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Not to mention that saying yes to his offer will give me a chance to dig some information out of him. Information that might help me formulate a plan of attack because wedding plans or not, Luke is right. I can’t give up—not without a fight.
I give him a single nod before I stoop over to pick up my backpack. Slinging the strap over my shoulder, I leave Two-tone to enjoy his breakfast and the morning off. “Okay,” I say, accepting his offer before closing the barn door. “I’m supposed to get a grocery list from your friend anyway.” Following him to his truck, I start digging. “He’s not a vegan, is he?” I ask Damien while he pushes past me to open my door for me. “I mean, there’s nothing wrong with being a vegan—just that a long-term stay on a cattle ranch would be an odd choice for someone who doesn’t eat meat.”
My question stops Damien for a moment. Standing in the wedge of the open truck door, he shakes his head, mild puzzlement flitting across his face before he gives me a shrug. “I don’t know...” he tells me on a laugh.
“He might be. It’s been a few years since I’ve even talked to him.” Before I can ask him what that means, Damien slams the truck door closed in my face. Looking at the house while he rounds the front of the truck, I catch movement in one of the upstairs bedroom windows. Still watching, I catch it again—the curtains twitching against the glass like someone is hiding behind them, watching us leave.
The only someone in the house is Abbey.
She’s had a crush on Damien since my father brought him on to work the ranch and I don’t think the years and his repeated rejections have done anything to quiet those feelings.
I asked him once, not long after he got here, if there was something going on between them and he looked at me like I was crazy.
Jesus, Kaity—she’s fourteen. That might not matter much to some guys but it matters to me.
It might’ve been naïve of me, but I believed him.
But Abbey isn’t fourteen anymore.
Turning away from the window when I hear his door open, I watch while Damien climbs into the driver’s seat and starts the truck, mouth open to ask him if what he told me four years ago has held true but quickly decide against it. Abbey is eighteen and truth be told, it’s none of my business. Besides, I have other things to worry about besides Princess Abigail’s love life.
“No.” Reading my mind, probably because he saw her watching us too, Damien gives me a weary sigh. “There’s still nothing going on between Abs and me.”
Abs. No one else calls her that—just Damien. Instead of pointing that out, I give him a wide-eyed shrug. “What? I wasn’t even going to ask.”
“Really?” He cuts me a crooked smirk while he shifts into drive and points the nose of the truck north. “Because you were about to ask me something.”
I stare at him for a moment before blurting out, “Okay, I was wondering but I decided not to ask.” When he doesn’t answer me, I start to get antsy. Damien is really good at using silence as a tool. “I mean, she’s eighteen and it’s not like you’re that much older—it’s not gross or anything.”
His mouth twitches again before it falls flat. “Your father—her father is my boss, Kaity. Believe it or not, there aren’t a lot of ranches around here that are open to hiring someone like me.”
Someone like me.
He means half Native American.
Blackfoot to be exact.
He’s right. While we’d all like to pretend that prejudices and bigotry died in Barrett a long time ago, they didn’t. They’re just quiet—and as long as everyone toes the line and remembers their place, that’s how they’ll stay.
Like he’s reading my mind again, Damien flicks a quick look in my direction before refocusing on the dirt road in front of him. “Say what you want about your father but he’s always treated me decent. Fair, which is a hell of a lot more than I’d get somewhere else. I’d never cross a line he put in front of me.” He shakes his head at the road in front of us. “Never.” Mouth open to say more, it snaps closed when the sound of the truck tires rumbling across the cattle guard fills the cab.
Thoughts about my sister and her infatuation with my father’s good-looking ranch hand evaporate. So do the million and one questions I have about Damien’s friend—who he is and what he’s going to be doing here for an entire month because for the next few moments, none of it matters. Turning away from him, I hold my breath and stare out the window at the copse of spruce and pine trees, clinging to the side of the mountain we’re climbing. The clear-cut path cut down the center of it. Three years later and the trees still haven’t grown back.
“I’m sorry, Kaity.” Damien says quietly when we finally round the corner and Northpoint comes into view. Coming to a stop in front of the house, he shifts into park. “About Luke... I don’t know if I ever got to tell you how sorry I am that he’s gone.”
He did.
After Luke’s funeral, we had a wake. Other ranch families from around the valley, standing in clumps around the front yard, holding soggy paper plates loaded with smoked brisket and melting jello salad. All of them talking about Luke. How great he was. How much he’d be missed. How big a hole his death has left in this family—all the while, my father staring at me, his mouth twisted into a hard, bitter line, the look of it screaming at me from across the yard.
You don’t get to cry, Kaitlyn. You don’t get to miss him. You don’t get to miss either of them because you’re the reason they’re dead.
Damien found me in the barn, sitting in Two-tone’s stall—hiding while I cried over the loss of my brother. Two-tone was Luke’s horse until he enlisted in the Army. The day before he shipped out, he gave him to me.
He needs someone who’ll ride him, and we both know that’s not princess Abbey.
When Damien saw me sitting there, he didn’t slink away on a muttered sorry or rush past me to go on about his business like I was invisible. Even though he’d been working the ranch for less than a year and only met Luke a few days before the accident, Damien stopped when he saw me.
Leaning a shoulder against the stall door, he took off his cowboy hat and bowed his head like I was saying grace until my sobbing petered out. The silence that followed left me feeling hallow and empty. When I was all cried out and finally quiet, Damien raised his head and said—I’m sorry, Kaity.