Page 206 of Chaos

“Was it?” she asks rhetorically, clicking her tongue before coming out with a real question. “Do you know why Finn left home?”

I shrug. “He never told me any specifics.”

“I fired him.”

My head whips towards her. “What?”

“I love that boy, God knows I do, but he’s too nice for his own good. Too happy being complacent. He doesn’t love the cattle industry, not like his Dad and I do, but he never would’ve left on his own. He wouldn’t do that to me, so I did it to him.”

“That’s…” I don’t know. It’s a hundred things at once. Harsh and thoughtful and incredibly familiar because I guess that’s what Lux tried to do to me. For different reasons, obviously, but seeking the same result. Forcing a change. But Mrs. Akello couldn’t know that, so I ask, “What does that have to do with me?”

“He’s never been much for talking my ear off about girls, but I thought when one did catch his eye, she would be like him. Sweet. Safe. Someone who made him happy enough, but not…” She lifts a hand from the steering wheel, flicking it through the air in search of the right word. “Someone he liked enough, but he didn’t really love.”

My heart jumps at that word.

And again when she shifts her gaze to me just long enough to make me squirm. “Not enough to take a bullet for her.”

A lump in my throat, I tell her the same thing I told her son, “I don’t want to talk about this.”

She stares for a long moment before nodding sharply.

The rest of the drive passes in silence, only broken when she pulls up to a drive-thru window and orders two coffees, quickly enforced once more after handing me one. I sip it slowly to pass the time, focusing on the hot liquid burning my tongue, not the whirlwind of thoughts searing my brain.

They stop abruptly when we reach the end of a familiar dirt road. Anything coherent evaporates as I take in the ruined remnants of the barn I spent so much of my childhood in—as it slaps me in the face how close I came to being buried beneath the rubble. I see Ruin, tail twitching erratically as he paces the yard, and my eyes water.

I must make a noise, do something to draw Mrs. Akello’s attention because I feel it land on me once more. As tangibly as I feel a hand land on top of mine where it’s resting on my lap, balled into a fist.

“They told me you swung at an EMT when they tried to take Finn away from you.”

I blink. I don’t remember that.

“You threw your credit card at them and demanded they let you into the operating room.”

That either.

“You said if he died, you’d get their medical licenses revoked.”

That rings a very vague bell.

“The nurse said she was afraid someone gravely injured would stumble in and leave after seeing your scowl.”

Yeah. Okay. That, I don’t have to remember to believe. “Finn likes when I scowl.”

Her mouth twitches. She pats my hand once. She clears her throat and then she unlocks the car, and I take that as my cue to get out. But when my feet hit the ground and I close the door behind me, she doesn’t drive off.

Instead, she leans over the center console, a steadying hand planted on the passenger seat as she peers at me through the open window. “In my opinion,” she starts, and I brace. “Anyone who loves my son like that is more than enough.”

“Okay.” I huff, dropping an armful of charred wood so I can plant both hands on an equine flank and shove. “Personal space, my guy.”

Ruin snorts as he shuffles even closer to me.Never heard of it.

Though I roll my eyes, I’m smiling. And even though a clingy horse is deeply disruptive, I can’t help but be awestruck. Proud.Mind-blown that this is the same horse who could barely stand a brush-down only a short few months ago.

“He’s come a long way,” Yasmin voices my thoughts, and I smile a little harder. I share one with her, chuckling quietly as I gesture to the ash streaked across her cheek.

Both of us have been out here since dawn—all of us have, the other ranch hands and my sisters too. Cleaning up the rubble littering the yard, erasing the physical remnants of what happened barely a day ago, trying to pass the time until the visiting hours at the hospital finally start.

I don’t think anyone slept. I sure as shit didn’t. I stayed up all night, perched on the wide windowsill of my old attic room, staring at the dirt road leading to the house and waiting for a familiar truck to rumble down it. It didn’t matter that the sheriff stationed a couple of officers here all night in case the Webers and their new best fucking friends came back—it mattered that theycouldcome back. That they’re still out there. That they might just get away with trying to ruin my life—with succeeding, in some ways, because what the fuck do I feel after their attempt, if not a little ruined?

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