion held an arm around and over my shoulder, aiming his own judgment, right at Daddy’s chest.
It wouldn’t be Hellion’s last kill, but he crossed that first line for me. And now, without Daddy’s constant abuse, I felt like a stranger in my own body. How could I do that to Thunder? How could I be so ungrateful as to not know what to do with myself now that he had given me my body back.
After Mama died, Jesus sent me Thunder. He was a blessed gift from above. I was sure of that. Yet now I was disgracing him by being so lost without my daddy. Almost every moment of every day I had been under his control, especially these last couple of years. So why was this newfound freedom so damn daunting?
Knock. Knock. Knock.
“Are you okay in there?” Thunder asked.
Him not opening the bathroom door without permission made me feel even guiltier. Again, I was disgracing his gifts of respect and space, something I’d never known before I was with Thunder. With Daddy, no doors were permitted to be closed, even if I was dressing or bathing. I was to always be accessible.
Thunder? I think because so many doors had been busted down on him since around age eight, he truly understood what an invasion of privacy and security was. So why was a closed door making me feel crazy? It would take time and patience for me to understand. But for Thunder, I believe all his life experiences, good and bad, gave him wisdom beyond his years. That’s the only way I can explain how someone so young was able to take on a damaged sixteen-year-old and have any kind of success.
I hated thinking of what he went through when not in Ani and Dio’s care, but I believed there was divine purpose. I wasn’t the only child, or teenager, who would need him.
From the shower—which I had been in for so long my skin was pruned—I tried to lie. “Yes, I’m okay—”
“Ry,” he gently warned.
Attempting to swallow more forming tears, I quietly asked, “Do you believe in ghosts?”
“I… I believe in many things.” After a pause without a response from me, he asked, “Can I come in?”
In humiliation, I put my face under the stream of hot water to cry. “I’m sorry I can’t be stronger for you.”
He deserved to have the best woman possible by his side.
The door swung open so fast the shower curtain waved in the gust. “Sweet country girl, you have been the one to teach me about strength. During some of the worst times of my life, it was you who got me through.”
I wanted to believe him, but the mounting shame had me feeling like I had caused everything wrong in my life. Especially my mama’s murder. It had been a decade since it had happened, but I now believed that had I not cried out, maybe she wouldn’t have found out what Daddy was doing to me. Maybe they wouldn’t have fought when she found him in my bed. Maybe … she’d still be alive.
A youthful hand, scarred from his harsh past including one in the center of his palm, reached past the curtain in offering, hoping I would accept.
