by Alison Kent
Not as lucky as him. No one in the world was as lucky as him. He wanted to take his time loving her, enjoying her fingers and hands and mouth, her soles as she rubbed them from the backs of his knees to his feet, her cunt holding his cock, forgetting everything else because she was the only thing he needed to know.
But he was hungry and in pain and in need. He began to rock, and she pushed up, biting his earlobe before whispering, “Fuck me.”
He rocked harder, his throat tight with the impact of her words, her wanting him, her knowing he wanted her. He rocked harder, rubbed against her, skin to skin, the contact raw and primal. He rocked harder, harder still, burying his face in the crook of her neck, his head on her pillow, falling apart as she scraped her nails over his scalp and came beneath him.
He burned and he ached but he finished her, then finished himself, collapsing, spent, the spilling of his seed exhausting him, leaving him only enough energy for something he needed to say. He pulled free of her body, rolled her away, and spooned in behind her, his arm beneath her breasts tethering her.
She cuddled against him, relaxed, and was on the verge of nodding off when he said, “I’m not coming to the party.”
It took her a minute to respond, pulling herself out of sleep’s clutches to turn to him. “Because of Clay?”
“No. Because I can’t,” he said, shaking his head. He’d been thinking about this a while. Thinking how it would feel to walk through those doors, have everyone look at him, everyone knowing what the house had been like when he’d lived there. Knowing about Suzanne.
“Why ever not?” she asked, reaching a hand to cup his face. “It’s your house. It’s a showpiece. You should be the one showing it off.”
No. That wasn’t his house. He didn’t know that house. His house was gone, and that’s what he was left to deal with. “Later, baby. Time to sleep.”
The next thing he knew, someone was pounding on Faith’s door, and at the same time he realized the shower was running. It was up to him to see what was going on or let it go. He preferred the latter, but the pounding wouldn’t stop, so he grabbed his jeans, walking barefoot through the living room, glancing through the peephole as he pulled on his pants.
“Shit,” he muttered, staring down at his bare chest, buttoning his fly before opening the door to Boone. When the other man did nothing but stare, he finally said, “Faith’s in the shower.”
“I came looking for you.”
“Here?”
“You weren’t at the ranch. You weren’t on Mulberry Street. Seemed the next best place to try.”
“You could’ve called Faith.”
“I didn’t want to talk to Faith. I needed to see this for myself.”
“And now you’ve seen it.” Casper had nothing else to say.
Boone ground his jaw, rubbed at his chin he hadn’t shaved. “Barrett’s been looking for you. Called me. Called the house. Get your damn phone fixed.” And that was that. He turned and walked away.
Casper closed the door, headed back to the bedroom for his boots and the rest of his clothes, trying not to think how bad this was on top of everything else.
“Who was that?” Faith asked, toweling her hair as she walked out of the bathroom.
He’d hoped to be gone before she was through. “You don’t want to know.”
“Boone?” she asked as he tugged on his shirt.
He nodded in answer, but couldn’t bring himself to look at her. “Greg Barrett’s trying to reach me. I gotta go.”
WHEN CASPER RODE into the Braff pasture later that morning to resume searching for Clay, Boone was already there, leaning into his forearms stacked on Sunshine’s saddle horn, his gaze trained on Dax as the other man rode through the grazing pairs.
“I should beat the shit out of you.”
Unlike the rest of the beatings Casper had taken in his life, this one he deserved. “I’ll get the ax if it’ll make you feel better.”
“It damn well might take that.” The other man was hot, his anger like a brand in coals, burning away hair before searing flesh forever. “It’s not even about the rule. It’s about trust. You broke it. That can’t be fixed.”
This was what Faith had warned him about. That she’d end things between them if his actions drove her brother away. He couldn’t imagine that happening, that Boone would leave over what really wasn’t any of his business. But he wasn’t going to risk it.
“I love her,” Casper heard himself saying, the words ones he hadn’t even said to Faith.
“You love your cock, you mean,” Boone said, still steaming.
“No.” He pulled himself straight, pushed back the brim of his hat, letting the truth of his feelings settle. “I love Faith. And I love her enough that I’ll leave her alone if that’s what you want. You staying here matters more to her than I ever will.”
Confusion swiped across Boone’s face. “Why wouldn’t I stay here?”
“I dunno, but she’s been afraid from the beginning if you found out about us you’d leave again.”
“I’m not going anywhere. But beating the shit out of you—”
“—or taking an ax to my head—”
“—is something else entirely.”
“You mean more to her than anything,” Casper said after a minute, wanting to fix this.
“Not more than you, it seems.”
“That’s…different.”
“I fucking hope so.”
“You know what I’m saying.” He was growing exasperated. He didn’t know how to talk about personal shit. Cows, horses, dead grass, the feed bill at Lasko’s. That he could manage. But not what he felt for Faith. “I’ll walk away. If this is going to cause trouble between the two of you, I’ll walk away.”
They both fell silent after that, the sounds of snuffling horses and cattle brushing through what remained of the grass the only noises for miles. The sun beat down, baking Casper’s back through his shirt, frying the strip of skin above his collar, browning his forearms.
These days, he looked more like he belonged to Diego Cruz’s family than to the white man who’d brought him at twelve to Crow Hill. Or to the woman who’d spread her legs to support herself, throwing an occasional box of cereal and a Benjamin his way.
“Go buy yourself a pair of shoes,” she’d tell him.
“Go get a fucking haircut,” she’d say.
“Go find something to eat,” she’d bark, smoke from a cigarette spiraling upward to magically diffuse the hard look in her eyes.
He’d wondered more than once if she’d even been the one to pop him out, or if the two of them had picked him up at some carnival, needing the extra mouth to qualify for government handouts, not to mention a house slave to fetch their beers.
This was how he’d grown up, and this was the past he was offering Faith as part of who he was. Yeah, that’s exactly what someone who loved her would do, saddle her with a mountain of trashy baggage she’d have to pick up and carry when he dropped it.
“What did Barrett want?” Boone finally asked, bringing him back to the present.
“He’s been in touch with New Mexico.”
“I came all the way to town for that?”
“He just wanted me to know. Guess it’ll be on the bill I’m gonna have to beg Faith to let me pay.”
Boone shifted in his saddle, reining Sunshine around and moving into Casper’s field of vision. “I’m not going anywhere. And I don’t want you walking away. She’s been happier these last few weeks than I’ve seen her in a very long time.”
That surprised him, coming from her brother, but it was good to hear in light of the hefty weight of change bearing down. Something told him he’d just taken a big step he’d never get back.
“It’s just…Stuff happened when she was younger,” Boone was saying. “Stuff that makes it hard for me not to want to beat the shit out of you because I know you and I don’t want her hurt.”
He nodded, stayed silent.
“She paid for your house, didn’t she?”<
br />
This time he couldn’t bring himself to do more than meet Boone’s gaze that was once again angry and ax-wielding mean.
“Fucking shit.”
“It’s for the party.”
“It’s not for the party. It’s for you.”
“She said—”
“I don’t give a goddamn crap what she said. Me and her…We were sharing the cost. Every bit of it. A split we could both afford. Or that I could afford since she can afford to buy the country club outright if she wants.” He wiped his wrist across his forehead, then tugged down his hat until his eyes were lost in the brim’s shadow. “She hasn’t once touched that money since it dropped into her account. Except maybe to move it into others. And yet for you—”
“It wasn’t for me.”
“Say that again and I rip your tongue out of your mouth.” The look the other man gave him guaranteed it would happen. “Did she tell you where she got it?”
This was harder for Casper to swallow. “Not exactly.”
“Don’t think you know what happened. And don’t you dare fucking judge her for getting herself mixed up with that sonuvabitch.” Boone flung a string of fucks and shits and damns into the air. “I didn’t say that. And it better not get back to her that I did.”
“I’m not about to say anything to her. And I’m not judging her. Jesus. Why would I judge her? What right do I have to judge what anyone does?”
“What did I miss?” Dax asked, riding up beside them.
“Nothing,” Casper grumbled.
“Uh-uh. Something is going on.” He licked his finger, held up his arm. “Winds are definitely blowing mean.”
Boone grunted. “Asshole broke the rule.”
“What ru— Shit. No-sisters?” Dax looked from Boone to Casper and back. “What’re you gonna do about it?”
Boone looked into the distance. “He says he loves her.”
“Which part of him loves her?”
That earned Dax a whip across the back from Casper’s quirt.
“Yeowch. Shit. I get it. You love her. Question is, what’re you gonna do about it?”
That he did not know. He knew what he’d like to do, the kind of life he’d like to live with Faith in it. Hell, thanks to her, he already had the house with the white picket fence. But he couldn’t see the two of them having kids, bringing them up together, making a family.
What the hell did he know about making a family? He couldn’t even hold on to one fourteen-year-old boy.
“What I’m gonna do is look for Clay.” He glanced from one of the men who’d been more brother than friend to the other who might end up being both, a thought that added to the teeth in his gut eating him up like sausage. “You two coming? Or you gonna sit on your asses and wait for the grass to grow?”
THIRTY-ONE
NEARLY TWENTY-FOUR HOURS after discovering Clay gone, Casper headed back to town to see Faith. He owed her an apology for bolting this morning. It had been hard to look at her, sweet from the shower, when all he could see was her brother’s face, her brother’s anger and censure, and know she was saddling up to ride him down with the same.
The thought that he’d fucked things up beyond all repair had sent him to Barrett’s office in a blur. Then sent him to the ranch at a speed limit he’d never seen posted on any sign in the forty-eight contiguous states. He and Boone airing things, if not settling things, had let him put that worry to rest for the moment and allowed him to focus on Clay.
But the search for Clay had been a bust, and the worry was waking up. He hadn’t talked to Faith all day, but his phone was out again, and he’d put in so many miles on horseback he’d promised Remedy he could have tomorrow off. A good thing for the both of them since he had an appointment with Dr. Pope. The other man would most likely give him a good reaming for getting back in the saddle so soon. But, hell, he’d had bulls do more damage.
He wasn’t going to let Summerlin’s Arabian—
He cut off the thought, squinting down the road, looking at the familiar figure jogging toward him. His heart dropped from his chest to his stomach, then it jumped into his throat before it settled back where it belonged. He braked to a stop, let the dust settle, and rolled down his window just as Clay reached him.
“Where the hell have you been—” But it was all he got out. Clay’s face was a mess. His clothes were a mess, smeared with dirt and what could be blood and smelling like animal shit. And he was without Kevin. He was without Kevin. Shit. Casper shifted into park, shoved open his door, climbed down with his gut churning. “Clay?”
“I need help,” the boy said, his throat working.
“What’s wrong?”
“If you’re going to turn me in, I’ll split,” he said, tears rolling down his cheeks, those same tears dousing the front of Casper’s shirt as the boy buried his face against him.
Casper’s arms came around him without any thought at all. “Clay, what’s wrong?”
“It’s Kevin,” he said, backing up and doubling over, his hands on his knees as he fought to catch his breath. “He got in the way of a bull. It tossed him.”
“Jesus, Clay. What were you doing in a pasture? And whose pasture? Where?”
“I figured going cross-country would take you longer to find us. And I don’t know whose.” He stopped, his whole body shaking with his effort to breathe. “We took off after we got back to the ranch. Then laid low for a while.”
Well, that was for sure. Okay, think. Think. “What did the bull look like?”
Clay straightened, waved a hand. “He was big, monster muscles, kinda white.”
That sounded like Philip Hart’s Charolais. One of the bulls Casper had wrecked on had been a big, mean Charolais. “Where’s Kevin now?”
“I had to wait till it was safe to get to him. I moved him into a ditch. I couldn’t carry him any further.” His voice broke, broke again, and the rest of the words flowed out with his sobs. “I think I was hurting him.”
“C’mon,” Casper said, his own voice tight, his throat choking up even tighter, his arm fastened around the boy’s shoulder as he walked him to the far side of the truck. “Get in. Tell me where he is. I’ll radio up to Mal’s, let him know we’re coming.”
“What’s Mal’s?”
“Mal runs an animal shelter. Doc Neal, the vet, he’s up there every day. No place Kevin could get better care.”
“He’d stay there? I want to be with him. He’ll be scared if I’m not there.”
“Considering you’re in a bit of trouble, that’s probably not going to happen.” When Clay didn’t say anything to that, Casper put the truck in gear and went on. “What were you thinking, running like that? Not even leaving a note?”
“I didn’t want to get you busted,” he said, his head in his hands, shaking. “When no one knew I was here things were okay. But with the cop and the lawyer and everyone poking around…I didn’t want a bunch of crap to fall on you for not turning me in when you found me.”
Casper didn’t even know what to say. This boy had lit off with his dog, heading over terrain fit for jackrabbits and rattlesnakes, barely fit for the cattle who grazed it, to keep Casper out of the law’s crosshairs? How in the hell would he be able to send the boy back into the system now?
Clay gave a desperate sort of laugh. “We made it across two states just fine, and I can’t even get outta Crow Hill without something happening to Kevin. God, I can’t believe I was so stupid. I’m going to end up in jail because I was so stupid.”
“You’re not stupid. And no one’s pressing charges. You know that.” He didn’t say anything about jail because that was beyond him to know.
“For the things I took, yeah. But I didn’t have a license.”
“True, and that’ll bring you some consequences.”
“And I’m a runaway. And a ward of the state.”
At least the boy knew the lay of the land. “That part, too.”
Clay kept his gaze averted, his head on the passenger window as the
road whizzed beneath them. “He’s going to send me back, isn’t he? The sheriff?”
“No. Not yet, anyway.” Casper thought about Kevin alone and frightened and bleeding, and gunned the accelerator. “He doesn’t know where to send you, though I’ll bet he’s been searching through bulletins all day.”
“So I get to stay on the ranch?”
“For now, yes.”
“I wish I could stay forever.”
He didn’t want to get the boy’s hopes up, but seeing him like this…“I’m doing my best to keep you here as long as I can. I’m not going to let you go back to the situation you came from. Not without a fight.”
“You’d do that for me?”
Casper nodded, silent.
“I don’t even think my mother would’ve done that for me.”
“As much as I liked your mother, I’m beginning to think she wasn’t much of one.” Though he couldn’t imagine her not fighting for her boy. Then again, had he even known the real her? “Neither was mine, which kinda makes me an expert on recognizing the type.”
“Sucks, doesn’t it?”
“It does, but I had friends whose folks knew what I was going through and showed me how to keep my head up.” Those dinners and breakfasts at the Mitchells rose like a port in a storm. “I want to do that for you. Even if things don’t go our way in the end, I don’t want you getting into worse shit and blaming your mom. You’re old enough to know what’s right and what’s wrong.”
“I didn’t mean to blame her, that day in the jail. I knew she did drugs, and there were a lot of guys. But she was always happy, like a kid. I kinda figured I was an accident, but at least she didn’t toss me in the trash or something. I guess she did her best.” He sniffed, wiped his eyes on his hoodie’s grubby sleeve, turned to look at the window. “I miss her.”
Casper reached a hand along the back of the seat and squeezed the boy’s shoulder. Saying anything wouldn’t have helped. This was Clay needing to work things out for himself, something Casper understood well. Except Casper making sense of his own shitty past had only begun recently, and his working things out fell to Faith. Without her…
Without her he’d be nothing, nowhere. He would’ve bucked under the weight of the house, the added burden of Clay, the suffocating obligation of the ranch drowning him. He needed her to know that. He needed to tell her what it had meant to him for her to find those papers, to be there while he’d burned them, even if he’d walked out of the room, and walked out on her for fear of breaking down…
