Page 98 of York

I had to have just been mistaken.

I made my way down, curious to see the rocks, to see what I’d missed all those years I spent around them.

“You can’t be here,” a voice barked as I reached out to touch one of the familiar cream rocks with subtle black coloring in the craggy indents.

I yelped and turned, my hand going to my waistband, where I had a small gun in a holster—in case I needed to scare off any animals.

“Oh!” I said, my hand falling and going to my heart instead. “Sonny! Jesus. You scared me!”

Sonny had been a fixture in my life since his father started working on the ranch when I was ten or so. He’d been a year older than me, and as we got older, I developed the most insane, one-sided crush on him.

He was tall and fit from all the farm work, with a chiseled face, bright blue eyes, and sandy hair.

God, how I used to follow him around while trying not to look like I was doing just that.

He’d been nice to me. He kind of had to be, given who my grandfather was.

I remember one night, after getting welts from such a bad lashing, I’d been sitting outside not far from the driveway, trying not to cry.

Sonny came swaggering over toward his truck before spotting me.

“What’s wrong, kid?” he asked. “What is it?” he pressed when my voice caught. When I didn’t answer, he exhaled hard and came to sit beside me. “Boy trouble?”

A snort escaped me at that. I never had boy troubles. I wasn’t an ugly teen, but I wasn’t as soft, curvy, or girly as the other girls in my grade. No boys looked at me twice. And if they did, it was to ask me to do something like off-roading or skeet shooting. Never to go sneak off onto someone’s property and make out.

“Come on. You can tell me.”

With that, he nudged me and I nearly screamed as his elbow met one of my welts.

His whole body stiffened as he reached out, grabbed the back of my shirt, and yanked it up halfway.

“Jesus, kid. The old man did that?”

“The old man does that a lot.”

“My old man has beat my ass a few times, but, fuck, nothing like that. That ain’t right. Not on a girl, either.”

It was pathetic how much my heart swelled at being seen as a girl.

He’d been even nicer to me after that incident. Sometimes even covering for me when my grandfather was angry at me for something. He would claim he asked me to do something for him, giving me an alibi. Or he’d take the blame for something I’d screwed up.

To say my crush went nuclear after that would be an understatement.

And it all culminated in a late night when I’d snuck back out of my room after being grounded.

I’d been taking a walk when I saw a light on inside the hay shed.

When I’d made it over, I found Sonny sitting on a bale of hay, a shotgun propped up beside him.

“What are you doing?”

“Wolves got a calf last night. Your grandfather wants one of us out here until he can get some guardian dogs.”

“He’s been sentimental about Buckeye dying. He doesn’t seem to want to replace him yet,” I said, moving into the hay shed, having no idea right then—or perhaps hoping and planning—that it would be the night I lost my virginity to the boy I’d been crushing on for years.

It hadn’t exactly been amazing, but it hadn’t been awful, either. And I’d romanticized it because of who it was. Enough so that I pretended it didn’t break my heart that he mostly ignored me afterward, except for two other occasions where we’d caught each other alone and he’d slept with me again.

But when he caught me getting too clingy, he’d been quick to shut me down. Then he started dating a girl who was my complete antithesis—blonde-haired, peppy, with big boobs, and a high, girly voice, who laughed at everything he said and pretended to always be weak and helpless.