Total pages in book: 16
Estimated words: 14860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 74(@200wpm)___ 59(@250wpm)___ 50(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 14860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 74(@200wpm)___ 59(@250wpm)___ 50(@300wpm)
I was ready for the fallout.
He wasn’t.
And I understood that completely because he needed to protect his sister. He feared the kidnapping charges that he could be facing back in Texas where he and his sister had fled from, and while I suspected any agency down there wouldn’t give a shit after so much time had passed, I wasn’t about to risk exposing Andrew or Jennie to any of that. While Jennie didn’t go to public school, she did spend most days doing online courses that would help her keep up with her education. She used the internet at the local library to download the material she’d need and then, with Andrew’s help, they went through the lessons together. So in essence, when she told the one girl she’d made friends with while at the library that she was homeschooled, she wasn’t lying.
Although I’d given in to Andrew’s demands to continue to live off the grid, I hadn’t been willing to acquiesce to all of them. Specifically, the issue of his salary and his mode of transportation. Instead of having his piece-of-shit car towed back to Eden from the restaurant in Cody, I’d had it scrapped and I’d bought Andrew a used but reliable little pickup. It wasn’t anything flashy enough to even be noticeable to the other ranch hands, but Andrew had been furious. It had been our second massive fight and this time when we’d made up, it’d been in my room and it had ended with him spilling his release down my throat and me coming all over my sheets as I’d jacked myself off.
After that, I’d learned my lesson and asked Andrew before I did something. I kept things small and inconspicuous as possible, like getting the place wired for internet and cable and making sure the structure was sealed to keep the heat in or out, depending on the conditions. But admittedly, it drove me crazy to think of them living in what I considered a dump when I had plenty of room in my house.
I sighed because none of it mattered. Things needed to be on Andrew’s timeline because he was the one who wasn’t one hundred percent certain about his feelings. The night he’d shown me his scars, both the internal ones and the external ones, I knew he’d been waiting for me to reject him, but I’d spent hours cherishing each of the bits of scarred skin that covered his entire back because to me they were signs of his strength. They were proof of how much he loved his family. They were also proof of his vulnerability, and I wasn’t going to shit all over that with empty words about the marks not bothering me.
I spent my time showing him instead. When it was just us, I touched him as much as I could. We both shared the details of our lives that we hadn’t been able to before. We were as much the same as we were different, and I loved every part of him.
I forced myself to tear my thoughts from Andrew and focused on the spreadsheet in front of me but when I heard several loud shouts coming from outside, I quickly stood to get a better look out the window. All I could see was a bunch of the hands forming a semicircle in the round pen, yelling and waving their fists.
My stomach fell out as fear overtook me. I couldn’t get out of the house fast enough. Even though I hadn’t seen who was involved in whatever altercation was happening, I hadn’t needed to. The round pen was Andrew’s domain. He worked with the horses in the small arena.
I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs to run any faster as I sprinted down toward the barn.
“Move! Move!” I shouted once I got into the arena. I could already see Andrew in the middle of the pen. A black horse, one of the newer additions, was practically trying to climb the tall rails to get out of the small space. And I could see why.
Rusty, a hand who’d been with me for years, had a long whip in his right hand. He snapped it toward the horse, but Andrew jumped in front of it, saving the horse from the harsh sting of the whip. Andrew’s shirt was sliced open and blood was dripping from several long strips where the flesh had been torn.
“Enough!” I snarled, but not in time to stop Rusty from snapping the whip again. This time, Andrew somehow managed to get his arm wrapped around the end of it but instead of letting Rusty react first, Andrew yanked Rusty forward until the man pitched forward into sand… and a big pile of shit.
The men who’d been egging Rusty on howled with laughter.
“You’re dead, you fucking little queer!” Rusty shouted. As he went to pull Andrew off his feet with the whip, I reached the man and slammed my booted foot into the back of his knee. Rusty howled in pain, but it wasn’t enough for me, especially when I saw an exhausted Andrew stumbling toward the horse in hopes of calming the terrified animal.