Page 27 of Property of Legend

“I stole something,” she whispered like it was a secret meant just for me.

She pulled a bottle out of her coat.Damn thing shimmered like treasure in the barn light.Pappy Van Winkle.Twenty-three-year.Worth more than my old man made in a month of Sundays.

“You’re insane,” I muttered, but took the bottle anyway.

We passed it back and forth, sittin’ on bales of hay with our knees touchin’.The bourbon burned, smooth and deep, and the whole world felt far away, just horse breath and crickets and the thrum of my pulse as I stared at her mouth.

“Why do you always look at me like that?”she asked, voice husky, eyes locked on mine.

“Like what?”

“Like I’m an alien.”

I leaned in.“Maybe you are.”

She clutched my shirt, pulled me closer, and for a second the world tilted just right, her breath, her skin, her damn heartbeat against mine.Sophie Montgomery kissed me.Hudson Welles.The kiss hit like a lightning strike.Soft lips, sharp hunger, the taste of heat and forbidden fire.

Then the barn door slammed open.

“Sophie Montgomery, get your damn hands off my son!”

My father’s voice cracked like a whip.Sophie bolted like a spooked filly, hair flying, boots thudding across the barn floor as she disappeared into the night.

I stood frozen.My old man staggered in, wild-eyed and mean.

“You think you get to touch a girl like that?”he spat, grabbing the bottle outta my hand.“She’s money.You’re dirt.You hear me, boy?”

He took a long swig of the bourbon.Her bourbon, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“She ain’t for you.None of this is.”

I didn’t say a damn word.Just stood there, fists balled, fire in my chest.

Because maybe he was right.

But that kiss?That kiss said different.

Now I sit on her porch, years and scars later, and that same fire still burns.Sophie Montgomery is upstairs, probably curled up alone, carryin’ more than any girl should.And me?I’m still sittin’ outside the glass, starin’ in.

Still wantin’ the one thing I was told I could never have.

Damn.

It’s the kind of night that makes a man bleed memory.The bottle’s half gone, and I ain’t feelin’ shit but the weight of everything I buried out here.

Some nights you drink to forget.Others, you drink to remember.Tonight’s the second kind.

I lean back in the creaking porch swing, boots planted wide, the wood groanin’ beneath me like it remembers too.Bourbon burns its way down my throat, but the sting don’t touch the ache sittin’ in my chest.Not tonight.

Because I can’t stop seein’ that damn night.The one that split my whole goddamn life in two.

Not long after that kiss, I was fifteen, raw, mean, and dumb enough to think I could outrun the shadows.My old man, Mike, had me workin’ sunup to sundown on this land like sweat and pain were love languages.He was a mountain of a man, part legend, part bastard.Ex-wrestler, current asshole.Never said much unless it was to knock me down a peg.

That night, he left me to lock up the stalls while he rode out to check the fence line, cold wind snappin’ at my collar, smell of hay and horse thick in my nose.I remember thinkin’ the night was too quiet.

Then I heard it.That scream.Sharp, high, wrong.It sliced through the dark like a blade and hit me right in the damn chest.

Dropped the bucket.Didn’t think.Just ran.

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