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“I told you.” Shaking my head, I try my best to give her what I hope is a slightly exasperated smile. “We barely clipped it. It probably ran off.”
She gives me a stubborn head shake. “Peggy heard from Sheila at the urgent care that Brock came in around 4AM with four broken ribs and that the gash on his forehead took nearly a dozen staples to close. Sounds like whatever hit him, did more than barely clipped him.”
I bashed his fucking face in—which isn’t even a fraction of what I wanted to do to him…
“Well, you can tell Peggy that Sheila violated about fifty laws, giving her Brock’s private medical history,” I tell her, my tone clipped and laced with a panic I hope she can’t hear. “I don’t think Mr. Morris would take to kindly to that fact.”
Ignoring my attempt at ending the conversation, my mom shakes her head. “She also told Peggy that you weren’t with him when he came in.”
I give her a shrug. “He must’ve decided he was worse off than he thought after he dropped me off.”
Hand still wrapped around the refrigerator door, my mom stares at me for a few moments. Long enough to tell me that she’s not sure if she believes me or not. “If something else happened, you can tell me, Kaity.”
I really wish that were true.
As usual, the truth is useless.
Even if she did believe me, Brock has an alternative story, complete with witnesses, that would get Damien run out of town, or worse.
Much worse.
Not to mention the fact that if what really happened came out, not only would Damien pay the price, the fact that his possibly famous brother is hiding out in my dead brother’s house would become public knowledge.
As much as I want to tell her the truth, I can’t risk it on either front.
“I don’t know what you want me to say, Mom.” I shake my head, shifting impatiently from one foot to the other. “Brock and I hit a deer coming home from the Saddle—just like he said.”
Looking at me for a moment longer, my mother finally gives up with a sigh. “Okay, Kaity.”
Relief that she’s going to drop it swirls around with guilt in my gut, the mix of it making my stomach turn. “I had a nice time tonight,” I tell her because I don’t want the last thing I say to her to be a lie. I want her to know how much I love her and appreciate the fact that she’s always been good to me. That sometimes, she’s the only one who has been.
“I love you too.” She gives me a faint smile while she moves across the kitchen to lift a sack of apples out of the box. “Now take your sister her milkshake and those silly magazines before she comes down here and has a fit.”
FORTY-THREE
Wentworth
With Kait gone, I started to go a little stir-crazy. As soon as she disappeared around the side of the house, I went back inside and stood at the living room window so I could watch her ride past it.
And when she disappeared over the rise that would take her back down into the valley, I started thinking about following her. Going after her. Snatching her right off her horse and carrying her back up the mountain.
Her damn horse could find its own way home.
Instead, I draw the heavy curtains closed before going upstairs to check my phone. All I have waiting for me is a voicemail from Delilah telling me that she and Jane, Silver’s best friend, are on their way to kidnap her and take her clubbing for her twenty-first birthday.
If you see us on TMZ, no you didn’t.
Backing out my voicemail, I send Silver a text.
Me: Happy Birthday!
She hits me back almost immediately.
Silver: Thank you!
Her reply is immediately followed by a selfie. She’s standing in her living room in a pair of sweats, Pretty Woman on the TV behind her, the coffee table laden with junk food—Dingdongs, and Twinkies. Doritos and pizza rolls, while she beams into the camera. Delilah and I look nothing alike. She’s petite and blonde like our mother. Big blue eyes and delicate features. She looks like an angel. I’m about as far from angelic looking as you can get—black hair. Black eyes. Enough tattoos to give a biker pause. Add the fact that I’m 6’5 and weigh close to three-hundred pounds, and there’s no way anyone who didn’t know us would peg us as brother and sister. Silver is different.
She has my coloring—olive skin and black hair—and she’s tall for a woman. Save for the fact that her eyes are a luminous gray color that prompted her name, people would have no trouble believing the two of us are related. Laughing at the picture she sent, I text her back.