Total pages in book: 166
Estimated words: 160042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 800(@200wpm)___ 640(@250wpm)___ 533(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 160042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 800(@200wpm)___ 640(@250wpm)___ 533(@300wpm)
It makes sense that when he does pick up, I growl, my words low and vibrating, “Where is my wife?”
“She’s safe,” Brecken Turner tells me.
“Where,” I ask again, as in my head I watch her giggle over something I said. “Is. My. Wife.”
“As I said, she’s fine,” he says in a calm voice. “And I’d like you to remember that you didn’t afford me the same courtesy when I asked about my sister a couple of weeks ago.”
I breathe in. I breathe out. Then I fist my palm around my open pocketknife, cutting my skin. I keep doing it, breathing and cutting my skin, until I can see clearly. Until it doesn’t feel like my world is on fire. That my insides are split open and I’m coming apart.
It’s important.
That’s the first thing that came to mind when I went back to the barn after cooling off. After riding Rebel hard for hours. After mucking the stalls and wielding the axe to cut down enough timber to last for the next six months. After all of that, when I went back and found her gone, I knew I had to keep my cool.
At first, I thought she did it.
She did what I told her to, so I went to the main house. I went so I could apologize. For real. With words. By saying sorry. Like other men do. Normal men. Men who care about their wives, not motherfuckers like me who don’t know what that word sounds like in their voice because they hardly ever use it. And then I was going to sit her down and tell her everything about Annie. I was going to tell her what she’s been dying to know all this time. What I’ve been too afraid to say because then she’ll really find out why she doesn’t belong here.
Why she doesn’t belong with me.
I know I’ve been acting like a big man, a big fucking noble man, these past couple of weeks, asking her to leave. Demanding that she run away from this ranch, this town. Me. But if I really was so noble, I would’ve told her about Annie. I would’ve told her the entire truth. But I didn’t. And then when she confronted me with the truth, I flipped out on her.
So when I didn’t find her in the main house, either, and she wasn’t in any of the other barns and stables where Rad looked or other places that Ax and Haven and Peyton could think of to search, and after all the phone calls that Mars made, I knew that keeping my cool was what was going to save my life and quite possibly her life too. I couldn’t lose it like I did that night in the cabin. I couldn’t lose it like I did eight years ago either.
I needed to be smart. I needed to be levelheaded, because for the first time in my godforsaken life, I can’t be selfish. I have a responsibility. She’s depending on me. And I can live through anything, any-fucking-thing, any failure, all the broken promises, but letting her down is not something I’m willing to do. What that says about me in regard to Annie, I don’t know. I’ll let her be the judge of that when I tell her, but for now, I need her here. I need her safe.
I need her.
“What do you want?” I ask Brecken as calmly as I can.
“I think you know what I want,” he says. “I want my sister back. Who by the way isn’t really your wife.”
“You—”
“One piece of advice: If you’re going to leave your enemies alive, make sure they don’t know your secrets,” he says, cutting me off. “The man, the one you booted off your ranch last week, he ratted you out. He came to me and told me about how two Turner girls are living on the Grayson ranch, and how you were sweet on one of them. Not my sister though. The other girl. That you keep calling your wife. I was getting close to cracking it all open anyway but he made it easier. Not to mention, he had a lot to say about your little prison program.”
The fire is threatening to overcome me, so once again, I wrap my hand around the knife and inject a dose of pain to keep myself sharp. “Let me talk to her.”
“No,” Brecken states, and I open my mouth to argue, but he keeps going. “Because you aren’t making the rules anymore. Here is what’s going to happen: If you want your wife back, you’re going to bring my sister back to me and you’re going to dissolve this sham of a marriage and your bullshit power of attorney. And then we’re going to sit down and have a conversation about your dead girlfriend and this decades-old feud between our families. How if it ever comes up, I’m going to make sure you lose every bit of that land you stole from my forefathers. Is that clear?”