Page 22 of Reins

“Maybe?” he grunts.

I’m afraid to ask. “Who?”

He thins his lips to glance at a vague distance over my shoulder before he finally answers. “My family.”

Chapter 12 - Cade

Her brows furrow over her red-rimmed eyes. “Why?”

“Because of me.” I fucking hate admitting that even years after the pain I’ve caused, there’s still misery being caused in my name.

Her blonde lashes flutter over her cold-flushed cheeks. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It’s the only answer I keep coming back to. I just don’t have any damn proof.” Maybe I can convince her to help me?

But when her icy blue gaze refocuses on me and fire laces her irises, I know I’m wrong.

“So, you don’t have any evidence, but you’re blaming them anyway? Are you just out to continue to torture us after taking Ava away?” Her voice shifts from quaking to firm as her spine straightens.

“No, Rosalyn. I’m following the trail and it keeps leading me here. Do you think I’d want to be here willinging? I moved halfway across the damn country to get away. It’s the attacks on my ranch that brought me back.” I let out a cloud of exasperated steam into the frosty air.

A little knot forms above her nose. “What are you talking about?”

Jesus. She really is in the dark.

“Cattle rustling. Harassment. Hell, last month your cousin tried to kidnap a woman from a Halloween party to shut her up. Know who he called the moment he got scared? Your brother.” My fingers jab out as I tick off the points.

Her nose wrinkles and her shoulders slump. “That’s why Max was arrested? I never heard why.”

“Yea. My nephew got lucky and stopped him before he could hurt her. Why do you think he was doing that?” I know what the statements show, and I’ve read Elena’s admission after her crimes.

But I don’t know how Max spun it on this side to think he was right.

She rolls her bottom lip between her teeth. “John was acting funny after he got home that night. I think he was there.”

It feels like a sledgehammer hits me in the chest, making me exhale harshly. After taking a deep breath, I drop my tone. “Does John have a red ring?” I ask quietly.

That’s the one fact that Sawyer mentioned in Wade’s report that stuck with me.

Rosalyn’s mouth thins as she nods. Then she pulls off her glove to reveal a small ruby on her own index finger. “We all have one. It’s Ava’s—”

“Birthstone.” I finish, then turn away.

July fourth. I used to call her my ‘firecracker’ as a joking reference.

Sour bile rises into my throat as the reality of all of this being my fault settles on me. That was one of the things that Ava and I bonded over.

We both had a thing for rocks. Mine must have started when my dad convinced me to carry one when I was little. He told me that the smooth green piece of jade would keep the nightmares away.

I don’t think it works, but it still sits in my pocket after all these years. It was in a geology class that I met Ava, trying to learn if Dad was telling me the truth.

She was fire in a ruby, I was ice in a sapphire, but somehow we clicked.

I even had the two gemstones made into a necklace for her, shaped like a heart.

Now that I think of it, I wonder where it ended up?

Shaking my head, I try to clear the memory of it resting in the hollow of her throat.