Page 21 of Ransom
I poured a cup.
"He's going to be hard on you,aguijón."
The word stopped me with the cup halfway to my mouth. Sierra had used that name for me since I'd arrived. He said I stung like a scorpion because it was in my nature to hurt people, and left it at that. I'd taken it as an insult at first, but I grew to realize it was just his read of me.
"I figured."
"Let him be hard on you. He needs to. Don't argue. Don't explain." Sierra turned then, finally, and looked at me with those steady brown eyes that had seen every boy who'd come through this house and never flinched at any of them. "He's a mustang,aguijón. You don't break a mustang. You wait for him to come down. He cares about you. That's why he's going to be hard. You have a place here. No matter what comes out of his mouth in there." Sierra reached for the coffee pot and topped off his own cup. "You remember that part. The rest is just weather."
I looked down at the cup.
"Sierra."
"Mm."
"Does he know?"
Sierra paused with the coffee pot in his hand. Pearl lifted her head again.
"He knows enough," Sierra said. "He doesn't know what to do with knowing."
That was as close to a warning as Sierra ever gave. I took a swallow of the coffee. It was too hot and too strong, and I drank it anyway.
"Go on," Sierra said softly. "He's waiting."
I went. The door at the back of the kitchen opened on the room nobody named, and Rafe was already sitting at the head of the table when I came through it. The table was petrified wood inlaid with turquoise in patterns that looked like water if you squinted, old enough that nobody knew where it came from or how it got here.
Rafe had his hands folded on the wood and his face set in that expression that meant he'd already decided something and was giving me the courtesy of hearing it directly.
Sierra came in behind me with the coffee pot and set it on the table. He pulled out the chair to Rafe's left and sat down.
I closed the door behind me and stayed standing.
"Sit down," Rafe said.
I sat.
Rafe looked at me for a long moment and waited until I looked away to speak.
"You took a Ranger into the desert," he said. "You want to tell me what part of operational discipline that satisfies?"
"He was investigating Castillo on our land. I was going to find out what he knew."
"That's not what you were doing."
Rafe's voice was quiet enough that I had to lean forward to hear it. That was how I knew how angry he was.
"Rafi." Sierra put a hand on Rafe's shoulder.
The silence stretched.
"You let him put his hands on you," Rafe said, still quiet, "and then you let Coyote decide what to do with him because you couldn't."
I didn't answer. There wasn't an answer.
Sierra reached for the coffee pot and poured a cup for Rafe, and slid it across without making a thing of it. "I'm not telling you to hurt you,aguijón. I'm telling you because you already know it, and somebody has to say it out loud." He set the pot down. "You couldn't do it yourself. That's not the worst thing about you. That's the best thing about you. But it's still something we have to talk about."
"I could've done it," I insisted, meeting Rafe's eyes finally and holding them. It was a lie, and we both knew it was, but I had to say it anyway. "It's what I do for you. What I've always done for you."
