“Not really. I don’t have a lot of faith that it will do anything, and I’m terrified it might put me more directly on his radar anyway.”
“That’s my instinct, too.”
“Your brother basically said the same thing. He said the cops won’t help me in advance, and depending on what happens, they might use whatever I said before against me. Is that about Cash?”
Zane takes a deep breath. “Yeah.”
“Oh.”
He draws a circle on my arm. “You know how when you’re a kid, you have a simplistic idea of what being a grown up will be like?”
“Very painfully so, yes.”
“Sorry, dumb question.”
“Mmm, it’s okay. You weren’t my rude awakening.” If anything, he’s the opposite. My soft salvation. A gentle refuge from the cold, hard truth of adulthood and consequences.
“In high school, Cash had this antagonistic relationship with a few guys in his grade. He never liked them, they never liked him. But after he graduated and joined the army, he would come back here for leave, and he’d go to parties where they were at, that sort of thing. He didn’t see them as a danger. And so he sometimes talked shit about them, you know? Just…talk. But when he was arrested, some of that talk was used against him. Even though he was standing up for someone. It hardened Ridge the most, to think that people we knew would turn on Cash like that.”
“Can I ask what happened?”
“In classic Kincaid style, he got between a woman and a fist. It’s what we do, and we’ll never apologize for it.”
“That doesn’t sound criminal.”
“He was twenty-two and jacked. The guy who he pulled off the woman was a skinny little shit. Cash could have stopped before he did, and when he didn’t…that became aggravated assault.”
“Oh no.”
“Yeah. He could have pled guilty and maybe missed jail time, but he wouldn’t do that. He maintained it was reasonable defence and the judge did not agree. He was sentenced to two years, and served every second of that time because he got in trouble inside, too.”
“Good trouble or bad trouble?”
“Depends who you ask. But he used that time to think hard about what he wanted when he got out.He set his sights on owning a garage, and now he does. So in the end, he got there. It was just a horrible run in the middle. And now…”
“What now?”
“I don’t want you to think that Dragonfly Creek is perfect.”
“I don’t think anywhere is perfect,” I promise. Except maybe this room. This man. This ranch. “But tell me more.”
“It’s not like we were innocent of how the world is when we bought this place. I had a decade in the military. Watched my brother get railroaded by the justice system and abandoned by our unit leadership. I know how callous the world can be. But I think we came back here with a bit too much nostalgia for a small town simple life that maybe never existed. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t make a different choice. This is home, and we needed to come back. For my mom, for my brother—but for ourselves, too. We needed to choose ourselves, and it felt like this place was where we could do that. But.”
He screws up his face and takes a deep, frustrated breath.
“But?”
He groans. “There’s so much under the surface. And sometimes right on the surface, too. Power struggles, backstabbing. And there’s some unbelievable wealth, which is a form of power that outstrips any kind of hard work.”
As he talks, I push myself up, wanting to see his face clearly.
“I know life isn’t fair, but there are times when it feelsveryunfair. When Cash was sentenced to jail time, that was the first time that I really thought…oh, sometimes lifereallyisn’t going to go yourway.” His voice cracks at the end and he shoves himself up the bed to lean back against the headboard.
Wanting to comfort him, I climb on top of him.
“What are you doing?” He doesn’t sound like he’s complaining, just asking. Just being sure.
“You sound like you need a hug.”
