Page 9 of Dirty Ginger

“You saved us?” she asked, incredulous. “Oh, well, thank you very much for being so considerate for saving me from being hurt further by dumping me at the altar.”

He sighed. “You know what I mean.”

“Actually, what I do know is that you think you know what’s best for me. And you most certainly don’t, because if you did, you wouldn’t have embarrassed me in front of all my family and friends.”

“My family was there too.”

“That makes what you did better?” She drew in a deep breath, her insides shaking, which was exactly what she didn’t want. She let out a slow, deep breath, cooling the heat boiling in her blood. “I don’t want to do this. We’re never going to find a resolution, because what you did was cruel even though you thought it was the right thing to do.” She took another long sip of her drink, steadying her hand, shoving all the hot rage away. “Again, this isn’t why I called you here. I don’t want to talk about us, about what happened, about anything.”

“Then what do you want?” Luka asked, coldly.

“I want you to drop the charges against Beckett.”

He shook his head firmly. “I can’t do that.”

She fisted her hands on the table. “Why? Pride? Did Beckett make you feel small in front of all your family?”

“No,” Luka said with a loud snort. “I need to fix what he did to my fucking nose, Amelia. My insurance only covered the original break. When it healed, it looked like this.” He pointed to his nose. “The surgery costs ten grand to make it look normal again. I don’t have that kind of money lying around after paying for the wedding. Look at me. I can’t leave my nose like this.”

Oh. “Well, did you ask Beckett to pay for the surgery?”

“I did. He refused.”

She sighed. Of course, he did. “You deserved that punch, Luka, whether you want to own up to that or not,” she said, loudly, over the grinding of the coffee beans. A rich nutty aroma infused the air as she continued, “Sending a good man to jail because you broke my heart into a million pieces for all to see is wrong.”

Luka glanced back down to his paper cup and gave a small shrug. “He’s gotta pay for the surgery. I’m not going into debt because he broke my fucking nose.”

Amelia paused, drawing in the deepest breath of her life, determined to put all this behind her and to get a fresh start. “Ten thousand, that’s what you need for the surgery?”

Luka’s gaze met hers. “Yeah.”

Amelia rose, taking her latte with her. “I’ll courier the check to your house tomorrow morning. I expect you to drop the charges after you receive the money. Got it?”

“I’m not going to take ten grand from you,” Luka said, adamant.

“Actually, you are,” she snapped, glaring at him. “Because you owe me this. After the shit you’ve pulled, you will do this and let this go so I can move on with my life.”

Luka paused, hot jealously flaring on his expression. “Why are you doing this for him?”

Before she turned away from Luka forever, she said, “I put Beckett into this situation because I brought you into our lives. He was protecting me. Now it’s my turn to protect him.”

* * *

“Dad, you could help a little,”Beckett groaned, holding half of his father’s weight as he helped him up the rickety old porch steps of his childhood home that was located on the cusp of his grandfather’s land. The Duncans had once owned two hundred acres of pristine Colorado countryside. When his grandfather passed, he left the land to Beckett’s mother, which transferred to his father after the accident. Jim had sold all the land, except for the ten acres around the house. But on the east side of the land, alongside a babbling creek, Beckett inherited his grandfather’s ranch style farmhouse and the horse farm, along with the fifty acres surrounding the property. That land would remain Beckett’s for as long as he was alive, in honor of his grandfather. He’d moved into the property the day after he turned eighteen years old, and the farm officially became his under the estate.

Hayes grunted on the other side of Jim. “How is he still this drunk?”

“It’s a talent,” Beckett grumbled, awkwardly holding his father while using his key to open the front door of his childhood home.

They staggered through the door, and Beckett inhaled the familiar scents around him. A little dusty, a bit damp, all that was missing was the aromas coming from the kitchen of his mother baking something delicious for him to eat. He left the front door wide open. His childhood cat that would have once escaped had passed a few years ago at the age of twenty-seven. Nothing in this house was as it once was, the emptiness was near suffocating.

By the time they set Jim into the recliner in front of the television in the small living room, Beckett was breathing heavily and sweating. He grabbed his dad’s shirt and adjusted him in the chair before flipping the leg rest up. His dad’s snores followed.

“Will he be all right here?” Hayes asked.

“Yeah, he’ll be all right. I’ll check in on him later.” Beckett grabbed the blanket off the back of the couch, and after removing his dad’s shoes, his set the blanket over him. There were things Beckett knew for certain. One, his father’s life drastically changed when his wife died in that accident that altered all their lives forever. Two, he never recovered from his pain. And Beckett, without a doubt in his mind, would never be like him. His pain was always there, but the heavy loss of his mother and grandfather wasn’t the driving force of his life. At least not anymore, after years of therapy and the will to better his life.

He’d tried for years to save his father. But when Beckett realized he hadn’t followed Amelia to Denver, and he’d given up his dreams of becoming a professional calf roper, all because he needed to stay in town and be close to his father to watch out for him, he knew he had to stop. He loved his father, but he quit hurting his life to better his father’s.

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