CHAPTER 24

jackson

Thank you for everything.

F our words scratched onto a piece of torn notebook paper never hit so hard. Somewhere in the middle of the night, West had come in to drop off the signed contract. It sat on my table with that stupid note—a neon sign that he was gone.

Whatever weird tiny shred of hope I had that he’d stay shattered with it. Not that I truly expected him to. I couldn’t blame him for getting out as quickly as possible. Hell, I would’ve too.

After texting Mickey to handle the morning crap out in the fields, I did the one thing I never did. I went back to bed. Or at least tried to. Tess made it damn difficult to go back to sleep. Once she was up, she was up. I managed to doze on and off for a few hours while also giving her the attention she demanded.

Somewhere around noon, I managed to crawl my ass out of bed. I pulled on whatever clothes I could find and made a cup of coffee to go. While I didn’t want to, I needed to get out to the field. I left Mickey to run everything too often anyway when I was on tour. I did my best to be available when I was home.

The stables were busy—a fact that put an immediate frown on my face. My guys milled along the fence, eating lunch and talking. Their horses wandered around the corral while they did. Most of the time, my guys took their lunches in the field. It was a waste of time and ridiculous for them to come back. Granted, with West gone, I had no idea how the morning had gone with the horses. Fuck, I hadn’t thought that one through.

Mickey peeled away from the lot of them when he saw me approach. That stupid fucking grin on his face annoyed me. It didn’t feel right that he was still here while West was gone.

“All right.” I sighed as I got out. “Tell me the damage, Mickey. What the hell are we dealing with?”

“Regardin’ what, boy?” he asked.

“West leaving and the fact that all my guys are here,” I said. “With all their goddamn horses.”

“Oh, he ain’t gone.” That fucking grin widened.

“The hell he ain’t,” I shot back. “I have the goddamn contract to prove it.”

“See for yourself,’ Mickey replied. He nodded toward the fence. Lord help me, my curiosity got the better of me. I stalked toward it to see what all the fuss was about.

I didn’t expect to see West in a baseball hat as he leaned out the window of his truck, watching behind him while he slowly backed a horse trailer into the corral. The look on his face was indescribable—determination and… was that pride? It certainly looked a hell of a lot like pride but over what?

“What the fuck?” I muttered, mostly to myself .

“You really should check your bank account more, boy,” Mickey said as he stepped up alongside me. “He says he only took five hundred thousand. Don’t need the rest. At least not the way you need it to save the ranch.”

“But…” But what? There were a handful of thoughts combatting one another in my mind. The first being that five hundred thousand wasn’t enough. He deserved a lot more money than that.

“He took that money and bought Thunder Jack.”

“That fucking horse?” I demanded. Thunder Jack was notorious for his temper. A former bucking rodeo horse, the stallion was nothing but trouble since they were forced to retire him. The owners could barely touch him. “The Mathews really should’ve just put him down. The horse has to be miserable.”

“Yeah, well, West asked me to deduct a boardin’ fee for both Bailey and Thunder Jack from his paychecks.”

Something warm wrapped around my heart at the idea of him taking back Bailey. Of him taking back his horse.

“You better not have,” I snapped quickly. There was no way in hell I was docking his pay for keeping horses here.

“Already upped his pay, boy,” he said. “It ain’t like he don’t work hard enough to have earned it anyway.”

“Good,” I whispered. Money couldn’t remotely begin to fix the shit West had gone through, but I didn’t want it to add to his struggles if I could avoid it.

I leaned against the fence, watching as West hopped out of his truck. I smiled. I couldn’t fucking help it. West stayed. He actually fucking stayed.

I didn’t give a fuck if it was the horses that convinced him to stay. He was here, and that was all that mattered.

“Do I need to remind you that I’m your head of HR?” Mickey teased. And there went my somewhat good mood. It grated on my nerves. I wasn’t in that place with him. Not yet, maybe not ever.

“We ain’t there, Mickey,” I told him. Crossing my arms, I faced him and kept my voice low. Mickey braced for it—I saw it in his expression. He expected me to fire him. Not that I blamed him. I still wrestled with the idea. “And we may never be. What you did… rather, what you didn’t do… I don’t know if I can forgive that. I know you think you meant well but you should’ ve done more.”

“I—”

“I don’t want to fucking hear it, Mick,” I interrupted. “You’ve said all you need to say. You might not have hurt him but you never did a damn thing to stop it either. That’s just as bad in my eyes. You had a chance to do the right thing, and you buried your head in the sand. And right now, I don’t know that I can trust you.”

“You know I ain’t ever goin’ to do a thing to hurt this ranch, boy,” Mickey said.

“I know,” I replied. “I don’t doubt your commitment to the ranch. If anything, you’ve proven you’ll do anything for this ranch. It’s your commitment to me I doubt.”

As harsh as it was, it was honest. How could I trust him?

Some kind of fierce urge to protect West had come to life inside me after everything I’d learned. Urges I intended to foster with my actions. With him staying, I wanted this to be a safe place for him—though, I had no idea what that even looked like. Was it even possible? I had no idea. But I was determined to try, even if that meant forcing Mickey out.

Maybe it was stupid but I didn’t care. I was finding I didn’t care about a lot where West was concerned as long as he was okay.