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“Well, he swung her into the side of his truck by her hair and knocked her out,” I tell him bluntly. “So, no—I guess he didn’t.”
My recount of what happened wipes the amused look off his face. “You didn’t try to stop him?”
It’s like he kicked me in the gut. Tightening the bracket of my arms around my chest, I try to remind myself that Damien sees Kait like a little sister. If I were him, sitting here listening to someone walk me through an assault on Delilah or Silver, I’d ask the same thing. “It happened too fucking fast.” Even though I understand the question, I hate that it happened. That I hadn’t been close enough to stop her from getting hurt. Every time I close my eyes, I see her, crumpled in the dirt like a discarded rag and it makes me want to bash Brock’s fucking head in all over again. “By the time I got to them, Kait was knocked out and fuckface was standing at the tailgate, getting ready to let it down.” So he could throw her into the back of it and continue his assault. I don’t say it out loud. I don’t think saying what we both know Morris was going to do to Kait out loud will help either one of us.
“And that’s when you fucked him up?” Again, Damien repeats the next part of my recount of what happened last night.
“Yeah.” I give him a nod, not feeling even the slightest bit of remorse. “Bounced his face off the tailgate a few time and broke a couple ribs.”
“Did he see you?” Concern creases Damien’s brow.
“I grabbed him from behind—he never saw it coming.” I shake my head. “His forehead was split open and his face was covered in blood—I seriously doubt it.”
“Let’s hope…” Damien shakes his head while he stands. “Because Hawthorne Hotel Tycoon Violently Attacks Montana Cattle Rancher is not a headline you can afford right now.”
He’s right.
If this thing grows legs and starts to run, I’ll have no hope of catching it. The fact that I’m here, in hiding, while my lawyer sorts out an even nastier situation would make my guilt over what happened to Brian Maxwell a foregone conclusion. I’d be facing felony assault cases in two states.
“He didn’t see me and even if he did, it was dark,” I tell him, doing my best to minimize the potential fallout. “He didn’t recognize me.” I don’t know that for sure but I say it anyway because the last thing I need is my brother caught up in yet another one of my fucked-up situation.
“You better hope he didn’t.” Damien shakes his head. “Mr. Barrett is gone for the next few weeks but that won’t stop Mitch Morris from raising hell if his baby boy starts pointing fingers.” Giving me another sigh, Damien looks out across the lake. “If that happens it won’t matter what your last name is or how much money you have—you won’t get out of this valley alive.”
Twenty minutes later, I’m standing on the front porch of the house, watching Kate argue with her sister about who should ride up front with Damien and who should take the short trip home in the bed of his truck.
“I’m fine,” Kait says, hands on her hips while she stares down her nose at her younger sister, who for some strange reason, reminds me of my own. “If I can get bucked off a—”
“Up front.” Her little sister stamps her foot, the crunch of gavel beneath it making me want to laugh for some reason. “Now.”
All it takes is one look at Kait and the laughter bubbling in my throat fizzles out. The knot on her forehead is big enough to turn my stomach, the skin covering and surrounding it a sickening shade of purple—but it’s the black eye that’s bothering me. It’s faint, not really noticeable unless you know what you’re looking at. Closing my eyes, I see it again—Kait laying in the dirt next to that asshole’s truck—and it hits me.
That’s the life she’s submitting herself to.
What she’ll have to put up with, day in and day out, until the day one of them dies.
Because she’s a Barrett and he’s a Morris and there’s nothing she can do about it.
Opening my eyes, I look away from the two of them, my gaze catching a flash of red on the porch. The notebook Kait and I were using to pass messages back and forth for the better part of a week. The notebook I kept writing to her in after I told her to get the fuck out and never come back. On impulse, I snap it up from the table and make my way down the porch steps.
“You have a purple Easter egg on your head, Kaity,” her little sister has switched tactics. No longer demanding, she’s trying to use reason. “If Mom and Dad found out I let you ride in the back of a truck like that—”
“Neither of them would give a shit.” Kait finishes on a laugh. “I’m fine.” She says it again, even though she looks anything but. “I want to ride in back. I need the quiet.”
“Quiet?” her little sister looks like she’s crazy. “I think you mean dust and gas fumes.”
“Let’s compromise,” I say to both of them before Kait can launch her rebuttal. “Kait will ride in back, with me.”
Little sister stares at me like I’m just as crazy as Kait. “I don’t see how that’s a compromise.”
“Sunshine gets what she wants and you get to shut up about it—sounds like a fair compromise to me,” I say, flashing her a grin when her jaw drops and her eyes widen so far they look like a couple of big brown marbles about to pop out of her head. It’s obvious she’s never been told no before.
She’s even more like Delilah than I thought.
She huffs at me. “You can’t—”
“Talk to you like that?” I say to her while moving to stand next to Kait. “Sure I can. Just did—now get your ass in the truck.”
Little sister gives Kait a what is happening kind of look but before she can say it out loud, I scoop Kait up and deposit her over the side of Damien’s truck bed before vaulting myself in after her. “Better get in the truck,” I tell Kait’s sister while I settle onto the floor of the truck bed. As soon as I’m sitting, I pull a stunned Kait into my lap. “I don’t think you want to walk home. I hear there’s bears out here.”