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“Aubrey’s dead.” Even saying those words feels as though someone’s carving my guts out.
“Just because someone’s dead, doesn’t mean you can’t still love them. You must miss her.”
“I don’t miss her. I lost her a long time before she died. What I miss is what we shoulda had,” I admit, not liking one bit where this is heading. I don’t wanna talk about Aubrey, not here and not like this.
“I’m the kinda man who needs closure and I don’t feel like I got that with her. I certainly didn’t get it with Mayor Walker,” I point out, trying to move us on from the subject.
“And you would have killed him?”
“I’ve killed men for much less,” I confess because I won’t hide who I am, not from her or anyone else.
“Is that supposed to be a warning?” She smiles at me.
“It’s exactly what it should be. Red, I should be telling you to run. To go back to whatever privileged little life in L.A. that you came from.”
“But…” She slides her finger over my bottom lip and after I quickly take it between my teeth, I grab hold of her wrist as I gently release it and place a kiss on her fingertip. “I don’t want to.”
I drag her hand down so it rests on my chest and when her head snuggles into the crook of my neck and she breathes me in, I appreciate the comfort she gets from it.
“Did you kill the man who put those scars on your back?” she asks, and I swallow real hard when I think about it.
“I thought about it,” I confess.
“So he’s still alive?” She almost sounds as if she doesn't believe me.
“Oh yeah, he’s still living.” I laugh sarcastically.
“Cole.” She suddenly sits up and looks down at me in shock. “Did you do that to yourself?” I don’t like the horror on her face, I've never talked about this shit with anyone for fear of seeing that look. People would never understand, not even if I explained it to ‘em. But I got a feelin’ that maybe she just might.
“It started when Mom left. I was twelve years old and the troublesome one. She was constantly scolding me, and Dad always told me that I was gonna drive her to some kinda breakdown. The day before she left, I was tossing a ball around the house after she told me not to, and I knocked one of the ornaments her mom had given her off the mantelpiece. It smashed into thousands of pieces, it was never gonna be fixable, and when Mom found me looking at it she wasn’t angry like I thought she’d be. She was real fuckin’ sad. She sobbed andstared at those broken pieces for what felt like hours. I wanted her to shout at me, I wanted her to make me pay for what I did, but she didn’t say a word. Then the next day, we woke up and she was gone.”
“You thought your mom left because of that?” Savannah looks sorry for me.
“I figured Dad was right and I pushed her too far. I hated myself for it. I blamed myself for the fact she’d left and I couldn’t bear that pain being inside me. Mitch used to tell us stories about when he was younger and how wranglers got whipped like horses for not pulling their weight where he came from. I remembered thinking about how awful that was and, at the time, well, I felt like I needed something awful. I waited ‘til everyone was asleep and I went out to the stable. I found Grandpa’s old training whip and took off my shirt…”
“Oh god.” Savannah covers her mouth with her hands as tears build in her eyes.
“The first strike felt like I’d broken through the damn I’d built up inside me. I learned fast that pain on the outside is far easier to tolerate than pain on the inside. So I struck myself again, harder. It stung and the pain forced tears in my eyes. It felt good when they came too. Hell knows I’d held ‘em in for long enough.
“Cole.” Savannah squeezes my hand tighter.
“I hated her for leaving, she was making Garrett, Wade, and Breanna suffer for what I did. Then, over time, I figured it was the ultimate punishment for her to give me. She knew how much I loved ‘em all. I was always taking the blame for the shit my brothers did, and Breanna may have only been a baby, but I always wanted her close. I was scared something bad would happen to her and wanted to be there to protect her all the time.” I think back to those days and how scared I used to be of losing Breanna. She wasn’t born at home like me and my brotherswere. Mom got rushed into hospital for an emergency cesarean and I remember Grandpa cried that night because he thought we were gonna lose ‘em both.
“That’s why when they both came home from the hospital I thanked God and promised myself that I’d never let anything happen to my little sister.
“I stopped doing it when we got used to Mom not being there, I focused on the ranch, and things started going good. I met Aubrey and she made me happy. And then one night, Breanna never came home.”
“I’m so sorry.” Savannah gives up on holding in her tears and I hate the pity on her face.
“We all dealt with it in different ways, but we all blamed ourselves. She was our sister, we were all supposed to protect her. The thought of her throwing herself off that damn edge because she felt like she had no better option or that she couldn’t talk to one of us really made me want to do it too. I thought about it over and over, I even drove my truck up there and sat for a while, trying to imagine what was goin’ through her head. Then I thought about my brothers back at home and what it would do to ‘em. I’d only be multiplying their grief and blame. So I came back to the ranch and I took that whip out again. I cut that leather into my skin until it bled then I did it some more. I wanted to hurt worse than ever. I wanted to tear the pain outta my body and that was the only way I knew how. The scars are bad because for a real long time, I never let them heal. I thrashed myself almost every night because the pain inside me never fully went away.”
“Do your brothers know?” she asks.
“Garrett caught me once, he made me promise to stop.”
“And did you?”
“A promise between a Carson brother is a sacred vow. I had to.” I manage a smile for her. “We never talked about it againand I kept that promise I made right up until the day Aubrey died. I won’t apologize for breaking it. When life brings ya to ya knees we gotta do whatever it is that makes ya stand up again. I haven’t done for a while.”
