Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 70445 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70445 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
“Yeah, sure you don’t.” I turn away. “I’ll be in town for another few days if you change your mind. You have my number.”
I start to leave but her hand flashes out. Her fingers grip my wrist and I pause, glancing down into her eyes. For a moment, the old Melody’s there: soft, sad, afraid. But it’s quickly replaced by anger.
“Don’t show up at the farm again,” she says. “Do you understand me? Don’t pull that fake certification bullshit again, either. You could get in trouble for that.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” I arch my eyebrow at her hand. “Are you coming on to me or is this a power move?”
“You haven’t changed a bit,” she says, letting me go, and I hesitate. For some reason, that hits me hard. The War she knew back in school was a slacker, a kid that cared more about feeling girls up behind the bleachers and selling shitty weed than getting decent grades. But that War’s long gone now, buried under years and years of struggle.
“You haven’t either,” I say and walk off, leaving her to think about what she wants.
Because I know one thing.
There’s no way in hell I’m leaving the Dallas area without Melody.
Maybe she doesn’t know it yet, but she’s coming home with me, one way or another.
Chapter 3
Melody
I don’t care about my dying dad.
I keep telling myself that, over and over. I don’t care about him. I don’t care, I don’t care. I say it, again and again, staring into the mirror: I don’t care about my dying dad. I don’t care about his low, rumbling laugh, or the way he’d heft me up into the saddle, or the sound of him breathing as we’d sit out back and drink iced tea and read books, and it never quite works. It never quite convinces me.
I put some force into it. I don’t give a flying fuck about my dying dad. That doesn’t help.
I make it sound like I’m begging. Please, please, I don’t care, please don’t let me care. That makes it worse.
Nothing turns off the churning emotions rolling in the depths.
But I need this story. I need this lie.
Otherwise, I might do something stupid—like break the one rule I’ve had ever since I walked away from my old life at Leader Ranch.
The day after my barroom meeting with War, I throw myself into work. I show up earlier than usual to get in some extra chores, even the dirty stuff I hate doing, but keeping busy is the only thing that guarantees I won’t think about home. There’s nothing for me back there, and the day I ran away is the same day I decided I’d never see the ranch again, never speak to my father or my uncles or my aunts or my cousins, especially not my cousins. Even if it killed me to walk away, even if it felt like cutting off a limb, I did it. I stood up for myself and went through a nightmare, the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, and every decision after that stems from that single moment, from that single choice.
I won’t go home. I won’t ruin all my struggle and toil and pain.
I won’t care about my dying dad.
He’s been dead to me for years.
But even hard work only gets me so far. By the middle of the afternoon, I’m exhausted and covered in a sheen of sweat, and I can’t stop picturing what things must be like at the ranch. My father, my big, towering father, always so large, always so loud, a big mustache, a thick beard, always in jeans and a denim shirt, always slightly dirty from the fields, with those rough hands and that deep laugh and that ever-present cigar. He was the heart and soul of Leader Ranch, the grease in the wheels, the brains behind it all. Everyone must be broken up about what’s happening to him, and I wonder if everything’s getting done or if my worthless cousins stepped up to fill the slack, or maybe my lazy uncles—
But no, it doesn’t matter.
Dad’s dying. I don’t care. Him and his stupid cigars.
I used to tell him smoking would kill him one day. Back when I was a cheeky teenage girl without a care in the world.
He’d laugh and rustle my hair and tell me not to worry.
It’s a miracle he lasted this long.
It’s an impossibility that he’d go at all.
I find myself in Bomber’s empty stall. He’s out with Nicky, one of the other trainers, and I stare at the phone in my hands. I don’t know why I’m doing this, but my fingers dial the old number that reaches the black landline in the office, the phone only one person ever answered back when I was there. I haven’t heard her voice in a very long time, and I have no clue if she’s still working there or if she’ll be the one to pick up. I’m nervous as I listen to the ringing, and I nearly throw my phone on the floor in shock when that familiar drawl comes over the line.