Key to the ignition, his hand twisted it viciously, the truck’s engine roaring to life. “You walk away, you leave me no choice.” Sweat broke out on his face and shoulders as he fought against the pull of the dream. He felt the sheet underneath him dragging against his damp skin, that physical sensation anchored in reality. It’s just a dream.
“I’ll own her, brother. Rest of her life, she’ll remember you were the one that lead me to her.” The truck reversed out of the parking space and pulled into traffic, accelerating quickly while he stared out the back window at the shadow moving through the room behind the sheer curtains, heading towards the bed where his Brenda lay. Just a dream.
“No choice. We are what he made us into. What we were made to be.” The voice hissed, “I am what I am.” The motel receded into the distance, but Ray’s voice was still loud, sounding as if it came from right beside him, maybe even from inside his head. “And, you are what you are, Rue. Blind and weak. Always were, always will be. I own her now.”
With a jerk, Reuben sat up in bed, palms scrubbing against his face, wiping the sweat away along with the last vestiges of the nightmare. He stood, leaving the dream sodden bed and walked into the hallway, pausing for a moment to listen to the sounds of restless sleep coming from Eli’s room.
Turning, he padded to Brenda’s door, soundlessly opening it, sucking in a breath when he saw her lying there, bare shoulders illuminated by moonlight streaming through the window. Peaceful. Resting. Ray never got his hooks into her, never found out how much she meant to Reuben. Thank God, I saved her from that, at least.
Making amends
Walking into the town’s main feed store the next morning, where the ranch had done business since he was a kid, Reuben entered a space so filled with tension it was palpable. He couldn’t be certain, but as he approached the counter, he thought some of what he was sensing was anger, and that anger was definitely directed towards him. He stopped near the register and nodded at a dark-haired woman standing behind the counter. She was on the phone and didn’t respond, but he didn’t think it would have mattered, because five seconds before she gave him her back, she had thrown him a blistering look of profound contempt.
Turning to an older man he recognized as the owner, Reuben smiled a greeting. “Mister Kennwort, good to see you, sir. How are you?” That got him a grunted response and he frowned, not understanding what he had walked into, but not liking it at all. He decided to get straight to business. “I need to order some feed,” he tried, and found an order pad wordlessly tossed towards him from the side.
“Write down what you want. I’ll give Brenda a call and verify.” These terse words came from the woman and he turned to look at her again. The woman—who he wasn’t sure he had ever met—was off the phone, glaring at him as if she hated him with every fiber of her being.
“Yeah,” he drawled out the word, annoyed, “if you’re gonna call Brenda, then clearly you know who I am. So, why don’t I just place the order.” Shaking his head, he reached out to pull the pad closer, looking up and down the counter for a pen. One skittered noisily towards him from the other direction. He stopped it with the palm of one hand and tilted his head up to look at the woman, waiting for her reaction.
“If it’s all the same to you, I’ll just call Brenda,” she repeated herself, words slightly different, her accent even more pronounced in her anger and he frowned. That was not the right answer, and it just wasn’t in him to let it go today. Not after his restless night and that fucking dream.
“Actually, it’s not all the same. So, since I own the spread and pay the invoices, why don’t I just save myself the stamp and pay this delivery in advance. In fact, I’ll just take the feed. Load it up today. Just so there isn’t a misunderstanding.” He bit off the words, his tone curt and short because her attitude was pissing him off and while he’d been nice up to now, he wasn’t sure he could maintain 'nice' for much longer if she kept pushing on that bitch switch. “If it’s all the same to you.” He offered her words back to her in a snide tone, mocking her, watching with some satisfaction as her head whipped backwards in reaction.
“Nelms.” The call came from behind him and Reuben turned to see an older rancher standing close, weathered face drawn into stern lines of disapproval. Recognition came after a moment, and Reuben smiled, trying to shake off his anger as he held out his hand. This was Chelsie’s father, Amos Transom.
“Mister Transom,” he said, hoping his pleasure was evident in his voice. That only lasted a moment though, because neither his smile nor his hand were met with the same, so he stood there awkwardly for a second before allowing his arm to fall. “Saw Steve last night, he said Chelsie is doing well.”
“Why are you in here, Nelms?” The older man asked this question as if it made all the sense in the world, and Reuben frowned, feeling like he was out of step with whatever was happening.
“It’s a feed store.” He paused, trying to decide if it needed clarification, and added, “I’m buyin’ feed.” Frowning, he looked around the room to see there were three other men glaring at him. He stepped closer, asking in a low tone, “Is there something I’m missing here, Mister Transom?”
“Write down your order. Let’s take a walk, Reuben.” Transom’s face softened slightly, allowing pain to creep in around the edges. “We’ll have us a chat.”
Several hours later, Reuben backed the truck up in front of the barn and sat waiting for the ranch hands to unload the feed he’d brought home. He sat, leaning his head against his hands on the wheel, overwhelmed by feelings and emotions suppressed for so long.
Hatred and anger, betrayal and pain. It all swept through him, carrying him along and battering him like rocks in a raging river. Weighty wings of shadowed shame rested on his shoulders, because of blood.
The picture Transom’s words painted was harsh, agonizing to hear, and Reuben was devastated by what the tale revealed. The woman behind the counter was Lisa Kennwort. She was the only daughter of the man who owned the feed store, and a classmate of Ray’s back in high school. She had competed on the circuit, running timed events and winning more often than losing. Just like Mica.
Mica. His mind took him back to the last time he’d stood outside his brother’s trailer. The slamming of the door echoing across the lot even while he listened to cries of pain and humiliation. Agony given voice as her body took blow after blow from the flank rope of Ray’s bull-riding rig.
She was the first girl Ray took that Reuben had known. Known and liked. Laughed with. Shared meals with. It was impossible for him to reconcile the giggling, beautiful, green-eyed young woman who dipped her fries in gravy with the mascara-smeared, sobbing play toy of Ray’s. That was the night Reuben had left the circuit for good and went home, running away from what he had heard and seen, trying to put it out of his mind.
For a time, he'd convinced himself leaving was the right thing to do. That she was a big girl. Told himself it was her choice to stay with the sadistic bastard his brother had become. After all, she could have always left.
His firm conviction had wavered, however, when he'd met and talked to Andy Jones. Thinking through it, talking it over, he'd come to the realization that it was his own fear holding him back. Fear that Mica would view him the same as his brother. Fear he would become the same. That somehow he would wake up and find himself just as twisted and depraved. Fear that the monster lived inside him, biding its time. Waiting.
He knew Mica wasn’t equipped to deal with Ray, none of the girls he’d played with were, so Reuben had gone out hunting his brother. Years after closing the door on that skeleton in his closet, it was boney and rattling, a shadow come home to roost in a painful way.
When he'd caught up to Ray, Reuben discovered Mica had left. Running; hiding from the demon populating her living nightmare. She’d gotten away, thank God, but not before it got worse. Reuben found her, protected her. Got her on the club’s radar and organized safety for her. Since then, he’d been protecting her, even befo
re Mason loved her. But he knew her time with Ray was so much worse than what he had seen. In the beginning, Reuben might have run like a coward, but at least he had sucked up enough courage to circle back around and make sure she was okay.
No one had done that for Lisa.
It wasn’t until she’d miscarried and had to be hospitalized that anyone knew what Ray was doing to her.
The local ER doc called her father as soon as he got an inkling of what was going on. Her daddy was a good man, one who had to stand by and witness what was done to her. Had to look every day at the scars she bore. A good man who’d held her hand as she lost her baby.
Reuben’s thoughts turned to Molly, Mica’s little sister. She was another woman he knew Ray had raped and gotten pregnant. Molly’s outcome was far sweeter than Lisa’s, because her child was loved by her husband, J.J. Rupert, as if Tomas was his own son. Precious mother and son both loved and protected by every Rebel member, because she was Mica’s, which made her theirs.
Lisa didn’t have that. She didn’t have anything like that. She had a widowed father, who struggled on his own to deal with what happened, never quite finding his way to help her.
What Lisa did have was a small town, which enjoyed gossiping entirely too much, and a Nelms’ sized skeleton in her closet attracting the chatter.
Chelsie and Lisa were best friends, so Transom, Chelsie's father, knew the story from that side of the equation. He knew how Chelsie’s heart hurt for her friend, watched and listened from the hospital room door as she'd cried with Lisa for the loss of so much.
But, Transom was also friends with Kennwort, so he knew the story from that side, too.
Transom had sat with a sorrowful, raging, drunken father, holding Kennwort up as he seethed in impotent fury. Listening to his wrath and anger against the way the high and mighty Nelms men acted, and how they had treated his baby girl.
Like father, like son.
Apple don’t fall far from that wicked tree.
Those boys will always be trouble.
Transom recounted Kennwort’s furious rants, and Reuben learned his father’s appetites had not gone unremarked in their not-large hometown. Where they were widely known as the Nelms, a family of bastards who seemed to ruin everything they touched.
Memories flooded him, things he hadn’t thought about in years. Women, paraded up and down the stairs of the house Brenda now lived in with Eli. The walls of the house soaking up the pain and humiliation delivered by his father. And then, by Ray. Next generation of evil. Growing up, some of the women he recognized around town. Some he didn’t, but he knew they saw him. Distressed and disturbed, his skin crawled with the fear that he might have stumbled on them like he had Lisa today, never knowing how his presence might be affecting them.
All of that, Reuben got from his chat with Transom. Now…God…now, he knew his walking into that store today had cost Lisa and her father something. Those emotions as painful as the day it happened, barely-healed scabs torn off by his boot falls through the door, exposing their still raw wounds to the caustic atmosphere being a Nelms brought with it. The cost to them might be intangible, but it was real. And he knew the something it cost them didn’t stop there, because he knew it could cost him…everything.
Ray had done that.
Apple don’t fall far from that wicked tree.
His father had done that.
Like father, like son.
His blood.
Those boys will always be trouble.
Took you with me
Reuben leaned forwards in the chair, resting his elbows on the kitchen table, head in his hands. He had been sitting in this position for a while, running things through his head, over and over. Ray. Lisa. Mica. Everything swirling round and round with no resolution.
He heard Brenda walking in from the yard, her voice preceding her and he watched as she moved through the room, graceful motion as natural to her as breathing. There she was, everything he had ever wanted from life. Right there, within reach, but so far away.
He had been home for hours and still didn’t know what he was going to say. So many possibilities, he was sick from contemplating them. Every one of them broke down to two things.
Go.
Stay.
So many ways this could have worked out between them, but now, he was lost. Reuben Nelms was nowhere to be found. Tangled up in his own mind, thoughts spinning around in his head like on a carnival ride. Be the man his brother wasn’t. The one he knew he could be. Be the club member the Rebels demanded, the brother Mason expected. Be whatever it was Brenda wanted from him, twist himself to be anything she would let him give her.
Could he let himself stay in town, knowing what he now knew? Always wondering how many other women were out there that Ray hurt as he had Mica and Lisa? Fears running rampant that each woman met on the sidewalk had been another of Ray’s victims? Looking into each face, wondering if his brother preyed on them as he had Molly. Mica’s baby sister, who—thank God—had only suffered at his hands a single night, but been given a reminder of him that she smiled at every day. Would this question ricochet through his mind every time he saw a hometown gal, wondering what his blood had done?
“Supper will be about an hour, Reuben. Eli’s with Gill and Tony, the boys decreed it was movie night,” Brenda said, walking towards him. When he didn’t lift his head, he heard her footsteps slow and halt, the soles of her boots scuffing the floor. With a breathless note in her voice, she cried, “Oh, no. What’s happened? Is it Breezy?”
“No, no, honey.” He was quick to reassure her. “The horse is fine. Everyone’s okay.” He picked up his head, letting his hands fall to the table as he looked at her. “Everything’s fine, Bee. I’m just…in a mood,” he said by way of weak explanation but she shook her head, rejecting his pat answer.
“No, something happened today. I can tell. Something bad. What is it, Reuben?” She came closer, tugging a chair out from underneath the table and shifting it so that when she sat, it was directly beside him, her thigh pressed tight against his. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” he said, and moved in the chair, twisting his neck to keep from having to look at her. If he glanced at her, it meant she could see him, and he didn’t want to give her a chance to spot the lie in his face. Everything was too close to the surface and he didn’t know if he could hide his pain, not from her. Pain that came from knowing so much, but being helpless to make a difference.
All his life it seemed as if he had been a day late and a dollar short. Dealing with his father, and the man’s failures. Coming along after the fact with the women, with the stock, hell, even with the ranch. Then, following behind Ray, cleaning up each mess as best he could. Ineffectual at soothing the pain that remained long after his brother was finished with his play. Today wasn’t any different, just the length of time between actions and responses was drawn out. The pain was the same, for Lisa, and for him.
He felt the weight of Brenda’s gaze and swallowed hard, looking down. The heat from her leg seared him, and he saw her hands clenched into tight fists, balanced on top of her thighs. Reuben waited, because she seemed on the edge of something, some reaction, and he wondered which way she would fall.
Seeming to make a decision, she stood, drawing his gaze up to her face. Slowly she reached out, palm up, fingers curled invitingly. He saw the set of her jaw, and stared at her outstretched hand for a long moment, weighing his options. He could accept the solace she offered, understanding it would be fleeting because he didn’t believe he could bear to stay in town knowing what he now did—wondering if every female face he looked into held ghosts of Ray. Or he could set aside the need building in him, the desire to hold on to something good, and right. Turn her away, play it off with a joke, let her down easy.
He knew what he should do, but his desire for her was so strong.
That need was all Duck, not Reuben.
Gone from Lamesa for a long, long time, he had been busily making his own way. Bui
lding a good life, one filled with friends who pushed him to reach for more, friends who worked to make him better. Friends and a found family who built him up and didn’t tear him down. That life he made, it meant his world was in Chicago, Fort Wayne, or any of a dozen other cities where the Rebels had a chapter. The club had become his life. A good life, one where the legacy of his blood would never again define him.
He was not his blood. Not his father. Could never be. He could dig deep and would never find his father’s brand of evil. It wasn’t buried inside him; he wasn’t a monster. Duck was not the product of his father’s raising. Duck belonged to Mason and the Rebels, and they had forged him into the worthy man he knew himself to be.
Duck closed his eyes, swallowing hard, because he could feel himself wavering. Right and wrong were so clear, but still he wanted. God, he wanted Brenda. I’ve loved her for so long.
He knew he could have this with her right now, the possibility of expanding his horizons in a different yet familiar way. Create a changed definition for Reuben Nelms, one outside of what his father and Ray tried to twist to wrongness, this man balancing the one the club had built inside him. Duck. Wanting.
Reaching up, he placed his palm against hers, stroking against her skin, allowing those strong fingers to wrap around his hand, letting her tug and pull him to his feet. She was strong, so strong, and he could lean on her for now. Follow her lead. Her initiative; his willing cooperation. Without a word, she led him up the stairs to her bedroom, turning to lock the door once they were inside. Silently, she looked up at him and then he saw a smile light her face, bright as the sun’s reflection on a river.
“I know it’s not a race,” she repeated his words from last night softly, reaching with her hand to trace her fingertips across his cheek, gently covering his lips when he would have spoken. “But I think it’s time to get some skin in the game.” She grinned and whispered, “After all, I’ve always heard racin’ ain’t racin’ without rubbin’, right?”
Duck (Rebel Wayfarers MC Book 8) Page 8
