by Tijan
“She’s talking to him.”
Him.
Not Matthew.
Not one of her family members.
No, she was talking to this stranger who had a reputation for being an asshole.
A sick feeling spread through him. He already knew what was going to happen.
He wanted to stop it.
He wanted to bar the asshole from his lands, from Morgan, but it was too late. If he did, the asshole would seek her out anyway.
He couldn’t control Morgan either. God knew that he’d been trying.
Abby touched his arm, both comforting and seeking comfort. “That’s good, isn’t it? That she’s talking to someone.”
Of course, Abby would see it that way.
He wanted Morgan back, so did Abby, and his sister wouldn’t care how that happened.
But he wanted to be the one. Not some Hollywood bad boy type. Asher didn’t deserve her. Not one bit.
“Yeah.” Matthew grasped her hand, covering it with his so he could pull her to him. Dipping his head down to rest against the side of hers, he said gruffly, “Unless he hurts her and she’s gone forever then.”
He heard her swift intake of breath, but she murmured almost calmly a second later, “We’ll just have to make sure that doesn’t happen. Or that we’ll be there for her.” Her hand squeezed his arm. “But she’s talking to someone, Matt. That’s good.”
It was.
It wasn’t.
It was the wrong person she was talking to.
“Yeah.” A knife was in his belly, protruding out, but he didn’t know whose hand was attached to it. Asher’s or Morgan’s. He said to Abby, “It’s a good thing.”
Morgan
I didn’t know what I was doing.
Shiloh was behind me, eating leaves from the underside of trees, but we were off on our own. I was standing in the woods, watching. That was what I was doing.
Watching.
Being curious.
Not understanding why.
I didn’t think about others. I cared for my siblings, but they had left. When Karen died, they had left. All of them. I had staff, who acted as my guardians, and teachers for my homeschooling, but the people I’d come to consider family were gone. Peter Kellerman went back to his businesses. Matthew, Finn, and Abby returned to their private schools.
I hadn’t been given a choice to go with them or not.
I got a new sister when Shiloh was born.
She and Shoal were my family.
Then they came back that day. Car after car. All of them were there, even Peter. My mother used to melt and get a glazed look in her eyes whenever he was around. She had loved him so much, but he had only ever been gruff and distant to me. Still, when he had come back four years ago, he brought memories of my mother with him, and it’d been hard to look at him.
They told me about the movie script, that it would be a commemoration to my mother’s life. Even then, I wanted to say no. They said I was giving them permission to shoot the movie on my lands, but my mother was in the room that day. I felt her. I felt how much she wanted this movie done, so I signed.
I had regretted it ever since, until this moment.
I didn’t like having strangers around. They upset the horses too. Everyone was on edge, but he came, and I talked to him at the river, and I hadn’t been able to stop wondering about him.
I wondered what his full name was. Where he came from. What his parents were like. Why did he become an actor? Did he know horses? They shot a scene where he had to ride one, and he seemed a natural at it. He held the reins like it was second nature to him.
There was so much I wanted to know, and then things changed at the house.
All the strangers went away again.
I saw them leave in the cars, but I watched his cabin that night. He remained. So did my siblings. They were the only four there, until the rest came back the next morning. That was the routine. They came at odd hours, sometimes leaving during the day and returning at night. They weren’t sleeping at the main house anymore. Matthew must’ve had them stay at a hotel in the city, but why?
That started a week ago, and every night, I wanted to go and ask why. I wanted to find out so many answers, more answers than I ever cared to wonder before.
I didn’t, though.
I always stood at the end of the last fence. It was as if the wild was behind me. The domestic was before me.
If I went in there, I couldn’t be myself.
There were expectations. A role. An obligation. Matthew likes those types of relationships.
He was the older brother.
He embraced that role and thought it was his job to care for all of us, to overlook, to watch, and he would try to fix things for us. I could tell he was the same, and Finn and Abby? They had the same spark from when we were kids. Finn always felt he had to prove himself to his father, to Matthew.
Abby was always the peacemaker. If there was a fight, she smoothed it out.
Half the time, I was waiting to see if they would muster the courage to look for me, instead of expecting me to go to them because that was what they felt. I could feel it from them. It came to me in waves.
I was supposed to go to them.
I was supposed to find them.
But there would be more.
I would have to fit into some role that each had for me. It was how they were before, that hadn’t left them. I didn’t feel that with Brody.
He wanted my body. I knew that. I felt that. I wanted his too. It was more than that, though.
Expectations.
It was the invisible weight crushing them and myself, and they didn’t realize it was what kept me away.
Shiloh wanted me to love her, but she didn’t expect that of me. Same thing with Shoal.
A twig cracked behind me. I didn’t look, but I knew it was Shiloh moving alongside of me. As the cameras rolled beneath us on the hill and the lady yelled, “Action,” I reached up, grabbed a fistful of Shiloh’s mane, and lifted myself up to her.
She was turning before I sat, and we left again, my back to their world.
Brody
The floor creaked.
I was in the dark, a bottle of bourbon half drank on the floor beside me, and I was staring out toward the field. I was on the second-floor patio, the door open behind me. A nice breeze came off the mountain, but it was just me. All me.
And Kyle’s ghost.
He was never far away.
But the floor creaked, and I knew it was her.
I felt her in my blood, in the way my skin washed in goose bumps and chills. The recognition slammed full force into me at the same time the need for her rose, threatening to overtake me. When she stepped out through the open door, I didn’t dare move.
I feared she’d run like the last time.
It’d been two weeks since I saw her at the river, and as she stood beside me, looking out over the field with me, she was every bit the ghost she’d been that night.
She murmured softly, “Everyone left,” before turning to look at me as I took a seat in the chair to her left. “Why?”
“Your brother was worried someone would see you.”
Her forehead wrinkled, just a small line. “Someone did. You.”
I laughed, a small one. “Someone who wouldn’t keep quiet.”
“Oh.” She bit her lip, moving to the chair beside mine. She folded down, her petite body so strong but so small and graceful. “He cares for me.”
I barked out a laugh. “It’s more than that, Princess.”
I felt her surprise as she looked at me. Her eyes were wide, startled, then a slow smile spread over her face. “That name reminds me of one of the horses.”
Great. I gave her the same nickname as a real-life feral horse. Awesome.
“Anytime.”
Another peal of laughter came from her. It was genuine, and I smiled along with her. I would give her all the cheesy-ass nicknames she wanted if this was the reaction I
got. When she started to fade, I asked, “Why’d you come see me?”
A person with an agenda could’ve feigned being hurt, saying that maybe I didn’t want them to come. I’d have to go on the defensive and tell her I wanted her here. Or even use it as a come-on. Kara, who most certainly had an agenda, would have somehow used the question as an excuse to crawl onto my lap.
Though, I wouldn’t mind if Morgan crawled onto my lap.
“Because I’m curious about you.” There was no game between us. No hidden manipulation. She was being real, and goddamn, my dick bulged inside my pants. I had to dig my nails into the chair. I needed to calm it down. Otherwise, I’d jump her bones.
I coughed, getting some restraint in there. “What are you curious about?”
“You.” She shifted on her seat, pulling her feet underneath her. She was facing me, leaning on the one side of her chair. Rapt curiosity was etched on her face. “What’s your full name?”
No thought. I answered immediately, “Brody Josh Asher. Not Joshua, just Josh.”
“Are you named after anyone?”
“My mom had a thing for a soap actor named Josh.”
“A soap?”
I grinned. That was goddamn cute. “Not something to clean yourself. It’s a type of show on television.”
“Ah. I had a nanny who watched one, I think.” Her eyebrows pulled together again.
I was having a hard time not reaching over and smoothing out the small wrinkles.
She added, “There was a lot of sex.”
An awkward laugh from me. “Let’s not talk about sex.”
Her eyes were on me again. They were full. They were unblinking. There was something there I didn’t want to identify. If I did, I would be in her within a minute. I wanted this time with her. It was real. It was the type of shit I didn’t want with anyone else.
“Ask me another question.”
“Do you want to have sex with me?”
A mangled cry ripped from my throat. “I’m finding the more time I spend with you, the less control I have.”
“So you do want to have sex with me?”
I saw the knowing look on her face and bit back a groan. “You goddamn know I do.” I fixed her with a hard look, letting her know that she may be able to see me, but I could see her too. “You want me as well.”
There was no hiding, only the continued spread of that smile. Yep. Tonight was going to be one of the most torturous nights I’d ever experience. I already knew I wouldn’t trade it for anything else.
“Yes.” She sat up, her feet tucked directly beneath her.
I nodded at her. “I have a feeling you could hang upside down from the post.”
“I live mostly in the woods. You develop the ability to climb trees and rocks if you want to survive.”
“Horses too.”
She nodded solemnly. “Horses too.”
“They climb trees?”
She chuckled. “No, but they can climb rocks if they have to. They can also run down cliff edges.”
“I’ve seen Snowy River.” I suppressed a shudder at the idea of her riding a horse down one of those edges. “It looked damned scary.”
“Snowy River?”
“It’s a movie.”
“I’ve not seen it.”
“Do you watch television?”
“I have in the past, when I went to school.”
I shot up in my seat. “You went to school?”
She laughed, settling into her seat again. Her feet slowly unwound from beneath her until she looked as if she was almost lounging back. “I had to. I live with horses for a choice, but I’m not a moron. I couldn’t give anyone a reason to say I couldn’t be with them. Getting a high school degree and,” she leaned forward again, a teasing glimmer in her eyes, “a college degree made it so I could do what I wanted.”
“You went to high school and college?”
She snorted, motioning in the direction where the main lodge was. “No way. I did the homeschooling thing, and I did the online thing for college. Peter made sure there was staff here to take care of me.”
I was surprised and impressed all at the same time. “Did you like Peter?”
She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She ended with a shrug before adding, “She loved him. That was all that mattered.”
I fell silent, digesting. I was learning so much and not enough. “I’m playing him in the movie, but I’ve never met him. My manager reached out to see if I could meet him, for research purposes. He said I could ask his children for any insight needed.” I remembered when she read the words to me from her phone, reciting them word for word. “He sounds like a peach of a guy.”
She laughed a little. “That seems like him.”
“When did he stop sending people here for you?”
She mulled it over. Her mouth puckered up again. “When I turned eighteen. He came to tell me everything was legally in my name now. A lawyer came the next day to tell me about my inheritance, and the staff was all gone that same day.”
I shot forward. “Wait. These are your lands?”
She nodded.
“Shit.” A nice piece of information I was pretty sure Shanna didn’t know about.
“Matthew drove out the next week. He took me to the bank and got me set up so I could get money when I needed it. He helped set up other things.”
“You don’t drive?”
She shook her head. “None of the staff offered to teach me, and I didn’t care. Shoal could take me anywhere I needed to go.”
“Do you want to learn?”
“Are you going to teach me?”
I nodded. “I would if you wanted me to.”
Her mouth opened. She was thinking about it. Then she shrugged again. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Well, think on it.” I reached down for the bourbon and took a large swig. God. I needed that burn.
Her eyes were on the bottle as I held it.
“You’re still drinking.”
I listened for the judgment. There was none.
I relaxed a little, nodding. “It helps.”
“With what?”
The air shifted between us. It grew more intimate. It’d been playful, light before. She was getting into a second layer of shit.
I motioned around the patio, still holding the bourbon. “Ever been haunted? Because I have. I am. You aren’t the only ghost here.”
“I’m not a ghost.”
“That’s yet to be proven.” I grinned at her, but I felt Kyle. He was sitting with us. He was either laughing at how much of a dumbass I was being or he was flipping me off.
I added, “He visits me often.”
She leaned forward, reaching for the bourbon. When I relinquished it, she took it and leaned back in her seat. “Does he get stronger when you drink or does he fade?” She took a sip. She swallowed it slowly before handing the bottle back, and I hadn’t wanted her as much as I did in that moment. I’d have to readjust in a minute because my hard-on was becoming too uncomfortable. But until then, I took the bottle, as well as a second shot.
I placed it on the floor between us.
I thought back to her question. “He gets stronger, but I can sleep. I can’t sleep unless I drink. I don’t want to take fucking pills. They mess up my head. If it’s going to be messed up more than it is, I want it to be from booze. At least then I can have some fun while I’m at it.” I flashed her a grin.
I waited.
Normal girls would try to be cute. Smart girls would try to say something witty. She only reached for the bourbon and took a long swallow. She hissed this time, setting it back down between us.
She coughed, rasping out, “They tried to make me take pills too.”
“Whe—” I remembered. “Oh.”
“Yeah.” Her chin dipped to her chest, and she pulled her legs up so she could hug her knees to herself. “I was young when my mom died. I had to take the pills, but I got off them. I slipped some to Finn. He liked pill
s back then.”
“You saw them after she died?”
She looked down and was silent for a beat. “Matthew brought them out a few times.”
But it wasn’t enough. They’d basically left her.
My hands went back to digging into the goddamn chair. I wanted to throw the fucking thing at Kellerman, but this time wasn’t about the piece of shit. I could hear Kyle telling me to calm down, so I took his advice. I had to. I couldn’t scare her away. That was the last thing I wanted.
Forcing myself to chill the fuck out, I asked, “Have you talked to your siblings since we’ve all been here?”
She was chewing on her bottom lip again.
Between the need to pound Kellerman’s face in and the way she was kneading that lip of hers, my dick was raging. I couldn’t remember when I had this big of a hard-on. Holy fuck. I tried telling him it wasn’t the hottest thing he’d ever seen. I wasn’t being convincing.
“I’ve talked to Matthew but not Finn or Abby.”
“Would you like to talk to them?”
Her teeth stopped nibbling. She smoothed her hands down her legs instead. “I always liked Finn. He made me laugh. He scared me a bit because he could be reckless, but he was funny.”
I raised an eyebrow. That preppy-looking prick was funny? “Really?”
She nodded. “Abby was too. Both of them would dare each other to do pranks. I remember one time when Matthew had a date. He’d just turned sixteen, and he was so proud of his car. He was taking out Molly Connors. Finn dared Abby to smear peanut butter all over the backseat. Matthew didn’t notice when he left, and then it got dark. I guess he found out later when they went back there.” She started laughing, her shoulders shaking. “He came home with peanut butter all over him. He blamed Finn the whole time, and I guess it was kind of his fault, but no one told him it’d really been Abby.”
Abby. The girl who looked like a strong wind could blow her over. She rarely spoke and stuck close to her two brothers’ sides whenever she was around. She had that kind of pranking streak in her?
I grunted, picking up the bourbon again. “No offense, but your siblings have changed. For the worse.”