Page 110 of Roped

To be honest, though, it should’ve occurred to me earlier too. It should’ve occurred to me the moment she told me about him, about what kind of a monster he is. But I was so focused on destroying him for all the damage he’d done in the past that I forgot to consider the havoc he may be wreaking in the present. Probably because moving on from the past hasn’t been a strong habit of mine.

Taking a deep breath, I admit, “You don’t need to see her to know she’s got a light shinin’ outta her.”

Light and warmth. Love. So much of it that I don’t know how I ever let her go, even thought about letting her go. How I walked out of that barn, rode away from her after she told me she loved me; after she gave me her heart, that sweet little thing full of hopes and dreams and wishes. Things she said she never had, not until me. Things I never had, not until her.

We’re fate, she and I, and I still walked away from her like the bastard I am. Scarred and ugly with a past so bloody that the red will never wash off. But mostly, I’m a bastard who simply has been terrified of life. Something I only learned in the past forty-eight hours that I spent looking for the girl I love.

“Only my brother would pick an angel like her,” Lynnie says, breaking into my thoughts.

Yeah, that’s what she is. An angel. But only I would find her, steal her, and fall in love with her, only to break that angel’s heart and send her into a beast’s belly unprotected. Before I can say anything, Lynnie continues, “And before you all came for us, she made me promise something.”

I go alert then. If it wasn’t her words that put me on edge, it would be her expression. She’s scared. Plain and simple. If she knows my moods, I know hers, and fuck, I missed that. I missed being able to simply read my sister, another human being so close to me, based on her expressions. But that’s not here or there. What’s more important is that she’s chewing on her lip and her eyes are darting this way and that. And I guess the time has come to talk about it. To talk about our history, about what I’ve done.

“To tell you th-the truth,” she finishes.

My jaw pulses and I sit up straight. “It’s my fault. All of it. I—”

She leans forward, one arm reaching out toward me. “No, it’s not. It’s—”

Unable to stop myself, I take her hand in mine and interrupt, “Lynnie, I shouldn’t—”

“No, listen,” she says, silencing me once again, her fingers squeezing around mine. “Rad, listen, it’s really not. There’s a reason why I went away, and… it’s not you. It’s him. H-Hank Turner.”

And then, my sister talks.

As I listen to her every word, my first thought is that I’ve already lived through the worst of my life—and I’m not talking about what happened sixteen years ago or when I got the text about Lynnie being taken. Or even when I realized the girl I loved was going to get shot. I’m talking about the last forty-eight hours of my life, the hours that changed so much for me. That changed me. Made me look at myself, really look at myself and the life I’d built. The consequences of it.

It was death, the last two days that I spent looking for my Princess, and then rebirth.

When we figured out it was, indeed, Hank Turner who was involved and he’d acquired a new friend along the way—fucking Anderson; the man from California who’s been after Rawhide for a fucking year—and together, they’d come up with this whole twisted scheme where they were keeping Lynnie and her hostage for land, we started looking into all possible locations where they might be keeping them. And when we started to run out of options, including all the secret hideouts and cabins that Hank Turner owned, I decided to torture myself by watching and rewatching that video footage. The clip of her being taken right under from my nose. Because I wanted the pain. The torture, the punishment. The fucking agony of my mistakes, of letting her go, of letting the past get in the way. And then, we found her—we found Lynnie, too, in the same room—and I could breathe again. It felt like I’d finally—fucking finally—crawled out of that burning car from sixteen years ago.

But when my sister tells me the truth, the real truth about what happened sixteen years ago, why our parents died and why she went away, it feels like someone has lit the match again. It feels like my scars, scabbed over and healed, have once again been sliced open. They’re pulsing and raw, still on fire.

And my sister knows it. Not only because she knows me, but also because she may be feeling the same pain. Same fire, same devastation. Because her fingers are tight in my hand and she asks, “R-Rad? Are you… are you mad at me? For—”

“No,” I say, or more like snap, even though that wasn’t my intention. I also squeeze her hand back harder than I should. And Jesus Christ, it’s so easy. So fucking easy to slip back into my angry shell. So easy to turn violent and furious and push everything and everyone away, go on a fucking rampage. But I’ve realized a lot in the last forty-eight hours. And one of the things I’ve realized is that the time for violence will come. The time for revenge will come too.

Revenge on both Hank Turner and that cockroach Anderson, who thought they could use my past against me and for land, no less. My anger, my biggest weakness. They thought they could turn me into a true monster who kills the princess in the end. That’s the part I’m still struggling with the most, the part they copped to as soon as I let my fists fly on them. I already knew why they’d picked me to do their dirty work, but their ultimate game plan still sends chills down my spine. It still makes my gut churn, my blood boil. It makes me want to abandon everything and everyone so I can go and snuff the life out of them. The fact that they thought they could take her away from me and make it look like I did it, like I hurt the girl I love. Me. And it would’ve looked plausible too. Because that’s how I’ve led my life, haven’t I? Refusing to move on. In any case, by the time I’m done, death will be a mercy for them both.

For now, I need to stay calm. I need to stay present. I need to be the man my sister needs. I can be a monster later.

So I inhale long and deep before saying, my voice calm and sedate, “Not at you. Never at you.”

A relieved breath escapes her and she nods. Then, “Are you… going to kill him?”

She doesn’t have to specify who. “Yes.”

Another breath goes through her and this time, her nod is fierce. “Good.” Then, “I only made you promise not to before because I didn’t want you going after him and… having something happen to you. I didn’t know how else to p-protect you. I didn’t—”

“You’re stayin’ here,” I say, cutting her off, my voice once again rough. “You aren’t leavin’. I shouldn’t have let you go. Back then. I shouldn’t have…” I swallow hard, my body shaking, straining due to my anger, the past pain. “Shouldn’t have let you be alone. Shoulda been there for you, for my sister. So you’ll stay here, do you understand? At Rawhide. With family. No more convent; no more nothin’. Here. You’ll stay here.”

I probably should take the time to say more things. To explain things clearly and in a way that she knows I mean it with my whole heart, my whole fucking body. But I don’t have it in me right now. To be gentle or tenderhearted.

And she doesn’t need it anyhow because she nods, her eyes swimming with tears, her smile trembling. Then, “She told me you’d say that.”

Her words feel like a kick to my gut and my muscles clench. Yeah, she’d know. Somehow, she always knows things I want to say before I say them.

“Are you going to bring her here too?” Lynnie asks.