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“I heard you were in town, but I was hoping you would crawl back to that rock you’ve been living under for the past eight years.” Her voice is venomous.
“Got tired of that.” I try to garner all the strength I can. “Decided I shouldn’t be the one hiding my face anymore. I did nothing wrong.”
“The minute my son started dating you, I knew you would be trouble,” she hisses, and it takes everything in me not to roll my eyes. If anything, I made her son a better person. I mean, he was downright horrible at the end, but I want to believe that at the beginning, he was better, and it was because of me. “He could have had anyone he wanted, yet he picked you.” She looks me up and down. “He probably felt sorry for you.”
“Not as sorry as I feel for myself,” I tell her, “having to endure the memories that I loved a man who was—”
I don’t get a chance to finish the sentence. Her hand flies up so fast, she snatches my wrist in her hand, jerking me forward. “Don’t you dare say another word about my son.”
“You best take your hands off me, Mrs. Cartwright.” I pull my hand free, making her move forward a foot. “People are already watching, wouldn’t want the Cartwrights to have to bury another story.” I walk around her, leaving her standing there and trying not to look around. But the curiosity gets the best of me, and when I do, I see I was not wrong. People have even filed out of the diner to get a good look at this showdown. My eyes go to the mechanic shop and seeing even Brock is coming out of his shop with a couple of his guys.
Brady waits for me at the door of the bar with his arms across his chest, his jaw tight, and I see the vein in his forehead looking like it’s about to explode, along with the rest of him. “What was that?” he asks, his eyes then going back to Mrs. Cartwright, who is acting as if we didn’t just almost get into a fistfight in the middle of Main Street. She turns to smile at a couple of people, waving her fingers at them. There’s a smile on her face, and all I can think is she’s just like a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
I try to get my body under control before I talk. “She was just welcoming me back to town,” I joke with him. “Said if I ever needed to borrow a cup of sugar, to come on down.”
I walk into the bar with him right on my heels. “You shouldn’t have to do this every single fucking day.”
“Sooner or later, people will get tired of it and move on.” I look over my shoulder. “Hopefully, sooner rather than later.” I try to steady my heartbeat as we walk.
“We would understand,” he says, and I stop walking, turning to look at him, seeing him with his hands on his hips, “if you decided that you wanted to leave. If this is too much for you…”
My eyebrows go up. “I don’t know how else to say this.” I stand tall. “But this is my home, and I’m. Not. Fucking. Leaving.”
Chapter Eleven
Charlie
I walk out of my house, coffee mug in my hand as I make my way across my backyard to the office. My eyes go to the red barn as I see some of the horses being brought out to start the day.
Pulling open the glass door and stepping into the office, I see Lilah sitting behind the desk. “Good morning, Charlie.” She smiles at me. She’s been working for me for the past five years. As soon as she turned eighteen, I hired her. Six years ago, she was a client here when the boy she was dating brutally beat the shit out of her and threw her onto the road from his moving truck. A passerby saw her on the side of the road, thought it was a mannequin, and stopped before he ran her over and saved her life. All of that because she beat him at a horse race. She was in a coma for two weeks. They didn’t think she was going to make it. It was a slow recovery. But she eventually came out of her shell. She needed a job, we needed someone to handle the phones and schedule appointments, so it was perfect. She also handles all our social media since she is the only one who understands it: the right place, right time. She is still quiet; the only way she lets you see a piece of her is when she’s riding her horse. The confidence she has, the ability to ride and keep a handle on her horse. She rides better than most girls I know, and I grew up with girls who rode every single day since they could walk. She is also the only person I let handle skittish horses. Something about her and her touch soothes them.
“Morning, Lilah.” I walk past her desk, and she looks up from her computer screen. “Anything I need to know?”
“Not really,” she says right before the phone rings, and her hand reaches out to grab it. “We got a busy couple of months coming up.” Putting the phone to her ear, she answers, “Mustang Creek Ranch.” She turns her eyes back to the computer screen. “How may I help you?”
“Music to my ears,” I mumble, taking a sip and walking to my office in the back, passing the wall of memories on the way. I’m not even fully in my office when I hear Emmett walking in from the back door. “Good morning, Emmett,” I greet him before he even walks into my office, and I round my desk at the same time he fills the doorway.
“Yeah,” he mumbles. He’s wearing light-blue jeans that are already filthy from the dirt, and I still have no idea why he keeps wearing the lighter colors, with a black shirt tucked into his pants in the front, showing off his big country belt. His cowboy boots have seen better days, and by that, I mean they are old as shit. “You’re late.”
I pull out my chair and look down to see that I’m two hours late. “Slept in this morning,” I lie. “Didn’t know I had to clock in with you.”
“Slept in?” He calls me out on the lie right away. “You haven’t slept in since I got here.” He pulls off his yellow-and-white gloves, tucking them in the back pocket of his jeans. He studies me and I put on my fake face, which he probably knows at this point. The two of us have worked side by side over the years, and he’s become one of the only people who I would confide in. He knows the pain I feel. He knows the signs of when I’m having a bad day. He knows the signs of when all I want is to give up, and he’s made it a point to be there every step of the way. I can’t tell you the number of times I got up in the morning and found him sleeping on my couch because he knew it was going to be a bad night. I can’t tell you all the times he’s seen me break down and curl up into a ball. I can’t tell you all the times he literally picked me up and helped me walk.
“First time for everything.” I sit in my chair, hoping he just turns and walks out of the room. But when I start the computer and look back up, he’s still there watching me. “Is that what this meeting is about?”
“I’m calling bullshit.” He narrows his eyes at me. “But I don’t care enough to get on your ass about it. Especially with that shit on your neck.” He points at my neck, and my hand comes up. The red-and-purple mark that I saw when I came home right before I stepped into the shower. I’m pissed at myself for how it got there, then pissed at myself when I closed my eyes and my cock got hard thinking about it.
“Thank you, I guess.” I chuckle as I take a sip of the hot coffee, actually thankful he isn’t going to ask any more questions because, truth be told, I’d have to lie to him. That’s something I have never done, except for two seconds ago, but that was not really a lie. I did sleep in, just not in my bed.
“We have five new horses coming in today,” he reminds me. “Should be here in about an hour or so.”
“Sounds good. I’ll be out there when they get here,” I tell him. “Then if you're nice to me, I’ll buy you dinner.” I wink at him, trying not to laugh at the face he gives me.
He pffts. “Fuck that, you want to do something nice, give me a day off.”
It’s my turn to pfft at him, putting one hand on the armrest. “Last time I forced you to take a vacation, you stopped talking to me for a whole month.” I point at him. “And then came back to work after two days where you told me to get fucked.”
He shrugs. “I could do with a day off here and there.” I can see the boredom all over his face as he says it. He has no family and came to us when he returned from serving two tours overseas. He was in foster care most of his life, enlisted when he turned eighteen, and finally had enough. My family adopted him since my cousin, Ethan, took him under his wing when he got out. Now he’s in his thirties and refuses to date anyone or have any ties to anybody. I know he gets laid, or else he would be a bigger pain in the ass. The question is, who is he having sex with? I’ve never seen him with a girl, not once in the past ten fucking years.
