Guilt Ridden (The Walker Five Book 4)

by Marie Johnston

  “And of course you didn’t tell her parents.”

  “God no.”

  “They think you’re the son they lost, and you don’t want to hurt their feelings. You’re afraid that they’ll think I’m taking you away from them and you’re too damn guilty to have an honest talk with them. I’m not your secret.”

  “Kami.” He reached out but dropped his hand, glancing at the house. Afraid they’d see and know they were more than neighbors?

  Last straw. “Don’t expect any more meals. You and I are done. I can’t…I can’t settle for being the woman a man has to moderate for. I want to be the woman he’ll fight for, the one he’ll stand by. Not the one he has to make peace for because no one will accept her as she is. And I’m certainly not going to wait around while you live your little lie so they won’t think a little less of you. Because then who do I need stand aside for next? No, thanks.”

  Sliding into her car, she blinked back tears. They sprouted from anger as much as from heartache.

  Careful to keep from speeding, she drove away. No matter what, there were grieving parents in that house. If she’d lost Kambria, a year wouldn’t dent her grief. She didn’t agree with Travis lying about her, but she wouldn’t add one more ounce of stress to the night for them.

  She didn’t look in her rearview mirror. Part of her was so furious at herself for how blind she’d been to their one-sided relationship. The other part was afraid that he’d be rushing back to the house instead of worrying over her.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Travis lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. It’d been a full week since Kami walked out on him and he’d went back inside and did what she’d furiously recommended. He’d pretended that she was nothing more than a friend to Phil and Della and demolished any self-respect he had.

  Kami hadn’t called. He hadn’t seen her. Their land bordered each other, nothing more. He missed their evening meals together where they discussed their day, the challenges they faced, and just laughed about stupid stuff, like her daily Goldilocks customer—the coffee was always too hot or too cold, never just right.

  He’d avoided his family just fine. His parents and siblings were back in their own lives and hadn’t so much as called. Texts between his cousins were sufficient. The weekend proved more challenging, but he’d managed to sequester himself in his house each evening after a full day of work. Thankfully, their job could be as solitary as they wanted.

  He’d been in bed so long his back ached. Might as well match the rest of him. His head throbbed whenever he recalled blowing Kami off minutes after they’d had sex. His chest tightened when the image of her hurt expression flitted across his mind. The pain in her eyes, the shame staining her cheeks.

  Yet he hadn’t done a damn thing about it. Was Kami right? Did he feel the need for approval so badly that he was willing to adjust his very thinking, his actions, around it?

  No. No one made him enroll in college. It was a basic decision. Leaving home after high school to better oneself wasn’t pride. It was what was done in his family. Dad had left the farm for school. Mom had finished her degree before she married Dad. Dillon and Cash left for the army, and Dillon even finished his degree before he returned home. Even Brock had left for two years when his only intention was to come back to work. Aaron…tried.

  And the gaming. Last weekend made it clear enough why he turned to his computer for entertainment. A town as small as Moore didn’t offer much, especially for a man with no intentions of finding another woman.

  Which brought him to today. It was the middle of the week, but he didn’t have anything pressing to rush off to do. He’d harbored a wealth of guilt about his determination to break things off with Michelle. Had he clung to it so much that it’d hurt the one he loved?

  With a groan, he sat up and stared at his bare feet on the plush carpet, bracing his arms on the edge of the mattress. He was born in this room. This very spot, probably. And here he was. How cool…

  Just a couple of weeks ago, it seemed more significant to be here. He got his start here, and it was where he wanted the whole journey to take place.

  His land. He squinted outside. Obnoxiously bright and sunny, hardly a cloud in the sky.

  His lip curled into a snarl. Why couldn’t it fucking rain?

  His phone rang.

  Who the hell would call at— What time was it?

  He blinked at the clock. Whoops. Nine thirty. Almost three hours later than he usually woke.

  Glaring at the screen, he snatched it up when he saw it was Justin. “Yeah?”

  “Nice to hear from you, too, bro,” Justin snapped.

  Travis drew his brows down. He’d been a little harsh when he answered, but Justin wasn’t usually that sensitive. “I’m waiting for the bad news, because you never call.”

  “I call all the time.”

  “You text. Once a month.”

  A gusty exhale came over line. “Can I stay with you for a while?”

  “How long’s a while?” Of course, Justin could stay here, but the price was going to be information from his notoriously closed-off brother.

  “Until I find a place of my own.”

  “What? Did you quit your job?”

  “You could say that.” Travis refused to respond until Justin elaborated. “Fine. I had a disagreement with my boss and I got fired.”

  “What kind of disagreement?”

  “One where I told her to mind her own business,” Justin said dryly.

  Travis smiled even though it was the last thing he felt like doing. “Point taken. Go ahead and stay here as long as you need to. But if you think my questions are bad, wait until Mom and Dad find out you’re moving back to Moore.”

  “I won’t be interrupting anything with you and Kami, will I?”

  Ah shit. Now he was in the same boat as Justin. Not wanting anyone up in his personal business. “She and I aren’t a thing anymore.”

  Justin hesitated for a heartbeat. “But you paraded her by Mom and Dad as if to tell them to get the fuck over it, you run your own life.”

  Travis groaned. “Not you, too. What is it with everyone thinking my mommy and daddy hold my hand through everything?”

  “You’re the number one son.” Said without heat or venom. A plain statement, like it was a fact Justin truly believed and had accepted.

  “What do you mean?” Please talk. Just this one time, share a little.

  “Look, I get it. You were the calm in Mom’s storm; Bridge and I gave her hell. I used to hold it against you, but I’ve gotten over it. It’s just the way it is. You’re the good son, the one that lives up to her expectations. I’m the kid that gives her gray hairs.”

  “One, Brigit gives her way more gray hairs than you. She talks about you all the time, only—” If he continued, would Justin find some emergency calling him away? But he couldn’t leave it hanging like that, Justin would fill in the blanks in the worst possible way. “Only I think she feels hurt that you don’t talk with her, or tell her what’s going on in your life.”

  Justin let out an exasperated sound. “Because she’d tell me everything I should be doing. ‘You know what you could do…’”

  Flashbacks bombarded Travis. When he’d told Mom he was fond of designing games. You know what you could do? You could publish them yourself and I’ll tell our housing association. They’re mostly retired from the Midwest; you have a built-in audience. When he’d told Mom he wanted to go to college. You know what you could do? You could go to Fargo for school. They have an excellent agriculture program. When he’d told Mom he was glad to be graduating so he could move home. You know what you should do? Graduate school. You’re already there. The professors know you, and when you take over the farm, you’ll have first-hand knowledge of emerging practices and research. You need to be progressive to succeed in this business nowadays.

  It’d all made sense. His mom’s arguments were comprehensive and solid. And she was always so damn proud when he carried out her dreams. />
  Hers, not his.

  He buried his head in his hands. Kami’s accusation was indeed accurate.

  But that didn’t change the incident with Michelle’s parents. That wasn’t about pride.

  “And…” Justin paused. Travis narrowed his eyes at the floor. A second favor. That had to be killing his brother. “Do you guys have any work for me to do? I have a little financial cushion, but I’d hate to run the well dry.”

  “Yeah.” He winced. Answering before even asking the other four wasn’t a good idea. But they were family, and family took care of each other. “Let me talk to the others. But you know we’ll help you out.”

  “Great. I’ll be back in a few weeks.”

  He said his goodbyes to Justin and tossed the phone on his bed. Stretching his arms wide over his head, he inhaled deeply. Then inhaled again. Was that smoke?

  He wasn’t burning anything. Neither were his cousins. They always arranged burns ahead of time. Letting a burn bin or grass fire get out of control could devastate their operation.

  He threw on the nearest clothing he could find and took off out of the room. Then backtracked for his phone in case he had to call the fire department. He stomped into a pair of boots before jogging out the door.

  Sniffing the air, he spun around in his yard. Nothing on his property. He needed to get beyond his trees to see if the fields or pastures were in trouble.

  He sprinted to his truck and hopped inside. Driving past the trees, he rubbernecked as much as he could.

  There. Smoke billowed from—

  Shit. Kami’s north pasture.

  It was the middle of the week. She’d be working. Was there any chance Pam was doing a controlled burn?

  Of course not. Pam hadn’t done anything with the place, controlled or otherwise, since Earl died.

  He palmed his phone as he sped down the road and thumbed through his contacts until he found Deputy Max. They’d grown up with him, and after some vandalism and arson troubles regarding their property, he was programmed into all their phones. Max was old school and didn’t mind getting called directly.

  When Max answered, Travis didn’t hesitate. “Has Pam English notified anyone about a controlled burn?” Giving the rural fire department a heads up wasn’t standard, but one could hope.

  “Let me check.” Max’s voice grew muffled as he spoke into his radio. Other voices drifted over the line. Finally, Max came back. “No one’s heard anything. What’s burning?”

  “Something in the north pasture closest to my property, from what I can tell.”

  “Got it. I’ll radio it in.”

  Travis disconnected and tossed his phone onto his seat. He sped down the gravel road and spun out onto the highway. In less than a minute, he turned onto the road to Kami’s. He slowed as he neared the pasture the smoke originated from. Embers glowed throughout blackened grass. The flames weren’t high, but the line of fire advanced at a steady pace. A quarter of the pasture had burned.

  He found an approach on the other side to park. A place where he’d be out of the way of the rural fire department when they came.

  The strong stench clouded the pickup cab. Wind buffeted the smoke in the other direction, but the line of fire spread across the entire pasture, from what he could tell. He got out and walked down the road. Grass smoldered in every direction.

  What the hell started this? There’d been no storms. She had no electrical fence that could malfunction. It was possible she’d taken a day off for a controlled burn that got out of hand.

  Arson? No. He didn’t want to go down that messy road. They’d barely recovered from the last one.

  He strode back to his truck. No sirens echoed in the distance yet. The fire department would be there soon, but the rural fire department took a few minutes longer, waiting for their volunteers to arrive.

  He coughed as he grabbed his phone, hoping the firemen could put out the fire before it spread to any more of Kami’s land, or his family’s.

  “Yeah,” Cash answered.

  “Do you see it?”

  “Fuck. I thought I smelled it. Is that a grass fire?”

  “In the English north pasture.”

  Cash let out a string of swear words. “Well, the cattle will move to the far end, but I’ll call Dillon, Aaron, and Brock in case we need to herd them into other pastures to get them away.” Cash was gone before the next breath.

  Sirens. Finally. Where was Pam? Did she even know her property was burning up?

  Billows of dust rose from the engines as they flew down the dirt road. Travis hung back and let them do their thing. The chief took a minute to talk with him, but Travis didn’t have any more to tell him.

  He brought up Pam’s number. She answered with her familiar smoker’s growl.

  “Are you at home? Your north pasture’s on fire.”

  “Shit. No. I’m at Doc’s. Have you called Kami yet?”

  His chest tightened. Should he have called her first, or was he avoiding it? No, not with something this important. She was at work, and it was still Pam’s property. “No, I’ll let you break the news. She might take it better coming from you.”

  “I thought you two—never mind. None of my business; she’ll tell me what she wants. How the hell did the fire start?”

  “The firemen are still putting it out. Maybe they’ll know something shortly.”

  They both hung up. Travis’s fingers itched to dial Kami’s number, but after the way they parted, she didn’t need him mucking up the waters.

  The fire chief was wading back to him, his smudged yellow firefighting outfit stark against the charred black land behind him.

  Travis started toward him, but the chief waved him back. “It’s a mess,” he called. “The fire didn’t originate in this pasture. Do you know if there was anything in the adjacent field?”

  Why the field? “No, Kami was concentrating on the pastures to ready them for livestock. She didn’t have the equipment to worry about the fields.”

  The chief’s dark brows scrunched together. “Well, they won’t be fit to hold anything this year. A year and fresh growth from now, maybe.” He squinted into the distance, toward the field he’d asked about. “It’s that copse of trees there I’m suspicious of.”

  Travis followed his gaze. A copse of weathered trees had formed in the middle of a low area of the quarter that was usually too wet for decent planting and definitely too soft to tolerate a tractor’s weight. A pile of rocks plucked from the ground over the years was situated next to it. Tendrils of smoke rose from the trees and now that he was looking directly at them and not concentrating on the pasture, it was clear the trees had suffered burn damage.

  “How would it start there?” he asked, but his heart was sinking. Experience was already telling him the obvious.

  “Stupid kids. Probably have been partying in there for years. The trees can hide a couple of vehicles and it’s July, not as wet as the spring months.”

  “But it’s the middle of the week.” A weak argument. He’d been a teen once, and while he hadn’t been like most teens, his cousins had been.

  “They could’ve been out there having a smoke, who knows. And nothing’s written down in a report yet, just my speculation…and experience.”

  Travis nodded. Chief was likely right. Kids could sniff out any place that smacked of privacy. Most knew the Walkers monitored their property carefully. But English land…

  Studying the area, he shook his head. The scent of the grass fire clung to him. He smelled like a joint, which ironically, was what the kids were probably smoking in those trees. His side of the road was clear, green pastures, spattered with wildflowers and fences that had seen better days. In front of him was blackened land surrounded by fencing that’d need to be replaced. New post and wires could replace the old with several hours of back-breaking effort, and the land would recover more fertile than before because of the nutrients left behind.

  But his concern was how Kami would recover from the setback.
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  Chapter Fifteen

  I can’t recover from this. Kami faced the ravaged pasture, tears burning the back of her eyes. She couldn’t cry, not in front of her mother.

  Mom had withstood Dad’s outbursts and crazy decisions, she’d weathered his death, all with a stoic expression and a straight spine. Mom didn’t put up with weakness. Kami hated to show any around her.

  “The earth will bounce back. It’s what it does,” Mom said.

  But would she? It’d been two days, and the fire department had given them the all clear. No more smoke curled from the ground, and it’d all been drenched so thoroughly an ember would have to possess supernatural powers to grow into a fire.

  The old wood fence posts were nothing but nubs. The firemen had busted through one huge section of fencing and the rest hadn’t tolerated the heat.

  So much for ranching sheep. The funds she’d use to start her ranch would now be diverted to rebuilding fucking fence, down to each and every post. She had two other pastures she could use, but they both bordered this one and shared the string of fence line.

  How long would it take to replace—by herself? She’d have Kambria’s help some days, and yes, the girl would have to learn how to work on the ranch, but she was still a kid. She could hold wire, fetch tools, and the rest of the time she’d be in her philosophical wonder world of cartwheels, front rolls, and kittens.

  And that’d be the extent of her activity. Because replacing all the fencing and purchasing the tools would eat into her allotted funds. So to buy even twenty head of sheep would be a financial burden. Kambria’s extracurricular activity would be work and more work, like Kami’s. And not even work she was thrilled about.

  As she gazed at the destruction, waiting for the surge of “let’s do this,” the moment when ambition flooded her and she rolled up her sleeves and waded in. It didn’t arrive. Why?

  Because ranching wasn’t in her blood as much as she thought it should be. Just like she wasn’t as important to a certain farmer and rancher nearby.