Unless, of course, he was throwing words in anger at me in a hallway before he gave me an orgasm. The memoryflashed anyway—hands, breath, heat—sharp and unwanted, barging in at the worst possible moment. I ground my teeth, irritated at myself for it. This wasn’t the time.
I stopped and grabbed his arm. “If this is business, I need to go back for my laptop.”
He glanced at me then, his lips thin, eyes bright. “You don’t need it.”
“I need my figures?—”
He kept walking, waited at the door, and I was torn between running back to the house for my stuff and following him, but his expression was so bleak that I was drawn closer and went inside first.
The hall was already full when we got there.
Gunner and Jake leaned against the back wall, arms folded, boots crossed at the ankle in that casual way men get when they’re trying not to look like they’re bracing for impact. Miguel stood near Ruth, shoulders rounded, eyes down. Colt straddled a chair the wrong way round, phone in his hand, thumb flicking the screen, though he looked up the second we walked in.
Everyone straightened, attention snapping to Jesse, and my gut tightened. For a split second, I wondered if I’d misread everything—if this was some kind of group defense, a line being drawn about the ranch, about selling, about all the numbers I didn’t have in my head because I really needed to go back for my notebook at least.
“This gonna take long, boss?” Colt asked, half-grinning, half-hopeful. “I’ve got fences to mend before dark.”
Ruth frowned, clearly confused, glancing between Jesseand the rest of us as if she’d missed a step somewhere. Miguel didn’t look up at all.
Jesse stopped at the head of the room. I stayed quiet at his side, headache pulsing behind my eyes, watching the people who made this place run—cowboys in worn jackets and dust-ground boots, people who knew the land better than any spreadsheet ever could—and waited to see which way the blow was going to fall.
Jesse cleared his throat. He stood with his hands loose at his sides as if he’d already accepted whatever reaction came next.
“I owe you all an apology,” he said.
That did it. The mood in the room shifted, subtle but immediate. Colt stopped scrolling. Gunner was worried. Ruth’s frown deepened.
Jesse glanced at me, quick but deliberate, and nodded. He had the room in his grip without raising his voice, control radiating from him in a way that tugged low and unwelcome. I shut it down just as fast. This wasn’t the moment. Not even close. So, I guessed this apology included me too, given it was me he was looking at.
“The others know this, but in the accident where Miguel was in the barn, and Walter got him out, my dad, Abel Knox, was in there as well. Maybe drunk, possibly using a heater he shouldn’t have, maybe the one who started a fire.”
I stiffened. “He what now?” This was all news to me—although other than inheriting this place from an absent-from-my-life grandfather, I hadn’t bothered to dig. He’d had a heart attack after a barn fire; that was the end of the story for me. “That’s an awful lot of maybes you have there, Jesse.”
Jesse nodded. “No one knows for sure. He came off badly and got a brain injury from a falling beam. He’s got something like dementia from a TBI.” He gestured at me. “A traumatic brain injury, I mean.”
“I know what a TBI is.”
Given the way no one else seemed surprised, this was a truth that maybe no one outside of the ranch knew.
“Was your dad arrested?”
“No one knew for sure what he’d done; we’re only guessing.”
“I was sleeping,” Miguel said. “I can’t place Abel inside.”
“We were so caught up with trying to get Walter help, and Dad seemed okay at first, even went home after getting stitches, and it was only a couple of days later he showed signs of the brain thing.” Jesse tapped his temple. “It makes him worse than he ever was, and I’ve hidden my head in the sand and pretended I had it under control. Then, I find out he’s been attacking Miguel, for the same homophobic shit he threw at my brother and would throw at me for every other supposed infraction he made up in his head.”
Miguel lifted his head. Ruth’s hand came up to her mouth.
“I know what he’s capable of,” Jesse went on. His voice didn’t rise, didn’t crack, and that somehow made it worse. “Iknowhe’s violent. Iknowhe’s unpredictable. Iknowhe’s the nastiest excuse for a human being I’ve ever had the misfortune to share blood with.”
He stopped, visibly upset, but not a single person said anything, not even me.
“And I let him hurt you, Miguel,” Jesse said.
“It’s okay, boss.”
“No, it’s not. He hurts with his words. With his fists. I let him walk onto this ranch as if he still had the right.” His shoulders hitched once, barely there. “I failed to protect you. All of you. And I let you down.”
