Grace tries not to sink in on herself, but the guilt is heavy. Even if she didn’tstartit, she sure as hell egged it on, and the weight of it is so heavy that she has to look away from Renata—eyes drifting until they find Crew, standing with his hands in his pockets. Looking at her. There’s a softness to his expression, despite the shitstorm his mother is about to rain down on them. He holds her gaze for a moment, perhaps picking up on her fear, her sense of responsibility for starting the brawl. He shakes his head tightly, quickly, as if to say,This is not your fault.
She hates how much better it makes her feel, that one look from him.
“What I do care about is the fact that when you leave my ranch, you’re representing me and my family.” Her head swivels to look directly at her son. Crew’s eyes dart away from Grace’s and land back on his mother. He simply nods, knowing—likely from many a talking-to just like this—it’s better to just keep his mouth shut. Renata’s hard eyes drag slowly back to the group.
“Y’all about gave Moe a heart attack last month with your antics,” Renata continues, this time pointing at Caleb. “And now”—she shrugs, shaking her head—“you’ve trashed his bar. His livelihood.”
A long, tense beat of silence passes. No one looks away from her, but no one dares to say anything to the contrary. “I’m docking each of your pay a hundred dollars this month to pay for the damages. Anyone who has a problem with that can find themselves a new job.”
A hundred dollars off a ranch hand’s salary isn’t small potatoes, but no one objects. No one says a damn word. Renata waitsfor it, but nothing comes. Eventually, she turns on her heel and walks over to Crew. The two share a conversation, too quiet for anyone else to hear, but Grace watches as his face shifts from guilt to resignation to apology in the span of a few seconds. His mother shakes her head, then walks away. About ten steps into the parking lot she stops, turns, and shouts, “What the hell are y’all waiting for? Party’s over. Let’s go.”
Like an obedient herd of cattle, they all stand, grunting with the effort. About half follow Renata to her truck, chins down and hands stuffed in their pockets, and the other half, including Grace, follow Forty’s slow steps over the gravel toward his. A few paces behind her, Grace finds Crew lingering, watching them all scatter. She slows her steps, letting him catch up.
The curiosity—and the whiskey—gets the better of her as she asks, “What’d she say to you?”
Crew swallows, his eyes casting downward. “Nothing I haven’t heard a thousand times before.”
Truck doors slam shut. Engines roar to life. “You do this often?”
He smiles crookedly, his mouth curving upward toward where a bruise over his eye is starting to bloom. “Not so much in my old age. When I was younger, though.”
A picture pops into her head at that—a sepia-toned memory that doesn’t belong to her, of a boy with a mop of black hair and a split lip, toeing up to men twice his size and smiling through bloody teeth.
They’re halfway to the trucks when Grace stops, turning to face him. “Thank you, by the way,” she says. Alcohol, it appears, makes her sentimental.
Crew’s eyebrows shoot up. “For what?”
“For earlier.” She shrugs. “For stepping in.”
Another one of those low, rumbling laughs sounds from his chest. It barely moves him, but it rocks her where she stands. “Maybe I should be thanking you.”
Grace smiles, or attempts to, anyway, before the cut in her lip forces her face back into something neutral. Crew’s eyes fall to her mouth, the humor in his expression fading slightly.
“You all right?” he asks, giving her a quick once-over before nodding toward her lip. “Apart from that, I mean.”
She nods. “Got kicked in the ribs, but I don’t think anything’s broken. Nothing a good night’s sleep and some Advil won’t cure.”
“Shoulder’s all good?”
She’d left the brace at the bunkhouse, but, miraculously, no additional harm had come to her shoulder. Even when she’d fallen on the ground after being shoved unintentionally by the brawling mob, she’d mercifully landed on the opposite side. “All good,” she replies, rotating it just a little. “Thanks.”
Crew nods, satisfied.
Stumbling on her words only slightly, she asks, “Are you—all right?”
The smile she gets in return is warm, like standing in front of a space heater in the dead of winter. “I’m all right,” he says softly.
A horn honks. Someone yells for her to hurry up, but she doesn’t look away, and neither does he. A few seconds, minutes, maybe hours pass as they stand there, staring at each other. Eyes tracing wounds, old and new, like the scar on the left side of his jaw. The indentation above his right eyebrow. She wonders what he sees when he looks at her. Wonders if he’s making up his own stories to go with each one of hers.
Crew lets out a breath through his nostrils, only tearing his gaze from hers when the honk sounds again. He shakes his head in exasperation at whoever it is that’s beckoning her. He nods toward the truck and says, “Go on.”
She walks away, and only when she gets all the way to the truck does she look back to find him still standing in the same spot. Watching her go.
Chapter 7
Everyone’s a little worse for wear by the time ten rolls around the next morning. A bottle of Tylenol is passed around at lunch, which consists of the greasiest, cheesiest smashburgers Grace has ever seen, alongside crispy sweet potato fries, pickle spears, and heaps of ketchup. It coats her stomach like something out of a dream, allowing her to keep the pill in her system and, eventually, feel less like she rammed her head into a concrete wall.
Waylon spares no sympathy for her. In fact, it’s almost as if heknowsshe’s hungover and has chosen to shame her for it. He side-eyes her as she familiarizes him with the saddle they’ll be using, letting him get used to the way it feels against his body, the way it smells. Though he does all she asks, it’s with an air of judgment. When he grunts at her toward the end of the session because she’s repeated the same movement with the saddle nearly twenty times, Grace rolls her eyes. “I don’t want to hear it,” she grumbles, walking back into the barn to hang up the saddle on its hook. “I’m allowed to have an off day.” Waylon blows out an unsympathetic huff through his nose.
