Nathan stared at his father, his disbelief twofold. Aside from the utter hypocrisy of the statement, the fact that his father would even insinuate that ten-year-old Angel was some kind of prostitute—and that he, Nathan, had been “whoring after” her—made his insides turn over on themselves. He couldn’t keep a look of disgust from rising to his face.
Nathan spoke out of shock, rather than a desire to argue. “She’s not a whore, and I wasn’t—”
His father interrupted him, his voice filled with contempt. “All women are whores. You’ll learn, and then you’ll know, just like me.”
The words flew out of Nathan’s mouth before he could stop them. “I will never,” he spat out, “be anything like you.”
He expected his words to infuriate his father, but instead, they had the opposite effect. His father stepped back, releasing Nathan’s shoulders from his grasp as he did so, his hands falling to his sides.
A cold smile spread over his father’s face, and he laughed before he spoke. “Boy, it’s in your blood. You are me. You just don’t know it yet.”
***
Nathan thought he would feel relieved as he and Angel separated to go their own ways, but instead, he felt worse. A strange anxiety he couldn’t quite describe started at the base of his skull, and then crept outward from there, filling his mind, twisting his stomach, and tightening his hold on the reins.
The shock of meeting Angel on the road had unsettled Nathan. Even though he had stopped in the general store to ask what had become of Angel, Nathan had never truly expected to see her again. Angel’s town was not so far from where he lived, but it was far enough that either Angel or Nathan would have had to go out of their way for their paths to cross again. Angel wouldn’t have known how to find him, even if she had wanted to. And until his father had left for good, Nathan had never thought about going back.
Well, that wasn’t quite true. He had thought about it, once. That thought had been quashed with the realization that by doing so, he would create one more thread tying Angel’s life to his—and correspondingly, to his father’s. Nathan had been able to think of nothing worse.
But his father was gone now.
Nathan played his and Angel’s conversation over and over in his mind, trying to reason away the sinking feeling in his stomach. Angel had asked—no, insisted—that Nathan leave. He had left. That was all there was to it. So why did he feel like he was going to be sick?
Nathan had unhitched the horses from the wagon and finished rubbing them down, and was measuring out the grain in their stalls before he finally made his decision. He grabbed a bridle off the wall and slid it onto the mare’s nose when she lifted her head out of the bucket, chewing a mouthful of oats. She tossed her head, protesting the idea of leaving her meal.
“Easy,” Nathan soothed her, patting her neck. “We’ll be right back, I promise.”
The mare eyed him, then shoved her nose back in the bucket for another mouthful of oats. He pulled at the bridle, and, shaking her head, she grudgingly followed him back out of the barn. He lifted himself up onto her back—he didn’t bother with a saddle—and they set out. The mare had a long stride that was smooth and covered ground quickly; it didn’t take long for the town to reappear in the distance, and once there, it took even less time for Nathan to find Angel.
She was sitting on the front steps of the saloon.
Still far enough away to have escaped Angel’s notice, Nathan pulled back on the reins and slid off the mare without speaking. Nathan stood, silently watching Angel, and a strange feeling that he had been in this moment before passed through him. Just like the first day they had met, Nathan felt himself drawn to her. He walked slowly toward her, pausing to wrap the reins of the bridle around the hitching post, then sat heavily down beside her. Angel hastily scrubbed at her eyes, and, with a realization that made his stomach twist into an even tighter knot, Nathan saw that she had been crying.
“Why are you here, Nathan?” Angel asked.
“I wanted to make sure you had a place to stay.”
Angel laughed softly, without humor. “Turns out there isn’t a place for someone like me.”
Even though Nathan knew Angel was simply responding to what he had said, he had the uncomfortable feeling that Angel’s response meant something more: that there was no place, anywhere, for her. They sat in silence for a few moments, and then Nathan gestured at the building they sat in front of. “The saloon?” he asked.
Angel shot him a look of disgust. “I’m not staying at the saloon.”
“No,” Nathan said. “I mean, why are you sitting in front of the saloon?”
Angel was quiet for so long Nathan thought she wouldn’t answer, but she finally said, “Maybe this is where I belong. Maybe I never should have left the saloon. People look at me the same no matter where I’m at, but at least before I wasn’t trying to be anything different.”
Nathan snorted, and Angel looked at him in surprise. “You don’t believe that,” he said.
“Don’t I?”
“No. At least, not all of it.”
Angel held his gaze for a moment—not agreeing, but not arguing—before resting her chin on her hand and staring down the road toward the general store. “That girl at the store—she doesn’t seem to like me much.”
“Yeah, Valentine’s a real piece of work.”
“That’s one way to put it,” Angel muttered.
A smile flitted across Nathan’s face, then fled as Angel heaved a sigh and leaned forward to lay her head on her arms, crossed and resting on her knees. She didn’t have to speak to let Nathan know what she was thinking. The edge of the sun was just beginning to touch the horizon, and soon it would be dark. And Angel still had no place to stay. Unless . . .
No. That was a terrible idea.
But Nathan was out of good ideas.
He glanced again at the setting sun, then turned to Angel and blurted, “Stay with me.”
His words were meant as a question, but Angel’s face paled. The words that tumbled from her lips were rushed, as though her hasty explanation could form a physical barrier between them. “No. It’s not—I can’t. Please, just leave. I never worked there, not like that . . .” Her words trailed off as Nathan, realizing what she thought he was asking of her, raised his hands, palms out, and hastily reassured her.
“I know.”
The panic in her eyes faded, but she continued to stare at him, unsure, and she leaned away from him, her arms folded across her chest, fingernails digging into her skin. Nathan held himself perfectly still, afraid to push nerves that had already been stretched, barely moving his mouth as he spoke, glancing around to make sure no one was near enough to overhear their conversation.
“I know you didn’t work at the saloon like that. I’m not asking you to stay with me—not in that way at least. But right now you don’t have anywhere else to go. I don’t want anything in return. You helped me once. Let me repay the favor. Stay with me until you can find something better.”
Angel’s body slowly untensed as he spoke, but when she replied there was a bitter edge to her voice. “When we met, when I helped you before—that was innocence. I was ten years old. It’s been seven years since—almost a whole other lifetime. I’m not the same.”
He spoke slowly. “It meant everything to me at the time. Let me help you.”
She shook her head. “I can’t stay with you.”
“Why?” Nathan asked.
“I just can’t,” she answered.
“If you can look me in the eyes and tell me you have any idea where you are going, or what you will do until you get there, I won’t ask you again.”
When she remained silent, he spoke again. “Stay. Just for a day or two, until you have a better plan. Besides, there will be a train coming through in a couple days.”
Still, Angel hesitated, looking at Nathan as though he were missing the most obvious problem in the world. “Aren’t you afraid of what people will say?”
His
bark of self-deprecating laughter caught her off guard. “I’m the son of an abusive drunk of a father who disappears for months at a time and hasn’t been seen now for over a year. I’m used to what people say.” He paused, then spoke the word one more time, gently: “Stay.”
***
Angel’s eyes flickered away from Nathan, then back, and then away again. She was accustomed to the things people whispered when she walked by, but the words never stung less. Still, she had never expected the cruelty that Nathan had shown, the way he had spat her name like it was dirty. Nathan’s words had pierced even through the walls of Angel’s expectations to score their marks on her heart. But now, he was offering her a place to stay, and twin emotions warred inside her.
Her heart couldn’t help feeling a sudden twinge of relief, but her mind couldn’t help balking at the pull of the idea.
The silence lengthened, growing more and more uncomfortable until Angel finally blurted, “Why?”
“Why?” Nathan repeated, surprised.
“Yes. Why are you offering me a place to stay, and how would it even be possible, and—” Angel paused. Her voice was half a tone lower as she continued. “And when you wake up tomorrow morning, will you wish you could pretend today was only a dream, or will you want to believe that it was real?”
Nathan considered her for a long moment. Angel held her breath, waiting.
“If I wake up tomorrow morning and this is real, what of it? Whether it is or isn’t, I don’t want you to leave. I’m asking you to stay because if I don’t, I’ll regret it. As for how it would be possible, that’s up to you. If you want to stay, it’ll be possible. If you don’t”—Nathan shrugged—“it won’t be.”
“But why do you want me to stay?” Angel pressed.
Again, Nathan didn’t respond immediately. When he did, it didn’t appear to be in response to her question. “I’m sorry for everything—for what I said earlier, for leaving you here in town, for what happened to you. I’m sorry for it all.”
“You want me to stay because you feel sorry for me?” Angel interpreted. Her insides cringed, and she was sure her expression reflected her distaste.
“Nah.” Nathan’s voice softened. “I want you to stay because I care what happens to you. Like I said, you helped me. Let me help you.”
Angel was silent for a long moment, then hesitantly, she asked, “I helped you? But what did I do that anyone else wouldn’t have done?”
Nathan searched Angel’s face, a bemused look on his own as though he didn’t understand why she would ask a question to which the answer was so obvious. Finally, with a slight shrug and a half smile, he answered, “Everything.”
Angel pondered his words, then spoke. “You didn’t truly leave me in town. You came back.”
A faint smile passed across Nathan’s lips. “There is that,” he admitted.
“So?” Nathan asked. Angel knew what he meant, even though he had left the real question unspoken. She wouldn’t make him repeat what he had already asked her so many times. She took a deep breath—she felt like she was jumping off a cliff blind, hoping that water or wings would break her fall—and answered, “Yes, I will stay.”
Chapter 5
Even after I saved my brother’s life, I couldn’t do any right in my father’s eyes. The day I saved my brother, my father beat me worse than he ever had—he said all because I nearly let my fool brother get himself killed.
***
Angel looked at the mare. “Should I ride behind you or . . .”
Her words trailed off and Nathan rubbed the back of his neck, recognizing for the first time the problems the lone, saddleless horse and Angel’s long skirts presented to propriety. Nathan ran through several possibilities in his mind, immediately discarding any scenario that involved Angel’s arms around him, or his around her, and settled on the only option he could think of that remained.
“You can ride, and I’ll walk,” Nathan said. Angel looked as though she might protest, so he quickly added, “The mare’s tired. She’ll be glad to be carrying only one of us anyway.”
To Nathan’s relief, Angel nodded. She walked to where Nathan was standing, and he cupped his hands together so that Angel could step into them and he could boost her onto the mare’s back.
As Nathan moved to lift Angel onto the horse, he paused, looking around to the nearly empty street and handful of people who were trying—and failing—to look as though they were not paying Nathan and Angel the slightest attention.
“Maybe we should wait until we are outside of town to ride.”
Angel followed Nathan’s gaze down the length of the street, then shook her head. “If we walk to the edge of town, it will look like we are trying to hide something.”
Nathan shrugged, then stooped and cupped his hands again.
Just as Nathan had lifted Angel onto the horse and handed her the reins, a voice hailed them. The soft dirt of the road had muffled the sound of someone approaching, and Nathan had been too preoccupied with settling Angel on the horse to notice anyone nearby.
Nathan turned at the sound of the voice, and the rider raised his hand to touch the brim of his hat. “Nathan.”
The greeting was a statement, but the man watched Angel as he spoke, and Nathan heard the question behind the man’s salute. Nathan looked at Angel, noticing her legs for the first time since he had lifted her astride the horse, bare up to her knees.
“Carl,” Nathan returned the man’s greeting, drawing his attention.
“You’re in town late,” Carl observed, his eyes still on Angel.
“We were just leaving,” Nathan answered, keeping his reply short.
Carl raised an eyebrow, nodding thoughtfully as he spoke. “Well, I’d best let you get on your way. You’ll want to make it to wherever you’re heading before dark.”
Ignoring the implied question, Nathan nodded, touched the brim of his hat, and patted the mare’s neck. “All right, Lady. Let’s go home.”
The horse snorted, as though to remind Nathan that leaving had not been her idea and started off in her long gait.
When they had left the man and the town out of sight, Angel spoke. “That man, Carl, do you know him well?”
Nathan shrugged. “Well enough. He owns the general store here in town. And he’s Valentine’s father.”
“Is he much like Valentine?”
“She had to learn it somewhere.”
“He and Valentine—they’ll tell people they saw us together?” Angel asked, but Nathan knew it was more a statement of fact than a question.
“Yes.”
Angel sighed. “I left to get away from everyone who thought they knew something about me.” She shook her head. “The stories are just following me.”
Keeping his eyes on the road ahead, Nathan spoke. “There’s something that I’ve been wondering about.”
Nathan could almost feel Angel tense, but her voice was even as she responded, “Yes?”
“The man at the general store back in your town—he said you left days ago. How is it you ended up on the side of the road as I was passing by?”
Angel shook her head, looking annoyed. “I didn’t leave until today. Geoffrey, the store owner, likes to think he knows everything. I bought a few things at the store he thought were suspicious—he was quite nosy about it—so when he didn’t see me for a couple days, he must have figured I had already left.”
Nathan did not respond for a long moment, then asked, “Why didn’t you leave sooner?”
Angel smoothed the mare’s mane along the horse’s neck, considering Nathan’s question before she answered. Finally, she said, “I was . . . rather ill in the months after the attack, and I didn’t have anywhere else to go. When I began to feel well enough to leave the saloon for longer periods, I started to hear the things people were saying about me—about the attack—and I knew I couldn’t stay any longer. I stopped caring that I didn’t know where I was going—I just wanted to be someplace where nobody knew who I was.”
Nathan’s hands tightened on the reins. “He’s gone,” he said shortly.
“Gone?” Angel asked. “Gone where? When will he be back?”
Nathan watched her out of the corner of his eye as he spoke. “I don’t know where he’s gone, but I doubt he’ll be coming back.”
“How do you know?” Angel pressed.
Nathan grimaced. “My father used to disappear for weeks, sometimes months, at a time. Usually during the winter. But this spring he never came back, and a few months ago the sheriff came by, saying my father was suspected of killing a man, asking if I’d seen him or knew where he went.”
“Your father killed someone?” Angel whispered.
Nathan shrugged. “Probably. I haven’t seen or heard from him since. I reckon I won’t, either. He knows I have no reason to keep his secrets.”
“Who was it? Do you know why?”
Nathan shook his head. “Nah, the sheriff didn’t say much else. And I didn’t ask. As bad as it sounds, it’s probably not the first time he’s killed someone.”
There was finality in Nathan’s last statement. Angel could feel him waiting for her reaction, but she was unsettled, and unsure how to respond. Her unease stemmed more from Nathan’s cavalier attitude than from his father’s actions. Of the two, it was Nathan’s attitude that seemed more out of place. Finally, when she could avoid it no longer, Angel asked, “Don’t you care?”
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