Wild Card

by Karina Halle

  Wild Card

  A North Ridge Novel

  karina halle

  Metal Blonde Books

  Copyright © 2017 by Karina Halle

  First edition published by Metal Blonde Books August 2017 for Kindle

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover by: Hang Le Designs

  Photo by: Wander Aguiar

  Model: Andrin

  Edited by: Kara Malinczak

  Proofed by: Roxane Leblanc

  For my wild card

  “There’s always this kind of nostalgia for a place, a place where you can reckon with yourself” – Sam Shepard

  Contents

  Prologue

  1. Shane

  2. Rachel

  3. Shane

  4. Rachel

  5. Shane

  6. Rachel

  7. Rachel

  8. Rachel

  9. Shane

  10. Shane

  11. Rachel

  12. Shane

  13. Rachel

  14. Shane

  15. Shane

  16. Rachel

  17. Shane

  18. Rachel

  19. Shane

  20. Rachel

  21. Shane

  22. Rachel

  23. Shane

  Epilogue

  Maverick

  About the Author

  Also by karina halle

  Prologue

  Rachel

  The word love never sounded so wild as it did when it came from the lips of Shane Nelson.

  That one simple word that would set my heart loose, like a horse galloping across the plains, free and real and pure. And yet my heart would always return.

  My heart would always return to him.

  “I love you, Raven,” he’d say, and I wouldn’t just hear it. I’d feel it. I’d live it. The love he had for me, the love I had for him—it was in my every breath. It hitched the moon in my sky.

  Raven was my nickname, partly because it sounded like Rachel, partly because he grew up on Ravenswood Ranch, partly because it was at that ranch, nestled at the foot of Cherry Peak where the forested slopes yield to rolling hills of yellow grass and sagebrush, that I fell in love with the clever birds.

  It’s where I fell in love with him.

  Shane and I would spend hours on horseback, riding side by side, pretending to help out his father and grandpa by checking on the cattle while the birds called to each other from the tops of the ponderosa pines. The reality is, we just wanted to spend every second we could together. We were nothing if not inseparable.

  It’s like we knew that time was running out. Even as a teenager, there was a sense of urgency, like a ticking clock that was counting the long minutes until a bomb went off. I so desperately wanted to run away from North Ridge and never come back. I so desperately wanted, needed, Shane to come with me.

  But even though he told me he would, I knew he wouldn’t. His home, his heart, was here. Not with me. And as time continued to wreak havoc on us, as we made wild love like we were dying, afraid of the distance when we weren’t skin to skin, the more Shane continued to pull away. I didn’t see it at the time but then again, you never do.

  Loss of love is the most terrifying feeling in the world. It’s the feeling of your heart emptying, slowly being drained. Because that’s the thing about love. It’s free to give. It’s never free to receive. We all know the cost of loving someone, of being open-hearted, open-souled. We know that at any moment it could all end. The world is filled with worst-case scenarios. People die. People cheat. People fall out of love. People lose sight of who they are, or what they want. People…they grow apart.

  I’m still not sure what happened on that fateful night—which of the above it was that made everything crash and burn around us. What led Shane to do the things he did, what made him smash my bleeding heart into smithereens.

  All I knew was that the love we shared was over.

  Years of being full.

  Heartful, soulful, wonderful.

  All gone.

  And he finally gave me the will, the drive, to leave North Ridge behind.

  Never to look back.

  Never to return.

  Until now.

  1

  Shane

  “I heard that Rachel Waters is back in town.”

  It takes a moment for the words to properly sink in. I slowly raise my head and look at Delilah as she cracks open a beer for another customer.

  “Come again?” I ask her, ignoring the stillness in my chest.

  A flash of something comes over her green eyes, maybe pity, maybe trepidation. I hadn’t heard Rachel’s name uttered in ages and yet Del’s treating it like we just broke up yesterday.

  It wasn’t yesterday. It’s been six years since Rachel Waters left the town of North Ridge, British Columbia, six years since I last saw her. I haven’t even been able to stalk her on social media. She’s had that shit locked down since the day she left, as if she wanted to forget every single thing, every single person that had something to do with this little mountain town.

  Most of all, she wanted to forget me.

  So to hear that she’s back, well, it’s more than a surprise.

  “She’s back,” Delilah says with a shrug, heading down the bar to slide the pale ales toward Jeremy and Finn, sitting where they’re always sitting.

  “I heard that too,” Jer says, scratching at his scraggly grey beard. “Don’t know why, but I have a feeling it has to do with Vernalee. Beth down at the hospital says she’s been in a few times. Don’t know what for.”

  Vernalee Waters is Rachel’s mother, and she’s tough as nails. She’s not the type to go to the hospital for anything, not if she can help it.

  “I saw her today,” a voice from the corner booth says.

  I turn on my stool to see Joe sitting there, palming a beer, cigarette smoke billowing from the corner of his mouth.

  “What in God’s name do you think you’re you doing?” Delilah says, and in a flash she’s swinging herself over the bar instead of walking around it, stalking over to Joe’s table. She rips the cigarette from his mouth before stamping it out with the heel of her boot. “Damn it, Joe.”

  Joe just laughs like he always does. I wouldn’t say he’s the town drunk as we have quite a few of those, but he’s definitely this bar’s drunk. And nearly every night here at the Bear Trap, the same song and dance plays out. Delilah, the bartender/owner and a girl who is pretty much a sister to me, dukes it out with Old Joe over smoking. If it’s not smoking, it’s that he’s snuck in a bottle of liquor, adding it to his drinks or just “forgetting” to bring money.

  But their nightly routine is the least of my concern right now.

  “You saw her, Joe?” I ask the old-timer.

  He flashes Del a sweet smile and then nods at me. “Sure did. In Safeway. Almost didn’t recognize her. She looks good, though. Put on some weight, but she always was too skinny.”

  I swallow, shifting in my seat. I want to ask more but I shouldn’t. Everyone in this room knows how it ended between us. Very dramatically, very publicly. Something neither of us would like to think of again. I pushed her away in a storm of lies, broke both our damn hearts, and the only good thing to come out of it is the fact that she left, far away from the demons in this town.

  So, the fact that Rachel is here of all places and her mother was in the hospital, the two have to be connected.

  This is throwing me for a fucking loop.

  Somewhere, deep in my chest, a raw hope is starting to sti
r.

  Delilah sighs, wiping her hands on her jeans, and jerks her chin at me. “Want another beer, cowboy?”

  I fight the urge to roll my eyes. I hate that nickname. Cowboy. Granted, I do work on the family ranch as my full-time job but even so, it’s not like I wear a cowboy hat and boots on the street. Even now I’m dressed in black jeans, a battered old baseball cap with the ranch’s faded logo, a white tee under a red flannel. Tattoos under my clothes. Vans on my feet. Even though it’s the middle of summer here in North Ridge, the nights can be chilly.

  “Would you run away with me?”

  Rachel’s voice echoes in my head, a voice that I shouldn’t hear. Her face looms large yet vague, a passing phantasm in my mind, that look in her eyes. It took so long to realize what she was running away from, took so long to see the depths of her pain. I should have known from the start.

  Shit, I hope this isn’t the start of old memories getting dredged up, memories I’ve spent six years trying to bury.

  “I probably shouldn’t,” I tell Del.

  She’s surprised. I don’t blame her. I’m usually drinking on Saturday night, pretty much the only time off I get from the ranch. “Early start tomorrow?” she asks.

  “Not really,” I tell her. “Might have to go out on the range, move some cows.” And at my lack of argument, I pick up my empty beer bottle and wave it at her with a nod.

  “Pushover,” she says with a smile as she reaches into the fridge and pulls out another cold one, passing it over to me.

  Del’s mother, Jeanine, was my nanny growing up. After my mother died when I was six months old, my father needed as much help as he could to raise me and my brothers, Maverick and Fox, while he and my grandpa ran Ravenswood Ranch. Jeanine and Del lived in the guest cottage on the property for as long as I could remember. She was six when I was born and she’s felt like my big sister ever since.

  And she is big, too, as in tall. Delilah is five foot eleven and in great shape. It’s probably why she does such a good job at running the Bear Trap. She’s usually as sweet as can be and her face is girl-next-door cute, but she’s got a lot of sass and I’ve seen her throw a few punches to unruly patrons more than a few times. Most of the guys don’t think the tall pretty girl has it in her so it’s often a moment worth putting on YouTube, if you’re into that kind of thing.

  But North Ridge is a small town. Population of 10,000 in the off-season. Word travels fast. If you’re going to be an asshole and pick fights, the Bear Trap isn’t the place to do it, social media videos of a girl handing you your ass aside.

  Not that many tourists come here anyway. It’s dimly lit, the walls dark wood, and there’s a layer of peanut shells on the floor with bowls of peanuts at each table. The neon signs, advertising beer companies that are no longer in business, buzz and flicker half-heartedly. Delilah keeps the bar stocked with only the basics, and if you come in here ordering a drink that has more than three ingredients, she’ll look at you like you’re hard of hearing.

  Outside, thunder rumbles, drawing our attention over to the windows. Cherry Peak rises in the distance across the river, a mass of dark clouds approaching from the north. That’s home to me. Ravenswood Ranch lies in the foothills, the perfect place to raise beef cattle. There’s the Queen’s River running past, then the open plains and rolling hills that run alongside it, the elevation toward the peak slow and gradual, going from tall grass to pine and eventually to alpine. All seven hundred acres belong to the Nelson family. Hopefully they always will.

  “Could be lightning strikes,” Del says, and when I look at her, there’s worry on her brow. My brother Fox is a smoke jumper and the two of them are close. Del doesn’t seem to worry about much but she’s always worrying about Fox.

  “Could be,” I tell her, taking a swig of the beer. “But you know better by now than to worry about him, don’t you?”

  She stares out the window for a few beats until she comes back to earth and realizes what I’ve said. She gives me a sheepish grin while straightening her shoulders a moment later. “I know. But you know it’s my job to worry about you boys.”

  No. It’s your job to worry about Fox. You don’t give me half as much hell.

  Not that it bothers me. Like I said, Del is like a sister to my family. But I’ve been noticing over the years that her attention is a bit lopsided when it comes to my brothers.

  “And it’s my job to worry about the herd. I better go back to the ranch, make sure I’m around in case there are problems.” I pound back the rest of the bottle and place a twenty-dollar bill on the bar before waving goodbye to the others.

  The air outside has changed dramatically since I’ve been in the bar. Earlier it was hot as sin with the kind of humidity that makes your clothes stick to your skin. Now with the coming storm and the evening settling in, the air pressure has transformed. There’s a freshness to it, like it’s crawling with life and electricity. The dark clouds are starting to crowd over the ranch, and long sheets of grey rain are skirting across the river. The skies above the town have an eerie golden glow from the setting sun. In minutes, the deluge will be here.

  I used to love summer storms as a kid. I’d be the first to run out into them with my arms out, feeling that charge in the air, calling on the lightning until Jeanine would pull me back into the house, where I would watch with Mav and Fox from the windows. Once a strike of lightning lit our old shed on fire and we had to call on a lot of help to put it out. I’m pretty sure that’s what triggered Fox’s fascination with flames.

  Now, though, storms just cause nothing but problems for me. Because of North Ridge’s placement, settled at the southern end of British Columbia, with dry, rolling hills on one side, the start of the Selkirk Mountain range and the Kokanee Glacier on the other, a long, deep lake in the middle, it’s the perfect breeding ground for storms. In the winter, they can bury the town in drifts or kill your cattle if it comes in too early. That’s when Maverick has his work cut out for him as head of the local search and rescue team.

  In the summer, the lightning brings a constant threat of wildfires, which Fox fights, and if not that, flash flooding. Last year we had a hell of a time when a mudslide took out a few of our cows. Three of them didn’t make it. I know by now you shouldn’t get emotionally attached to beef cattle, but every loss like that hurts.

  As I head toward my dusty, beat-up Tacoma, I feel a tug in my brain. It wants to reflect on the past. Not last year, not the year before.

  It wants to think about Rachel.

  It wants to think about Rachel and that time we were caught in a thunderstorm.

  The first time I ever saw her with new eyes.

  The first time I kissed her.

  I pause at my truck and hold down my baseball cap as a gust of wind comes through. Part of me probably should have stayed behind in that bar, just to be around company. I know I would have put pint after pint into my system trying to poison the feelings out of me. It would have ended as it usually does, me passing out on a cot in the back room, Del laying out Advil and Gatorade beside me for the morning. In fact, it was my father who earlier today encouraged me to take the night off, head down to the pub and let loose.

  The other part, the older, smarter part, knows that I have work to do and a head I need to keep on straight. It’s the braver part, to be honest. Knowing when I get back to the ranch, that my dad and grandpa will probably be out, that I’ll be alone. With the worker’s cottage empty for now—our old ranch hand David just left for university last week—the place is deserted and there’s something about the open sky and the towering peaks that make your brain go into overdrive. When you’re alone on a ranch, you have a lot of time to think. A lot of time to dwell on what could have been, on everything you should have done differently. Thank God I have the dogs and the horses for company.

  That said, it’s not uncommon to have Mav drop by. Even though he shares a swanky alpine-style chalet with Fox on the opposite end of town, something compels him to come by every o
ther night, either to have dinner with us or to lend a hand. Especially in the summer, when search and rescue isn’t in as high demand, reduced to a few hikers going off into the mountains and getting lost.

  I get in the truck and hold my breath until the engine turns over. She’s been giving me trouble lately and I’m too stubborn to trade her in for a newer vehicle. She gets the job done and, well, there’s definitely a lot of sentiment at play.

  It was in the back of this truck where I first told Rachel I loved her.

  “Fuck,” I mutter after a moment, sitting in the parking lot just as the skies open up and the rain starts to pour down, a drumbeat on the roof that builds and builds but the crescendo never comes. It’s almost maddening.

  Hearing that Rachel is in town has put me in a mental time machine. Six years ago I pushed her away because I had to, because I was stupid and immature and full of blind rage and the kind of naivety only young love can grant you. I pushed her away, brutally, irreparably, because of my own selfish choice. Six years ago I blasted my own heart to smithereens because I thought I had no other option, and even though I’ve tried every day to put it past me, tried to move on, the truth lingers. It’s kindling for future flames.

  I never told Rachel the truth about what happened that night. Why my knuckles were raw and bleeding. Everything was a lie, right down to me telling her, yelling at her, that I didn’t love her anymore.

  It’s a lie that’s been trailing me ever since, like my shadow, except darker and deeper.