I angled in closer, vehemence curling through my muscles. “You’re just a dude who got scammed by a greedy businessman, Rhys. You know nothing more. And you maintain that until we get to trial. Keep your nose out of it. You got me?”
He shook his head. “You’re in trouble? Means I fuckin’ am, too.”
He didn’t say anything else, just peeled out in the gravel as he lurched forward. I watched as he took the short distance to come to a stop in front of his mother’s house.
Blowing out the strain, I turned and trudged back toward ours.
Night pressed down, as heavy as the exhaustion that weighed my bones. Every window in the house was blackened, only the light next to the door scattering a dim glow across the porch.
The air was cool, a light breeze ushering in the fall that consumed the last days of summer. Bugs hummed a low buzz from their perch in the swishing branches of the trees.
The stillness profound.
The hole inside me gaped wider than it ever had.
So close. So fucking close and she was still out of reach.
Girl on my tongue and dancing in my soul.
I tipped my head toward the sky to the spiral of stars that wrote the heavens in song.
Endless, ethereal beauty.
My fingers itched with the need to play.
With the need to create magic.
To sing this girl in a sonnet.
Weave her in poetry.
A horse whinnied from the stables, drawing my attention that direction. Far to the back of the property, a single light blazed from the smaller house my younger brother Lincoln had built a handful of years ago.
But the stables and workshop were still there.
Standing like a tribute.
A memorial.
Unable to resist the lure, I moved that way and crept through the shadows to a place that to me would forever be scripted in the delicate curve of her name. I eased open the sliding door, enough to slip inside, only to freeze when I heard the snapping of a stick coming from the other side of the stables.
A horse whinnied again, and I could hear Linc’s dog, Cal, start barking from within his house.
Every hair on my body stood on end.
A shiver of awareness.
A slick of dread.
I eased back a step and peered into the lapping darkness. Through the shift of shadows that played and danced through the wispy tendrils of the night.
Another crunch.
Quieter this time.
Controlled.
Measured.
My heart rate spiked, and my breaths turned shallow as I slipped back out, keeping my footsteps as light as possible as I edged that way.
Caught somewhere between alarm and the bare determination to protect my family.
Another crunch echoed to my left, and my attention jerked that way to see a shadow suddenly bolt toward a grove of trees behind the stables.
Didn’t think it through. Didn’t consider.
I shot after him.
Pants of aggression puffed from my lungs, violence stretching every muscle thin.
Consuming.
Overwhelming.
I could feel the panic ripple from the bastard who tried to outrun me. The darkened silhouette dove into a thicket of trees, winding into their massive trunks and beneath the camouflage of their leaves that cast the ground in a murky obscurity.
I sprinted after him, feet thudding on the damp ground as I darted around the stables. Cal barked like mad, enough that it caused a light to flick on somewhere in Lincoln’s house.
Fuck.
Last thing I wanted was my younger brother coming out here.
Couldn’t allow him to get involved.
Couldn’t put him in danger.
Problem was, I had no idea what I was up against. Didn’t know who would dare come here. Who was wishing for death so badly that they would risk stepping foot in Dalton, though I’d lay down bets it was whatever prick had been snooping around Royce and Emily’s engagement party.
Royce a clear target.
But my gut told me this went deeper.
I was determined to find out.
I made it around the stables and plunged into the disorienting haze of shadows. My eyes scanned, searching for movement.
For a sign of the fucker who was going down.
My hands desperate for retribution and knowing it wasn’t time.
That I was supposed to be biding the days and the only thing I wanted was to end this now.
Violet’s touch echoed from my flesh. Her words and her pain. Wanted it for her, even when she would fuckin’ hate me in the end.
A creak rode on the air from somewhere in the distance, and I angled through the trees, ducking below branches and dodging undergrowth as I searched through the brush.
I thought I saw something off to my right, and I turned, running faster.
Asshole was gonna die.
I had no care—no focus—nothing but putting a hand on this asshole and bringing him to his end.
I jumped over a fallen log and darted around another tree.
I didn’t even have the chance to process the rock coming for my head before it made impact.