Page 20 of Saving the Rain (Crimson Ridge #4)

T rudging my way up to the front door, I can already hear her shrill voice. Incessant screeching makes my ears bleed before I’ve even laid a hand on the doorknob.

Standing outside in the damp night air, I take a couple of deep breaths.

I’m not high anymore, my head is clear. All I had was a few tokes earlier to take the edge off, and it’s been hours since then.

It’s a shit load more responsible than any of the other almost-nineteen-year-olds I’ve been hanging out with this afternoon, who were on a one-way train to getting so fucked up they won’t remember a thing tomorrow.

My old man isn’t even here at the moment, and shit is rough.

The prick won’t return for another few weeks, if he bothers coming back from the oil rig at all.

Knowing him, he'll hit the mainland, walk straight to the nearest bar for the twenty-odd days he gets off, and stay shacked up in some shitty motel rather than fly out here.

It’s a blessing in disguise for all of us if he stays away.

Something slams inside the apartment, and I steel myself for what I’m about to find.

When I get through the door, it’s dark... so much so, it takes a second for my eyes to adjust. Probably because she hasn’t paid the electric bill again.

“So fucking help me, Kayce.” His mom is going mental. Threatening the kid like she always does when she’s high. “Where the fuck are they?”

Their raised voices come from the direction of the kitchen as I stride down the hall.

“I already told you. Not my fault you don’t listen.” He sasses back, without any sense of self-preservation.

Smart-mouthed little shit he is. My stepbrother is forever tempting fate where their altercations are concerned. He doesn’t know what it’s like to have a parent who will actually follow through on verbal threats with the physical result.

But I can handle this woman. Even with a belly full of pills, she doesn’t dare try anything with me.

I round the corner only to find them both in the middle of a fucking bomb site. Every drawer and cupboard has been ransacked, with shit spilling out onto the floor. There’s a wild, unhinged look in her eyes as her attention sluggishly turns my way. Yeah, she’s off her head tonight.

Kayce’s eyes are red. He stands there in a threadbare t-shirt and pajama pants, shuffling on bare feet against cold linoleum even though it’s nearly winter.

His fists are balled by his sides as she shoves a finger right in his face.

Her makeup is a mess. Mascara has run everywhere, black rings surrounding her eyes, along with smudged lipstick—the rest of it smeared on the wine glass sitting on the counter beside her.

“Go to bed, Kayce.” I scowl. His blue eyes flare when he looks up at me, but fortunately for my sanity, he storms off without a fight.

“He stole them again. A whole packet. Unopened .” His mom whines, picking up her glass and downing it so fast it dribbles over her chin.

“For Christ's sake, Shawn. Go sleep it off. I’ll clean this shit up.” Jabbing my fingers through my hair, I temporarily leave the disaster of a kitchen and stalk down the hall to Kayce’s room.

“I didn’t do it.” The kid is already snarling before I set foot inside his bedroom.

Pushing the door closed behind me, I glance around.

It’s all fucking horsey posters and shit in here.

Ribbons pinned to a cork board. Trophies he’s won sit lined up on the mantle.

Above his bed is a poster of a rodeo bronc arching in a horseshoe shape, with all four hooves airborne, flying high above a cloud of dirt.

Holding out my palm, I snap my fingers. “I know you fucking took them. ”

His red-rimmed eyes glare stubbornly in return as he sits with folded arms on the edge of his bed.

“What the hell am I supposed to do?”

“Don’t swear.” I snap my fingers again. Impatience grinding in my stomach. If there’s one thing I can’t goddamn well wait for, it’s to get out of here and be a million miles away from all this mess. This hellhole of my father’s world.

“She keeps buying them.” His bottom lip quivers even though he tries to catch it.

“Yeah, well, you need to stop trying to deal with it yourself. Just leave it alone and let me handle it because you keep fucking it up.”

“I don’t need your help.” Kayce screws his nose up, sniffing. “And don’t swear.” He mocks my voice.

This time, I’ve had enough, and I step forward, snapping my fingers twice with irritation, before holding my palm outstretched again. I know he’ll have them hidden in here.

Kayce swallows heavily, blond hair going in about five hundred different directions, then gets up and plucks a book from a small shelf. The packet of cigarettes flops forward and he tosses it in my direction, frown firmly locked in, before he turns and slots the book back in place.

“What do you care? You’re two seconds from leaving me. From leaving us.”

“ Damn straight.” I pocket the cigarettes. Ready to drive around the block and toss them in the trash like all the others, all the times before. “So, cut the bullshit and learn to be smart. Stop making life hell for yourself... for everyone.” I add as I reach his bedroom door.

“ Dick.” He gives me a middle finger.

“ Snowflake.” I slam the door behind me.

Drumming my fingers with one hand on the shifter, the other tightens on the steering wheel. I have no idea why that particular memory flew back in as soon as I started driving away from the arena.

Probably seeing Kayce’s stupid pouty little look and bottom lip quivering.

That was one of our last interactions before I moved out. By that age, I’d begun competing as regularly as possible on the rodeo circuit, working minimum-wage jobs. I already had my escape plan .

I’d had it all straight in my head, how I was going to get myself out from under my father’s fist. He was away for weeks at a time anyway, so the prick didn’t know much about my life once I was in my teens.

He was none the wiser that I’d steadily built myself a small nest egg, enough of a safety net that I could disappear for good.

Other than the fact he loved to hit the bottle, and then me, in turn—his bit of fun to fill his time with whenever he did get home—Ezekiel Rainer Senior had no interest in the kid who reminded him that he was a widower.

Just as I was almost at the point I could finally leave, he decided to go and screw it all up.

This platinum blond woman and her kid turned up.

My dad and her got married in a blink, two miserable people thinking it was a good idea to get together.

The second she walked into the house with her wide-eyed son in tow, I knew she was just like all the others who had come before her.

Someone to cook his goddamn dinners and fill an empty spot in his bed. Except, rather than a rotation of strangers, this time, he decided to marry. For some stupid, unfathomable reason.

Overnight, I went from having only my own skin to look after, to make sure I survived his foul moods, to having two extra people under our roof to take care of. They didn’t know what that asshole was capable of—what he is still capable of, I’m sure, if he wanted to pick on someone smaller than him.

Fortunately, I grew tall enough and filled out enough that by the time I was about to turn eighteen, I was more imposing in stature than him. The day I was able to catch his swinging fist and block his attempt to smack me across the jaw, I saw the rage in his eyes.

He knew it that day. He couldn’t lay a hand on me anymore. I wasn’t the little kid to beat on. But that also meant his attention was far too easily gonna turn to the two people in that house who he could smack around any time he pleased.

So I was stuck.

Just when I’d been so close to escaping, there was all of a sudden a deep, churning sense of guilt plaguing me anytime I stared at my packed bag.

It took me a long time to get up the courage to move on with my life. That plan I’d so carefully stitched together had to be reworked, steadily reconfigured, until the point in time I knew they would be safe if I wasn’t around.

Time has flown by so quickly since then.

Season after season of rodeo, of competing against the very kid I’d stuck my neck out to protect—when, make no mistake, I shouldn’t have ever had to.

It made me mad as hell at the time. All that searing-hot fury of a young man with a chip on his shoulder and a head full of bad memories.

The sight of Kayce at all those competitions was only ever a reminder of all the shit I had to sacrifice. All the ways I had to make sure he didn’t get dragged out of his bed in the middle of the night to take a beating from the guy who loved nothing more than to do that to me when I was his age.

With his stupid big blue eyes and perfect blond hair, the kid has always been a sponsor’s wet dream.

A poster boy for rodeo, with that megawatt smile and ability to make friends with just about anyone everywhere he went.

He’s always had the looks, the natural ability.

He’s never had to work at this game. Riding broncs is the kind of thing that some people fall into naturally.

Where Kayce Wilder is concerned, all he had to do was look at a horse, and it would just about tell him its secrets.

The rest of us were training like our lives fucking depended on it, like every single prizewinning dollar was the key to our safety.

I had to win. I had to kick his ass whenever he stepped foot in an arena at the same time as I did. Because if I didn’t, without that winning paycheck, then I had no idea what else I was gonna do.

Yeah, sure, I was a dickhead to him along the way. I was the angry guy with an abusive father. How cliché . Of course, I hated anyone and everything that reminded me of the worst times of my life. Seeing Kayce reminds me of so much of that time of my life, even now.

It’s hard to rationalize it, the way he only has to breathe in my direction to successfully make my blood heat.

I know it doesn’t make any sense.

But at least I’m not sticking around to watch today.

It was only a coincidence I saw him during the brief moment I was there after driving Tessa to the arena.

She needed a ride, and will go home with Oscar later this evening.

There’s no denying a pregnant woman when she asks for help, batting those eyelashes my way and shoving a coffee into my hands.

I’ve got shit to do at the ranch. I’ve got nothing more planned than to get my ass back to Crimson Ridge and sort out the horses for the day. To check in on the cattle. You know, to do my fucking job.

Who fucking cares what Kayce Wilder does. I certainly don’t.