11
ROWAN
The ranch looked different in the daylight.
Not safer.
Just sadder.
Tex’s bike rumbled down the dirt road toward the house, dust curling up behind him in long pale clouds, and I followed behind in my truck, my elbow resting on the open window, the warm morning air whipping strands of my hair across my face as the familiar land stretched out around us.
Usually coming home settled something inside me. Today my stomach twisted tighter the closer we got.
Tex slowed his bike and pulled to one side to park next to two other bikes, and I drove my truck into its usual spot by the front porch. He cut the engine on his bike and climbed off, moving toward two other bikers and having a muted conversation with them.
I shut off my engine and got out, walking toward them, chin high, shoulders back, though I felt anything but confident right now. As I walked, their gazes shifted between one another and Tex looked at me, his expression warring with something. And then I saw why.
As the main shed came into view, my breath caught. “Oh no…”
The side of the large shed was blackened, the wood charred and blistered. One of the large sliding doors had been partially burned, the edges curled and dark. The ground nearby was still smeared with ash and wet dirt where someone must have put the fire out. A long breaker had been dug into the ground between the shed and the animal barn, and I could see that the fire had begun to lick toward the barn before mercifully being stopped.
Tex came to stand by me, and for a moment neither of us moved.
“Looks worse than it is,” he finally said.
I grunted a response, unable to vocalize what I wanted to say. And then I moved toward it, suddenly desperate to see inside. To look at the damage that had been done.
As I pulled open the doors, the smell hit me first.
Smoke.
Burned wood.
I walked slowly, my boots crunching on dirt ground. My chest felt tight as I reached out and touched the blackened wood.
“This was my dad’s favorite place,” I said quietly. “He used to come out here all the time. He’d grab a bale and bottle of Jack and he’d open the doors wide and sit and watch the stars.”
Tex stood beside me but didn’t say anything.
I sighed heavily and looked around. The interior was mostly intact, but the fire had licked along the wall where the hay bales had been stacked. A few of them were scorched and half soaked where someone had thrown water over them. I shook my head at the damage and destruction, at the loss. But it was relief that I mostly felt. Relief that it hadn’t been the main barn with the animals in it.
I turned and left, heading toward the barn, heading straight to the stalls.
“Hey, girl,” I whispered as I moved to the first one.
Daisy stuck her head over the gate, ears pricked forward. Relief flooded through me so fast it made my knees weak.
“You’re okay.”
She made a soft noise and nudged my shoulder like she always did, and I smiled at her, stroking the spot under her chin.
Tex leaned against one of the posts, watching. “They’re all good?”
I moved down the row, checking each stall. “Yeah,” I said after a moment. “They’re shaken up but they’re fine.”
Outside, boots crunched on gravel. The two younger guys Tex had been talking to outside approached the barn, both wearing leather cuts with the Kings patch. Their vests still looked stiff and new and I frowned, panic rising. I looked to Tex for confirmation that they were okay.
“They’re prospects,” he said, and I nodded, having no real clue what he was talking about. “They’re like, in training I guess. They’ll work harder than almost any other King because they want to be patched in.”
