Page 117 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
Jonah moved fast for a man who’d taken a beating like that. He was already past the chicken coop and cutting toward the bunkhouse with his head ducked, and his shoulders pulled up tight. Gerald flapped off his perch and let out one of those gargled war cries that meant he’d spotted movement, but even he seemed to reconsider, because Jonah looked like the kind of thing you just let walk past.
“Jonah!”
He kept going.
“Jonah Linton, you stop walkin’ right now, or I swear to God—”
He stopped. Stood with his back to her about ten yards from the bunkhouse door. His shoulders hitched up, then dropped, and the shape of him against the fading light looked smaller than she’d ever—
Sure, he’d always been thin, even as kids. Even when Mama still fried dough on Sundays, and Papa brought home salt cod from the docks, Jonah ran lean. But this kind of small had nothing to do with ribs or shoulders. This came from somewhere else.
“You don’t even have your things.” Grace caught up to him with Miriam bouncing on her hip and her voice coming out ragged because she’d half-run the distance in boots she’d tied too tightly. “You were just gonna walk off into the dark without your coat? Without your—”
“I got my boots and my legs, Gracie. That’s more than I started with.”
“That’s not—you can’t just—”
She grabbed his arm and yanked. In the last of the daylight, the bruising around his eye had gone from purple to something darker, almost black, and the gash above his brow had started to crust over in a thick, uneven line.
Mama would’ve had a fit. Would’ve sat him down, pressed a cloth soaked in vinegar against it, and scolded him in two languages while forcing broth down his throat, because broth and scolding had been Mama’s answer to everything.
But Mama had died on a cot that smelled like sulfur and lye, and nobody had made broth since.
“Explain it to me.” Grace planted herself in front of him. “All of it. And don’t you dare leave out a single thing, because what you just told Logan tore my whole life open.”
“I ain’t got nothin’ else to say, Grace.”
“Don’t give me that. You stood in our kitchen back in New York and put that ad in my hand and said this could be somethin’ good for us, and Ibelievedyou.”
Jonah’s jaw worked side to side. The swelling in his lip made his whole mouth crooked, and he kept running his tongue along the split. He’d done the same thing as a kid whenever Papa caught him in a lie, tongued his lip like the truth might be hiding behind his teeth.
“Itisgood… foryou.” His voice came out hoarse. “Look at this place, Gracie. Look at the house, the baby, the—”
“Don’t you dare. Don’t you stand there and dress this up as if you did me a favor.”
“I’m not—”
“Youusedme.” The word tasted like copper, like biting the inside of her cheek so hard it bled. “You handed me to a criminal like a skeleton key and smiled while you did it.”
Jonah flinched.
“I didn’t want to.”
“Oh, that’s a relief.”
“You gotta believe me, I fought him on it. I told Ace to find another way, to leave you out of it, and he—” He dragged his hand down his face, pulling the gash open again. “He said he’d kill you.”
“Oh, Jonah, tell me you didn’t believe—”
“You ain’t seen what he does to people who tell him no.”
Miriam started fussing again, groping for Grace’s collar and catching a fistful of fabric instead, pulling at it with that angry little grip she got when she needed something but hadn’t figured out what yet.
“So you sacrificed me instead.”
“I sacrificedmyself.” Jonah’s good eye burned wet and red. “Every day I sat at that table and ate with them and laughed with them and held that baby, I—”
“Don’t you say it, Jonah.”
