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They were just as unwelcome now with the man before me.
I had no idea what to make of the fact that Xavier was working for my uncle. That he now held the position that such a good man like Del had held for so long. It was a position requiring the utmost trust and responsibility. What I needed to be doing at the moment was asking Uncle Curtis what he’d been thinking when he’d hired Xavier, but instead, the first chance I'd gotten, I'd gone racing after Xavier to confront him. And about what?
Fucking insurance.
Okay, so yeah, I’d managed to call him out for being a liar, but I hadn't had the balls to do much else. And most of that courage had come from the adrenaline rush I'd been feeling after the encounter in the driveway. I didn't even know what to make of what had happened. I knew I was at fault for having attacked him like I had, but his reaction was something I still didn't know how to deal with. If Uncle Curtis hadn't stopped him, I wasn't so certain that he would’ve stopped on his own. His hands around my neck hadn’t been a game, it hadn't been a way of trying merely to subdue me. And that crazed look I'd seen in his eyes… all I knew was that I kept coming back to the idea that that look had been more about survival than anything else.
His survival.
Uncle Curtis had said as much when he’d begged me not to call the police and press charges against Xavier. He’d said he'd explain in more detail later, but I wasn't sure what he could say that would undo what had happened. I'd never been afraid of Xavier when I’d been a kid.
But I was afraid of him now.
And I was afraid for my uncle.
I’d promised him I wouldn’t call the cops, but it was a promise I might not be able to keep. But that little nagging voice in my brain wouldn't stop reminding me that prison changed people. Even after the events of "that night," I’d tried making excuses for Xavier's behavior. I’d tried to convince myself he wasn't truly a violent person. I’d tried to come up with some reason to explain why he’d done what he’d done that night. And maybe I'd hung on to that all these years to make that sting of betrayal just a little less painful. But it was hard to get past the fact that the man could have easily killed me.
The fact that right after he'd attacked me, I’d found myself nearly as violently attracted to the man as I’d been afraid of him just moments before didn't help.
I watched as he took in what I'd said about being the one who'd convinced my father to hire him. Xavier had been at the ranch many times before he had actually officially worked there. My father had bought the place as a way to compete with the ranchers around him, specifically Uncle Curtis. The problem had been that my father hadn’t been a horseman. He hadn’t known anything about quality horses and what the ranchers of Eden were looking for in the animals that they used to work their cattle.
So he’d done what he'd always done… thrown money at it. He’d bought the most expensive pedigreed horse he could find and had built an obscenely large ranch, thinking it would earn him the respect he craved. Then he’d started hiring people to work with his newfound investments. I had no idea if my father had made money with the ranch, or just wasted it, but I’d benefited from it just the same.
Xavier's father, who'd once worked for Uncle Curtis but had been fired after only a few months, had become the foreman at my father's ranch. I hadn't had any interest in the horses until the day Xavier had stepped foot onto the property. Then my interest had quickly changed. It’d been all about the quiet boy with the dark hair and unique eyes. When Xavier had admitted to me that his family was still struggling to make ends meet even after his mother had started working as my parents’ housekeeper, I’d convinced my father that Xavier was far more experienced with horses than his own father.
Which was entirely the truth.
Xavier had "the touch" with horses that his father had lacked. In fact, his father had had a heavy hand, which had never earned him results. Xavier, on the other hand, had managed to do more with a horse in a few minutes than his father could've done in a few months.
Unfortunately, I'd been fully infatuated with the young man by the time he’d proven himself to be far worse than his father.
"You're lying," he said to me.
I shook my head. The move seemed to be more convincing than my words, because Xavier looked away.
