Page 22 of Stay for Me

But I wasn’t going to tell Kings that.

If he needed me to be wagon boss, I’d be wagon boss.

He raised his glass and I mirrored him. “To Hallow Ranch.”

“To Hallow Ranch,” I parroted and then brought the glass to my lips. I took a healthy sip, enjoying the sting of the whiskey trailing down my throat. Kings drank all his in one go and poured himself another. I raised a brow.

Damn.

His eyes flicked up to mine, a smirk teasing the corner of his mouth. “My father was raging alcoholic during his final years, and my grandfather was too,” he confessed.

“You lookin’ to keep that tradition alive?” My question came out like all the others usually did: no bullshit and to the point. It shouldn’t be any of my fucking business whether he drank. He was a grown man with a lot on his plate.

Who the hell was I to judge?

“No, I’m not,” he muttered, taking a small sip of his second glass. “And I have rules to make sure that fucking curse doesn’t latch onto me.”

“Good.” I nodded and looked over to where my cowboy hat hung on the wall. Generational curses were usually a bitch to break, but I believed Kings had the strength to do it.

When I looked back to him, he lifted his chin. “You hungry? Did you eat?”

“I can eat at the bunkhouse.”

Kings grimaced. “A bowl of the four day old chili Jigs made?”

That was the plan. “I’ve eaten a lot worse,” I replied, and he chuckled as he walked over to the fridge.

“So have I, but that doesn’t mean you need to eat that fucking chili,” he muttered, pulling open the door and scanning the food. He looked at me over his shoulder as I took another sip. “So are you hungry or not?”

“I’m hungry.”

“I’ll grill us some steaks,” he declared, chuckling as he pulled out two wrapped in white paper and then grabbed a large cutting board.

I finished off my glass, watching as he unwrapped the steaks and seasoned them. The pit of hunger in my gut grew at the sight, and I was thankful I didn’t have to eat the fucking chili again tonight. There was no rules in the bunkhouse kitchen. You could eat what you wanted, when you wanted. However, it was difficult to cook when I didn’t have anything to cook with, and going into town for groceries wasn’t an option. So, since day one, I’d been eating whatever Jigs made. The old man was kind of the bunkhouse cook, and a damn good one at that. He knew I didn’t ever leave the ranch. He knew I didn’t buy groceries, and I wasn’t about to ask anyone to buy them for me.

Kings and I drifted through the house, heading out to the back, where his old beat up grill sat. I leaned against the back of the house, my empty glass of whiskey inside on the counter, and watched him throw the steaks on. Neither of us said anything for a long time, and the smell of the steaks in the air made me salivate.

“How many tours?”

My eyes snapped away from the grill to find Denver studying me, his head tilted slightly to the right. My jaw tightened.

In the past, we’d talked about his time in the Marines, but never mine. It was something I never talked about—not even when the Corp sent in a specialist. Instead, thousands of taxpayers’ dollars were wasted over the course of three weeks. Day after day, I was sent into a white walled room, with colorful furniture, and atop the dark green chair sat a trauma specialist, holding a notebook and pen, willing and ready to do whatever it took to get the demons out of my head.

No amount of time or money would achieve that.

I just had to learn to live with them.

I didn’t say a fucking word, because none of what I went through, what I saw, was worth repeating. Simple as that.

When I didn’t say anything, my boss added, “You know almost all my shit, Mags.”

“Because you chose to tell me,” I damn near snapped, my spine straight, my body preparing to go on defense.

He inhaled a deep breath and exhaled slowly, looking back to the grill. “You have a friend here,” he said.

“Only got one friend, Kings, and he doesn’t even know.”

A chuckle left him then. “He knows enough. That’s why he’s your friend.”

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