Page 12

The words were out before I could stop them, low and dangerous, surprising even me. The calf bucked free from my grip and trotted off toward the far end of the pen, forgotten.

Chuck straightened up slowly, like he was giving me time to reconsider what I’d said. There was something ugly creeping into his face now, something past teasing. “Or what? You gonna cry about it? Go run and tell your boyfriend I hurt your feelings like the little fag you are?”

“I said shut up.”

“Everybody knows it,” Bobby Ray chimed in, stepping closer, and I realized then that they’d circled around me without me even noticing, the three of them boxing me in against the chute rail. “Whole bunkhouse knows it. You think we don’t hear you at night? Cryin’ in your sleep like a little bitch.”

Chuck shoved me. Hard, both hands flat against my chest, and I stumbled back into the rail, the metal biting into my spine.

And something in me just snapped clean in half.

I didn’t think about it, didn’t weigh the consequences or consider what it would cost me. I just swung, my fist connecting with Chuck’s jaw with a crack that I felt all the way up to my shoulder. He went down like a sack of feed, more from surprise than the actual force of it, and for one glorious second I felt something like triumph.

Then Bobby Ray was on me.

I caught an elbow to the temple that made the whole world tilt sideways, and then Boomer’s fist found my ribs, and then I was on the ground with all three of them. Chuck was back up now with blood on his mouth and fury in his eyes, raining down on me with boots and fists while I tried to curl up small enough to protect my face. Dirt and gravel bit into my cheek. Someone’s boot caught me in the gut and drove the air clean out of my lungs.

“Get off him!”

Dale’s voice cut through the ringing in my ears like a gunshot. The guys paused only for a moment before they went back to it. Dale tried to intervene, tried to pull them off of me. But he was no match for them. The three guys were half his age and twice as strong. One of them gave him a shove and Dale sat down hard in the dirt, yelping in pain.

Then Westley’s voice tore through the yard, louder than anything I’d ever heard come out of him, a raw and furious sound that didn’t even sound like him.

“GET THE HELL OFF HIM!”

I felt a weight lift off me, then a loud crack before Chuck collapsed to the ground beside me. Another body pulled away followed by another crack. Boomer hit the dirt in a limp pile. He was completely unconscious. Bobby Ray however, removed himself and backed up before he could face the same fate.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” Westley screamed. “Three against one? He’s half your fucking size, Chuck!”

“He… He started it⁠—”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass who started it,” Westley cried back. “Dale told you to stop, and you kept on beating him!”

Bobby Ray held his hands up, backing further away with his eyes darting between Westley and the two men on the ground. “Nobody meant nothin’ by it, West, we was just⁠—”

“Get outta my sight before I put you down too.” Westley’s voice had gone dark and quiet now, which was somehow worse than the shouting.

Bobby Ray didn’t need telling twice. He turned and half-jogged toward the bunkhouse, leaving Chuck groaning in the dirt and Boomer still not moving at all.

I lay there in the gravel, tasting blood and dust, trying to remember how to breathe right. Every part of me hurt in a different way. My ribs were screaming where the boot had caught me, my temple was throbbing where Bobby Ray’s elbow had cracked against it, and my cheek was scraped raw from the ground. I heard boots crunching toward me and then Westley was there, dropping to his knees in the dirt beside me, his hands hovering like he didn’t know where it was safe to touch.

“Rhett. Rhett, look at me.” His voice had changed again, gone soft and scared underneath the fury still simmering in it. “Hey. Hey, stay with me.”

“M’here,” I managed, though the words came out slurred, my split lip already swelling.

“Christ.” He got an arm under my shoulders and helped me sit up slow, and the whole world tilted and spun before settling back into place. Dale was there too, still favoring the hip he’d landed on, his face pale with something between anger and fear.

“I’m callin’ Doc Hensley,” Dale said, already fumbling for the phone clipped to his belt. “And I’m callin’ your daddy too, Westley, he needs to know what happened out here.”

“Good,” Westley snapped, not taking his eyes off me. “Tell him his prized ranch hands just about killed somebody over nothin’.”

“Wasn’t nothin’,” I whispered, and I didn’t know why I said it, except that it felt important somehow that he understood. That I hadn’t just been jumped for sport. “Chuck pushed me. But I hit him first.”

Westley’s jaw tightened, a muscle jumping there. “Don’t matter. Three on one ain’t a fight, Rhett. That’s a beatin’.” His hand came up to my face, fingers ghosting along the cut on my cheekbone like he was afraid of hurting me worse. “What in the hell did they say to you?”

I couldn’t answer that. Not with Dale standing right there, not with Chuck still conscious enough to hear, not with my whole chest caving in at the thought of saying it out loud. I just shook my head, which turned out to be a mistake because it sent a fresh wave of nausea rolling through me.

“Okay,” Westley said quietly, reading something in my silence that made his eyes go soft even as his jaw stayed hard. “Okay, you don’t gotta tell me right now. Just breathe. Can you breathe alright?”