Wicked Hearts (Poplar Falls Book 3)

by Amber Kelly

  “He was with someone else two nights ago. I saw the proof with my own eyes, and he bragged about it,” he says.

  Then, he looks up at me, and I can see the hate burning in his eyes.

  “No,” she says on a strangled cry as she shakes her head.

  “Yes,” he says as he stills her movements and looks her in the eye.

  “You’re lying!” she shouts. Then, she turns to me and begs me, “Please tell him that’s not true.”

  “Elle, baby, I—” I start as I step toward her.

  “Stay there,” Braxton demands as he envelops her in his big arms, and I halt.

  “Walker?” she asks as her voice cracks with pain, and I watch as her heart breaks wide open in front of me.

  She breaks away from him and comes barreling toward me. She lands a hard slap against my swollen cheek before I can say a word, and then she shoots right past me and jumps into Sonia’s car. Ricky climbs into the driver’s side. I try to make it to the door before she closes it, and Sonia lunges at me.

  “Noooo. You stay away from her!” Sonia shrieks as she and Bellamy race up behind me.

  “Sonia, I need—”

  “You need to go to hell; that’s what you need to do,” Sonia screams in my face as she throws all her body weight into me.

  I stumble back from the car. They hop in the backseat, and they rocket out of the parking lot.

  We all watch as they go around the curve.

  Braxton’s voice pierces the silence. “Get your shit tomorrow, and Sophie will mail you your last check.”

  I turn to see all of them glaring at me.

  I just nod, and then I head to my truck.

  Payne follows me. “You need me to drive you home?” he asks.

  “Nope.”

  “You sure, man? You might have a broken rib or two.”

  I don’t respond. I just dig my keys from my pocket and let myself in. I crank the truck and slam it into reverse just as he approaches my window.

  His hands shoot up, and he backs away.

  I peel out of the parking lot and head home to my shack.

  Elle

  “Elle, honey, do you want to go with us to pick out the Christmas tree today?” Aunt Ria asks from her perch at the end of my bed.

  I look up, and Aunt Doreen’s hopeful face is standing in my door.

  It’s Sunday afternoon. I’ve been in bed since Thursday night when Ricky and Sonia dropped me off. I’ve spent the past two days hiding under my covers and crying. Braxton came in and tried to console me, as did my aunts, but I wasn’t in the mood. I just wanted to wallow in my pain.

  “I don’t feel very festive today, Aunt Ria.” I sniffle.

  “Well, lying here isn’t going to do anything to help you feel better,” she says gently.

  “I don’t want to feel better,” I tell her.

  “Oh, sweetheart, you can’t hide away in here forever. Nothing is ever resolved that way. You have to get the tears out, but then you have to get back up and fight,” she encourages.

  “Fight for what?”

  “For what you want,” she says.

  “What if what I want doesn’t want me? What then?”

  “What makes you think Walker doesn’t want you?” she asks.

  I guess Sophie or Braxton filled them in.

  “I don’t want him to just want me. I want him to want only me. And maybe that’s unfair. He’s always been honest about who he is, and he’s never promised me any different. I thought I could handle that, but Sonia was right. I’m not that girl. I thought he had … I mean, I thought we had … but he never said the words, so I was just fooling myself. I should have asked for the words. Then, he would have told me. I was afraid to because I think, deep down, I already knew,” I say before a flood of sobs racks me again.

  I bury my face in my pillow and let them out as she rubs comforting circles on my back.

  “This is nonsense, all of it,” Aunt Doreen’s voice booms.

  I look up at her.

  “Nonsense, and I won’t have it. If no one else is going to do anything about it, I will,” she says before turning on her heel and walking out.

  “Uh-oh, I think she’s a bit worked up,” Aunt Ria says.

  “I’m sorry I caused all of this. I should have known better,” I whisper.

  She reaches and brushes my hair behind my ear. “We don’t always have a choice when it comes to falling in love. You can fight it tooth and nail, and it will happen anyway. Our hearts can be stubborn like that.”

  “I don’t want him to lose his job. You have to talk to Uncle Jefferson and Pop and get them to make Braxton take it back,” I tell her.

  She gives me a regretful smile. “I don’t think it will be that simple. Braxton and Walker need to work together as a team, like Pop and Jefferson always have. They can’t just force that kind of relationship with an order. The boys have to work it out between them.”

  I shake my head. “Braxton won’t ever forgive him. You know that. And it’s all my fault.”

  “Do you think you can forgive him?” she said.

  I shake my head as the tears start leaking down my cheeks again.

  She reaches up and runs her thumbs across my face to wipe them away. “Then, maybe it’s for the best that he is not here every day.”

  “I hate this. I ruined everything they had planned.”

  She wraps her arms around me and squeezes tight. “Things always work out the way they are supposed to.”

  “I hope so,” I whisper.

  “Hope is just another word for faith. You keep the faith, Elle. Now, let’s start by getting up and taking a shower and getting dressed. You can’t heal until you start moving forward, so have enough faith to take the first step,” she says as she stands and reaches her hand out to me.

  “Okay, Aunt Ria,” I say as I take her hand.

  The shower does make me feel slightly human again. I throw on a pair of black leggings and an oversize white sweater, and then I head into the kitchen.

  “That’s better,” Aunt Ria says cheerfully as she hands me a cup of coffee.

  Emmett and Uncle Jefferson are sitting at the table.

  I look to them. “So, are we going to get a tree or what? Where’s Aunt Doe?”

  “She had to run out for a bit. She’ll be right back, and we’ll go,” Emmett answers.

  “Where did she run off to?” I ask.

  “To see a man about a horse,” he says with a shrug.

  “We will have a late breakfast while we wait. You need to eat,” Aunt Ria says as she grabs eggs and cracks them in a pan.

  My stomach growls at the sight.

  “That’s what I thought. Now, sit,” she demands.

  I do as she said.

  Walker

  I wake to a pounding at the door. Shit, maybe it’s a pounding in my head. I roll over and ignore it.

  “Walker Reid, you answer this door. I know you’re in there,” Doreen’s voice booms from the other side of my front door.

  I’m definitely ignoring that.

  I fall back to sleep until ice-cold water soaks my head.

  “Shit, what are you doing?” I yell as I turn over and wipe the water from my eyes.

  “Getting your hungover behind up,” Doreen says as she stands there with a pot in her hand.

  “I haven’t had a hangover since I was eighteen. I’m sleeping. How did you get in here anyway?”

  She walks over to the window and turns back with a scowl. Then, she reaches back, grabs the chain, and heaves the shade up. Bright noonday sun blasts in and fills the room. I bring my arm up to cover my assaulted eyes.

  “Door wasn’t locked. Now, get up,” she says as if that makes it perfectly okay that she came in, uninvited.

  She walks back to the kitchen and starts banging around, and I decide the ass-whipping she came to give me will probably hurt less than the sound she’s making rattling around in my head.

  I stand and stretch. Everything still aches from the
beating Braxton gave me three nights ago. That son of a bitch is strong as an ox and hits like a wrecking ball. We should have had him in some underground fighting ring in Denver all these years. We’d have made a killing.

  “Goodness, look at you. You’re a mess. Sit,” she orders as she pulls out a stool for me.

  She places a basket on the island and starts to unload it. My stomach lets out an anguished growl when the aroma of the fresh-baked bread hits my nose.

  She turns and gives me a stern look. “That’s what I expected. You haven’t eaten a thing, have you? You plan to sit here and drink yourself to death?”

  “No, ma’am. I ran out of alcohol yesterday. My plan was to sleep myself to death until you started all that racket,” I say on a yawn and plop onto the stool.

  “Well, you look like you’re well on your way,” she observes, and then she sniffs in my direction. “Smell like it too.”

  “Why are you here, Doreen?” I ask in a low voice.

  It’s painful enough, stewing in how bad I fucked up and how I lost the best friend I’ve ever had, a job I love and the woman I love, all at once.

  “What I want to know is why are you here?” she asks the puzzling question as she slides a plate of food in front of me and pours us each a cup of coffee from a thermos.

  “I live here,” I say.

  “That’s not what I’m talking about, and you darn well know it,” she chides.

  I sigh and run my hands through my hair. “I messed up, Doreen.”

  “It can’t be so bad that you just stop showing up for life.”

  “It’s pretty bad.”

  She sits down in the stool beside me and turns to face me. “Explain it to me,” she commands.

  I shake my head, shame filling my heart.

  “I’ll start, then,” she says as she takes a deep breath. “Braxton found out about you and Elle, and he didn’t take it very well.”

  My head snaps up. “He told you?” I ask.

  “Oh, he didn’t have to. We’ve known for a while.”

  “We?”

  “Ria, Emmett, and me. You know you don’t get to be this age without learning how to read people. I knew it was a matter of time with you and Elle. How you felt about her was written all over you every time she walked into a room. You tried to mask it with that bravado and charm you’re so good at throwing around, but you weren’t fooling us.”

  I should have known they knew. They probably knew before I did.

  “Yeah, well, apparently, we hid it from Brax pretty well,” is all I say.

  “So, what are you going to do about it now?”

  I give an incredulous laugh. “Not a damn thing.”

  “Giving up that easy, huh?” she asks with disappointment clear in her voice.

  “You see my face. He beat the shit out of me before he fired me and made it pretty fucking clear that I’m not welcome back at Rustic Peak.”

  “Language,” she admonishes.

  “Sorry,” I mumble.

  “Don’t you think our Elle is worth more of a fight than that?”

  “Of course she is. She’s worth everything, but Braxton’s right; she deserves a better man than me.”

  “What makes a man better than you, Walker Reid?”

  “A fancy title, a man who comes from a big and happy family, one who can afford to buy her a huge house and take her anywhere she wants to go. A man who can give her the world because that is what she deserves. A man like Brandt Haralson. All I have to offer her is a bad reputation, an old mine shack, and one crazy mother.”

  “Is that it?” she asks.

  Isn’t that enough?

  “Don’t you get it, Doreen? I’m dirty. I’ll muddy up her life. It’s better if I just let her go on thinking the worst of me.”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake,” she says as she stands and places her hands on her hips. “Dirty? What’s so dirty about you?”

  I look around and bring my eyes back to hers. “Everything. I drink too much, just like my father. I sleep around. I didn’t go to college. My own mother hates me most of the time—or she will again now that I can’t pay for her care anymore. I’m a piece-of-shit friend, a piece-of-shit son, and a piece-of-shit boyfriend. I always have been. I thought I was getting better at it all, but I’m not. I’m the same old fuck-up.”

  Momma has been doing so much better, so on top of everything else, I’m letting her down too.

  She shakes her head. “Son, that’s not dirt. That’s soil.”

  What is she talking about? Am I still drunk?

  “Huh?”

  “Soil, Walker. All those experiences, everything you’ve been through—that girl choosing not to have your baby and taking off on you when you were young, your father being an alcoholic and abusing you and your mother, him dying and your mother losing her touch with reality, all those pointless and fruitless physical relationships you were hiding in—it’s all just soil.

  “Everything that grows on this earth starts out as a seed. You take an apple seed and throw it out on the gravel, it just gets burned up by the sun and doesn’t grow into anything. But if you take that same seed and cover it up with dark soil, it will fight its way through that darkness, and it will sprout and start to grow. It will become stronger and stronger until it bursts through the ground and grows into a mighty tree that produces fruit.

  “You’re not dirty. You’ve just been planted. I’ve watched you turn from that scared kid painting window trim for Gram into a man—a funny, charming, loyal, strong, handsome devil of a man. A man I love and respect, a man who Pop and Jefferson think so highly of that they plan for you and Braxton to work side by side, running their ranch one day. We love you like a son.

  “But, Walker, you have to think highly of yourself and realize that you deserve it. You worked hard for it, and you deserve everything you have, including Elle’s heart.

  “As far as the rest of that nonsense about titles and houses and big families? Elle doesn’t need all of that mess. She’s lived her whole life in a big house, surrounded by a huge, loud family and thousands of critters that aren’t going anywhere. All she needs to be happy is someone who loves her.”

  At her words, I hang my head and start to sob for the first time in sixteen years.

  She wraps her arms around my shoulders as they shake with the emotions bubbling out of me. I bury my face in her neck, and I hold on to her, this woman who has been like a mother to me. I let all of it go—all the anger and pain and self-doubt. I get it all out.

  “God has a plan for you, Walker Reid,” she whispers to me.

  “Gram said the same thing to me the day she hired me,” I tell her.

  “Well, you don’t think it was a coincidence you ended up at her table that day, now do you?”

  Not anymore.

  When I’ve cried myself dry, I mumble into her skin, “If you tell anyone about this, I swear I’ll tell everyone Myer’s momma’s pot roast is better than yours.”

  She laughs, and then she pushes me away. “Like anyone would believe that lie,” she says as she rolls her eyes. “All right now, off you go. Shower and put on some clothes that don’t smell like whiskey and regret. I’ll be waiting. It is time to go and face the music. I will be right there with you. You can do this.”

  I stand and kiss her cheek. “Thank you for coming and putting a boot in my ass.”

  “You’re welcome. Now, scoot.”

  I follow Doreen in my truck.

  The entire ride to Rustic Peak, I plan what I intend to say. I might not be able to win back Braxton’s trust, and I might not be able to leave there with my job, but the one thing that I can do is fix things with Elle. That’s all that really matters anyway. It sucks to lose my friend and walk away from Rustic Peak, but I can’t let Elle think I did anything to betray her. I can get a new job, and I have other friends, but there is only one Elowyn Young, and she is mine.

  When we get to the iron gate of Rustic Peak, Doreen pulls to the side and rolls her window d
own. I do the same.

  “Do you want me to talk to Braxton with you? I can play referee,” she offers.

  “You got a black-and-white-striped blouse in that truck?” I ask.

  “I can find one.”

  I smile. “No, ma’am. I’ll handle it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I nod.

  “Okay. Stand your ground. Be honest with him. Speak from the heart and for goodness sake, don’t let him throw any more punches without defending yourself. Good luck,” she says before pulling up the drive with me close behind her.

  As we approach the house, I see Braxton out at the barn. She’s right; it’s time to face the music and fight for my girl.

  Walker

  I back my truck up close to the open doors and walk into the barn. Braxton is standing there against one of the stalls with his arms across his chest. He saw us pull into the driveway, and he’s been waiting for me.

  “Come to get your shit?” he asks.

  “Yep,” I say.

  “Good. Once you have it, we’re done. You don’t need to ever show your face here again.”

  I grab my saddle from the stand and toss it into the back of my pickup. I go back in to grab my cooler. Anything else, they can toss.

  Braxton watches me intently as I walk back in.

  “You know what sucks the most about this? I considered you family. Before you go, I need to know why. Why did you have to mess with Elle? Of all the women in Poplar Falls, why her?” he asks in a low voice.

  I look up at him. “Because I couldn’t stay away,” I admit.

  I can tell that was not the answer he wanted. I just don’t know what else to say.

  “Look, I’m leaving, but I want you to know that I never meant for any of this to happen. I love this ranch. I love you like a brother. I love being a part of this family. I tried to stay away from her. I tried so damn hard, but in the end, I loved her more than any of it, and there was nothing I could do to fight it anymore. So, I’ll go, but I’ll be back tomorrow and the next day and the next. Not for you, not for my job, but for her. You can use me as a punching bag every damn day. I don’t care, but I’m not going to spend the rest of my life wondering where she is or what she’s doing. I’m not going to read about her marrying someone else in the paper. I wouldn’t survive that.”