Big Sky

by Kitty Thomas

  “Now, honey, I can’t keep secrets from the boss. Luke is like a brother to me. How would it look if he couldn’t trust me?”

  “Please. He might hurt me if he knows I said something to you.”

  Will frowned. “I told ya he wouldn’t...”

  She decided to throw caution to the wind. The only way she’d get to tell Will was just to tell him and pray to God he saw the gravity of the situation and was smart enough to keep his mouth shut. “Last night Luke had some kind of meltdown. He thought I was Trish. I’m really scared of him. You have to help me.”

  Will avoided her eyes.“He was real hurt about that. When she died, he almost lost the ranch. He wouldn’t get outta bed. We had to pick up his slack and between that and feedin’ ourselves, it was a rough few months. Did he hurt you?” Even as he said the words, Veronica knew he wouldn’t believe it if she said that he had.

  She wasn’t sure how to answer. She didn’t want Will privy to the thing that had almost happened between her and Luke. That was too private, and in many ways too humiliating. What had most scared her was when he’d taken off his belt and then called her Trish, proving he’d left mental health a long time ago.

  “No, but he seems unstable. You didn’t see him last night.”

  Will set his thermos down and went to the cabinet to get a coffee mug. He poured a cup and handed it to Veronica and led her to the kitchen table. “Sit and drink this. You need to calm down before you hyperventilate. I don’t know what happened with you two, but Luke’s not crazy. You can take my word on that. I’ve worked with him day in and day out for years and years. He had a rough patch after Trish died, but he’s not crazy.” The ranch hand seemed to be in denial about the situation, as if saying it enough times would make it true.

  “Why won’t you help me get out of here?”

  “Just sit and talk to me for a minute.” Will sat at the table and nodded to the chair opposite from him.

  Veronica sank into it. “How long ago did she die?”

  “A couple a years now. I never seen him so over the moon for a girl before. And when that baby was comin’, I never seen him so happy. Usually he was all business about the ranch. Didn’t have time to bother with no woman, even when we suggested he settle down to take a little of the load off us. You know what with the cookin’ and basic homestead stuff. That’s why I don’t think he’ll hurt you, no matter how he got you here. You remind him of her. He never coulda hurt her.”

  “And that could be a bad thing. What if he snaps and hurts me because he can’t stand to look at me anymore? Sooner or later he’ll realize that I’m not her. All I can be is a painful reminder.”

  “He knows you ain’t her.”

  “Are you sure about that? Because last night, he didn’t.”

  The ranch hand looked like he might waver, but then the kitchen door opened, and Luke walked in.

  “Will, you taking a break?”

  Will raised his thermos. “Just came for the coffee. It’s too close to breakfast for a break.”

  “That’s what I like to hear. Robert and Jake are bringing the new cattle in today. They got some good deals at the auction.”

  The ranch hand took one last uncertain look at Veronica and Luke, then he headed out the door back to his work.

  When they were alone, Luke crossed his arms over his chest. “Why haven’t you started breakfast?”

  “I-I was about to.”

  He sighed and sat at the table across from her. “I’m sorry I scared you last night. I don’t know what came over me.”

  “You thought I was her.”

  “I got lost inside my head for a minute. I know you’re not her.”

  “But you wish I was.”

  “Do you want me to lie, Ronnie? I took you because you look like her. You know that. I’m sorry I lost control last night and that I scared you. I heard part of what you said to Will.” He nodded over to the open window. “I was standing on the patio, and the voices carry out that window. I’m not crazy. I know who I am. I know who you are. And you and me aren’t finished. It’s going to happen, princess. I’ll do damage control with Will. You make breakfast.”

  There went her only shot at help. Because if he talked to Will, he’d probably talk to Jake and Robert, too. By the end of the day, she’d look like the crazy one.

  ***

  After lunch, when the garden had been checked on, the chickens had been fed, and most of the household chores were done, Veronica wandered to the end of the yard where the grass ended. From there, dirt stretched out with barns and pens until the ground turned to green again at the start of pasture.

  She liked to think she would have protested more loudly about the work she wasn’t being paid for in any other circumstance, but she’d seen off in the distance that the men worked harder than she did. Of course, they were being paid. Luke had made it clear he’d take care of all her needs. It grated that she didn’t have her own money, but what was she going to do with it? Get into more debt? She wanted to believe she’d learned to be more responsible, but her recent cutbacks had been out of sheer survival necessity and the fear of going hungry.

  And if she started spending money with her name attached to it, the creditors would line up at the door. She’d started to see herself as part slave, part fugitive, and the fugitive part made her wary about demanding her rights to a paycheck that debt collectors would just swoop in and take. Luke was right. Paid or unpaid, with so much debt, she was a slave, and there didn’t seem to be an exit ramp in sight.

  The work made the time go by faster, and it wasn’t as if any of the men stood over her with a bull whip. Even if they’d wanted to, they didn’t have time. Ranch life was hard. In the end, she had the easier end of things even without being a natural at gardening.Luke had given her a list of things to check for on the leaves.

  Veronica was starting to suspect that people without green thumbs lacked knowledge, not magic. Gardening was something of a crapshoot and something of a science. The more you knew, the less gambling there was. But an outsider wouldn’t know that. They’d put something in the ground, it would die, and they would assume they just didn’t have the magic touch.

  She stared at the sharp division between thick, green grass and dirt. She hadn’t ventured this far before without shoes. Even the idea of walking in grass without shoes had seemed like a treacherous activity only a few days ago. Who knew what bacteria and parasites were in the ground? She took a few steps onto the warm dirt and then continued on, wondering if she was allowed out this far.

  From a barn a few yards away, Veronica could hear a cow making a horrible, distressed sound.

  “Hold him!” Luke shouted.

  She raced to the barn door to see what was going on. A young steer was being held down while Robert clipped part of his coat away on his hip, then Luke raised a hot branding iron and seared its hide. Smoke and the smell of burnt flesh filled the air.

  “No!” She couldn’t help the protest. Luke pulled the branding iron away and gave her a look that made her fear she’d be next.

  Veronica turned and ran back toward the house, trying to erase from her mind what she’d just seen. He’d taken that thing to Trish and marked her like common cattle. He’d never hurt her? The scarred flesh on Trish’s hip from the brand he’d given her was proof to the contrary.

  “Ronnie, stop!”

  Luke’s footsteps pounded behind her, but she kept running. Finally he overtook her, and she was in the grass, panting and struggling to get away from him. His gloved hands held her in place. “Stop it!” he shouted.

  She was crying so hard it was difficult to form words. “People use ear tags now. You don’t have to brand them. Do you know how cruel that is?”

  He moved off her and let her sit up while he picked stray bits of grass out of her hair and off her dress. “You sound like one of those PETA people, or the lawmakers trying to phase out branding. That’s their endgame, you know. I forget you’re from the city and think food comes from
the grocery store.”

  “It should be phased out. I’m not the one with the problem, here!” She couldn’t stop seeing the calf struggling while Robert held him down and then the cry of pain when the hot iron hit its mark.

  “It doesn’t hurt them as much as you think. That cry is more from fear and shock than pain.”

  “How would you know? Are you a cow whisperer?”

  “I’ve branded hundreds of cows. And I’ve branded a human. The danger comes in getting it too hot so it damages the tissues under the skin, or in not getting it hot enough to kill the nerve endings. Then it hurts for a long time. But like I said, I’m a pro at this. I’ve got a professional branding heater that regulates the temperature out there. I know what I’m doing. It doesn’t hurt them. And it didn’t hurt Trish.”

  Veronica thought she might be sick at the casual way he spoke of pressing a hot iron to the flesh of the woman he supposedly loved, to say nothing of all the poor cattle. If he’d loved Trish, and Veronica was a dim replacement, what hope of safety did she have with him?

  “I don’t brand them for the purpose of hurting them,” he said. “It protects them from theft and getting lost. They wander a lot when they graze. Sometimes my cattle get mixed in with other people’s cattle. They cost too much to lose like that. This is my livelihood, Ronnie. This ranch has been in my family for four generations. That’s been our cattle brand for the same time period.”

  “Tags,” Veronica said, still not willing to let it go.

  “Tags come off. Sometimes the cows do it; sometimes hustlers do it. Brands are permanent.”

  At least in his own mind, he seemed to think his actions were justified, but the idea of him doing that to a human being when he had no practical rationalizations, made her feel like she was suffocating in a small cramped place, even though they were out under the open sky with plenty of air.

  “What about Trish? There’s no justification for making her...”

  “She asked for the brand.”

  Veronica’s eyes widened, not ready to believe him. What woman in her right mind would ask to be hurt and mutilated like that? Perhaps Trish had been as insane as Luke. Those two had been made for each other, cut out of the same cloth of crazy.

  Luke pulled his gloves off and gripped her chin, forcing her eyes to his. “No, Ronnie. She asked for the brand. She knew what it meant, what it signified.”

  “That she was no better than cattle for you to use or slaughter at your whim?”

  The slap across her cheek knocked the wind out of her.

  “You’re a monster,” she said, holding a hand to the warm, red mark he’d no doubt just left on her. “I don’t believe anything you have to say.”

  “You had that coming. I’m tired of the way you twist things.”

  Veronica scrambled back a few feet. He sat in silence for several minutes. Finally he looked over at her. The disgust in his eyes made her recoil worse than the slap had.

  “That brand means something to me, to my family. Anything with that brand on it is mine until the day it dies. She wanted to be mine. I know the way you think. You have to understand that, no matter how much you deny it.”

  “I’ll never be yours,” she said, her voice laced with contempt.

  “You are mine.”

  “No.”

  “We’ll see.” He stood and scooped her up, going back to the barn with her kicking and screaming in his arms. Her mind blanked, not allowing her to think about what his intentions surely were.

  Two other cows were in a pen, waiting their turn. Robert stood in the middle of the barn. His eyes widened when Luke threw Veronica to the ground.

  “I’m going to need you to hold her down.”

  She looked up at the other man, pleading in her eyes. Now he’d seen how crazy Luke was, somebody had to help her. “Please, don’t let him do this,” she whimpered.

  “You appeal to me, not him, Princess. I’m the one who owns you. Do you see the big G on the branding iron?”

  Robert raised one of the brands out of the heater, and she nearly went mad from panic seeing how bright red the iron was, then he laid it back down in the burner.

  She turned to Luke from her sprawled position in the dirt. “P-please, Sir. You can’t do this to me.”

  “Can’t? Don’t tell me what I can’t do with my property. That won’t play in your favor.”

  “I’m sorry.” The tears streamed down her cheeks.

  “Are you mine, Ronnie?”

  “Y-yes, Sir,” she said, hoping verbal surrender alone would end the frenzy that had started in him again. If he did this to her and she survived it, she’d show the mark to Will and make him feel guilty forever for walking away and leaving her alone with Luke in the kitchen. He could have taken her out of here. Between the mean streets of New York and this, she finally knew which fate was preferable: not this one. Luke was the door with the tiger behind it.

  He grabbed the dress and ripped, pulling the fabric apart, leaving her in her underwear. She wasn’t even wearing a bra—the ones in the drawer were so tight she’d finally given up on them. But she was too upset by what was about to happen to her to be concerned with the ranch hand seeing her half naked.

  “NO! Please, please. You don’t have to do this.”

  “I mark what’s mine. Robert hold her.”

  The ranch hand studied her for a minute. “I’m not sure about this, boss.”

  Veronica made another attempt to plead her case. “You said Trish asked for the brand. Maybe that’s true, but I’m begging you not to do this. Please, I won’t defy you again. I belong to you, please. I’ll never say I don’t again.” She was babbling, repeating herself, unable to stop the endless litany of pleading. Words that had seemed so hard to say a few days ago spilled from her mouth in a desperate bid for safety and protection.

  “I also didn’t kidnap her. Face it, sweetheart, there is a lot about our situation that is different.”

  “She’s not Trish,” Robert said.

  “I know she’s not Trish! Why does everyone keep saying that? But she may as well be.”

  Her face heated when he slid two fingers underneath her panties. “She’s so wet right now. Do you want to check for yourself? She was born for this.”

  Veronica chanced a look back at Robert. The expression on his face had changed from pity and uncertainty to pure, animal lust. He was lost to her as an ally now. Apparently her body betraying her with arousal, no matter what she wanted, was enough to count as consent in his book.

  “At the deepest core of her being, all she wants is to be owned and dominated. She wants to come, bucking like a wild horse. You didn’t see her last night. She’s not Trish, but she looks the same and she’s wired the same. She should be marked the same. I need this.”

  Veronica changed tactics. “I’ll never forgive you. I’ll hate you if you do this.”

  “No. You won’t. You’ll feel like you belong to me, and it will be that much easier to surrender to the things I’ll make you do.”

  She wished now that she’d masturbated for him the previous night like he’d asked. If she had, things might not have escalated to this point. All she’d had to do was obey—appease him a little. It didn’t matter if it was right or wrong. The only thing that mattered was surviving his special kind of crazy until she could get away. A job at a strip joint was sounding better and better, but who would hire her with a cattle brand on her hip?

  Robert sat in the dirt beside her and put her head on his lap. He trailed fingers through her hair in an attempt to comfort her while she cried. “Just try to be still. It’ll be over in a few seconds.”

  How could he go along with this?

  “Are you going to be still or are you going to try to fight, because I can’t guarantee it won’t hurt if you thrash around. And you’ll mess up the design.”

  Inside, her heart was trying to escape its cage. He was really going to permanently mark her like one of his cows. She couldn’t believe she was lying in her
underwear in the dirt, being held by some ranch hand, waiting for a branding iron to strike her skin.

  “Are you hearing me, Ronnie?”

  “Y-yes, Sir.” She turned to look at him again, the resignation starting to fall over her. “Do you promise I can handle it?” She wasn’t sure it mattered what he said, but she was so terrified she’d take any comfort she could get.

  “If your concern is pain, don’t worry. Trust me for one minute. If you don’t trust me not to harm you, trust that I’ve been doing this long enough to know how to do it. Remember what I said. Brands that hurt are either too cool or too hot. I know what the right temperature range is. Trust me.”

  How could she trust him? After everything he’d put her through already, extending an ounce of trust to this man was stupid, but what choice did she have?

  A moment later, the hot iron struck her skin. She tensed, expecting horrible pain, but it was shockingly minimal. He held the iron to her skin for a few seconds then pulled it away. She turned to find a look of satisfaction in his eyes at having marked her.

  Relief and endorphins flooded her as he picked her up and carried her back toward the house. Once they reached the grass, he laid her down and applied an ointment to the brand, then he covered her with her ripped dress.

  “W-what are you doing?”

  “I’m letting you ride out the endorphin rush out here. And I’m going back to work. Don’t forget dinner by six thirty.”

  Veronica’s head fell back on the grass as she looked up at the sky that went on forever. She felt like a cloud, detached from her body, floating up there in the big bright blue. Her breath came in and out in slow, measured sounds that lulled her like the hypnotic waves on the beach. Her college drug experimentation had been limited, but this was almost like being high. It was definitely an altered state. She couldn’t remember ever being this relaxed before as the breeze brushed over her face. The leaves on a nearby apple tree became the most fascinating things she’d ever seen.

  A small group of butterflies fluttered around in her line of sight, and she couldn’t be sure if they were even real. When they fluttered off, she felt she’d become one with the tree, the grass she lay on, and the fluffy clouds. She felt open like the sky.