Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

“ H ow are you feeling now?” Trevor asked.

“I feel good,” Angel said, though the weight of Lone Star had already fallen back onto her shoulders. She looked up as her brother put a plate of food in front of her. “Thanks, Trev.”

He smiled at her and watched as he used his hand canes to go back into the kitchen to get his own food. He picked up the plate and then just used one cane on his way back to the table.

“You’re moving really good today,” Angel said.

“Yeah,” Trevor said. “I didn’t work at all today. Took the day off.”

Alarm bells rang through Angel. “You took the day off today?”

Trevor grinned as he sat down, the affair kind of clumsy and noisy, but Angel was used to it. “Yeah,” Trevor said. “I had a bad headache last night, so I didn’t train with Cutter today.”

“Oh,” Angel said. “Are you feeling better then?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Took some medicine, a hot shower, and then a nap. I feel great.” He picked up his fork and stabbed it into the pile of mashed potatoes on his plate.

Angel looked at her own food, which was a barbecued chicken breast, mashed potatoes with country gravy, and corn on the cob, and she wondered why she thought Trevor couldn’t take care of himself. It may not be gourmet food or fine dining, but the man ate just fine. He had money to buy groceries, and all he had to do was get a ride into town to pick them up. Angel often took him or just picked up his grocery order when she went to town.

“This looks great, Trev,” she said, her voice catching in her chest. Thankfully, it didn’t make it up to her throat where he could hear it.

“Why don’t you tell me what you have going on?” Trevor picked up his corn and took a bite. He held incredible strength in his lower back, abs, chest, and arms. He had to move his whole body that way sometimes, as his injury had left his legs less than able to support his weight. Trevor still did physical therapy every two weeks to improve his range of motion and strength. He would never be able to walk without some sort of assistance, but he wasn’t wheelchair-bound either.

Angel took a bite of her own mashed potatoes. “I went to Three Rivers with Henry Marshall.”

“Yeah,” Trevor said around his mouthful of food. “He texted all of us; we all know that.” He didn’t seem alarmed by that. He didn’t seem like anything shady was going on, and Angel relaxed into her plan to perhaps just keep Henry a secret for a little while.

You have to finesse it , she told herself, echoing Henry’s words in her head. She didn’t know how to do that with Trevor. Heck, she didn’t know how to do it at all. She looked at her brother, pure vulnerability streaming through her. She loved him dearly, but she didn’t have to hide anything from him.

“I like Henry Marshall,” she said.

Trevor looked up from his dinner, his eyes widening with every nanosecond that passed. “You like Henry Marshall?”

Angel nodded, picked up her knife and fork, and focused on her own food. Trevor’s gaze wasn’t quite the level of Daddy’s, but she still couldn’t hold it very well.

“I like him,” she said. “Like, I want to go out with him. I want to hold his hand. I want him to kiss me. I like him.” She couldn’t believe she even said the word “kiss” to her brother.

She especially didn’t like how, out of her peripheral vision, she saw Trevor wipe his hands and his face and lean back in his chair. “Well, what are you going to do about that?”

“I don’t know,” Angel said. “I’m talking to you about it. What would you do?”

“What would I do?” Trevor asked. “I don’t know what I would do.”

Angel let out a huff, scarfed down a bite, and stabbed through a piece of chicken that she’d cut. “Let’s say that I hired somebody to work out here, a girl that you really liked. She’s a really good farrier. She leads the team well. You thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world. What if you wanted to go out with her?”

Trevor folded his arms. “We don’t have any women working here right now.”

Angel glared at him. “But what if we did? And you liked her?”

Her brother looked at her, searching her face—for what Angel had no idea. She put the food in her mouth so she wouldn’t say anything else. Like she’d already held Henry’s hand, and he’d already kissed her, even though that hadn’t been a real kiss and it had happened a year ago.

“Pick up your fork,” she said. “Eat.” She cut off another piece of chicken, a slow anger simmering inside her. “Is it so shocking that I like a man? That I want to go out with someone?”

“No,” Trevor said quickly, and he did pick up his utensils and start to eat. “It’s not shocking at all, Angel. It’s just…one of the guys here.” She heard the level of insecurity and incredulity in his voice.

“Yeah,” Angel said. “I mean, where else am I going to meet men?” She looked over to him. “Heck, I barely leave this place. And when I do, it’s just to run errands. It’s to pick up medicine for Momma or get groceries. It’s to go into the farrier academy and attend meetings, teach a class, or do internship selections. I don’t ever go hang out with people my own age. The people my own age are off-limits to me. And I’m just wondering what you think. Like maybe….”

She trailed off, trying to get the right thing to come. “But what if they weren’t?” This time, she had enough mental capacity to put a little bit of potatoes on the fork with her chicken. She took that bite, and she looked at Trevor, the question hanging in the air between them.

“You’re going to talk to Daddy about the no-dating rule?” he asked.

Angel really didn’t want to do that, but she didn’t see a way around it. “I don’t even know if anything between me and Henry will happen.”

“Does he like you too?” Trevor asked.

Angel shrugged one shoulder, though she knew the answer to that question was yes. “I think so.”

She focused on her food again, using it as an excellent distraction. “I had a real nice time with him this weekend,” she said. “It was an escape that I needed.”

“You work too hard around here,” Trevor said. “Everyone knows it.”

“Will you lead roll call tomorrow?” she asked.

Trevor pulled in a breath, and she looked at him. “Me? You want me to lead roll call?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I want someone else to start taking over roll call, and I think you can do it.” She occasionally had others lead roll call, but not often. “Who did it when I was gone?”

“No one,” Trevor said. “We just didn’t have it.”

Angel shook her head, displeasure and irritation bleeding through her. “See, that’s not okay. We need to have roll call every single day, and what if I have a headache?” She gave Trevor a glare. “What if I can’t make it out there by seven a.m.?”

She stabbed at her food again. “There needs to be someone else to lead this ranch when I can’t.”

“I agree.”

“Great,” she said without missing a beat. “Then I want you to lead roll call.”

“I don’t really know what’s going on with the farriers,” he said.

“I don’t either,” Angel said. “I would text Shad.” She raised her eyebrows, a clear challenge in the movement. “In fact, why don’t you just text Shad and ask him to do the business at the beginning, and you’ll do the inspirational or training part? And then I can talk about schedules. One person doesn’t have to do everything.”

She caught the surprise in her brother’s expression, and it flowed freely in her veins too. “I know this is new,” she said quietly. “But I think it’s time for something new.” She pushed her potatoes around her plate, wishing she was hungrier.

“Henry’s momma sent a lot of food for us,” she said. “I’ll bring you some in the morning.”

“Okay,” Trevor said. “And okay on the roll call, Angel.” He reached over with his fork and tangled it up with hers, starting a little pushing war in the potatoes that made her smile. He’d done this when they were younger, when Daddy lectured them too much, when she wanted to go to prom but didn’t know how to bring it up.

She laughed and looked at him. “Okay, Trevor.”

“Are you okay?” Trevor asked. “Because you don’t seem okay to me, Angel. And you’re real good at hiding it from everyone, but you can’t hide it from me. And if you start dating Henry, you’re not going to be able to hide it from him either.”

Angel already knew about Henry’s eagle eyes. She’d already revealed a lot to him. He already did see her—the real her, the Angel behind the walls, behind the straight-line face, behind the schedules, behind the roll call, behind the public fa?ade.

Henry already saw her .

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m doing okay, now that I’ve had a little break.”

“I’m glad,” Trevor said. “But what else do we need to change?”

Angel took a deep breath and sliced off another piece of chicken. “Not this chicken, I can tell you that.”

Trevor grinned back at her. “I even made the barbecue sauce myself,” he said. “It’s Granny’s recipe.”

“We need to go visit Granny,” Angel said.

“Yeah,” Trevor agreed. “We haven’t been there in a while.” He scooped up another bite of food, and Angel got herself to take one too.

“I’m not Daddy,” Angel finally admitted. “I can’t do things the way Daddy did. He has a lot of good systems in place for hiring farriers, for how we get things done around here, and our culture, and I want to keep all that. But I’m not Daddy.”

She simply couldn’t take another bite, but she looked at the glistening corn on her plate. “I can’t work eighteen hours a day with no breaks. I’m so lonely.” She looked at her brother, and she knew he saw her too. “I need time away from the ranch. I do want to date Henry. So I’m going to need more help. Maybe another foreman.”

She dropped her head again, and this time, when Trevor reached over, it was to cover her hand with his. “Then we’ll hire another foreman,” he said. “Maybe even Henry. Move someone up from one of the team leads, those who are already ingrained in our culture. It’s part of our motto. We promote from within.”

“Yeah,” Angel said. “What about you?”

Trevor pulled his hand back, already shuttering off his own vulnerability. “I’m too slow for that, Angel. Besides, I don’t work with the farriers. I train cutting horses.”

“You only work with one horse at a time.” Angel knew that. And he had two men who helped him. That was their whole job, to take care of his cutting horse and him.

“Okay,” Angel said. “I’ll start going over the team leads and see who’s appropriate.” She looked at her food, put another bite in her mouth, and started to feel more settled. After swallowing, she asked, “Can I sleep here with you tonight?”

“Anytime you want to,” Trevor said.

“Do you think it will look fishy if I promote Henry?” she asked. “I don’t want the other men to think I’m favoring him. Especially when they find out that we’re dating.”

“Are you dating?” Trevor asked.

“No,” Angel said. “But if we do—let’s say we do—and I promote him, then what?”

“What if you promote him first?” Trevor asked.

“Did anyone seem like it was weird that we were gone together this weekend?”

Trevor looked at her blankly. “I don’t think so. I didn’t hear anything.”

Angel nodded, her thoughts becoming more and more wild as they raced around. They tied knots in her head, and she decided she didn’t have to know or decide anything tonight. “Thanks for dinner, Trevor.”

“Any night you want to come over, Angel,” he said. “You’re always welcome here.” She nodded because she knew that was true. She helped her brother in the morning get ready for work. They always went to roll call together. After roll call, she went back to her parents’ house and helped them while everyone else got to work. By eight-thirty, she was fully entrenched with ranch work. She was lucky if she was home before seven.

As Angel finished her dinner, she knew absolutely that she’d spoken true. She wasn’t her father, and she couldn’t keep doing what she’d been doing at Lone Star for the past year. Something had to give, and she didn’t want it to be her.

They’d both finished eating, but neither of them got up. Angel finally looked over to her brother again. “Just say what’s on your mind.”

“I’m a little nervous about it,” Trevor said.

“Yeah, you think I wasn’t nervous to come over here and tell you I have a crush on Henry Marshall?” She gave him a wry smile that broke the ice between them.

“All right,” Trevor said. “At the risk of sounding like Daddy, I’m gonna give you some advice.”

Angel nodded in tight little bursts. She loved her father, and she went to him for everything. She always wanted his advice. And the truth was, she’d always relied on Trevor too.

She listened to him when he spoke, because he said things straight from his heart. No judgment.

“You gotta stop running away from what you don’t want,” Trevor said. “And go toward what you do.” He nodded just one time, his jaw tight. “We don’t run away from problems. If there’s something that needs to change, we figure out what that thing is, and we work toward it. That’s what Daddy would do—that’s what Daddy taught us to do.”

Angel swiped quickly at the corners of her eyes, which had started leaking tears. “You’re right,” she said. “I know you’re right.” She tipped her head back and looked up to the ceiling. “I guess I just don’t know what I should be running toward.”

“You’ll figure it out,” Trevor said. “You already know some of it.”

“Yeah,” she said, with a heavy sigh. “I guess I do.”

“You can ask God tonight,” Trevor said.

“You think I haven’t been asking Him?”

Trevor chuckled. “I bet you have, but sometimes when there are a lot of other loud things in the world, God is hard to hear.” He covered her hand again, and Angel met his eyes. “And Angel, you know I love you to death, but I think your life has been really loud lately.”

This time the tears slipped down Angel’s face, because Trevor had spoken true. Her life was loud. She had so much going on all the time. Things to do, people to talk to, orders to put in, jobs of her own, errands to run, schedules to make, men to hire. Henry had told her he’d be there for her if and when she needed to slow down, when she needed things to be a little quieter. Right now, that was exactly what Angel needed.

“All right, Trev,” she said. “You’re right. I’ll figure it out.”

“I know you will,” he said. “If there’s anything I can do, let me know.”

“Well, you’re going to run roll call for the foreseeable future,” she said. “Even if that means you ask Shad or Flint to do it. I don’t care. You’re in charge of roll call for now.”

Trevor nodded resolutely. “I can do it, Angel.”

“‘Course you can,” she said. “I trust you, Trev.” And she realized as she said those words that she’d been severely lacking on the trust front. She didn’t truly trust Trevor until now. She needed to trust. Trust the men on her team. Trust everyone who worked at Lone Star. Trust her brother. Trust her parents. Trust herself, and most of all, trust God.

Maybe she’d fallen away from doing that. She wasn’t sure. She’d known her brother would help her iron out the things inside of her or help her see what she needed to do.

She got up and moved over the two steps to hug him. “Thank you, Trev. I love you to bits and pieces too.” Then she cleaned up the dinner he’d made while he texted, supposedly with Shad and others about roll call.

And because Angel didn’t want to go to sleep alone in her house, she helped Trevor get in bed and then she moved into his guest bedroom, pulled back the comforter that probably hadn’t ever been used, and climbed into bed.

Run toward what you want , she thought, echoing her brother’s advice. But the real question was: What did Angel White really want her life to be?