Page 92 of Chasing the Wild
He takes a long swig from his beer, while I stew in my seat.
“Colt. I’m serious. What are you protecting them for?”
That triggers a response. His hazel gaze lands on me, and there’s a ferocity that sparks right there. Bright embers glow beneath his heavy brow. “You think I’m protecting them? Those assholes are exactly the kind of predators who like to drug girls and film them when they’re out of their head, while they do whatever they want to them. They get away with it because they always manage to make it appear as though whoever they preyed on wanted it. Hayes has tried to catch them in the act before, but nothing has ever stuck to them. There’s never been enough indisputable evidence.”
I’m so confused and lost and angry on his behalf. I don’t understand what this has to do with the ranch and the man sitting across from me isn’t being forthcoming.
“Then why not report them?”
His shoulders roll back, and he shakes his head. “Just… fuck… there’s history there, and even if I got on that radio to track down someone at this hour of the night to put in a report about trespassing, absolutely nothing can be done about it.”
My lips press together as I watch him closely. “You’ve had shit like this happen before, haven’t you?”
Colt holds my eyes, and there’s an expression on his face I can’t read.
“The important thing is that you didn’t get hurt.” His throat works down a heavy swallow as he looks me over, then pushes up to his feet, collecting our empty dishes.
As I help with tidying up after the two of us, I keep mulling over what secrets still roll around Devil’s Peak and this ranch. What burden is Colton Wilder still carrying? As we settle into bed together, he tugs me against his chest, holding me tightly in his strong arms. I drift off to sleep listening to the thump of his heartbeat beneath my ear, with a wishfulness filling my mind that he didn’t have to continue facing whatever it is that he carries alone.
Even though my time on this ranch is coming to an end, I hate that he’ll be left here and that he won’t have anyone to be steady for him, like he has been for me.
Chapter 25
I’m dreading the call that is going to come in any day now.
In fact, at any minute that handset tucked in the cradle below my truck’s stereo could potentially crackle to life with the words I do not want to hear.
There’s likely to be a cheery fucking asshole on the other end of the line, letting me know that the mountain road is cleared and that they’ll be arriving at the entrance to the ranch, reuniting us with the rest of the world.
I’ve never felt more animosity toward the men and women who work to keep these mountain roads safe and passable. For the first time in all the years I’ve been living on top of Devil’s Peak, I don’t want them to arrive with their beaming smiles and friendly jokes and motherfucking helpful attitudes.
Not once have I ever felt this much longing to be hidden away and kept isolated from anyone and anything outside this ranch.
One more day. One more hour. That’s what I keep begging to some fucking unknown entity as I let my whispers fly on the icy wind.
Layla is so close to slipping through my fingers, and I can’t believe that the most desperately short two weeks of my life are coming to a close. I knowtimelike the veins mapped out on theback of my hand. I’ve nursed broken bones and burns and been left with scar tissue that needed the best part of a year to heal properly. I’ve endured nine months of waiting for a child to be born—all while torn to shreds by the conflicting emotions his arrival would bring. I’ve hit my knees wishing for time to speed up, wishing for death to come calling, when there seemed to be no end in sight to the beatings or trauma, being a kid frightened half to death by the monster left in charge of my life.
Time is an asshole of the highest order, and we’re close fucking acquaintances.
This fraction of a moment has disappeared as fast as the sun sets behind the Peak on a mid-winter’s night. For only the briefest of glances, I got to bask in the brilliance of this girl, and now I have to go back to enduring the longest, coldest, most fucking soul-destroying darkness. Alone.
Even worse than that? She’ll still be right here.
The girl of my dreams will be in a bedroom just down the hall from me, with her sweet scent still embedded in my pillowcase because there’s no way I’ll be able to bring myself to wash it. Every time I roll over, all I’ll see is the lingering outline of her coppery curls fanned across my sheets. She’ll beeverywhere,and I won’t be able to go near her.
A rock lodges in my throat knowing that the second we receive that impending update from the roading crew, Kayce will arrive back, and I don’t know how I’m going to get through the coming weeks with him here at the ranch—having both of them in the same place—until Layla ups and disappears once her contracted time is over.
I’m not going to stand in the way of her future, because it’s one that is radiant and filled with possibility. She deserves to have everything she’s ever dreamed of, and it certainly doesn’t look like wasting her life away in a place such as Devil’s Peak.
Could we tell him? Sure. However, we both know Kayce is miles too immature to handle something like this. She knows it. Don’t I fucking know it.
And I’ve got so much to make up for that I cannot put my own selfishness ahead of my kid’s life. Goddamn, I would be the world’s shittiest person and most fucked up human being if I didn’t care about him enough to put our relationship as father and son above my own desires.
Maybe in another life.
Maybe sometime in the future, there’s a miracle that this girl won’t have gotten married and settled down with some nice guy her own age, and an old, gruff asshole like me could have a hope in hell of finding her again years from now.
But that’s never going to damn well happen, and I know it.
