Chapter Twenty - Westin

CHAPTER TWENTY

WESTIN

I'm so fucking angry, and I don't know where to put it all.

Sovereign doesn't notice. He's getting ready to bring Keira Garrison up to the ranch. I've never seen him more determined about anything in his life. His eyes are always distracted. When I speak, he asks me to repeat myself every time.

I wish Sovereign had someone for me to kill, because I need an outlet for the fire burning in my chest. Instead, I lose myself in work. When I'm not doing that, I'm getting drunk at night in the gatehouse.

It's not healthy. I need my girl back.

A week passes. I stay up until midnight, staring out at the tree outside my window. My mother used to say I bottle things up, that I'd be healthier if I just talked to people, but I'm my father's son through and through. I don't want to fucking talk it out.

I want to shoot Garrisons.

Or David Carter, unless I can find something worse to do to him.

Maybe I'm justified in how I feel and what I'm doing about it, maybe not. Maybe I drink too much. Maybe I stay up and replay every time I kissed her in my head. Maybe I touch myself a few too many times a night thinking about some other man's wife.

Maybe I'm all fucked up inside over what could have been .

After the second week, all my bottles are empty, so I clean myself up and get a haircut and shave. When it's bedtime, I lay on my back and stare at the ceiling. I don't sleep, but I pretend I do until I give up and take Rocky from the barn.

We move through the dark, the lantern hanging off his saddle, to the hill that overlooks Thomas Garrison's house. She's inside somewhere. The lights are all off, except for the one that hangs over the barn.

Inside that fucking house, she's in his bed.

My stomach is sour. I'm so angry, I have to argue myself out of walking down that hill and shooting him dead.

The next night, I go a little earlier. The light is on downstairs, and I can make out the outline of someone inside. Then, the light goes off and turns on in the bottom left window. My breath catches as the curtain draws back.

There she is, in a little white slip, like a pale gold ghost.

It feels like someone shot me right through the heart. Even from this distance, she looks so sad as she leans against the glass. Her face turns up to the full moon for a long time.

She pulls the curtains shut. I stand there for another hour before I go home. The night after that, I go at the same time and watch as she turns out what I assume is the kitchen light. Then, the bedroom light goes on, and she sits in the window, staring out.

Looking at nothing at all.

It turns into a routine. I watch her go to bed, and after she pulls the curtain shut, I can go home and get some sleep.

What I thought would be the best summer of my life turns into living hell. Jensen stays at the gatehouse one night. He's on the porch having a cigarette when I head out to get Rocky from the barn.

"Where are you going?" he asks.

I pause on the steps. "Getting some air."

The tip of his cigarette glows. It's dark tonight, and the moon is a sliver in the sky.

"Do you go out every night to get some air?" he asks.

I shrug .

"You're looking a little rough," he says flatly.

I run my hand over my jaw. It's stubbled. I shaved my beard off when I stopped drinking every night, and I've kept it cut back since.

"I look fine. Fuck you," I say.

"Are you sitting on that hill over Thomas Garrison's house?" He cocks his head.

I don't say anything. He lets out a stream of smoke and leans back in his chair.

"It seems to me, the balance of things in Diane's world is…delicate," he says. "But I don't think seeing her would upset it, so long as no one knew."

"I've got no desire to fuck things up for her," I say.

"This isn't what she wants." Jensen's jaw is set.

"I said I'd figure this shit out for her."

Jensen sighs, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. "She's scared, and she has never had anybody to depend on but herself. Go see her. Try to convince her she can trust you."

I hesitate. Jensen doesn't know that Sovereign plans on bringing Clint's widow to Sovereign Mountain. He knows about the Garrison-Sovereign feud—he knows some of the awful particulars, like Sovereign's fiancée being pregnant by Clint the night she died. That Sovereign has a deep loathing for infidelity because of it. But he's unaware that we plan to kill the rest of the Garrison brothers when the time is right.

He doesn't know that I have a delicate balance of my own.

"It's a situation, given who her husband is," I say.

"I get that," Jensen says. "I'm just saying, it wouldn't hurt just to talk. Just make sure the Garrisons don't find out, or she'll be in trouble."

He hands me a cigarette, like he knows how angry I am inside. I take a drag and let it sit for a minute as I think it over. Truth is, if I see Diane again, I'll fuck her.

And I'm trying not to be that kind of man.

My mind goes back to her in my truck, on my lap, wrists tied to the wheel .

Pretty like summertime, flushed and riding me hard.

If I see Diane again, I will step over a line I've never crossed. It doesn't matter to me that it's Thomas she'd be cheating on. I have my doubts he's faithful to her; none of the Garrisons are known for being faithful. No, this has nothing to do with Thomas.

Truth is, as much as he loved my mother, I'm not entirely sure my father played it straight. I don't have any hard evidence, just a few too many nights when he came home late and wouldn't say where he'd been.

I can't go down that road. I won't do it.

I can't visit my mother, sit in her kitchen, and talk to her with the same mouth that touched another man's wife.

I shake my head in the dark, even though Jensen can't see it. "I don't think that's a good idea."

Jensen is quiet for a long time. Then, he sighs and gets to his feet. "Diane is a lot stronger than you're giving her credit for," he says.

Hell, I know that. She walked into the belly of the beast and told me not to follow her. I run my hand over my face. The night is hot, and I'm sweating. Jensen goes to the door and pulls it open. I start down the path to the barn.

"Hey," Jensen calls, and I stop, turning. "You want her back, gunslinger? Get the fuck out of your head and do what you do best."

He doesn't wait for an answer; he just goes inside. My heart thumps like a drum as I take Rocky up to the hill over Diane's house. Her lights are all out tonight, so I sit up there for a while and just look at the stars overhead.

Gunslinger.

He called me that on purpose; he knew what it would do to me. I turn Rocky around and ride him across the ranch to the valley where Jensen and I shot beer cans. In the dark, I dismount and kick through the ground until I find a shard of glass the size of a dollar bill.

It's dark, but my eyes adjust enough so I can see the railing. I walk to it and place the glass in the center. Then, I walk back and take my pistol out. I think I see a faint glimmer as the barely-there moon catches the glass.

The man I wanted to be and the man I am are two different people. I didn't realize that until it was set in stone.

I spin in a circle and take a breath. My finger comes down on the trigger.

Glass shatters.

Goddamn it.

I go home, defeated for days after. Then, things move slowly up at Sovereign Mountain—until they move fast.

One minute, the ranch is quiet as we ready it for winter. The next, I wake abruptly to the sound of gravel spraying beneath pounding hooves. I'm out of bed in a second, pulling on my clothes and boots and heading out the door. Up the path of the gatehouse, I can see the outline of Shadow just inside the barn.

Sovereign slides off. As I approach, I can make out another shape on Shadow's back—a woman.

I enter the barn. "Is that the Garrison girl?"

Sovereign nods. There's a hard set to his jaw. "I need you to cool down Shadow, put him away."

"What happened?"

He lifts the Keira Garrison down. I see a flash of her as she writhes in his grip. She's barely clothed, her curvy body protected only by a thin slip against the early autumn cold. Her brilliant red hair flips back, her wide, scared eyes rolling.

"Someone burned the house," Sovereign grunts. "I have a pretty good idea who. I pulled her out and released her horses."

My stomach sinks. He's implying that Thomas and Avery did this.

"Would they? It's their property," I ask.

Sovereign shrugs. "Can't say. Looks like vandalism to me, but I doubt we'll ever get the truth out of them."

I gather Shadow's reins. "Better take her inside. It's fucking cold out here."

He lifts her, carrying her from the barn and out of sight. I can't help but feel a pang of jealousy at seeing him get his girl. Still more intense is the thought of Diane being in a house with a man who was willing to hurt Keira.

That thought sits in my head all night. By morning, my mind is made up.

I have to, somehow, find a way to see my girl.