by Jillian Neal
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
“You’re sure you want me to show you this place?” Natalie asked Aaron yet again. He watched her teeth sank into her bottom lip as she piled a quilt and a picnic basket into his arms.
“If I bite your lip for you, would you finally believe me?”
She rolled her eyes. “It’s just not the most exciting place in the world.”
“It’s your favorite place in this tiny town. To me that’s all kinds of exciting. Plus, I get to spend the afternoon with you. Nothing better than that.”
She followed him out to her truck. He set the picnic and blanket in the bed. “I’ve never shown this to anyone else. I’m not even sure my brothers and sisters go out there.”
“Then I’m honored, baby. You want me to drive?”
“Nope.” She hoisted herself into the driver’s seat and slammed her door. When he’d climbed in beside her she gave him that grin that he swore could light a thousand distant suns. “But hang on tight. It’s a rough ride.”
“My favorite kind.” He winked at her and fastened his seat belt.
Instead of heading to the gravel road that would lead them off of the ranch, she turned the other direction and drove over grass. “I take it your favorite place is somewhere on this ranch.”
“Yep.” Her spine was straight as a board and she kept gnawing that lip.
“Are you scared to show me, sweetheart? You don’t have to.” He reached for her hand.
“No, I want to show you. It’s just… well it would kind of be like showing you Mr. Sniffles.”
Smiling at her creative descriptions, he brushed a kiss across her knuckles. “Sharing a pretty important part of your life with someone is scary. I get that. Offer still stands. We can do something else tonight.”
“Just don’t ever tell anyone about this place. I don’t ever want it to change.”
“Classified information is definitely something I can deal with.”
They drove over cattle guards and enough pasture land he was shocked they were still on the same ranch. When they reached rocky terrain, she slowed the truck. “It’s not far.” The truck bounced and creaked as they traversed a ditch Aaron was concerned it couldn’t handle.
The grass turned to clumps of dead weeds and dirt. She kept going. A slight elevation was ahead. She parked the truck just before they reached it and hopped out. Aaron followed her up the hill.
“So, this is it.” She spread her arms and he took in an endless expanse of nothingness. Mounds of dirt ran all the way to the sinking orange sun set against the blue sky. “I know the grass is more picturesque or whatever but just look at it. No telephone or electric poles. No fences. No worn places from where we drive the feed trucks over and over again. If you just look at it and pretend, you can’t even tell what decade it is. It’s like time doesn’t exist here. Nothing exists here but us.”
“Hey.” He wrapped his arms around her. “You don’t have to explain it, baby. I get it. Believe me, I get it.”
“You do?”
“Oh yeah.” He sank down on the ground and pulled her into his lap. “You already know I grew up in foster care. The year before I started high school my social worker got wind of just how bad the place I’d been in was. She shut that home down and pulled a few strings on my behalf. I got sent to this farm in Gentry, Missouri. Whole entire town only had like fifty people living there. My new foster parents owned a farm. I got out of my social worker’s car prepared for the worst and walked out on the most beautiful bit of pastureland I’d ever seen. I stayed there until I joined the Army. There used to be a dirt field just like this where I’d go when I wanted to think. I was finally in the middle of a place where people cared about my well-being and that field in the middle of that farm felt like all of the shit I’d been through belonged to someone else’s life. It couldn’t reach me there.”
“You do get it.” She wrapped her arms around him with enough force that he swore her love was going to be enough to hold him together forever. “Thank you for telling me that.”
“Thank you for showing me this.”
“Do you ever go back to Gentry? Do you ever go visit your foster parents or your field?”
“No.” Aaron drew a hard line there. He’d already shared as much as he could. Going back to Gentry wasn’t an option. He couldn’t look Ms. Campbell in the eye. Not after all she’d done for him and how badly he’d let her down.
Natalie stared at him. He swore she was searching for his soul. She hadn’t quite figured out that his heart and his soul resided in her. “You can come to my field any time you want.”
“I plan on bringing you out here as often as you’d like.”
“Come on there’s something else I want to show you.” Crawling out of his lap, she took off.
“I’d follow you to the ends of the earth, Nat.” She was too far away to hear him but that was a truth he’d never hesitate to tell her.
Clutching the stitch in her side, Natalie panted as they came into view of her old barn. She tried not to be annoyed that Aaron wasn’t even breathing hard. Stopping a few yards from the door, she grinned. “So, this is the oldest building on the ranch. I have no idea when it was built but as far as we know it wasn’t built by a Camden.”
His hands traversed the crumbling dirt and stone structure. “Pretty rudimentary construction. Could be hundreds of years old.”
“Isn’t that cool.” She rushed inside, coughing from the dirt soaked air.
“Careful, baby. This roof could go at any moment.”
“I know but you have to see this.” Determined to go on with this even if it was lame, she scooted into one of the ancient horse stalls. “Look” She pointed to a pile of old metal horseshoes, mostly broken.
He grinned. “Kind of cool to think about people back then ranching the same way you all do, isn’t it?”
“See, I knew you’d get how cool this is. I love it up here.”
He knelt down to touch the horseshoes and his brow furrowed. “What’s that?” He pointed to a mound of dirt in the corner of the stall.
“I’m going to go with dirt.”
“No. Underneath it.” Prying a clod of earth out of his way, he shook off a stack of papers.
“Oh my gosh.” Thrilled with a new discovery in her barn, she snatched them out of his hand. “These don’t look very old.” Shuffling through a bunch of yellowed slips she tried to determine what she was looking at.
“If you’ll hand them back I might be able to help you figure out what they are,” he goaded.
“Sorry.” She handed over the find.
Stepping to the doorway he held one up to the fading sunlight. “They’re old horse race betting slips.”
“Can you see a date on them? This is so neat. I wonder if there used to be a track around here somewhere a long time ago?”
“Babe, you were right. These aren’t that old.”
“Then how did they get here?”
“No idea but these are from the nineties. Look they’re carbon copies.”
Her parents never gambled. They wouldn’t even allow the boys to play poker until they were grown and living on their own. No one she knew gambled. Her father wouldn’t even hire hands who occasionally bet on a Huskers game.
A sudden memory ripped the breath from her lungs. He’d been there. He’d been in her barn. How dare he? This was hers. And just like everything else he’d taken from her he had no business there. “Oh.”
Time came rushing back to her. She couldn’t push it away.
“There’s something else in here.”
She could barely make out his voice. The screech in her ears drowned out his curiosity. He flipped through the massive stack of yellow slips until something else came into her view.
His eyes goggled and all of the color bled from his features. He jerked his head away from whatever he’d seen like he’d been slapped. She didn’t want to know but she had to ask.
“What is it?”
Not even the
hatred and fear that had etched his face the night he’d had the flashback could compare to the raw fury in his eyes.
“Tell me.” She told herself to let it go but couldn’t.
“No. Let’s just go,” he choked.
“I already know whose gambling slips they are so just tell me.” She gagged, certain she was going to be sick.
“I don’t want to tell you, Nat. Please let’s just burn them or something.”
“So, they’re pictures right? Pictures of me I’m assuming.”
A single nod. Driven only by her own gall, she jerked the stack of slips out of his hand once again. Flipping to the thicker pieces of paper hidden in the stack, she found two photographs.
Both were of her and Holly standing on their parents’ front porch when they were in late elementary school. Mud was caked in their hair and covered the steps and porch railings. Her mother was doing her best to rid them of the mud they’d been playing in all morning. She’d stripped them and was toweling them off.
The picture had been snapped from so far away only their backsides were truly discernible. “Guess it could’ve been worse.” The papers fluttered to the ground as she turned and flew out of the old barn.
She didn’t stop until she reached her truck. Leaning against the door, she refused to feel anything at all. She would just pretend she’d never shown Aaron the barn. They’d just stopped right there in her field. The dirt she’d kicked up burned her throat and stung her eyes. She blinked rapidly trying to erase the things she refused to feel.
Fifteen minutes later, Aaron returned to her.
“What took you so long?”
“I had the lighter in my pocket for the candles you packed for the picnic. I burned them. Had to make sure it didn’t burn down your barn because I will not let whoever took those pictures take that place from you. I won’t. And if he were here right now, it would be him I’d be setting on fire right after I beat him senseless.”
“Thank you,” she managed in a haggard choke.
“Come on, baby, talk to me. Tell me how to help you handle this.”
“I don’t know.”
“Then I’m taking you home and I’m gonna hold you until you’re ready to talk.”
“I’m never going to be ready to talk.”
“Then I guess I’ll be holding you forever because I’m not going anywhere.”
CHAPTER FORTY
Spreading the quilt out on her living room floor instead of in her favorite field, Aaron set up the picnic as best as he could. The dogs were stretched out nearby, eyeing the picnic basket hopefully. He already had a fire roaring in her fireplace. If it weren’t for her sicko uncle, this would’ve been nice.
Using the same lighter he’d used to incinerate the photos, he lit the candles he’d set on her coffee table. “Come here,” he held out his hand.
“You didn’t have to do this.” She started to sit beside him on the floor, but he guided her into his lap instead.
“I told you I will not let him take anything else from you. Not your barn. Not this picnic. Not your dignity. Not your field. Not anything else on this ranch that you love. And sure as hell not me.”
If he hadn’t been hell-bent on never leaving her side, he would already have driven back to his house and beaten the fuck out of Rasmussen. Her uncle’s name wasn’t the only one on those slips. He’d recognized the old man’s handwriting before he’d even found one with his name on it.
There were only two possible reasons Rasmussen hated her so much. He was afraid someday she might find physical evidence against him and press charges, or he blamed her for keeping him from his sick hobby. He was too stupid to know the old betting slips weren’t enough to convict him in a state courtroom. Aaron didn’t give a damn what a judge might rule. He’d execute the man himself. He stopped short of listing ways to murder his landlord while making it look like an accident.
“I don’t want to remember that part of tonight. I want to remember all of the other things that I liked about it.”
“Okay.” He rocked her back and forth. “Then that’s what we’ll do. Your field is beautiful, baby.”
“I still love it.”
“Good. I want you to still love it. Never stop going there. Don’t give it up.”
“The barn is still really cool but I…”
“Don’t want to go visit that for a while.”
She nodded.
“You tell me when you think you’re ready. I’ll take you back up there and I’ll be right beside you the entire time. Okay? Bet I could even get all of your big brothers to go with us. I know they make you feel safe.”
“They do, but I don’t need them so much anymore. I have you.”
“Always.”
Cosseted safely in Aaron’s embrace, Natalie quirked one eye open the next morning. Make it stop. She whimpered. The buzzing continued.
Sitting up, she grabbed her cell phone from her bedside table. “Hey, Mama,” she yawned.
“If you’da told me a month ago that my girl was gonna fall in love with a man who’d make her sleep in late, I woulda called you a liar.”
“Sorry. Rough night.”
“Something happen with you and Aaron?”
“Not exactly. We’re fine. What did you need?”
“Well, your brothers are fit to be tied over doing your chores for you so after you go check your cattle bring Aaron down for breakfast. I’m making strawberry pancakes.”
“Yum.”
“Hurry up and you can lick the beaters on the mixer,” her mother bribed.
“Are you making strawberry whipped cream, too?”
“Does your mama ever do anything halfway?”
“Definitely not.”
“Then I’m making strawberry whipped cream. Get your behind over here.”
“Okay. We’ll hurry.”
“We’ll hurry to do what?” Aaron’s entire face contorted with his yawn.
“Mama’s making strawberry pancakes. She makes them with the preserves she puts up. They’re amazing. But I have to check my cattle first, so get up.”
“If I go down there with you, is your daddy gonna take pot shots at me?”
“Possibly, so just stay behind me.” Natalie giggled.
“Not a fan of the idea of using you as body armor but your daddy definitely won’t shoot you so I may take you up on that.” Aaron crawled out of bed, grinning at her. “Feeling a little better this morning?”
“Much. And no nightmares so that’s good. Plus, strawberry pancakes improve all situations.”
“Let me find clothes and feed the dogs.”
“I’ll make us coffee,” Natalie called as she headed down the hallway.
An hour later, the horses were fed and her cattle were all accounted for. They were just pulling into view of her parents’ house when a loose steer darted in front of Aarons’ truck. He slammed on the brakes missing the steer but causing Natalie to dump hot coffee all over her lap.
“Oh God, baby, I’m sorry.”
Natalie held up her hand willing the hot sting to cool. “I’m fine and I’ll dry. Spilled coffee is way better than a dead steer.”
“Let’s get you inside so I can get that coffee off of you.”
“I’m fine.” Natalie popped open his glove box searching for napkins.
“Nat, don’t.” He grabbed her hand but it was too late. Instead of the napkins she’d been expecting to find, her hand landed on a letter address to Hope.
Jerking away from him she stared from the letter to him. “Why do you have a letter for Hope?”
“I, uh… it was in the…”
“How did you get this?” Her body flushed hot and then ran ice cold. The acid in her stomach swirled into a maelstrom. She recognized the scratchy handwriting from the betting slips she’d seen the night before. Tearing open the envelope, she jerked open the letter. “Tell me how you got this. Tell me right now.”
“T took it.” His voice was a half-haunted whisper. T. The library. Che
ryl seeing T at the court house. All of the pieces fit far too neatly. “You broke into the library didn’t you. You took this from her desk or something. You were the one who broke the lock and the windows. You and T, right?”
“No.”
“Stop lying to me!”
“It was T and Griff. It wasn’t me.”
“Oh my God. The night at the fair. When you said you were going to Cottonwood. You were in Moorer’s Woods. You went to get them because they’d found this.”
“They almost got caught at the library. I had to rescue them. You wouldn’t tell me who’d hurt you. I just… Nat please. Please, I’m so sorry.”
“So, what, I wouldn’t tell you so you hired your friends to find out everything about me. Is that it?”
He had the audacity to nod. Bastard.
“The courthouse. Oh my God. Cheryl saw T outside the courthouse. Did he break in there, too?”
“They were looking for the wills.”
“I trusted you.” She raged in his face. “I trusted you with everything!” Flinging the door open she bolted toward her parents’ house. “I hate you. I never want to see you again,” she screeched as she reached the porch.
Her parents and brothers all raced outside. Dec, Holly, Brock, and Hope followed after them.
“Nat please,” Aaron continued to beg as he raced after her.
Shoving past Luke, Natalie took the stairs two at a time. “Tell him to leave,” she shrieked before slamming her door.
“What the hell?” Luke and Austin made it to Aaron first. If they wanted to beat the shit out him or kill him in cold blood at that moment, he would have let them. “What did you do?”
He’d made a career out of always having the right thing to say at the right moment. Lies. Truth. Half of both. It never mattered. But he’d reached the end of the rope. There was nothing but the truth. It was the only thing he’d ever owed her and it was the singular thing he’d withheld. “I tried to find your uncle.”
Every single member of the Camden family froze where they were. Dec’s eyes closed for the better part of a minute. Ev’s mouth was still hanging open.
“Why would you want to find my father?” Brock finally asked.
“We’ll talk about that later,” Jessie decreed. “Aaron, sweetie, let me talk to her. Let’s just let her cool off a little.”