Page 5 of For Fillies and Monsters

From bad friends to worse boyfriends. From insane choices of mentors to wicked parents. From careless money decisions and unsupported living situations. From unhealthy mental habits to even worse sexual habits.

I have seen and done it all. I am filthy, used up, a hazard.

I know it must be true—so many people have told me as much. Regardless of the constant reminders, it doesn’t stop me from trying to be better.

Or at least pretending to be better.

I am good at pretending—a master, really. Almost as good as I am at getting into trouble.

I know who I am; the morally gray character in my own morally gray story. I know who I am, even if I don’t always love the choices I make.

Trauma, am I right?

I huff angrily, shoving the long golden blonde hair out of myface for the millionth time. The wind, an offensive curse with its humidity and pelting sand companions, ranks in my top ten least favorite things about Texas. Compared to the cool March temperatures in Colorado, I know I’ve successfully landed in Hell. It is the bane of my existence, and like all things, tests me every chance it gets.

“Fuck. You,” I grind out, looking up at the sky, hoping it might heed my warning. Instead, it whips again, driving impossibly sharp specks of red dirt into my face.

An obviousfuck you, back.

Grinding my teeth and smashing my lips together, I turn back to the task at hand. I have miles of fence to fix, and it’s obvious I will need to hire help—the kind of help that will require more money than I have and more humble pie that I can chew.

In the two weeks since I’ve moved here, I have accomplished ninety feet of pole and barbed wire fencing. It has broken every callus on my hand and bruised every finger. But for someone with no experience, and even less interest, it is an accomplishment, nonetheless.

Albeit poorly, but accomplished all the same.

The problem is, I’m running out of money, and running out of stubborn willpower—I had no money to begin with. This place is like trying to find a vein in a corpse; dried up and pointless. Every day, I come out and face the endless fence work, and a dwindling pile of pennies feels like a noose on my neck—tightening slowly for dramatic effect.

It isn’t my fault. I’m not irresponsible.

I may have been careless in the past with my money, but that was before Bob and Linda passed away. Now, I have it together. If I don’t, no one will.

The thought of them makes me reach up with a gloved handand rub at my chest. Even thinking about them still makes my heart ache. They had been my only truly good influences in a long line of horrible ones, and when they suddenly passed in a boat wreck, my fragile life crumpled completely. I hit rock bottom, and that was when I foundReckless Abandon,a Wild Horse Rescue in the cool mountains of Colorado.

I know, nonprofits don’t exactly pay well. And no matter how much I loved it, how much it saved me in more ways than I am willing to admit, it didn’t pay the bills. It had been more than enough for me, though, for five years. I gladly exchanged any kind of life of luxury for one spent in a dusty old saddle.

I still would.

But then, I didn’t have a three-hundred-acre ranch and just over two hundred hungry cattle to feed. Not to mention miles and miles of broken fences, dried-up water wells, over-grazed pastures, and a crumbling barn.

And now I do. Lucky me.

I can no longer afford to stay working in the one place that makes me feel like I’m worth something.

It has been two weeks since I gotthe call; two weeks since I uprooted my life to chase the ridiculous notion of being the kind of woman I could be proud of—that my mother could be proud of. And I am paying for it, every second of every day.

I loved my life in Colorado, my small simple room on the Reckless Abandon Ranch. I loved the smell of horses and the ache in my legs after an especially hard day of riding. I crave the silence that follows a young horse surrendering for the first time, finding peace and love for the first time, feeling safe for the first time. I miss being one of them, feeling all the same ways as my wild horse companions.

But now I have cows.And I don’t know a fucking thing about cows.

Here I am, covered in the sandiest dirt imaginable, sweating before nine a.m., in a wind that likes to piss me off. All because I want to be the kind of woman who makes a dead person proud.

I angrily throw the wire cutters to the ground and wipe my arm across my forehead in an attempt to keep the beads of sweat from falling into my eyes.

What a stupid kind of woman.

My mother, Poppy, as I had known her, was the dreamer behind The Spurrin’ L Ranch. She came from a long line of Texas cattle ranchers and always dreamed of running her daddy’s ranch the way he had. She was proud of it, but knew even less than I do about cattle ranching; she didn’t want to—she had a handsome cowboy willing to take over for her from the time she was sixteen. And when she inherited the ranch at twenty-five, she was so blinded by love and loyalty that she didn’t see the snake who had constricted around her neck.

The snake, with the name of Gibson, who also happened to be my father.

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