Page 92 of Bull Rush

“Get your hands off my husband.” I can see her just on the edge of my vision as I stare up at the ceiling. She’s hovering behind him, a menacing look on her face if I’ve ever seen one. He’s startled by her proximity, but he still grins like he’s amused.

“That eager to suck daddy’s cock?” He winks at me. “You can—” He stops short, and then I see why. She has the barn rifle I’d left sitting on the desk aimed at his head.

“Blow you?” I can hear the taunt in her voice.

“Hazel… you need to calm down.” Curtis’s tone changes immediately, and he turns back to look at her. I use the opportunity to shove him hard, trying to get him off me, but when he slips, his knee hits my balls, and he digs in. His attention snaps back to me, and I feel the knife start to press into my flesh a moment before I see red. Thankfully not mine own.

There’s a flash from the muzzle of the gun and the spray of a million tiny droplets of blood. I blink as Curtis’s body slumps on top of me, blood streaming out from the wound in his skull onto my chest. I look up at Hazel in shock, but she’s already in motion. She tosses the gun aside and pulls at Curtis’s arm as I push, and we manage to get him off me. I move to sit up, trying to get myself right and make sense of what just happened. But she’s already in my lap, straddling me as her hands go to my chin. She lifts it and tilts her head to look at my neck.

“Are you okay? Oh my god! Let me see!” There’s panic in her voice that starts to fade as she looks me over. “Okay. It doesn’t look like anything more than a small nick.” She lets goof me and sits back, looking into my eyes. “I was scared he got you before I could stop him.”

“No. But Hazel…” My eyes drift to Curtis’s lifeless body.

“He was going to kill you. I had to.” Her brow furrows as she looks at him, her face shifting as she takes it in.

“Are you okay?” I ask, wrapping my arms around her, because my wife is strong as fuck, but she’s never had to kill someone before. I’m not even sure she’s seen someone die or shot at anything living. She never went on any of her brother’s hunting trips, that I know of. But at least they taught her how to shoot. Thank fuck.

“I’m fine. As long as you’re fine, I’m fine.” She leans forward and her hands cup my face as she checks me again for good measure.

“I’m fine.” I reassure her.

“Fuck me with a rattlesnake…” Bo’s voice is low, barely above a whisper, as he takes in the scene. He’s doing the math in his head that this has just gone from kidnapping to murder. Hazel knows it too as they exchange a look.

“It was self-defense. He was going to kill Ramsey.” She pulls herself up from my lap, stepping one foot over my legs and then holding out her hand for me so I can try to stand again.

Bo’s eyes meet mine as I stand, a seriousness there I’ve only seen a few times. We’re both imagining the same fate. One where Hazel ends up suffering for her good deed. I look back at her, and she’s staring at Curtis’s body too, still trying to make sense of the situation.

“We can just explain to the police that it was a domestic dispute, and I had to do it,” she says softly, in a tone that tells me even she doesn’t believe that will work.

“Haze, come here.” I reach for her, and she takes my hand. I pull her close to my chest, kissing the top of her head, and shesqueezes me tight. “We can’t call the police, sugar. But we’re going to make sure you’re okay.” I look over her head, and Bo nods to me, already plotting how we’re going to get ourselves out of this mess.

She’ll be okay. We’ll make sure of it. I’m not letting her life go up in flames because of me. Whatever it takes.

FORTY-FIVE

Hazel

I’m standingunder a hot stream of water, scrubbing my skin clean with soap, still processing how this morning took such a sharp turn. It’d started out so well—having breakfast with my brother and planning to come back home and finally sort things out with Ramsey. The two of us were gonna tell Curtis to fuck off for good, and then we were gonna get started on a plan for rebuilding the ranch—and us.

Instead… it turned into a nightmare. Curtis’s cruelty running so much deeper than I thought possible. The flash of the gun and the spray of his blood plays like a loop in my head when I close my eyes. I don’t regret killing him. I should… I should feel guilt or sorrow or something that makes me feel like I should be on my knees begging for forgiveness. But I don’t. Not if the alternative was that Ramsey died right in front of me. I’d pick the same option every single time.

But my heart still hurts for it, and I’m terrified about what it means for all of us—that I pulled the trigger and that I’ve made my husband and my brother an accomplice. Ramsey’s brothers too, since they showed up just as Bo and Ramsey sent me to get cleaned up. They insisted I needed to get changed, try to make myself look normal in case anyone at the inn needed me.

Grant and Levi had just nodded at me like it was nothing, but then I imagine this isn’t their first rodeo. The people in the inn on the other hand… I’d have to come up with a story. That Bo was running off a coyote that he thought had rabies or something that could explain away the gun shot. I can’t imagine Grace or Kit would ever look at me the same if they knew the truth. Albert might have a heart attack if he found out. And that’s just my employees… Amelia? She’d probably never speak to me again if she found out that I killed the man she was rooting for me to marry in order to save the one who had left me.

But she didn’t know Curtis—hell, I didn’t know Curtis. I couldn’t have dreamed he’d turn out this twisted and sick. But then I don’t suppose he guessed I would be the one to take him out of this world either. I imagine he would have left like I asked this morning if he had a second chance.

I run my fingers over the bruises he left on my arm. I’ll have to hide them with a cardigan even though it’s still a little too warm on these early fall days to justify it. We’ll have to figure out what to do with his car. With all his stuff that’s in my house. How we’re going to explain his disappearance.

I hadn’t even met his family yet. They were always on one trip or another—and now I wonder if I was ever going to meet them. If the people who were helping pay for our wedding were even his family at all, or more likely, whatever criminal element he was involved in. I blink and shake my head. Ourwedding. That was probably never happening either. Not if he was only using me. Just coming to terms with all this makes me feel ridiculous. How gullible. How much of a fool he made me out to be. He must have been laughing every single night.

He certainly was convincing when he was using me. I believed he really loved me right up until this week. I thought I meant something to him. There were date nights and flowers and a ring, big shows of affection, but there were also quiet nights alone together, and tender kisses and inside jokes. We’d started planning the wedding, reserving all the chairs and tents and tables we’d need. I’d picked out a dress, and he’d picked out a suit—more things I’ll have to burn right alongside my clothes that are covered in his blood now.

But it was all a lie. All a lie so he could find something that the Stocktons supposedly stole. The last forty-eight hours replay in my head like a movie reel, and then my heart stops.

He said it wasn’t safe for me here. That she could change her mind. Who is she? Who could have that much control over him that he’d be scared of her? Another woman? His boss? Did they have eyes on the ranch? My heart skips in my chest as I hurry to finish my shower. I need to tell the brothers the rest of what I know.

As I towel off, I keep racking my brain for anything else Curtis said or did that didn’t make sense, anything that set off my senses when I’d seen him in the last couple days.

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