We’re going ninety on the dirt road, truck bouncing so hard, it might pop the hubcaps off. Brothers is tensed up like a bow. I’ve never seen him afraid before. My cheek stings, and I wipe it, blood and sweat covering my palm.
“Christ,” I murmur.
He pulls a handkerchief from his pocket and hands it over. I mop up my face, trying to get a feel for how bad the cut on my cheek is. It’s soft, swollen. Maybe that’ll keep it from bleeding too bad.
“You all good, Jen?” he says hoarsely.
I nod. “Yeah.”
“Took some hard hits out there.”
“Nothing much.”
Heturns the truck at a hairpin bend, veering the opposite direction we came from. “Not the way he took them.”
“I had it handled out there,” I say.
“You get the women out tonight, I’ll be your spotter,” he says.
“Sounds like a plan.”
My confidence doesn’t come from cockiness. No, it’s made of all the anger I’ve carried on my back. I’ve fought for a break for thirty-nine years. Then, she appeared. Now, I see the light coming through the trees. The opening of the clouds.
I want a family. I want her. I want to feel what it’s like to fix a truck with that little boy of hers. Maybe nobody did that for me, but I can sure as hell make sure somebody does it for him.
The trees blur, the headlights a smear across my vision.
I’m so fucking angry.
I think I got real angry down in my marrow the day I came home and saw Cherry, Holly, and Kyle dead on the floor. There was no path to revenge, so I tamped it down, pretended it didn’t exist. But I lived with that rage, not realizing it was still growing inside me. Brothers bringing me back here activated it like a sleeper cell. Tonight, it all came spilling out in the pit.
I can’t put it back. I’ve been gutted, and I’m holding everything that used to live inside me in my hands.
Brothers hits the brakes, pulling off the road. He reaches in the back and pulls something out, tossing it in my lap before getting out of the truck. I look down, lifting it—soft felt, a little worn and smells like a barn. It’s a cowboy hat, dark brown, the kind I might wear out in wintertime.
There’s a tingle of emotion in my chest as I get out of the truck. Just off the road sits a silver horse trailer. Brothers’ horse and Godspeed are tied to the side.
“You wanted to be a cowboy, Jen,” Brothers says. “Go on, be one.”
I put the hat on, and it fits. “So what do we do when we get the women out?”
“Angusis going to have the plane ready at the gravel park at the park-and-ride, off seventy-five,” he says, untying his horse. “You get Della and Landis to it, and they’ll take you back to Montana.”
I stare at him.
“You’re just letting me go?” I say. “Just like that?”
His face is shadowed as he checks the cinch of his saddle. “I made a mistake when I took you on for the business. I should’ve taken one look at you the day we fixed your truck and left you the fuck alone. Hell…life had already kicked you around enough. But I got selfish. We really clicked, and I felt like maybe I could step in and fix some of the shit people did to you.”
I don’t know what to say.
“I hurt you, Jen, but not on purpose,” he says, voice hoarse. “I’m sorry for that.”
The people pleasing part of me that used to take precedence back in the day wants me to forgive him the way I did in the diner, but grown Jensen is a different story.
“You got your family with Della and her boy,” he says. “Take them and go. I’m sorry I played a part in yours dying.”
I clear my throat. “You hauled me all the way back here to say sorry, huh?”
