Page 1 of For Fillies and Monsters

PROLOGUE

AUGUSTUS

February 14th, 2014

“Get in the fucking truck.”McCrae’s palm slaps against the side of the rusted green Ford and I continue to stare at him. I hold all emotion hostage from my face, my eyes twitching to roll, but I refuse. This blank expression especially pisses him off, and I want to see how far I can push him. “Damn it Gus, get in the truck!”

I sigh, exaggerating with a slump of my shoulders. And I sigh again, louder this time, to emphasize my point. He growls, like a fucking bear, and I hang my head forward so my hair covers the triumphant smile I cannot control tearing across my face.

He slaps the truck again. I sigh again.

We can go round and round, but I’ll always win when it comes to matters of determination. I am made of equal parts determination and bull-headed stubbornness with a dash of obsessive personality tendencies. My older brother? He’s made of doubt, distrust, and a healthy dose of deep-rooted hatred. Hate for me, for himself, and for the life he has.

Where the wind blows, he follows. But only if it benefitshim. He has nothing and no one he believes in, least of all himself.

“So help me God, Augustus. If we don’t leave tonight, we will not make it in time to enter the rodeo tomorrow.” I shrug my shoulders.

What I really want to say is,“Thank God, I’m so sick of being your meal ticket, anyway.”But I don’t. I shove my tongue into the side of my cheek and keep my eyes on the dusty sidewalk.

“Is this really over some stupid tail? You get ass everywhere we go. Hell, if we head over to that stupid podunk bar right now, I bet you could get a quicky in and we’d still have time to leave and make it to the rodeo.” His voice almost sounds hopeful, and I have to strangle a laugh.

McCrae just doesn’t get it. He can sniff out a bar in a desert, find a willing woman in a nunnery, chart a course to a new rodeo in the dark—but he doesn’t understand love, doesn’t have the capacity for it.

It’s not just stupid tail—it’sthe girl,and I will not leave this town until I get her name. I refuse.

“Get in the truck, Augustus.” His voice is a deadly whisper now, the one reserved for meaninghe’s serious. I’m getting closer to cracking him. Now all he needs is a little push.

“No.” I lift my eyes again, my face perfectly neutral once more, and pin him with my most hollow stare. McCrae always tells me staying in one spot too long makes him ‘itchy’, and by his calculations, we’ve been in Moztecha, Texas three days too long—we’ve been here four total. I’m several paces back from the truck, just out of his reach, or I know he would have slapped me by now, and I can see his skin crawling. His face, although mostly covered in shaggy blonde hair, is beat red and glistening with sweat. His jaw works angrily, popping over and over—Iwonder if you can burst a blood vessel in your brain doing that?I hope so.

“You are a waste of my fucking time and energy. I would have been better off if you had died with Mom and Dad.” His eyes, sharp and all seeing, scour across my face to see any crack his words might have created.

But he won’t find any. After the millionth time hearing them, they just don’t land the same, ya know?

“Enjoy your whiskey,” I singsong and turn on my heel. I don’t actually know where I’m going, but my dismissal of him will be the final straw that breaks him.

“Fuck you!” He hurls the words at my back, and I shrug my shoulders and saunter farther down the street. The truck revs, and he punches the gas, spraying gravel across my back. I wait until the truck can barely be heard over the creaking wooden sign overhead, one of those like you’d see in an old western—how fucking cliche—and turn back around to watch him leave.

He won’t go far; the bar is just around the corner. I will pay for this tomorrow morning, but it’ll be worth it.

At least that is, if I can find her tonight. If not, I will have to find a new strategy because I’m under no impression he won’t hog tie me and throw me in the bed of the pickup tomorrow if I don’t get in myself.

But I don’t know where to start.

Cars no longer line the dusty sidewalks, the small shops are all closed down, and the people are either home doing whatever they do in the evenings, or at one of the four open bars or restaurants available to them here. It’s pathetic—who in their right mind would want to live in a place like this?

Not to mention it’s February, and it’s already hot and humid.

I shove my curling hair back behind my ears, and readjust my cap to hold the dark spirals off my face. The smallerones, frizzy in the humidity, cling to the sides of my jaw, and refuse to be contained—the locks are practically suffocating, but I can’t chop them off—I don’t have the heart to. No reason really, other than it is the only thing I have done for myself, and myself alone.

And they piss off McCrae.

So,win-win.

I wipe my sweaty hand down the front of my faded jeans. It is no doubt muddy now, with the mix of sweat and dust that covers every surface in this fucking place, but it’s whatever.

My blue pearl snap is clean, and my silver buckle is shiny.

I look down at the oval of silver and pointless aspirations, shaking my head. I won this particular Saddle Bronc buckle at the National Western Stock Show earlier this year, with two thousand dollars I never saw a penny of.

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