Otis pulls his hat off and smooths a wrinkled hand over his balding head. “You hear about the groomer?”
“Ours?”
“Yeah. She got a job in Saskatchewan and left this morning.”
I scratch my scruffy jaw. “Dad got a replacement yet?”
“Not yet, far as I know. Wanted to give you a heads-up. That black horse needs a groomer real bad.”
“He won’t have a groomer near him for a while, Otis. It doesn’t matter who we hire.”
He’s quiet for a minute.Too goddamn quiet.
“What?”
“Word has it Tilly Whittman is back in town.”
My breath expels in a rabid puff. I curl my fingers before shoving them beneath my armpits as I cross my arms.
“That so? I haven’t heard about it,” I reply, too slowly.
“Because you don’t leave the ranch. Take a drive into town and you’ll hear so much about it you’ll wanna pull your hair out.”
I wet my lips as they try to curl downward. “She’s not working here. Bring her up to my dad and we’ll have it out in front of the entire ranch until we can’t go any longer.”
He lifts his hands, half grinning as he chuckles. “I’m not picking a fight. Just wanted to mention it so you weren’t taken aback when news got here.”
“You’re a shit liar,” I grunt, frustration burning like a poison inside my chest. “Ash didn’t tell me she was back.”
“I doubt he’s had time.”
Ash Whittman has been my closest friend since childhood. He should have told me his sister was here. It should have been him in front of me right now, ruining the careful life I’ve built around myself since getting parole.
I stretch out my neck, grinding my molars. “Doesn’t matter anyway. She’s not stepping one foot back on this ranch, Otis. Itdoesn’t matter to me how good she is. End of discussion. Don’t bring it up again.”
“You got it, kid. Consider it dropped.”
I tip my chin once. The need to disappear is there, coaxing me as I sidestep Otis and back away. Diesel’s inside, but so is everyone else. The last thing I need is to get stuck in a conversation with the guys inside.
Fuck.
The round pen is close enough that I don’t have to walk far. I grip the railing and dig the bottom of my boot into the wood, shoving hard at it. The angry horse copies me, his hoof making deep grooves in the dirt beneath him on the far side of the pen. My nostrils flare, and so do his.
Tilly Whittman.
The same Tilly who I went to prison for. She still has too much nerve if she’s come back here after all this time. But it’s not her presence in Oak Point that pisses me off the most.
It’s the way she couldn’t even bring herself here to tell me herself. I don’t know why I expected otherwise. She ran from this place—from me—and never looked back.
Not once.
5
TILLY
“Go out with them,Tilly. It’s the least you can do for me since you came back and broke my heart all over again.”
I drop my head back and sigh, tapping a nail to the bathroom counter. “You’re being dramatic, Mom.”
