Page 26 of The Outsider

She thought of her few cherished personal items.

“Yeah. There are some things I might like.”

“After we work a bit, do you want me to drive you over there to get some things?”

“Yep. If you don’t mind.”

“I don’t.”

It made her want to yell at him. To push at him a little bit. Because why was he doing all this for her? She understood. At least, she understood the reason that he’d given. But it just felt weird. She wasn’t used to it. Her dad, her brother, they wouldn’t have treated her this nicely. They never had.

She just had to remember what she’d told Daughtry not a few minutes ago. Sometimes in your life you had a lot of something. Sometimes you had a little. Right now, this was happening, and there was food. A warm, safe place to sleep where she didn’t feel like she had tojump up bright and early, as soon as she’d gotten the bare minimum of rest, and get back on the defensive.

So, she was going to take it. Not ask too many questions. And not get too attached.

That was her best bet.

Chapter Six

He had a strange, unsettled feeling when he drove Bix out to the barn to get an assignment for the day. Deciding to take the day off, he didn’t like the idea of Bix leaving so quickly after she got here. He just felt like whatever he was sending her off to, it wasn’t going to be good. And he felt like she was so vulnerable that he didn’t like the idea of it at all. He could see that she didn’t think so. It was obvious to him she thought she was tough. Well able to withstand any of the bullshit out there in the world.

Obviously, she had done it up until this point.

He didn’t feel like she should have to.

He would never have gone out looking for somebody to help, but now she had fallen into his lap like this, and it just seemed...

You’ve latched on to her, but she hasn’t necessarily latched on to you.

No. It was clear to him that she was ready to bolt at a moment’s notice if any of them put a foot wrong. And he wasn’t entirely sure what would constitute putting a foot wrong as far as Bix was concerned. She was an unknowable entity, and maybe that was part of the reason why he was fascinated by her.

People, in his experience, were generally exactly what they seemed.

Oh, some of them had a pretty good mask. But it didn’t take much digging to get to the heart of it. His father hadn’t presented like a maniacal asshole. At least, not to the children that had been raised underneath his firm hand.

He had been a difficult man. Giving praise and rescinding it. But Daughtry had idolized him. His father was a hard worker. For a lot of years King’s Crest was the highest-earning ranch in Four Corners. They were the most successful. He’d said it was because he was dedicated to doing business on the side. He’d laid out the ethics of that business like he’d really thought it through. The Kings, he’d said, were hard workers. Lazy people borrowed money then blamed others when they couldn’t pay it back. But if you had a debt, it was the right thing to pay it back. Sometimes he had to be hard to collect those debts, but that was him protecting his family.

Daughtry had bought it all, hook, line and sinker. He’d worked with his dad.

He hadn’t realized his dad was a loan shark and a drug runner. And so when Daughtry went with his dad to collect debts, he was cheating people. Along with his dad.

So yeah, he knew that people could fool you. But at this point in his life Daughtry was difficult to fool.

But Bix was a study in contradictions. On the surface, she was almost exactly what he might expect. An angryantiestablishment rebel who came about the belief system pretty honestly. What had the system done for her? Nothing. Even he could see that, and he believed in the system.

He didn’t believe it was perfect. It was only as flawed as all the people in it. But he believed that the framework existed to make good things within the system, and that was what he tried to do. Because he prized rules and order above all else. A clear and binary way to act and mete out justice.

But there was more to her. He could see it, in the quick flashes of softness that appeared in her eyes. Little bits of emotion. She did her best to hide it, maybe even from herself. He had become a student of the people around him because he had been bound and determined not to be tricked again.

Not the way that his father had deceived him.

But rather than feeling frustrated or suspicious of Bix for being unreadable, he felt intrigued.

He wasn’t used to that.

When they pulled up to the barn, Justice and Denver were standing outside next to a pile of lumber that had clearly been freshly delivered.

“Morning,” he said, when he parked the truck and got out.

---