Shelter ~ Jay Crownover

by Crownover, Jay

  He was wide awake and he was raising hell. He had somehow gotten hold of one of the men’s guns, since they had been too distracted watching what was happening to me. He fired off a round taking one of the men down before the other jumped him. They grappled on the ground for the weapon while the man on top of me climbed to his feet. He was hitching up his pants and reaching for his own weapon when another shot rang out. Suddenly, the man fighting with Sutton dropped to the ground. Sutton staggered to his feet, the ugly, black gun steady in his hands even though he was still bleeding heavily from his head wound.

  “Let her go.” The two men faced off, neither looking like they were willing to bend.

  “Why would I do that? I was just starting to have fun.” I was covered in blood and bite marks. My skin was shredded and raw from the knife.

  I wouldn’t physically survive any more of his fun.

  “I’m not going to let you touch her again.” His voice was raspy and the look in his eyes was deadly serious. I scrambled to put my pants back on and to get as much of my shredded shirt back over me as I could. It wasn’t easy with my hands bound and covered in slick, wet blood. I managed to cover my chest, but the fabric immediately turned scarlet from my bleeding wounds. I was climbing to my feet and moving toward Sutton when another man entered the tent.

  This one had an aura about him that made chills race up and down my spine. He took one look at the men lying on the ground—bullet holes in both—and pulled out a pistol. He shot Sutton twice in the chest, not saying a word as he did so. No warning or remorse showed on his face as he watched the blond man pitch forward. I screamed again and ran to where he had fallen to the ground, again catching himself on his hands. I put a hand on his back, but I could hear his gasping breath and see the way his skin went white. His eyes rolled back in his head and he flopped on the ground, his face in my lap.

  “How did you let this happen?” The man with the pistol motioned to the two dead men on the ground.

  The man who had very nearly raped me shrugged. “I was distracted and the cowboy was more determined than I thought.”

  The newcomer turned the pistol on the other man and pulled the trigger just as coldly and calmly as he had when he shot Sutton. “We don’t have time for distractions.”

  The man collapsed in a heap as his executioner turned to me. I was talking softly to Sutton, trying to get him to respond. I could feel his pulse go thready and weak. He wasn’t going to make it. Almost as if he could read my mind, the newcomer told me, “He’s a dead man. None of you are getting off this mountain alive.”

  He was wrong on both counts.

  Sutton almost died . . . but he didn’t.

  I watched the life fade out of him, watched his eyes go dark and his chest stop moving. But those drug dealers didn’t have any idea how stubborn the Warner brothers were or how protective they were of one another.

  Not even a minute later, Cy showed up out of nowhere with the cavalry and managed to rescue both of us. Sutton barely made it. No one was sure how he survived the flight to Billings, Montana and the intense, lengthy emergency surgery that followed . . . but he had.

  I owed him my life and so much more than that.

  I wanted to stay by his side.

  I wanted to hold him and thank him repeatedly.

  I wanted to take care of him the same way he had taken care of me.

  I wanted to fix him.

  I wanted to get the chance to let myself fall in love with him because I was sure I could. No one had ever taken care of me before, let alone taken a bullet and nearly died for me.

  But as soon as he opened his eyes, he told me to go. He couldn’t speak since he had a breathing tube down his throat but he was so upset, so distressed at the sight of me, he made his brothers give him pen and paper so he could tell them that he wanted me gone.

  He didn’t want anything to do with me. After a while, I realized I couldn’t blame him for sending me away. After all, I was the reason he was in this shape. I had nearly gotten him killed. He’d sacrificed himself to save me and obviously regretted it. The man had a family and a daughter to raise. I’d nearly taken him away from them.

  He wanted me out of his life . . . so I left.

  I left my job, my friends, my family.

  I left everyone trying to help and heal me.

  The thing was, no matter where I went or who I was for the day, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there were things left unsaid between Sutton Warner and me. He was in every thought; he was trapped inside every feeling.

  He followed me everywhere I went.

  I’d left a piece of myself, a chunk of my heart, back with the cowboy who had saved my life, and if I ever wanted to move forward, if I ever wanted to be complete again, I needed to go and get it back.

  Somewhere South of Rock Bottom

  Sutton

  “You been sleeping with my wife, Warner.” It was more a statement than a question, and the guy asking looked like he already knew the answer.

  I squinted up at the man from under the brim of my battered and well-worn baseball cap. It was dark in the bar but the reason I needed to narrow my eyes wasn’t because of the crappy bar lighting. I was more than halfway through a bottle of cheap bourbon, and there were two images of the tall cowboy, blurry and wavering, in front of me. I had to concentrate really hard to pick out which of the fuzzy figures was the actual threat and not a figment of the booze flooding my system. There was no question the man was pissed and looking for a fight.

  I lifted a shaky hand and rubbed it over the pale scruff that covered the lower half of my face. It had been a few days, or maybe it was weeks . . . probably a few months . . . since I had shaved. I didn’t give enough of a shit to worry about how my appearance had deteriorated along with the rest of my life. If this cowboy bothered to look past his anger, he would notice I wasn’t exactly the catch I had once been. It was no secret that I used to get around. Both me and my younger brother, Lane, had worked our way steadily through the single women and the not-so-single women who called Sheridan, Wyoming home. Over the years, as the tourist traffic increased, so did the opportunity to have guilt-free fun, and neither one of us apologized for it. I’d been stuck in a relationship for nearly a decade that was the opposite of fun, so I’d been making up for lost time. At least I had been, until I was stopped in my tracks by a couple of bullets and a beautiful brunette.

  If I had slept with this guy’s wife, it would have been before everything changed.

  It would have been before I nearly died and before I spent every waking hour of the day wishing I had so I didn’t have to see the look on her face as that asshole pawed at her and sliced her open between each blink.

  It would have been long before I started drinking the minute I opened my eyes and didn’t stop until I blacked out.

  It would have been before everything hurt. And I mean everything. My chest ached where those bullets went through me and tore my insides apart. My heart hurt from the way my daughter looked at me, like she didn’t even recognize me anymore. My soul felt like it was burning every single time my older brother looked at me, disappointment and reproach clear in his eyes. And the rest of my body . . . well, things hadn’t been quite right since getting out of the hospital. I was weak. I was skinny and almost frail, uncoordinated and sloppy. But worse than all of that, I couldn’t have fucked this guy’s wife even if she was naked and begging, because shit below my belt hadn’t been right since everything went wrong, either. It was like everything that made me a man had been stolen away the minute I let those men hurt her.

  I blamed it on the bourbon whenever I was stupid enough to find myself with my pants around my ankles and a disappointed woman looking at me like I’d done something wrong.

  I was drinking enough that it was easy to play it off. However, when I was sober, I couldn’t escape the nightmare of hearing her scream and the image of that guy crawling all over her, his knife slicing into her over and over again. I knew my newly acquired mal
function had nothing to do with the booze and everything to do with her and the way I’d let her down. What kind of man allowed a woman to go through that? I bet she wished I had died on that operating table almost as much as I did.

  I blindly reached for the rest of my drink, swallowing back a mouthful that burned the entire way down. By the time the last of the liquor hit my gut, there were three wavering cowboys in front of me instead of two, and all of them were losing patience and getting angrier by the minute.

  I used a finger to push the brim of my hat up and narrowed my eyes farther. I didn’t recognize him, but that didn’t mean anything. Sheridan was slowly expanding as people from the rest of the country were going out of their way to find the quiet, rustic, and peaceful kind of life my brothers and I had fought to keep since the minute we were born. Most of the ranches that surrounded our property had grown exponentially in the last five years, which was good for business and longevity, but bad for keeping that small-town feel of everyone knowing everyone else.

  “You sure you got the right Warner, bud?” My words were slow and deliberate so I didn’t slur them together. It took way more effort to get those words out than I wanted to admit. I was having trouble breathing and a cold sweat had popped out across my forehead. I didn’t feel quite right, but that was nothing new.

  The cowboy rocked back on his boots and the blurred images on either side of him did the same. The motion made my stomach roll and trying to keep my eyes focused was giving me a headache. I tapped the rim of my empty glass with my finger and the bartender looked at me with regret before shaking his head in the negative. Burke Bolton had graduated the same year as my older brother. He’d moved away a few years ago, and much like Cy, had been reluctant to return. His family had owned the Big Horn for as long back as I could remember. He was the one who snagged a bottle of really bad tequila when we were teenagers so we could all get drunk for the first time. He was the quiet sort with watchful eyes and was incredibly easy to talk to. I wouldn’t call him a friend, but he was something close to it. He was also the first person who ever dared to cut me off. It was happening more and more recently. Other people telling me when I’d had enough. Other people trying to rein me in and protect me from myself. Same ol’ shit, different night.

  They didn’t hear her screaming with every heartbeat.

  They didn’t see her bleeding, broken, trying to fight for her life while that monster mauled at her, hit her . . . forced her.

  No one had any idea that there was never going to be enough liquor to shut that out, to numb the ache that was constantly throbbing under my skin.

  “Only one of you assholes is blond and that’s you, Sutton. Now answer my fucking question. You fuck my wife?” What little patience he’d had when he walked in the bar was now gone. When he asked the question, he poked me in the center of my chest where my shirt was buttoned crooked and the t-shirt I had on underneath was a week overdue from when it should have been washed.

  He was also right about me being the only one of us who was fair. Both my brothers took after our old man with dark hair and light eyes. I was the only one who took after our bitch of a mother, in both looks and personality. Cy was already starting to go gray so he looked older than he actually was. Lane was good-natured with dimples and a quick wit so he always seemed younger than he was. Then there was me, the blond, black sheep of the family. Forever stuck in the middle, neither as serious as Cy nor as laid-back as Lane. I always felt like I was trying to balance the other two out, like it was my job to yank the stick out of Cy’s ass occasionally, and it was my job to remind Lane that life wasn’t all fun and games. I was the asshole, the one who was unsettled and forever trying to find his place. I’d been unsteady on the soil that was tied to my very soul for a long time, the ground uneven and rocky beneath my boots. Everything that happened with her made everything seem even more uncertain, and the place I always called home no longer felt welcoming and secure.

  I swatted away the poking finger and tried to climb to my feet. As soon as my ass was off the barstool, the world tilted around me and there were a whole lot more than three blurred images in front of me. Everything swirled in a nausea-inducing kaleidoscope and I had to put a trembling hand on the bar in order to keep myself upright. I snatched the ball cap off my head and tucked it into the back pocket of my jeans by the bill. Running my free hand through my dirty, greasy hair, I cringed and wobbled slightly. How could this guy think I was banging anyone in my current condition? I was beyond gross and had been sliding toward disgusting for a long time. I couldn’t even remember the last time my kid had hugged me, and she was one of the most affectionate little girls in the world.

  Worse than that, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d tried to hug her. I was more than gross. I was the fucking worst. I’d been beating myself up for months but this spiral of self-pity was new. I could feel it sucking me under, and normally I had enough strength to fight free, but not tonight.

  “A neighbor called me a few days ago and told me he saw a tall, blond asshole stopping by my house while I was at work during the day. A blond asshole driving a brand new half-ton. He said it looked like Cyndi was getting more than her lunch delivered. Everyone in town knows you and your douchebag brothers have no problem ignoring a wedding ring when it suits you.” He crossed his arms over his chest and in that moment, I noticed all three of him were bigger and in far better shape than I currently was.

  Before, I would have slapped him away like a buzzing fly. Now, I was seriously considering wobbling my way to the door so I didn’t get my ass handed to me. I still had things inside of me healing from the gunshot. It wouldn’t do me any good to get my ribs kicked in and my face smashed to bits when I wasn’t exactly back in fighting form.

  “Joel, calm the fuck down.” Burke’s sharp warning tone jerked the blustering cowboy’s attention away from me as he leaned on the bar and glared at my accuser. “This is Wyoming. Everyone and their little sister drives a half-ton, and Sutton isn’t the only blond asshole in this town. Seems to me, if you want to know who your wife is fucking when you ain’t around, you should take that up with her.”

  Burke could have just as easily told the cowboy I had been sitting on this same stool since before noon yesterday, the day before yesterday, and the day before that. I hadn’t left until Burke had kicked me out; Lane showed up each and every time to haul my sorry ass home. Burke quit calling Cy, because when my older brother showed, fury and frustration clear in every line of his big body as he shoved me out the door, he brought down the mood of the entire bar. He scared Burke’s customers . . . and Burke. It was impossible to ignore the whispers every time I needed saving from myself. Even though Sheridan was growing and Wyoming was far from a wasteland, everyone was still in everyone else’s business, and I’d been the hot topic of conversation more than once. My downfall was feeding the ravenous gossip mill daily.

  “I didn’t do your wife.” This time the words tripped over one another and I made no effort to stop the sway that had my entire body listing to one side. “I couldn’t do your wife.”

  It was the truth, but it also sounded worse than I intended. The cowboy was already pissed, and he wasn’t going to take what I said the way I meant it. He wouldn’t believe a man, any man, but especially a born-and-bred Wyoming man, would ever admit to his absolute shortcomings when it came to his manhood. Guys like us never admitted to weakness.

  His hands hit my chest and I stumbled back into the bar. My elbow hit my empty rocks glass making it sail to the floor. Burke yelled and several customers shouted as they moved out of the way of the building commotion. The angry cowboy shoved me into the edge of the bar with his forearm across my neck. The wood dug painfully into my back. My heart surged sluggishly in my chest, banging against ribs and bones that were still fragile. His fists curled in the fabric of my shirt and his breath was hot on my face as he leaned in close.

  “What do you mean you couldn’t do Cyndi? What’s wrong with her? She not good enoug
h for you, Warner? Now that your brother went and hooked himself up with that mouthy city girl, you all think there’s something better out there? There ain’t nothing better than a woman who knows what it takes to make it out here. Cyndi can run circles around that redheaded bitch in bed and out of it.” The guy was making no sense. He started out pissed his woman was stepping out on him and ended up pissed because he thought I insulted her. I guess that kind of emotional whiplash was what happened when a man was stupid enough to give your heart to someone who didn’t want it. Been there, done that.

  I wrapped my hands around his wrists and tried to tug myself free as Burke started yelling at the furious cowboy. “I already told you that you had the wrong guy, Joel. Don’t start something with Sutton and not expect his brothers to show up to help finish it. And,” the bartender leaned on the bar top and pointed a warning finger between the two of us, “I would find a good place to hide, because as soon as Cy hears that shit you’re spouting about his woman, you’re a dead man.”

  Another voice that came from somewhere over my shoulder chimed in. “Damn straight. We like Leo, so don’t think any of us are going to step in and stop him when he pulls your arms off and beats you with them.” A murmur of agreement worked its way through the crowd.

  Everyone liked Leo. She was smart, sassy and wasn’t shy when it came to making her feelings known. She was also pretty and sweet, but the reason the folks around here wouldn’t tolerate anyone talking shit about my brother’s woman was because she was my brother’s woman. Cy was a big part of this town, the same way my father had been before him. When he came back home it was like the town found a piece of itself that had been missing since he left. He brought much-needed revenue into the area when he revamped our ranch into a luxury retreat that catered to high-end clientele. Cy was good for business, and as long as Leo was happy here, my brother would stay. Everyone went out of their way to make sure my brother’s new girl was as welcome as welcome could be. After all, she was the one who might finally be able to break the Warner’s pitiful legacy when it came to picking the right woman to love.