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I hope he knows I’m about to go home and edge her until she cries.
There’s still water in the pipes so I wash up in the bathroom. Then I toss her vibrator and leave with nothing but her diary in my pocket.
Back in the truck, Westin is having another cigarette. He hangs up the phone as I approach and yanks open the truck door.
“That was the cleaning crew,” he says. “They can be out Thursday.”
I nod, settling in the front seat and pull back onto the road. We have a few hours left and I need to go see one of my least favorite people.
“Can I ask you a question?” Westin says, rubbing his stubbled jaw.
“Sure,” I say, not looking over.
“Is this girl just about revenge?” he says slowly. “Or is this something more?”
I simmer on that for a minute even though I know the answer. My redbird belongs to me. She has since the night we first met in her husband’s office, whether she knows it or not.
But I can’t deny she’s uniquely situated to be part of my revenge as well.
“Why?” I ask.
“Because this could get ugly,” he says.
I trust Westin’s opinion, but I also recognize that he’s not me. He doesn’t live with this burning anger in his body. He’s never felt the deep sting of injustice the way I have for most of my life. He’s never watched the people he hates take everything from him.
And he’s not fucked up for the redheaded Garrison girl in my bed.
My knuckles go white on the steering wheel. I take a beat to sort through my thoughts.
“I’ll handle this part of my business,” I say.
“I get it,” Westin says. “Just don’t hurt yourself. You’ve got enough scars as it is, Sovereign.”
He never calls me by my first name, most of the men who work for me don’t. When we were boys, he called me Gerry. Then, after everything went to hell, he found me in a bar one night trying to drink myself to death, and something changed.
“Come on, Sovereign,” he said. “Let’s get it together.”
I didn’t realize it then, but he was giving a new name for a fresh start. He took me to a motel and cleaned me up. The next morning, he bought me breakfast and marched me downtown to the basement of a church in South Platte. I was at rock bottom so I went along with it because it couldn’t get any worse.
“My name is Sovereign,” I said. “I’m an alcoholic.”
Westin stuck by me for the next few months. He cleaned me up and took me back to his mother’s house. There I recovered and paid my bills by working on their ranch. After two yearsof hard labor alongside Westin, his father offered us a plot of land that bordered the Garrison Ranch. Westin was adamant he didn’t want to manage a ranch, but I accepted it without question. I didn’t have anything to fall back on the way he did, this was my one chance to make something of myself.
I’d never had anyone believe I was anything but trash before that. Westin finally agreed to work alongside me, so long as he didn’t have to bear the brunt of management. I leapt at the chance to build something, to finally have a piece of land to call my own. From that small plot, we created Sovereign Mountain Ranch. The wealthiest cattle and quarter horse operation in the state of Montana.
Westin told me to forgive and forget what the Garrison family had done to me, but I couldn't. They’d destroyed my family and one day, I would return the favor. If it took me until I was eighty, I’d wait until the opportune moment to strike back.
Then I met Keira Garrison and suddenly everything felt urgent.
I was at peace with eating my revenge ice cold, but not with leaving her with that man.
My thoughts carry me in a haze down the road. We pull up before Thomas Garrison’s ranch and I cut the engine. My pistol is at my hip, where it always is regardless of where I’m going or what I’m doing. I flip the holster strap open—just in case—and get out of the truck.
A sheepdog bursts around the side of the house and yaps at me. The screen door creaks open and Thomas’s wife steps out. She’s in jeans and a white t-shirt and I see Westin’s eyes linger on her curves. Westin used to date her a while back, but then Thomas swooped in and got to her first. She’s a pretty thing with curly blonde hair and sharp, brown eyes.
She has a scowl on her face. “What are you doing on my land, Sovereign?” she snaps.
Westin swings out of the truck and lifts his hand to me. “Hold on, I believe this is earth I’ve plowed. Let me handle this.”
