Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 97369 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 487(@200wpm)___ 389(@250wpm)___ 325(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97369 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 487(@200wpm)___ 389(@250wpm)___ 325(@300wpm)
He finally turns his wheelchair toward me and sighs, shaking his head. “I’m tired. And I need you to trust me to care for those you cannot care for. You have Benjamin and Jolene. You have all the people who work under you. So many people depend on you. Let me worry about Annie. Let me worry about Indie. You’re too invested in how much you’ve failed them to be able to do right by them now. I’ve got it. Think of it as ‘Jesus taking the wheel’.”
Fletcher’s patience has been perfected over the years. I know he’ll wait for eternity for me to respond. I know he won’t let me leave his office until I pledge my loyalty to him in blood. He usually compares himself to God.
Jesus is more fitting. Jesus died.
Fletcher will die. I might even put him on a cross or tie him to a fence post and let the creatures of the night eat the flesh from his bones.
“If you had to choose … who would it be?” He lights up a cigar and takes a puff. “If I couldn’t spare the time and resources for both of them … hypothetically, or maybe not so hypothetically, who would you choose to live and who would you choose to die?”
“Is it that she died?” I ask. “Ruthie. Is it that she died? Or is it that you cheated on her while the hospice nurse sat next to her bed on one side, Indie curled up next to her on the other?”
“That’s it. We’re going to the barn,” Ty says impatiently, shoving his gun into my back.
Fletcher holds up a hand and gives Ty a slight headshake.
Ty steps back, holstering his gun.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Fletcher says, rolling the cigar between his fingers.
“I know the night before she died, you drank a whole bottle of whiskey, told Ty to get you ‘someone,’ and when I passed this same office, you were shoving your limp dick in a brunette’s mouth while telling her to suck harder. Ruthie died the next morning. You spent the whole day hurling. Everyone thought you were sick from losing Ruthie. You were just hungover and choking on your guilt.”
“I loved her, and don’t you ever fucking question that.”
“I don’t. You didn’t have a lot of redeemable qualities, but she saw them. How could you not love someone who saw something good in you when you knew it wasn’t much? But she took all the good with her when she died. And I do know how hard it is to break a horse. I also know that when you have one that’s so fucking miserable that it can no longer stand on its legs, you have to put it down.”
Fletcher eyes his limp legs hanging off the edge of his wheelchair. “Take him to the barn,” he says to Ty.
Ranger has seen Ty beat the shit out of me more times than I can count. And I’ve never fought back. I knew the rules. I knew it would end quickly if I just took it. And for years, I felt deserving of it. My parents were dead. Archer was in prison. And Annie was missing part of her brain and vision in one eye.
Tonight, I can’t. Even if I still deserve it, I have to find Indie.
“Annie’s gone. You have to be smart enough to know that,” Ty says, shoving me to my knees inside the barn, giving Ranger his usual front-row seat.
Sitting back on my heels, I fist my hands on my legs and close my eyes for a few seconds. Annie’s not dead. He wouldn’t kill her. She’s the reason I’m here.
“Sam saw you last night with Indie by the pond. Do your marriage vows mean nothing? I mean, all this for a girl who was willing to spread her legs for me this morning.”
What?
Everything turns red. Finding my feet, I slowly turn toward Ty. There it is, that fucking smile again.
He tosses his gun on the ground several feet from Ranger’s stall and cocks his arms, hands in fists. “I’ve been waiting for this.”
It’s an unspoken agreement on the ranch. When one person tosses their weapons aside, challenging someone to a fight, the other person does the same unless someone’s indisputably earned themselves an ass-kicking.
This is the first time that Ty’s offered me a fair fight.
“All this for a girl who was willing to spread her legs for me this morning.”
“Drop your weapon.” Ty nods, taking a step closer to me.
“I told you …” I say.
Again, Ty nods toward the ground. “Toss your fucking gun aside.”
My hand wraps around the gun, slowly pulling it from my holster and holding it at my side. “I told you … if you ever laid a hand on Indie …”
Ty eyes my gun, my finger on the trigger. “What makes you think it wasn’t consensual?” he asks. Then he dives for his gun.