by Stacy Gail
“That sounds like a load of bull.” She looked out the window as the landscape of rolling hills gave way to rockier terrain, with jutting, toothlike boulders dark with malachite, the semiprecious green stone that gave the ranch its name. “It’s obvious he cares about you now. Didn’t he ever do anything nice for you when you were kids?”
He was quiet a moment. “Yeah. He did.”
“Like what?”
“He’d stand guard over me at night whenever our father had to be away on business.”
He heard her catch her breath. “He did what?”
“Della, my stepmother and Kill’s biological mother… She was a sick woman, Winsome, no two ways about it. All my brothers swear she was a good woman before I came along. Then I was left on her doorstep, living proof of her husband’s infidelity, and it broke something in her. From one moment to the next, you never knew what that bitch was going to do. I remember one morning shortly after I’d arrived at the ranch, I was sitting at the breakfast table eating some cereal with Fin, when suddenly that woman came up behind me and smashed my face into the bowl and held me there. Broke my damn nose and nearly drowned me in a couple inches of milk and cornflakes. From there the abuse only got worse.”
“Oh, my God.” The horror in her voice was obvious even as she reached out and curled a comforting hand on his shoulder. “You were just a baby.”
“Baby or not, that was my life in the Brody household.” He slowed for a bend in the road, then turned on the high beams as the sun at last dipped completely below the horizon. And all the while he drank in the warmth from that little hand on him, supporting him in ways he never knew he’d ever want, much less need. “Like I said, my brothers swear something broke in that woman when I came along, but I don’t know. Seems to me that shit was already inside her, and I was just a convenient excuse for her to let it all out. And she did. Every fucking chance she got, and no one lifted a finger to stop her.”
“What about your father?”
“He was the most useless one of all. It was like he wanted all the punishment his wife had to dish out. Only he wasn’t the one she kept attacking.”
“It was you,” came the soft reply. “The one she kept attacking was you.”
He nodded, his gut tightening as hellish memories crowded in. “Little kids don’t really get the concept of death, you know? But I did. From the time I nearly died in a fucking cereal bowl I fully understood. I was just one scary-ass step away from death as long as I lived under the same roof as that batshit crazy cunt.”
That sweet little hand rubbed along his shoulder and arm, and it was the most soothing damn thing he’d ever known. “I can’t imagine what that kind of toxic pressure would do to a child’s mind.”
“I’d be lying if I said I haven’t had some self-destructive hiccups along the way, but at least I wasn’t totally alone in that house with my own personal monster. The one thing my father did right in keeping me protected was that he made sure I had all kinds of locks on my door. Whenever he had business out of town, Killian would be outside my bedroom at night standing guard, though I doubt he knows I knew he was there.”
“He was forced to stand guard?” He heard the disbelief in her voice. “All night?”
He nodded. “You asked if he ever did anything nice for me, so there it is. Kill made sure I didn’t ‘accidentally’ get smothered in my sleep, or some dumb shit like that. I knew he resented me for that, and honestly, who could blame him? He was around fifteen or sixteen at the time when he started guarding me, burdened with the task of literally keeping me alive. If I’d wound up dead, he was the one who would’ve been blamed, not Della. Shit, I guess I would’ve hated me too, if I’d been in Kill’s shoes.”
“But he doesn’t hate you, Des, and he did make sure you stayed alive.” As they drove into the deepening night, she gave his shoulder one last squeeze before settling back into her seat. Maybe he was crazy, but he missed her hand on him like he’d miss a part of his own body. “You know, I don’t think you hate Killian at all.”
That surprised him enough to make him glance her way. “What makes you say that?”
“First off, you know how destructive hate can be, so deep down you know hate is never the way to go, unless you want to wind up like that horrible Della person. But more than that, I think you feel so guilty because of all the pressure that was put on Killian that you don’t know what to do with it, so you’ve turned it into something you can manage. Hatred’s easy. Everything else is so much harder.”
He snorted. “Bullshit.”
“Okay, let me ask you this. Have you ever thanked Killian for standing guard over you?”
“I thanked him for picking up my sister so she could become a living donor for me. Liver,” he explained, touching his right ride briefly. “None of my brothers were a match, but Dallas was. So he brought her here.”
“Aha. So that’s why he kidnapped her.”
“I actually think he fell for her the moment he saw her. The liver thing and keeping me alive was probably just an excuse to take whatever the hell he wanted.”
“See? Right there. You’re automatically thinking the worst of him because you have to keep finding new ways to hate him.”
“So? You automatically thought the worst of me when I kissed you.” He gave her another pointed look. “Guess we both have trust issues, yeah?”
She made a face. “We’re not talking about me right now, we’re talking about you. And right now I can see you’re doing everything you can to dodge the fact that Killian’s done a lot of good for you, because it screws with your habit of hating him.”
“So, what do you want me to do? Just forget everything he said when we were kids and sing kumbaya?”
“Depends on how good of a singer you are. I don’t care what you decide to do when it comes to your brother,” she went on when he made a sound of impatience. “I only know one thing—if you keep holding on to things like grudges and hatred, you kill yourself by inches by holding on to what amounts to be poison.”
“You think you can tell me about carrying around poison, yet you don’t tell me dick about yourself,” he muttered, his eyes searching out the darkness for the first motion lights on either side of the track leading to his house. “How could you know what it’s like? How do you know I’ll feel better if I let go of all the shit inside me?”
“I-I just do.”
“Have you let your personal poison go? Because I’m thinking if you have, you could at least talk to me about it.”
“At the risk of sounding like a glitch, we’re not talking about me.”
“Yeah, because we never fucking talk about you. Bottom line—you don’t get to preach to me about making peace with the past unless you convince me you know what the hell you’re talking about. For all I know, you read that shit off a greeting card.”
“I know exactly what I’m talking about when it comes to letting trauma go and trying to move on with life.”
He stopped the truck with a jerk and hit a button on the truck’s dashboard. “Prove it.”
“I…” Her throat seemed to lock up, and she looked out the window as if looking for an escape. When she saw the elegant wood and glass contemporary house before them, with stark, clean diagonal rooflines and panoramic views, her jaw dropped. The shadow of a Lone Sentinel Butte hulking in the purpling gloom beyond matched the slope of the roof, an obvious architectural echo he’d sweated bullets over, but it had been worth the headache. “Wow, this is beautiful. But also, kind of lonely. Is this where you live?”
“Yeah. And you’re still not answering the question.”
“What question?”
“Jesus, you’re a hard nut to crack.” He parked the truck once the garage door rolled open, revealing his babies, a bright orange 1970 Dodge Challenger in mint condition, a Heritage Classic Harley, and in the back workshop area, a battered and well-used four-wheeler ATV. “But you are going to crack, Winsome. I won’t settle for anything less. Now, come on in
and let me show you the house. And while I wine and dine you, you’re going to find a way to make peace with losing this battle of wills you’ve got going on, and find a way to trust me.”
Chapter Eleven
More than anything, Winnie wanted to relax and enjoy Des’s beautiful home, with its soaring cathedral ceilings and prow-shaped wall of windows overlooking the butte and shallow valley below just visible in the falling dark. Southwestern art and artifacts of the Wild West were tastefully displayed on whitewashed walls, and the brass-studded leather furniture looked both luxurious and as durable as the land beyond the windows. A cowhide rug pulled the room together, something her sense of aesthetics would have usually approved of.
But as Des turned on lights and headed onto a massive deck that jutted out into space over the valley below, with the colors of sunset dimming in the west, all she could focus on was the ball of nerves in the pit of her stomach.
As far away from her as he was, Des had still managed to corner her.
She hated the feeling. It was very much like the feeling she’d endured while growing up, waiting for hours behind her closed bedroom door for sounds of her father leaving the house so she could escape. This was almost like that…
Except for one obvious point.
Des wouldn’t hurt her.
The dreadful gnawing in her stomach eased when that one fact crystalized. Des would never hurt her. She believed that with everything inside her, because this amazing man knew what it was to be someone’s victim. He knew, and he hated it just as much as she did.
He also trusted her, a small voice inside her whispered, reminding her all too clearly of what Dallas had said. There was something in Des that was open to her. If only she could be just as willing to be open, and accept that gift.
That was one heck of a big if.
But it was also one heck of a big gift.
The gift, of course, being Des.
All she had to do to accept that gift was give the gift of herself.
Totally.
Utterly.
Even the broken parts.
Those ugly, tainted, broken parts.
“I hope you’re good with T-bones.” Still looking less than friendly, Des opened accordion-style glass doors with a remote, along with the deck lights. “I’m going to use propane instead of charcoal, because I don’t want even a hint of a charcoal ember getting out for fear of a fire hazard. If you want, I can give you a quick tour of the house before I put the steaks—”
“Des.” Winnie heard the tremor in her tone and mentally kicked herself. The only pressure she had on her now came from her, not him. If she could remember that she was okay—that she was always okay—she could get through this. “You need to know that I trust you. I do, really. I know you would never hurt me, or judge me for…” She swallowed and forced herself to look him in the eye. “For anything that happened in the past. The thing is, I don’t talk about the past. Ever. So please don’t take it personally.”
His gaze never wavered from hers. “Not even with your grandmother?”
“She… knows a little, because she lived in that house of horrors until we both left when I was seventeen. And Cleo knows a little bit, but I couldn’t tell her everything.” She took a calming breath when she realized she was babbling and tried again. “There was only one person I ever revealed absolutely everything to. Just one. And though it’s too late to prove it, I know my father murdered her because he wanted to keep her—and me—silent. That’s why I don’t talk about the past anymore. There’s no point.”
“Your mother.” Slowly, he came away from the deck’s vast open doors, absently dropping the remote on a side table to take both her hands in his. “Goddamn it.”
“She’s dead because of me.” She said it flatly, because to allow herself to feel anything now would shatter her all the more, and she didn’t want him to see that. “Do you understand? I told her everything, and it killed her. If I’d just kept my mouth shut, she would still be alive. My talking killed her in the most horrific way imaginable, so I don’t talk. Not about… that.”
“No, Winsome. No.” In a heartbeat, he dropped her hands to pull her into a crushing embrace, like he wanted to somehow fuse them together and give her his strength. “Able Smiley was evil, top to bottom and all the way through. Swear to Christ, I don’t know how you survived.”
“I knew I wouldn’t survive after what he did to my mom.” Her voice was small, because every instinct was screaming at her to shut up, shut down, curl up and never come out into the world again. But that was a living death, and she wouldn’t hand that one final victory over to her father. He’d already taken too much of her already. “Call it animal instinct or whatever, but I knew my mother’s death was just the beginning of a new level of hell. He’d crossed some mental line, and when he did—when he took a life and nobody stopped him—it was like he became the devil personified. The only reason I didn’t leave immediately was because of Granny, who was still living at the homestead at that time. If I’d left then, my father told me point-blank that he’d kill Granny, too. She was old, he said. He’d make it look natural. No one would know.”
“Fuck,” he gritted out, sounding more dangerous than she’d ever heard him. “Fuck.”
“Luckily Rufus overhead this, so he snuck Granny off the homestead to stay at his place the very next day. That freed me to run, so I did, straight to Cleone and Cleo. But I was still in high school, and since I was technically a minor, my father could have made the police drag me back to the homestead.”
“Why didn’t he do that? Because you would’ve told the authorities about how he killed your mom?”
She shook her head. “Like I said, there was no way to prove that. It would have just been my word against his when it came to my mom’s fear of large animals and that she never would have voluntarily gone out there by herself. I mean, she was a farmer’s wife, so who would believe she had a fear of something like horses and cows?”
“You’ve got that same phobia, or so you said.”
“I do. Even more so after my mom… died.” She swallowed hard, trying not to shiver at the memory of her mother’s screams mingling with the horse’s. “I was just a kid, so I didn’t believe anyone would listen to me. My father tried using that fear to control me. To force me back home. But I had one ace up my sleeve when he said he’d call the cops to bring me back.”
“What was that?”
For a long moment she struggled, hating that somehow he’d managed to get her to talk about the very thing she’d buried deep in her soul to silently fester. “I swore to him that I’d tell the police everything he’d ever done to me. Everything he’d done that I’d told my mother about, complete with detailed and… and intimate descriptions. That was something they’d have to believe. So he finally left me alone.”
“Jesus.” His lips pressed against her temple, her hair, wherever he could reach without letting her go. “No wonder you’ve got your shit locked down so tight you can’t find a way to get free of it. You tried once, and that fucker made your whole world pay for it.”
“Exactly.” Thank goodness he understood.
“But he’s dead and gone now, baby girl. He’s rotting in hell where he belongs. Nothing can hurt you anymore.”
On second thought, maybe he didn’t understand. “It’s over. It’s done. Please let it go.”
The arms that held her tightened, though somehow there was a feeling in them that made her feel infinitely precious. “If it helps, I’ve already figured out the basics of what that cocksucker did to you.”
She squeezed her eyes shut as a wave of nausea and shame hit her. “Des—”
“The fear I see in your eyes whenever I hold you… that fear shouts it out at me, Winsome. Even when you’re smiling. Even when you think no one can see. That’s why I think you need to say it out loud. When you say what he did out loud, that’s letting it out into the world so it can’t wound you anymore, instead of holding it so close it digs into
you until you’re a bloody, raw mess. So say the words, baby girl, and let it all out. Let it go. I swear to you now, you’re safe with me.”
Right. Say it out loud. Let it go.
Like it was that easy.
But…
At least she could give it a try.
“He…” Without warning, her throat locked up.
No, no, no, no, no.
Again his lips pressed against her temple. “It’s okay. I’m right here and I swear I’m not going to go anywhere. I don’t scare that easy. Trust that, believe in me, and say what you need to say.”
“He would… hunt me.” The words barely escaped the tightness in her throat, and she kept her eyes shut if a futile attempt to avoid the shame and remembered pain. “I would try to stay in my room for as long as I could, and sometimes it would work. There were some days when he would just leave the house, and then I could escape and go to the bathroom or fend off starvation. But a lot of the time he’d lie in wait for me. And when I finally had no choice but to come out, he’d… pounce. Like an animal, he’d be on me. There was no escape.”
She thought she heard him breathe out, “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” but it was so low she couldn’t be sure.
“It’s kind of sad to admit it, but I was used to his cruelty by that point. One of my earliest memories is of my father whipping me with his belt. I don’t remember what I did to deserve that sort of punishment, but I do remember he wailed on me until I understood what wishing for death was. That’s something I’ll never forget. I think I was about three or so.”
“Jesus,” he whispered, and she could hear the thundering of his heart. “Okay. Okay, baby, you’re doing great. Keep going.”
She swallowed hard and plowed on. “He enjoyed other kinds of cruelty. He never once bought me clothes, knowing full well how humiliating it was to be dressed in rags. Back then, everything I ever had to wear came from my mother or from Granny—whatever they could get at the secondhand store, or what they’d once worn themselves. That’s why I started making clothes at such a young age—it was either that or go naked. I made sure I got good at making pretty things to wear. Not because of any real drive or ambition to be the best, but out of sheer survival. Schoolkids can be just as harsh as any abusive parent, God knows. I spent countless recesses and lunch hours hiding in closets and bathrooms just to avoid bullies who saw my patchwork clothes as an easy target.”