Raging Love (A Mitchell Family Series BK#3)

by Jennifer Foor

  The three women had gotten up from the table and were helping Lucy clean up. I started to walk over to offer a hand, but Colt grabbed me by the hand and pulled me into the small powder room. The space was confined and I had no idea what was going on. “Are you okay?”

  “I want you and Miranda to take the kids to our house.” Colt stared at me like I was supposed to read his mind.

  “Care to fill me in on what the hell is going on? We were just having breakfast and then you’re outside fighting. What is wrong with Conner? What aren’t you telling me Colt?”

  “Sugar, I’m not really sure. It’s definitely alcohol, but I reckon’ it has to be somethin’ else too. I don’t want you involved in this.”

  “Conner has been fine, Colt. I don’t understand?”

  He ran his hands over his face. “He has been actin’ funny for months, but the alcohol abuse has become an issue. He doesn’t have a father and neither do I. You know I feel obligated to look out for him. Can you just please take the kids and Miranda and just go to the house. Ty and I will stay here and try to talk some sense into him. There is obviously something else goin’ on that we don’t know about.”

  I put the toilet seat down and sat, giving us a bit more breathing room. “If he is abusing drugs or alcohol, how could we not have noticed? I mean, I know he likes to drink and go out, but I never thought Conner would get himself involved in something so dangerous.”

  I was feeling like my breakfast was coming back up. Colt was very protective of Conner, so I knew if something was really going on, it was not going to be easy for him to deal with. With Miranda in good hands and living out of state, Colt had been able to relax more and worry about his younger cousins less. Now I wondered if he was somehow blaming himself for not noticing this before it got this bad. “Colt, this isn’t your fault. No matter what is going on with Conner, it isn’t because of something you did, or didn’t do. You have to know that.” I grabbed his hands and looked right at him.

  He leaned down and kissed me on the head. “Darlin’, Krista’s dad was a big time drug abuser. I don’t know how many times I had to hear her talkin’ about him spendin’ all of their money and not takin’ care of himself. There were times where he wouldn’t even wake up for days. I don’t want this from Conner. I won’t let him ruin his life.”

  There was no use arguing with Colt about his family. He wasn’t going to give up until he knew Conner was going to be alright. I stood up and kissed my worried husband. “I love you baby. I will see you when you get home. Don’t forget that you promised the kids they could ride today.”

  A half smile was displayed on one of his cheeks. “I won’t forget, Darlin.” He lifted my chin up. “I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  Miranda and I grabbed the kids and headed to the house. Neither one of us talked about her brother. I could tell she was anxious about her brother, but she focused on the kids and nothing else.

  Chapter 21

  Colt

  The last thing I wanted to do was some kind of intervention on my cousin.

  Ty and Miranda hadn’t come here to visit to deal with something like that, but we couldn’t let it go any longer. Ty and I had been working hard to try and expand the family cattle business. Conner was the biggest part of the operation. Without him, our plans would have to be put off until we could afford to find someone with all of the knowledge that I had trained Conner with.

  I knew Ty was frustrated, but I wasn’t sure of the extent until I started paying attention to Conner’s actions. His stunt at breakfast was the last straw for me. He blatantly had brought a complete stranger into our home and didn’t even have the decency to introduce her, or thank my mother.

  By the time that Ty and I walked the girls out, Conner had already taken the girl and gone back to his house. We hopped on the golf cart and rode toward my Aunt Karen’s place.

  Conner’s truck was in the driveway, as well as a car I didn’t recognize. Ty and I looked at each other before walking right into the house. I led the way through the kitchen, until I reached the living room.

  Conner was being straddled by the girl. Thankfully, they were both wearing clothes. I would have liked to say that was the worst part of us barging in on them, but I was wrong. A tiny bag of white powder was laying on the table, along with a rolled up dollar bill and a half snorted line of coke.

  They obviously hadn’t noticed us walking in, or the door shutting behind us, because they were steady making out. My cousin’s hand was slipped down into the front of the girls jeans. She sat up and began rocking back and forth. I looked to Ty to roll my eyes, but he was just staring at the drugs on the table. I nudged him with my arm, grabbing his attention.

  At the same time, we each headed over and grabbed the couple by the arms, separating them. Ty was closest to the girl. He pulled her by the arm, shoving her into the kitchen, while I held on to Conner.

  “Get your hands off of her!” He yelled.

  I could hear Ty yelling from the kitchen. “Get your shit and get out of this house. Did you know that Conner’s mother is dating the sheriff? How about we call him and have him come over right now. I’m sure he wouldn’t see too kindly about the drugs all over the living room.”

  Conner looked down at the table and turned his gaze away from me. A loud crash sounded in the kitchen and Ty came walking in. “She’s gone.” A car motor started outside, followed by someone skidding away from the house.

  Ty came into the room as I shoved Conner onto the couch. I stood up preventing him from moving while Ty dusted the paraphernalia off the table. I watched him walk toward the bathroom and then heard the toilet flushing. He washed his hands and came back out to stand next to me, shaking his head at Conner the entire time. “Do you have any idea how much of my money you wasted?” Conner said rudely.

  “You have got to be kidding me right now. We just caught you doing drugs and you are worried about how much money we wasted? Dude, you need help.” Ty was so frustrated.

  Conner wouldn’t look at either of us. He just sat there laughing for no reason. I leaned over and smacked him straight in the jaw, his face turning as my hand made impact. “How long has this been goin’ on?” I asked.

  “There ain’t nothin’ goin’ on. Me and that girl were just havin’ a good time. Not everyone is as uptight as you two pussy’s.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest and looked from Ty to myself. “You were using illegal drugs. How long has this been goin’ on?”

  “What? Me havin’ a good time? Livin’ my life to the fullest? Givin’ the ladies a good time?”

  Ty looked at Conner and shook his head. “You need fucking help!”

  “Fuck off, Tyler. I’m so sick of hearin’ your mouth. Why don’t you take your perfect little family and go the hell home. This ain’t any of your business.” Conner’s eyes were halfway open when he was speaking to us. The drugs were obviously kicking in.

  “It is my business when your sister is crying herself to sleep over you. Do you have any idea how much she wants you to come stay with us? It’s killing her seeing you like this.” He shook his head again. “Shit, man, you didn’t even come to say hello yesterday. Izzy talked about seeing her Uncle Conner and you didn’t give her the time of day. You’re pathetic, man. How could you pick some strung out chick over your flesh and blood? How could you hurt Miranda?”

  Conner put his hand over his face and leaned his elbows on his knees. “Whatever man. Please just leave. I don’t feel like hearing any of this right now.” He never moved his hands.

  I sat down on one side of my cousin, while Tyler sat in the chair across from us. “We ain’t leavin’. It’s ten thirty in the morning and you are drinkin’ a beer and snortin’ coke.”

  He started to laugh. “That shit ain’t even mine. My girl likes doin’ that. It makes her all freaky and shit. Not that either of you two fuckers would know what a good party with a girl looked like. You walk around with your fingers up your asses all the tim
e. You wouldn’t know a good time if it hit you in the face.”

  I was losing my cool, clenching my fists to try and hold in the anger. Conner was shit faced. It wasn’t even noon. How could I not have seen how bad off he was? This was a disaster. A fucking nightmare.

  “You can either get your act together, or get the hell off the ranch. Those are your options Conner.”

  “Screw you Colt. You ain’t gonna do shit to me. Just get out of here.”

  In one leap, Ty was on top of Conner with his hands around his throat. Conner was punching the hell out of Ty, but he kept holding him by the throat. Somehow, Ty had managed to flip him around in a head lock, while Conner pounded on Ty’s face. I pried the two of them apart and sat between them. Ty said nothing as he got up and walked out of the house. I don’t really think it was about him, it was the fact that he was hurting Miranda.

  I stood up, ignoring the look on Conner’s face. “You have twenty four hours to get your ass clean, or you need to find somewhere else to live and work. I will not have drugs on my property and be an enabler to you and your habits.”

  Conner said nothing as I walked out into the kitchen, but I did hear the loud sound of a beer bottle smashing against a wall.

  Ty was outside sitting on the golf cart. I hopped on and he immediately started driving away from the house. “It’s much worse than I thought. I’m real glad you brought it to my attention.”

  “He ain’t coming to my farm like that Colt. This could ruin everything you know.” Ty had wanted to branch out the cattle business for over a year, so this problem with Conner was a major issue for him and his family.

  “It won’t ruin everything, but it will definitely set us back. I can’t believe his mother knew nothing about this.”

  “She is so serious about John now and besides, Conner is a grown man. He should be able to be responsible for his own actions. I think she has a right to finally enjoy her life. It had to be hard to not date for all of those years. She had to do it for the kids.”

  We pulled up at the cabin and saw the girls sitting on the porch swing. Noah and Bella came whipping around the corner on two Hot Wheels vehicles. One was a Tractor and one was a Mustang. They were giggling, trying to race each other. “Sorry ya’ll had to deal with this on your visit.”

  Ty put his hand on my shoulder as the kids flew by us. “Hi Daddy!” Bella waved.

  “Hey Sweetie!” He turned to look at me. “This isn’t your fault Colt. Conner just needs an eye opener. He needs something that will change the person he wants to be. You and I both know what that is like.”

  I nodded. He was right. Ty and I both knew what it was like to find something that made us want more out of life. I don’t know how much I had changed for Savanna, but Ty was a different person. I’d hate to tell him that he turned soft, but it was true. All he cared about was being with his girls.

  “How’d it go?” Miranda asked from the porch.

  Ty skipped all the steps but the last and hurried over to where she sat. He leaned against the railing as I came up to meet him. “Not exactly how we pictured it.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? Oh my God, Ty, your face.” Miranda stood up and approached Ty, holding her hand up to her husband’s face. “Did he do this to you Babe?”

  Ty grabbed her hand and pulled it away from her face. “I’m fine. I pounced on him first. He was just trying to get me to let him go,” he explained.

  “I think he was still drunk from last night.” Miranda thought she knew the worst of it.

  “He was drinking when we got there, Baby.”

  Ty pulled Miranda into his chest and kissed her on the head. “He can’t come stay at the farm like this. I can’t be pregnant and responsible for him too.”

  “I know, Baby. Don’t worry about it right now. He obviously didn’t hear us mention it, so we can focus on you having a good first trimester and then figure out what to do about Conner. As of right now he isn’t our problem to fix. Colt gave him an ultimatum and hopefully he does something about it.” Ty stroked Miranda’s hair as he spoke to her.

  “If he knows what’s good for him he will cut his shit out. I wasn’t lyin’ when I said those things Ty.”

  He looked over at me. “I know, Cuz, I know.”

  Miranda was really bent out of shape about her brother. After Ty and I finally dropped the conversation, she went inside and called her mother. We could hear her raising her voice in the office. I don’t think that my aunt was saying she wasn’t concerned, but I think she just didn’t know how to handle her grown son. Aside from drinking and driving, we really weren’t sure what else he was doing. Sure, he was caught with drugs, but Ty and I couldn’t prove they were really his.

  Savanna stayed outside with the kids, while Ty and I started watching a ball game and drinking some beers. The kids came in yelling that it was time to ride the horses, but we still had about a half hour left in the game we were watching. They went back outside huffing and puffing that we were meanies. A few minutes later we heard them outside laughing and playing again.

  Miranda finally came out of the room and winked at Ty before she went outside with Savanna.

  “It’s pretty cool we are both going to be Daddy’s’ again.” Ty announced.

  “Yeah, it is. I just can’t wait to be there for the birth. I missed out on so much with Noah.”

  “The birth is crazy. It is scary and disgusting and beautiful all at the same time. Do you have any idea what their shit looks like?” I had to remember that I was talking to Ty. Of course he was going to bring this up.

  “Yeah, I hadn’t put too much thought into that part of it.”

  He started laughing. “As much as I wanted to be with Miranda that first night we were finally together, there was this flash right before of what it looked like down there the last time I had seen it. Dude, I was scared shitless.”

  “Not that I want to even talk about Miranda like this, but I have to believe that you of all people would have still gone through with it.”

  He shook his head and busted out in a loud uncontrolled laugh. “Yeah, there is no way I could have said no to her. She had me from the first kiss. Everything else was just a bonus. Besides, it ended up looking nothing like I remembered. Trust me when I say I have it memorized in my head. Every little inch of it.”

  The grin on his face showed me he was just playing into my disgust of hearing about it. I tossed a pillow at him. “You’re sick.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  I decided that talking to Ty about Savanna’s birth was a mistake. He was lucky to have been there for Bella to come into the world. If it weren’t for that day, he and Miranda probably would have never gotten together. Looking at Noah now, made me regret not seeing him as a baby. All of those first experiences that I had missed out on. I knew we would have a lifetime of new ones, but it still hurt to know I could never have those back. I would never try to replace that with our new baby, but I was very excited to experience them. I wanted to see those first steps, or hear the first words.

  Krista’s dad had made sure I had pictures and Noah’s baby book, so I could at least read about them. The first thing he said was ‘ba ba’, a word he used for his bottle. He got his first tooth at five months and took his first steps at nine. The pictures of my little boy were cute, but they didn’t fill that absence of not being there. Noah would never judge me for that. I think the kid loved me before he had even met me. I still didn’t understand why Krista did what she did, but she never kept it a secret that I was his father. I had to believe that she always did want to tell me.

  I started thinking about Conner and how upset his father would have been if he saw how his son was behaving. The company he was keeping was what was bringing him down. The girls kept getting more rough looking and obviously had introduced him into a new kind of party life.

  None of us kids were raised to take up with people that lived like that. We knew better. I had to assume that this was Conner’s way of dealing with
his loneliness. He was drowning himself in booze and women to get through not having happiness for himself. It wasn’t like the rest of us were gloating in happiness, but it was hard to not see it when you lived on the same property and were related.

  My cousin was engulfed in some sort of infomercial about rags you hook on your feet and polish your floor with. I shook my head before calling for his attention. “Hey Ty, what if movin’ away will help Conner out? I know you are worried, but if he is at your place he doesn’t have access to the things he has here. Everyone knows Conner here and they put him on some kind of pedestal. If he moved out of the state, he wouldn’t know anyone. You would be his only means of communication. I just don’t see him changin’ if he still lives here.”

  Ty shook his head and leaned his elbows on his knees. He clapped his hands together and kept shaking his head as he talked. “I don’t know man. I’m willing to do whatever we need to do to help him, but this shit is not something I know anything about. If he is using drugs, I can’t allow that shit in my house, or my parent’s house. And frankly, I don’t want that kind of shit happening around my daughter.”

  “I get that, but I don’t think it will happen. We need to get him as far away from here as we can for a while. Other than to force him into the military, this is the best scenario.”

  Ty didn’t say anything for a good two minutes. I noticed him glaring out the window at the ladies swinging on the porch. “Let me talk to Miranda. I don’t want to say yes or no without really talking to her about it first.”

  A weather alert came on the bottom of the screen, catching our attention from the conversation we were having. It was a severe weather alert for our county. They were calling for strong thunderstorms with high winds that could potentially create funnel systems, turning to tornados. “Damn, we picked the wrong weekend to visit.” Ty joked.