“Are you kidding me? You did that to them because they were keying your truck?”
“They did a lot of damage,” he said. “And I had been sleeping in there not too long before that. You may remember I didn’t have anywhere to sleep last night, so I ended up stuck in there. What do you think they would have done if they had gotten there and I was still asleep?”
“Don’t you dare even try to put any of this on me,” I said. “They wouldn’t have done anything different if you were sitting in that truck. The only reason they did what they did was because you weren’t there and they thought they could get away with it. Yes, it sucks that they damaged your truck. They are complete and utter assholes. That’s nothing new. You already knew that.”
“So, I was supposed to just let it happen?” he asked. “I was supposed to just sit by and not do anything?”
“This wasn’t just doing something. You were completely reckless and out of control. It’s valid to be angry. You could even be serious. Hell, I would have completely understood if you had decked him when you saw him doing it. But not this. Not coming completely unhinged like that. It’s totally unacceptable. I expected more of you.”
Rage and something close to hurt boiled in Colt’s eyes. He took a step closer to me.
“Listen to me carefully, Leah. I got enough of these bullshit tongue-lashings from my father when I was younger. I was never good enough for him and never did anything right. And he never missed an opportunity to remind me of it and scold me for it. Every day of my life, I had to hear from him how I had control issues and indulged my anger too much. He loved to say I was unstable. And now I’m having to hear it from you.”
What I thought might be something like hurt solidified and there was no longer any question that it was pain. It was obvious hearing the same things from me brought up terrible memories of his father. I could see that I had cut him deep, and I felt bad, but also, I knew he needed to be called out for what he did. He couldn’t think it was fine to just do something like that around here.
“Colt,” I started, hoping to keep my voice calmer so we could talk this through.
He cut me off instantly. Obviously, he had no intention of listening to anything else I had to stay.
“I don’t want to hear it, Leah. I don’t know who you think you are, but I don’t need someone else pretending they know better than I do trying to look out for me. I can take care of myself. I don’t need you hovering around acting like a buffer between me and everybody around here. I don’t need you fighting my battles for me or telling me when and how to react to things. And I sure as hell don’t need you being referee with my family. I can do all this on my own. Besides, you’d be better off without me. I’m no good for you.”
I blinked a few times, trying to process what he just said. There was still anger and intensity in his voice, but the meaning behind his words had shifted. I couldn’t believe what he just said and thought maybe I heard him wrong.
“What do you mean by that?” I asked.
“You know exactly what I mean by that,” he said. “It’s not hard to figure out.”
I was shocked and the anger rushed back. “Seriously? Are you actually calling this off because you can’t handle me disliking something you did? You really can’t tolerate me calling you out for completely ridiculous actions? You’re just going to throw me away like that?”
“Like I said, you’d be better off without me,” he said.
I let out a short, mirthless laugh and shook my head, planting my hands on my hips and staring at him incredulously.
“I can’t even believe how much of a coward you are,” I said. “It’s just that easy. Everything’s good as long as I totally agree with you and don’t dare mention when you do something wrong. It doesn’t even occur to you that two people can butt heads and have it out but still make things work.”
Colt shook his head, his expression cold and steely. “No. Not in my books, they can’t.”
As if that was enough to end the conversation, he turned and walked over to his truck. I followed behind him. The closer we got, the more I could see the extent of the damage the guys did. It looked pretty nasty, but it still wasn’t enough to justify what he did. But right then, all I was thinking about was how suddenly everything went to hell and how I couldn’t believe this was what he was doing.
Colt climbed into the truck.
“We need to finish this conversation,” I said.
“I don’t have anything else to say,” he said.
“Colt, if you drive away like that, I won’t forgive you. You won’t be able to just come back when you’ve cool down and realize what you did.”
He didn’t even bother to say anything. He looked at me for a moment, like maybe there were some words trying to form in his mind, but then either they didn’t appear all the way or he just decided not to say them. Instead, he cranked the engine over and backed up. I watched with my heart aching and lodged in my throat as he drove away.
Chapter 31
Colt
I zoned out as soon as I got on the highway. I didn’t really know where I was going, but I knew I couldn’t stay there.
My foot never left the gas pedal as I zoomed for miles and miles until I realized I was starting to recognize my surroundings. Weaving in and out of the driving lane so I could pass slower cars, I made time getting down the road until I saw the exit I was looking for. It led to backroads I knew by memory, and nostalgia took control, pulling the wheel until I zipped down and into the whirling, circular winding roads of Montana. All the way to Green Valley town limits and to the bar I got kicked out of the night Cassidy came to get me. I had ended up at a bonfire party that night, somewhere no one asked for ID.
I wouldn’t need my ID for this trip. Everyone inside that bar would already know exactly who I was. And how much trouble I might cause.
As I parked the car, years of memories came flooding back to me. Drinks and laughs and fights and women. All the frustration I felt at being in Green Valley and not on the back of a horse. All the anger at my father for dying. For dying before he died. For not being there, not the man I knew, for years before his body finally gave up. All the times I tried to come back between rodeos, adorned with new buckles, new hats, new trophies. All those times that I stopped by one last time, knowing I was leaving in the morning.
All of it hit me as the engine cut off and I leaned back into the seat. My leg was aching from pressing the peddle for so long. I hated using cruise control and always had. What was the point of driving the truck if I wanted the truck to do half the work?
That point of view filtered down into my entire life. I always wanted the control. Right down to my choice of profession, it was about taming nature. Taming wild horses was me taking control. I wanted to spit right in the face of anyone who said I couldn’t make my own destiny. And I knew right where that all started.
I locked the door and slid out of the driver’s seat, my ribs aching with a slow pounding that was now being joined by various other body parts that were either hit in the fight or were stiff from the drive. My hands ached both from punching and from gripping the wheel so tight my knuckles were white and staying that way for a long damn time.
There was still so much bouncing around in my mind that I just wanted to get a few drinks in me and see if it evened it all out. Sometimes when things got complicated and I had the choice of either feeling everything or trying to sort out some kind of plan to attack it like a logic puzzle, beer helped. Lots of beer. Quickly.
Whisky made it too fast, and other liquors were for pansies. But good, solid, dark beer was the pace I wanted and the pace that got me where I needed to be, provided I had the time to do it. Considering it was just after eight in the evening, I had plenty of time to sit with several glasses and figure my next step out.
But even before I got inside and ordered my first of the night, I knew it would likely involve going to the ranch for a day or so. I didn’t want to. I didn’t have to, either.
I could just sleep in the truck, wake up early, and roll the hell out of town. Go for the coast, maybe. See what California had in store for me. Whatever the choice was going to be, it would involve a lot more beer than the first frothy glass of black perfection that got poured for me before I even said a word.
Bill was the owner of the bar that was named after him. It wasn’t the usual stop for the Montgomery clan, nor was it the normal stop for just about anyone close by. The people who came to Bill’s weren’t looking for companionship or fun. They were looking for strong drinks, silence other than an old country radio station softly crooning in the corner, and a room upstairs to crash in if they had too much. Bill usually didn’t charge for the room until the morning and his price was whatever you could spare. He was a good man in that way, but he was also a drunk himself. It wasn’t unusual for him to be as hammered as the clientele just after closing time.
Bill was good for not bothering you unless you started the conversation, and since I wasn’t in a talking mood, he kept quiet too. A few other people were in the bar, and as I nursed that beer, I noticed a few of them were eyeballing me. One was a kid I went to school with, another a guy from a few ranches over. That still meant he lived a good thirty minutes away driving, but he counted as close to a neighbor as it got out in the ranchland of Montana. On more than one occasion during storm season, we had helped each other’s ranches prepare for sudden emergencies. He also had a horse get loose a few years back that I tracked down for him.
Both men approached me at roughly the same time, and I tried to exchange pleasantries, but it was no use. They could both tell I was surly and bitter. I didn’t like being that way, but there was just too much going on. So much crap about my father was being brought up, and more about how I felt about my brothers. Then to top it all off, the catalyst of it all was Leah, who was probably back at the rodeo cursing my name.
Just as well, I thought. She deserves to do that. I’m no good for her anyway.
“Well, it was good catching up,” Tommy, the kid I knew from grade school said.
I accounted for about six words in the entire conversation, but he seemed not to mind. He was three sheets to the wind anyway. He could have talked to a stuffed scarecrow and I didn’t think it would have mattered much. As he stumbled away, heading toward Bill to procure a room to crash in, the door in the back opened and my hand tightened around the remnants of my first beer of the evening.
Anger would have kept me sober if the beer had an effect. The darker beers were much heavier in alcohol, which was why I liked them, but with only one in my system, I was still stone-cold sober. I downed the rest of the beer and asked for another, which Bill dutifully poured.
I watched the figure make his way into the bar and head directly for me in his slow, ambling way. I pounded the beer down in a few massive gulps and signaled for another. Bill simply nodded and refilled the mug. My eyes never left the grinning face approaching me, and if anger was what I was feeling before, it was nothing compared to the bile I was feeling building up in me right then.
“You’re cut off,” the voice of Roy Hayes said, trying to sound deep and full of bass and authoritative. I always thought he sounded like a little boy talking into the back of a fan, trying to imitate Darth Vader. Just without all the fun breaks in sound.
“Excuse me?” I said.
“No more beer,” Roy said, the grin stretching up one side of his face. He hadn’t removed his hat or his mirrored sunglasses, which tracked for him. He always wanted people to recognize his cop status, and literally seemed to beg for their respect or fear. I had neither for him.
“Pound sand, Roy,” I muttered, turning back to the beer being set in front of me. “I’ve only had two beers, and I’m having a rough night. I don’t want trouble, and I’m not driving anywhere else tonight. After I get up in the morning, you won’t ever see me again.”
Roy chuckled in his stupid, narcissistic way. He thought it made him sound cool, but it really sounded like a jackal with a two pack a day habit. He coughed to clear his throat and leaned against the bar, reaching out and pushing the beer away from my reaching fingers.
Bill looked between us but didn’t move. He was in a tough spot, and Roy likely was coming in to shake him down. What Bill did to operate his bar wasn’t always by the letter legal and the idea that Roy would come in and drink for free and still ask for other favors not to turn Bill in… well, as the younger rodeo kids said, it tracked.
“That’s not how this is going to go,” Roy said, enunciating each word like I was an imbecile. Considering I was pretty sure he had the IQ of a lukewarm ham sandwich, an imbecile was still better than whatever he was.
“Oh, it’s not?” I asked, not looking at him.
“Nope,” he said. “You don’t get off the hook that easy, Montgomery.”
With that, he reached forward, grabbed my beer, and held it at arm’s length in front of me. Slowly, he turned it over, pouring the beer out on the bar. My eyes were locked on Bill’s, who looked defeated and sad. There was a desperation in his look, one that said that not only was Roy here doing his regular extortion but that Bill didn’t have the wherewithal to stop him, or the money to put the bar back together if I stood up and beat his ass.
I clenched my fists on the bar and some of the beer splashed in the open wounds. It stung like hell and I grimaced. The knuckles were still split from the brawl earlier, and my muscles were tired and sore from both the fight and from the drive. I had just started the process of unwinding from all that, but my back was still tight and my ribs still aching. I was in no damn shape to get into another fistfight, but knowing Roy Hayes, I wasn’t going to get a choice.
My head was pounding, and my eye was sore from the black eye I caught a glimpse of in the bar mirror. I was in pretty rough shape. But I wasn’t done. Not by a long damn shot.
Slowly, I put the coaster for my beer that I had been fiddling with down on the bar. I scooted the chair back and the last look I saw on Bill’s face was one of resigned sadness. It was very probable he was going to need to replace some furniture, but I would pay him for it. Whatever damage I did to his place, I would double, so long as he didn’t get between me and my business. And that business was pounding the smirk off Roy Hayes’s dumb face.
I stood, and the bar went even quieter than normal. An old Johnny Cash tune played on the radio softly, and in his vaguely menacing voice, I heard the inspiration for the beating I was going to lay on the lawman.
My ribs screamed out in agony when I turned too fast, but I refused to let the pain cross my face as I went eye to eye with Roy. He tried to read my expression, but I gave him nothing. He was either going to make the first move or I was going to hit him without telegraphing it.
I was bent on letting the lonesome whistle of my fist through the air blow my blues away.
Chapter 32
Leah
“Can you believe him?” I asked. “I mean, seriously. Can you believe he would act like that?”
It was probably the thousandth time I’d asked those questions, but I couldn’t stop them from coming out again. At that point, I honestly wasn’t sure if I was asking Macy or myself. I was still trying to process everything that happened, but no matter how many times I thought it through, it stuck in my brain and I couldn’t really believe it was how it all unfolded.
“How does he get off acting like that? Who the hell does he think he is talking to me that way, then just driving off? If he thinks that I am going to mope around and pine for him, he has another thing coming.”
Now I couldn’t believe I had actually just said that. It was something I remembered my grandmother saying when I was very young, during one of the rare times I actually got to spend a couple of days with her. At the time, I thought it sounded impressive. As I got older, I started to wonder if I had even heard it correctly. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Now I found myself actually saying it.
That was the place I was in. Saying things I wasn’t even sur
e meant anything because I was so flabbergasted and angry.
“I seriously can’t even wrap my brain around this,” I said. “I’m trying to. Really. I’m going through it all and trying to piece it together in some sort of way that will make sense and I’ll be able to see the cracks. Like there’s got to be a red flag somewhere and I just didn’t see it because I was so…”
I couldn’t even put it into words. Was there something about Colt I just didn’t notice because of how he affected me? There was no point in even trying to deny I got pretty wrapped up in him. From the beginning, there was just something that drew me in. Was it possible that had kept me from seeing who he really was?
Did I give him all kinds of excuses and defend him when he didn’t actually deserve it?
“Here I was thinking this man was so sweet and so amazing. I was amazed I found him and he seemed to want me as much as I wanted him. Everything was so perfect. I barely even knew what to do with myself, he made me so happy.”
Macy nodded. “Things seemed to be going well.”
“Right?” I asked. “And then out of nowhere, he turns into an absolute intolerable jackass. I wish there was even another way I could describe him, but there isn’t.”
“I still think ‘jackass’ is putting it too nicely,” Macy said.
“Yeah, I did everything I could to make him a part of the group. I introduced him to people. I defended him and talked him up to people. I even went with him to his family’s ranch and tried to fix some of the mess around them. And what did I get out of that?”
“Nothing good.”
“Nope,” I said. “He jumped on me and accused me of overstepping. What the hell does that even mean? Overstepping what? Here I thought I was an adult who could make my own decisions and say what I wanted. But apparently, I have all sorts of restrictions and guidelines I’m supposed to follow.”
I looked over at Macy where she was sitting on my sofa staring blankly at me as I paced back and forth down the length of my trailer. As soon as Colt left, I had stormed back and intended on spending the rest of the day by myself, but I just couldn’t deal with it.
His Sexy Smile Page 18