Danni Rose (The Sherwood)

Five years, he served to protect his mother and Danni. Five years of his life were gone, and he could never get them back. It left an ache in his gut. People looked at him differently. People who didn’t know him and those who did and no longer trusted that he was a good man. It was almost like it was tattooed on his forehead, ex-con.

Jesse had set him up and told him to take the fall for him. He had leverage, his own mother and Danni. She was seventeen then. Young and wild. Free. He thought maybe he loved her even then, but she was with Jackson Hand. The jealousy he felt turned him inside out. It also made him feel like a dirty, old man. Matt would have strung him up if he knew how he felt about Danni then. Maybe he would even now.

It was like at sixteen, she suddenly became this beautiful, young woman and her spirit and beauty took his breath away. He had to stop himself from touching her every time she smiled at him. It gripped his heart and shredded it when he thought about the day the sheriff arrested him on Matt’s farm in front of her and Matt.

Matt knew he couldn’t have done what he was being accused of. He begged him to tell him the truth. Only after he got out did he tell Matt and Simon Hatfield why he had confessed to his brother’s crime.

Simon had never given up on him. He told him he should have been honest with him and Matt. Even the sheriff, Hawk Simpson hadn’t believed it was him that was dealing. They all knew it was Jesse but had no proof. Jesse was that good. He had covered all his tracks pointing all the evidence directly at Walker. His confession sealed his fate.

He remembered her tears. Her crying no when Hawk handcuffed him. He begged Matt to get her inside. He didn’t want her to see him like this being shoved into the backseat of a police cruiser.

Matt was stunned. He wasn’t listening. Danni cried harder. Walker couldn’t tune out Danni’s sobs of pain because they were taking him away. At the station he confessed without the lawyer that Simon Hatfield had provided for him.

They didn’t understand. He had his future taken from him the few days before when Jesse promised him that he would hurt their mother or Danni if he didn’t take the fall for drug possession with the intent to sell. He couldn’t take the chance. Not with either of them. Only Matt and Simon knew the truth and only after he served his five-year, prison sentence in the Lebanon Correctional Facility.

Five years locked inside a cell with limited outdoor time. He thought he would lose his mind except for the books that he read. Exercising in the small cell which drove his cell mate, Tobias crazy but it kept him sane. That and dreams of Danni Hatfield. Illicit dreams that he shouldn’t be having about her, his best friend’s little sister.

Then he saw him leaning in the open doorway of the barn and Walker pulled himself to a sitting position. “What the hell are you doing here?” He asked Jesse.

“You don’t have a phone. I can’t exactly come to the bar or the farm to talk to you so here is the only place that I can catch you.”

Jesse didn’t look so dissimilar from him. He was smaller in build but not much in height. His eyes were as dark as his own but more menacing or was it his imagination? His hair was the same unruly, dark mass of wavy, messy curls that looked like they had rolled out of bed and never brushed it. His brother wore his longer than he did. Too long, in Walker’s book.

They looked like their mother, Artemisia, Walker Wild. She was part Native American from a tribe known to Ohio not that her grandmother knew which one and part Scottish. The Scotts were heavy settlers in Ohio, in Brown County area in the early eighteen-hundreds. They had inherited the tawny skin that their mother had from her ancestors.

Their father, he preferred to not think of him, but he wasn’t unlike their mother. Dark haired, silky black and built like Walker. Muscular and fit. He had left them alone. He had hurt his sons. One had built his walls up high and one had turned to anger and aggression, eventually criminal activities as a way of dealing with his pain.

“I don’t have anything to talk to you about, Jesse,” Walker grumbled at his brother. He wanted him far away from Danni.

“I need a small favor, Walker.”

He rubbed his hand across his jaw and chuckled. Then he rose to his feet. “I think you are out of favors where I’m concerned.”

His brother glanced over his shoulder at the cabin where Danni was sleeping. “She gets prettier by the day, Walker. Why don’t you tell her how you really feel about her?” Jesse suggested.

He got to his feet and crossed the floor to stand by Jesse. He was taller than his brother by two inches. Bigger thanks to being in prison for five years. His gaze was hard as he stared at his younger brother. Jesse had been in trouble since he was sixteen, giving his mother every gray hair on her head. The fact that Jesse cared so little for her that he threatened to hurt her made his gut ache with anger at Jesse.

“You need to leave,” Walker informed him.

“It’s not illegal,” Jesse informed him talking about the favor he wanted from him.

“I don’t give a damn, Jesse. I’m not doing jack-shit for you.”

“I’m your brother,” he declared trying to appeal to his good nature.

Walker snorted. “You stopped being that eight years ago when you set me up to take your fall. You are nothing to me.”

He watched Jesse look over his shoulder again at the cabin and it made his blood run hot in his veins. The implication was clear. Jesse could get to her if he wanted. Walker couldn’t watch her twenty-four hours a day.

He grabbed Jesse by the throat. His brother’s hands went to his trying to push him away. He wasn’t the nice man that went to prison eight years ago. Now he protected what he loved, and he loved Danni Hatfield. He wasn’t doing anything for Jesse. He would kill Jesse first, brother or not.

Walker applied enough pressure that it was difficult for Jesse to breathe. “You stay away from Danni. Do you understand?” Jesse’s face was turning red as he struggled to breathe. “Can you speak?” Jesse shook his head no. He let the pressure release a little. “Now, can you?”

“I’ll stay away from Danni,” he responded.

“I thought so.” His own implication was clear. He would put him in the ground before he would do time for him again or let him hurt Danni. He stepped back, and his hand dropped to his side. “Now, get the hell out of here.”

He went back to his cot after he saw Jesse disappear into the woods that led to the Hand place. No one lived there anymore but Jackson’s mother. Walker hoped he was just heading in that direction to get his vehicle not to cause trouble at Selma’s place. He knew she wasn’t well.