CHAPTER 18

jackson

C onvincing myself to go back to the ranch was hard. What the hell was I supposed to say to West? What could I fucking say?

The answer: not a damn thing.

That fucking killed me.

I eased my truck to a stop outside the stables because going home felt wrong. I felt like I owed West something. What that was… I didn’t have a goddamn clue. I just knew I couldn’t go home and sit with this.

As always, West was in with the horses. The sunset settled across his shoulders like the proverbial new light I was seeing him in. He wasn’t the West that left me. He was the West I’d lost. That did something to me. Something painful.

Those gray eyes caught mine and I swore the fucking world stopped for just a moment. Any of the anger and hatred I had for West had dissipated, replaced with a kind of sadness I couldn’t describe. Even with the giant fucking rift between the two of us, I wanted to fix it. I wanted to take away all the awful things. The anger, the fear, the panic. Every single damn thing .

West broke eye contact and returned to work while I just stood there, staring and wondering. What the hell was his life like now? The drinking and the fighting were just the smallest of indicators. But what couldn’t I see? How deep did his self-harm and self-loathing go? Was it worse than that? Did it affect his ability to keep a job? A house? Was it why he stayed as far off the grid as he could manage?

And the guy he killed… was it related to…

I couldn’t bring myself to think the thought. How fucked up was that? It was his everyday reality and my stomach rolled just thinking about it. Fuck.

My mind was a wild mess as I tried to make sense of it all. Of all the things I expected my mom to tell me about West, this wasn’t it. This was the kind of thing you didn’t want anyone to go through.

“You knew,” I said under my breath when Mickey joined me. “You knew and you didn’t say a fucking word.”

“And what the hell was I supposed to say, Jackson?” Mickey replied. He sighed heavily, draping his arms over the fence and staring out to where West traded horses. “There’s just some things…”

His voice trailed off, and I glanced over at him. The haunted expression on his face did nothing to quell my anger. He didn’t have a fucking right to be haunted. Not after everything he helped hide.

“You know, I ain’t ever wished someone dead,” he whispered, “but when I saw that boy after… I couldn’t help thinkin’ it. You know, they marked him. One cut for every man that…”

The nine scars on his side. Bile stung the back of my throat with that little piece of information.

“And the guy he killed?” I asked. Did I want to know? Not particularly. But I felt like I needed all the information I could get—to understand what the hell West was going through.

“You know, he had to go back in there with those animals once he was out of the hospital,” Mickey told me. “Your daddy tried to convince them to send him to another prison—somewhere he’d be a bit safer—but no one fuckin’ listened. Or maybe they just didn’t care.

“It changed him. Not sure how it couldn’t, you know? But it did. And I don’t know the details—not sure I want to—but two years later, he killed one of them. Not that the fucker didn’t deserve it, if you ask me. He had to go back to court and all that. Got off with self-defense. Had a damn good lawyer. She managed to get him transferred to another prison too. Your daddy and I went to watch the trial, and West… he wasn’t there, you know? He’s got that empty look about him right in the eyes. Still does.”

I knew that look. I saw it every fucking day. And it made sense now.

“Sometimes, I still wonder if he would’ve been better off dead,” he admitted, his voice cracking slightly. That fucking guilt he felt? He deserved it. “Livin’ with somethin’ like that… I don’t think there’s livin’ after somethin’ like that.”

“Y’all should’ve done something, that’s what should’ve happened,” I said. While I understood where he was coming from, it was all a load of fucking bullshit. There’d been chances—a lot of them—to spare West this life. Instead, the lot of them picked a fucking plot of land over a kid.

That shit I couldn’t let go.

“I’m tryin’ here, boy. It’s the best I got.”

“You failed him,” I snapped, feeling that familiar rage bubbling to the surface. “You can say and do whatever the hell you want now, but don’t you think for a minute you’re doing it for him. You’re doing it for you because you feel bad. You should’ve stepped up when he fucking needed you.

“No, y’all decided to bury your fucking heads in the sand, and for what?” I gestured around me. “For some fucking land? For fucking cows? You failed him—all of you—when you decided his worth wasn’t more than this stupid fucking business. Than a stupid fucking job!”

“Now, it ain’t like that—”

“It is like that!” I interrupted. How could none of them understand that? I was sure my dad probably thought the same shit. That keeping West busy here and there was enough. It wasn’t. “I would’ve burned the whole fucking place to the ground before I let him run away afraid for his life.”

“Jackson—”

“You can say whatever the hell you want, Mick,” I continued over him. I was on a roll. I didn’t fucking care. “It don’t change a damn thing about what y’all didn’t do when he needed you. Y’all let Harrison terrorize a boy without protecting him and that’s just the fucking start of it. It’s no wonder he don’t want to be here. Nowhere is fucking safe. This place is full of bad memories and people who didn’t protect him. ”

I stormed away before I kept going and fired Mickey because I was real damn close to doing just that.

Every now and then I did stupid shit. Most would say bull riding was the stupidest shit I could do. But this? This right here? This was going to top it, and I didn’t give a flying fuck.

I couldn’t get rid of the memories that haunted West, but I sure as hell could burn the reminders to the fucking ground. Which was why I drove right to the old McNamara house in the middle of the night. I backed my truck up to the front steps, running over the old bushes with no fucking remorse.

Hopping out of the truck, I rounded the back and lowered the tailgate. I grabbed the crowbar and one of the six containers of gasoline I had in the bed of the truck.

Harrison’s lawyer had locked up the house after he died, but that didn’t stop me from kicking down the goddamn door. My boots echoed in the empty house as I stomped up the stairs.

I broke out windows and smashed holes in the walls.

I dumped gasoline on every fucking surface until I stormed through puddles.

Second floor.

First floor.

Basement.

Fuck, I even wrecked the goddamn porches.

Everything had to fucking go until this awful goddamn house was nothing more than smoke on the horizon and a pile of ashes.

When every inch of that godforsaken house was drenched in gasoline, I tossed the last can in the back of my truck along with the crowbar. My boots were soaked, and I reeked, but I didn’t give a fuck as I took a pack of cigarettes out of my pocket. I set one between my lips while I stared up at that old house. I hadn’t smoked in fucking years, but I wanted one.

“I hope you rot in hell, Harrison,” I murmured, wandering close to the front steps. Rotting in hell was too good for him, but it’d have to do .

Lighting a match, I held it to my cigarette until the end ignited before dropping the match onto the porch. The gasoline burst to life and ran with the flame. It’d probably be enough, but I walked the perimeter for good measure, tossing lit matches through broken windows as I went. Flames erupted violently and raced through the house at an impressive rate.

When I was certain the house needed nothing else to burn to the ground, I returned to my truck. I leaned against the tailgate and crossed my arms. Taking a long drag from my cigarette, I watched the house burn with a wicked kind of satisfaction. Black smoke billowed into the night sky while the orange glow lit up the dark field.

Only when I was certain there was no saving the goddamn place did I put a call in to the Sheriff.

“Keating,” I said when he answered.

“ What do you need, Jackson? ” the Sheriff demanded, grumpy and annoyed with me bothering him. “ This better be damn good. It’s late. ”

“I need you to give Carter a call and get him out to the ranch. Tell him I have a…” I faltered briefly, staring at the fire for the right words, “controlled burn I need his help on.”

The momentary silence that followed was so damn telling.

“ What the hell are you setting fire to now? ”

“The McNamara house.”

“ Fuck. ” He sighed and the silence lingered. “ Fine. I’ll give Carter a call. He’ll want to know what happened. You know that. ”

“Tell him I slipped while carrying… what?” I glanced back at the empty containers in the bed of my truck. “Call it twelve gallons of gasoline while smoking a lit cigarette.”

“ Jesus fuck, Jackson. ”

“Oops.”