Inside is absolute pandemonium.
Brody, Brutal, and Bobby are all fighting with some bigass motherfuckers. Fists are flying and punches are landing with oomphs, but it’s not a fair fight, not with the size of these guys.
“Luke!” Shay cries out.
I turn to follow her voice and I see absolute red. Another guy has her held by the arms, but she’s fighting his restraint like a fucking champ, yanking and pulling her arms and stomping on his feet. Unfortunately, she’s barefoot, because she could do some real damage if she had on boots. If anything, though, he’s not hurting her, just holding her back from her brothers.
That’s my Shayanne!
I have no idea what’s brought this all on, but I know whose side I’m on. Shayanne’s.
Mark and James must have the same thought because we all join in, tackling the newcomers.
Welcome to town, fuckers! Try a good old country boy ass-kicking as a thanks for stopping by!
With improved odds, we make some real headway, but the guys we’re fighting aren’t just big for show. They’re skilled, and the bruises blooming on the Tannens’ faces show that. Hell, Brody’s nose is bleeding when I join the fight he’s waging.
Punches pound flesh, a sick sound filling the room as we all take hits. It’s a mess of arms and legs, bodies fighting for dominance. I just keep aiming for the guys in black shirts mixed in with the chaotic heap of our battle.
An uppercut hits my gut, and I feel my rib complain. I can see that Brody threw it. On accident or on purpose, I don’t know, and we don’t have time right now to address our own shit.
Almost too quiet to hear, a voice says, “Enough.”
Just like that, the black shirt-wearing guys stop fighting. They push off us, totally nonchalant, done with the fight because they were instructed to be. Brody throws one more solid punch at the guy closest to him and a crack of a nose answers.
Judging by the blood-tinted smile Brody gives the guy, it’s payback for his own smashed schnoz.
I turn to see a guy in a turtleneck sitting on the couch, examining his nails like we weren’t all just fighting for our lives. He actually looks bored.
He stands, scanning the room, his dark eyes landing on Brody. “One way or the other, I’ll have my money.” He looks around again. “Though, rest assured, I wouldn’t dream of living in a place like this. I’ll sell it.”
Shayanne gasps and my brow furrows. What the hell is this asshole talking about?
He doesn’t answer my unspoken question. He simply walks out the front door, his men following him. We all hold our breaths until we hear their SUV start and drive away. It’ll still be a solid minute until they hit the other side of the fence, but the immediate threat is gone.
“What the fuck?” I say, my breath pained from exertion and my now aching ribs.
“What the fuck is right! What are you doing here?” Brody yells at me, anger reddening his face and making his nose bleed faster.
Incredulously, I sputter. “What? I’m saving your ass! You’re welcome, by the way.”
“Didn’t ask for your fucking help, Bennett!” he roars. Suddenly, he runs at me, tackling me to the floor.
A flurry of punches batters my body as I keep my guard up to protect my face. I buck my hips, setting him off balance and tossing him off me. I quickly hop to my feet, but he comes at me again and I’m forced to fight back. I throw a solid cross to his jaw, avoiding the cheap shot at his nose, and follow up with a hit to his gut too.
Doesn’t feel so good, does it, asshole?
He growls, and I realize that was out loud, not in my head. He lands a good hit to my cheekbone and pain blooms bright and hot as I feel blood trickle down where the skin split.
Bad part is, I still don’t know why he’s attacking me.
Shayanne cries out, “Stop! Brody . . . stop!” I chance a glance her way to see Mark holding her back. I’m glad because I know her and she’d run pell-mell into the middle of whatever this is and get hurt. I don’t want that.
But if Brody needs to bleed me, so be it. I don’t know what we walked into over here, but I’m damn sure gonna see it through.
We trade a few more punches, each throwing more than we land and our breath jagged with exhaustion. Mark whistles loudly, his county fair-winning piercing edition, and everyone cringes. Mama covers her ears with her hands but nods her approval.
“As that nasty fellow who left said, enough,” Mama declares. “Now let’s get you all cleaned up and we can figure out what the fuck’s going on.”
Everyone freezes. Mama just dropped an F-bomb. I can count on one hand the number of times that’s happened in my lifetime and not even need all five fingers. It’s a sure sign that she’s done with whatever fighting we’re doing and we’d best get ourselves straight right quick or she’ll be the one to do it. It’s a threat I’ve heard before, and I don’t even know what it means. I’ve never pushed hard enough to find out, and I’m certainly not gonna start today.
“Yes, ma’am,” I say, daring Brody with my eyes to say anything contrary.
Instead, he growls and points a crooked finger at me. “I can handle my own family shit. Back the fuck off.” He spins on his heel and stalks to the front door. The screen door slams behind him loudly, and through the windows, I see him punch a porch post as he yells out, “Fuck!”
He buries his hands in his hair, pulling at the strands.
Mama dips her chin, her lips pressed together in a thin line that makes the wrinkles above her lip flash. “We’ll let Brody cool off while I deal with the rest of you. Shayanne, can you lead us to the kitchen and hand me some towels that we can use for cleanup?”
No one says a word as Mama and Shayanne tend to our wounds. For the most part, it’s bruising, so we don’t ruin many of Shay’s kitchen towels, but we do use almost every bag of frozen vegetables she has in the freezer.
Mark’s got one on his right hand and one on his left shoulder. James has one to his jaw, holding it with the back of his bruised hand in a multi-tasking necessity because Brutal and Bobby have a couple of bags each. Brutal’s got one on each hand—and I make a note that he’s seriously ambidextrous when he punches—and one resting on his thrown-back forehead to soothe his busted brow. Bobby’s flexing his hand slowly, and I hope he’s not too hurt to play guitar again because that’d be a shame. He drops the bag of peas back onto it with a grimace, but he doesn’t seem too upset, so that’s a good sign. His other hand moves to hold a bag to his jaw.
We look like the losers, but somehow, just getting out of that fight alive feels like a victory.
“What happened, kids?” Mama asks.
Brutal and Bobby look to Shayanne, the apparent family leader in Brody’s absence.
She tells us about Edward Franks and his goons coming over, wanting to see Brody, and how she’d called in the cavalry because she’d felt like this was going to be bad.
She’d been right, unfortunately. And we’re all paying the price.
“So, what does this Franks guy want?” Mama asks Shayanne. “He said he wanted his money and that he’d sell this place.”
Shayanne looks at Brutal and Bobby, shaking her head and throwing her palms up like she doesn’t even know how to begin to answer that.
Brutal clears his throat. “He said he was a friend of Dad’s.”
Even that little bit answers so much. Paul Tannen was a good man for a lot of years, a less good man for some, but recently, his escape into gambling had been scandalous. Win big, lose big, play hard either way. And Edward Franks’s appearance becomes seriously concerning.
“He said Dad signed a line of credit to keep the cashflow rolling after we cut him off . . . and put up the farm as the collateral. It’s payable on death after all heirs reach the age of twenty-one, so we can either pay off the huge loan Dad ran up or Edward’ll take the farm to pay the debt,” Brutal finishes.
Shay growls, literal fury rolling in her chest. “The one damn thing Daddy could’ve done rig
ht, but he even managed to fuck that up by dying weeks before my birthday.”
Brutal shrugs. “At least we’re dealing with it now, with slightly clearer heads. I don’t know what would’ve happened if that guy had shown up to the funeral talking about taking the farm.”
“We would’ve run him out of town, that’s what,” Mama scoffs. “He came now because that’s what the contract said, but make no mistake, he came knowing you kids would be blindsided by this. He wanted the upper hand.” She tsks like that’s a shameful thing. “Do you even know if this is true? I mean, does he have paperwork with Paul’s signature?”
Shayanne shakes her head, and Brutal’s and Bobby’s brows rise. A glimmer of hope that maybe this is all some misunderstanding tries to lighten my anger.
Then Brody comes back in the back door. He’s obviously been listening from the porch, judging by the hard line of his jaw. His nose is straighter than it was before, so I guess he set it himself, which must’ve hurt like a son of a bitch. Tough fucker, that one.
Mama tosses a bag of okra to him, which he catches with ease in one hand, but I see the slight grimace. The other holds a manila envelope.
“Asshole left this on the front porch. Seems he might have a leg to stand on,” he says, his voice deep and angry. But I can see how tired he is, the weariness etched in every line of his face and the set of his shoulders.
Shayanne gasps, her hands covering her mouth, but in the next heartbeat, she’s pissed as a raging bull. “No! We will fight this with everything we have.” Her nail digs into the wood of the table as she makes her point. “I’m not leaving my home because Daddy messed up and fucked us over.”
I know how hard it hurts her to say that, to know it down to her soul. Brody licks his lips and winces when he tastes the blood from the fresh split there.
He goes to Shayanne, an invisible thread pulling them together. He hauls her into his arms and she curls against his chest. She doesn’t cry, not now. She’s holding strong, gearing up and getting ready for battle. There’s a part of me that wishes she was seeking comfort from me, but I know she needs this from her brother.
The connection between them has been fraying, unraveling bit by bit as they battle it out over Shay and me. But in this moment, I think we all realize that there are bigger problems looming, and whom Shayanne loves doesn’t matter in the least as long as we all love each other.
Okay, so I don’t love Brody Tannen, and he certainly doesn’t love me. But as long as we both love Shayanne and tolerate each other, that’s got to be enough, right?
I meet his eyes and see more than I expect.
He attacked me today, bled me over interfering in his family, with Shayanne and with the shitstorm that landed on his front porch. But I can see his silent apology, his pain as he struggles to be everything to everyone and his hope that his family can just be happy. I remember that Mark seemed to feel a kinship with the eldest Tannen son, and if I can manage to understand Mark’s grunts, maybe I can learn to translate Brody’s fists into the words he truly means to say.
Family—Protect. Love. Survive.
Farm—Work. Support. Provide.
That’s all there is to him, all that matters.
I nod my chin once, and in some type of cowboy conversation, a truce is made.
“Bennetts, thank you for coming today. But can we get a little privacy now? We have some things to discuss as a family,” Brody says flatly.
We stand up from the kitchen table and begin a circle jerk of careful handshakes, brothers to brothers. Mama goes in for a hug with each of them, fussing over their cuts and telling Brutal that he needs to put Steri-strips on his brow. He agrees, though we all know he’ll do nothing of the sort.
I kiss Shay on the forehead, and she closes her eyes and whispers, “Thank you.”
“Anytime, honey,” I promise her.
Last but not least, I shake Brody’s hand. It’s a tight grip for both of us, one last pissing match that hurts both of our abused hands. But he growls, “Thank you.”
I know it cost him a lot to say that, especially to me.
So I let him off the hook he’s uncomfortably twisting on and let him know that we’re good. “Next time you throw hands at me, I’ll go for your nose instead of being nice and getting your jaw.”
He smirks like the cocky bastard he is. “You can try, motherfucker.”
It’s not a pretty ceasefire, but it’s ours and I’ll take it.
Chapter 30
Shayanne
I don’t bother with a real dinner, not after the battle royale of the afternoon. I toss microwaved ham steaks, box macaroni, and cold biscuits on the table and call it done. It all tastes like sawdust, anyway.
“So, what are we gonna do, Brody?” I ask, jumping into the deep end with both feet.
He swallows a bite of ham and lays his hand on the stack of papers he read out loud to us. Seems Daddy really did sign a contract with Edward Franks.
The gist of it is that Daddy had a line of credit and was making payments up until a week before he died. He managed to get a clause in the contract that we all had to be twenty-one for the collateral to be actionable, which would’ve been a small kindness if we’d been younger and wanting to stay on the farm until we grew up. But since we’re all of age, we have no time, no money, and no options.
Brody looks like a man drowning in his insufficiency, but I don’t think any of us were ready for something like this. I always thought Daddy was funding his gambling with his own wins and the little ‘allowance’ we gave him. At least, that’s what he assured us was happening.
Guess not, huh, Daddy?
“First things first, we need to see the lawyer in the morning. He handled Dad’s will and estate stuff, and he probably knows more about contracts than any of us, so maybe he can give us some advice on where to start.”
“Uhm, not that Mr. Jacobsen isn’t good,” I ask, biting my lip, “but do you think this might be a bit outside his norm?”
Brody sighs but looks choiceless. Thankfully, I have an idea.
“I think I’ll call Sophie tonight too. Her brother’s that big shot, and I’m sure he’s got some bulldog lawyer he can recommend. ’Kay?”
“He probably does, but we can’t afford some high-dollar suit, Shayanne,” Bobby says miserably.
“We have to,” I argue. “The safe deposit box had a few thousand dollars in it, not enough to make a dent in Daddy’s debt, but maybe enough to get us some real advice, at least. We can’t lose the farm because we don’t know what we’re doing. None of us are stupid, but this isn’t something we can begin to handle on our own. I mean, look at y’all.”
My eyes tick around the table to my brothers, each one with bruises still blooming in ugly swatches of black and blue.
“I can handle our shit, Shayanne,” Brody protests. “Always have, always will.”
I don’t respond, just glare back. This is so far beyond the scope of anything he or I have ever done, and we can’t just start now. Now when the stakes are so high. Hell, we could end up losing a lot more than just the farm.
Brody blinks silently and then begrudgingly agrees. “Fine, call Sophie. See if someone can meet us anytime tomorrow, in town or out here. We need to act fast because I don’t trust that Franks won’t come back out here. I’m scared he won’t give you a chance to call me next time.”
A hush falls over the table. I’ve never felt vulnerable at home before. We’ve always been safe, and the folks out here in our remote area are kind and friendly, the sort that’d give you the shirt off their backs. But today, I’d been alone with danger. It went badly for our family, but it could’ve been worse, much worse.
“I’ll lock the front gate and set it to manual before I go to bed tonight,” Bruce says. “No one will get in without a remote.”
“Unless they’re on foot and just climb over,” I correct.
Bruce sighs, knowing I’m right.
Silence reigns for several minutes, the only sound the
scraping of forks on plates and Brody’s slightly wheezy breathing from where his nose still ain’t quite right.
Bobby finally speaks. “We gonna talk about the other thing? About the Bennetts?”
It’s a bold move on his part. We’re in the eye of a tornado and he just threw fire into the mix.
Is a fire-nado a thing?
I don’t know, but it feels like it’s swirling all around us right now, real or not.
Brody gets up from the table, refilling his tea and dropping it to the table so hard it sloshes over the rim. His mood’s gone dark, his eyes black as soot. We can all feel the shift, and I’m honestly scared of what Brody’s going to say.
“You know what I think?” He scoffs at some thought only he can hear in his mind, his paces across the kitchen floor picking up speed as my heart races. “I think Dad didn’t know shit. Maybe once upon a time, he did, but here lately, he was mean, Shay. Mean to those people next door, mean to us.” He looks at Bruce and Bobby, whose heads have dropped. “He was wrong.”
I wonder if Daddy was a different man to them than he was to me. I’ve had some eye-opening thoughts about who Daddy was and what might’ve made him devolve into the man he’d become, but maybe even that’s not the whole picture. Today’s definitely proof of that.
We each had a relationship with him, but that doesn’t mean it was the same for each of us. There’s a saying I heard once. Hell, it was probably one that I repeated with a ‘Daddy says’ at one time or another.
Some people say I’m sweet as an angel. Some people say I’m cruel as the devil. They’re both right. Just depends on who you are to me.
I wonder if I got the nicer version of Daddy as ‘his girl’ and what that means the boys got from him.
I don’t have time to contemplate, though, because Brody is laying down his verdict.
“It was good of them to come over today,” he starts.
I can’t help but interrupt. “You beat Luke up for that.”
Captain Obvious, shut up and let the man speak!
Brody shrugs, smiling a little. “Well, he got in the way of me whipping those guys’ asses.”
Racing Hearts: Bennett Boys Ranch Page 29