Chapter Sixteen
Cash
The sun was blazing hot. The kind that went deep into your bones and burned you from the inside out. It had no sympathy, scorching me as I stood under it. Sweat rolled down my back, soaking my jeans and leaving wet streaks on my shirt.
Crows cawed in the tree above me. One flew high above, an inky black spot in the sky. Its wings were spread as it coasted on the air. It’s beady little eyes looked down at me with malice, never letting me out of its sight.
I watched it. Like that bird, I was on edge. The muscles in my arms were tense, ready to spring into action. My breathing was measured, my chest rising and falling with minimal movement. I was focused. Controlled. A statue in nature.
But the calmness was a lie.
Inside fury boiled in me. The kind that simmered and festered until it became a problem.
My attention went from the crow to my target. I squinted against the blistering sun. The weight of metal in my palm was an extension of my body. A part of me. My gaze stayed on my mark, judging the distance and anticipating the strike. I became a part of my surroundings, a figure that blended in with the trees. But unlike nature, I wasn’t perfect. I made mistakes.
Like Cat.
The anger burst free at the thought of her. I swung my arm, quick and sharp. The knife left my hand. It sliced through the air, end over end. The gleaming sun caught the blade as it spun toward the haystack set some fifty yards away.
I watched the knife with a tightly clenched jaw, welcoming the fury in me. I deserved it. I deserved every damn ounce of it for being such a fool.
Three days, I thought, flexing my fingers with barely controlled anger. For three days I hadn’t heard from Cat. I had called, texted, and damned well stalked her but she had ignored all of it.
I had reminded myself that it was only a one-night stand. That I should forget her. I was wrong.
The knife embedded in the haystack at least a foot off center.
“Shit!” I swore. I’m off my game.
My strides were long and angry as I headed to the haystack. I had contemplating more than once getting into my truck and showing up on Cat’s front porch. I would have but my friend Brody called, listened to me bitch, and then threatened to kick my ass if I drove to her house.
I stopped in front of the haystack and jerked the knife out with anger.
I shouldn’t be thinking of her. I shouldn’t care if she fell off the face of the earth and I never saw her pretty face again. She was nothing to me but a nice time.
Nothing else.
The knife was cold, heavy in my hand. I ran my index finger over the blade, trying to calm myself down. I knew the weight of a knife in my palm and the sounds of nature around me. Those were things I knew. Things I cared about. Not some black-haired devil of a girl. Not what she did to me or how I wanted to see her again.
Self-loathing made me swear. I rolled my shoulders, trying to loosen up, but that damn crow squawked at me again from high in a tree, mocking me.
I gritted my teeth, ignoring it, but I couldn’t ignore the memory of Cat beneath me.
The thought made me furious. I spun around, flipping the knife and catching the point in my palm at the same time. Without missing a beat, I drew my arm back and threw the blade. It sailed through the air, this time with more power.
I watched as it hit the haystack dead center, buried deep in the middle. I let out a breath. My mind might be screwed with thoughts of Cat, but my aim was still good.
I started for the haystack again, feeling better. I was halfway there when suddenly I heard a noise behind me.
I stiffened, all my senses alert. Out in the woods, I was a sitting duck for panthers, trespassers, deadly snakes, and angry hogs. All of which could kill me. I had had my share of run-ins with most of them and I was still here, still standing. This time would be no different.
I spun around, my hands empty of a weapon but my muscles and strength my backup. A man was walking toward me, slow and unhurried in his gait.
My dad.
He didn’t say anything at first, just kept his eyes on the ground. I relaxed as he headed my way, not surprised to see him. He had eyes like a hawk and a nose like a bloodhound. He could sense when something was wrong and something had been wrong with me since Cat.
My dad stopped a few feet from me and looked up at the clear, blue sky, ignoring me for the most part. I knew he would talk when he was ready. I just had to give him time.
He eyed the crows in the trees then glanced at the knife in the haystack. His faded eyes stayed on it a while as if he could read all the emotions that had put it there.
Finally, he pushed his sweat-stained Pete’s Feed Store ball cap further back on his head and turned his attention to me.
“That hay do something to you?” he asked, motioning to the haystack. His voice sounded like gravel rolling around in a tin can, thanks to years of dust inhaled while plowing fields.
I glanced over my shoulder at the knife. “Just practicing.”
He grunted, the normal response he had to about everything. “Seems like more than target practice to me.”
He walked past me with his uneven gait. I watched as he pulled the knife from the hay. Flipping it in his hand like I sometimes did, he studied the blade, judging the weight of it in his palm.
“Remember what I told you when I gave you this knife?” he asked, glancing up at me.
“Yeah. I was twelve. You said handle it with care or I’d get hurt.”
“That’s right,” he said, heading back toward me. “I told you that you might be tempted to play around with it, but you had to be careful. Its edges are sharp and its blade long. It could draw blood with just a touch.” He stopped beside me and looked down at the knife, running a rough thumb over it. “Lots of things in this life can do that to a man, son. Just remember that.”
He offered me the knife, handle first, then walked past me, leaving me alone in the woods once again.
I held the knife with a loose grip. He was right. Lots of things in this world could hurt a man.
Including a beautiful woman.
But she would never make me bleed.
Chapter Seventeen
Cat
I dreamed of hell. It came for me, a darkness I couldn’t resist. I felt safe as it wrapped around me, dragging me down and taking away the pain. I needed it. I had to have it to keep my heart safe.
My skin burned as the flames of hell licked at me. Drops of sweat trickled down between my breasts, soaking my t-shirt. I shifted, fighting the heat and seeking a cooler spot.
“Where are we?”
The layers of sleep peeled away at Tate’s voice. I forced my eyes open. Glaring sunlight blinded me.
I wasn’t in hell. I was in the backseat of Nathan’s car. It was hot, so hot I was having trouble breathing. I could feel the air conditioning on my face, but it wasn’t enough to cool me down.
Hard plastic bit into my ribs. I grimaced and pushed myself up, away from the door poking into my side. My legs were stuck to the leather seat and the window beside me radiated heat. I ran a hand through my hair and stared out the window, seeing nothing but miles and miles of empty grassland. One fence post blended into another and another as we flew by them.
Tate, Nathan, and I had loaded Nathan’s car and left our small hometown that morning. They would drop me off at my collage apartment and spend a few days with me. After that Tate and Nathan would return home, minus one sister.
As the miles passed by, numbness engulfed me. I welcomed it. Filled my lungs with it. Breathed it deeply. I reminded myself who I was. The girl that women hated and men loved. The one that didn’t give a damn. I just didn’t know that when I screwed a cowboy in bathroom, I would feel something.
I laid my forehead against the hot window and closed my eyes, refusing to open them again even when high-pitched chirps came from the seat beside me.
I flinched with each sound, keeping my eyes squeezed shut. Finally, I couldn
’t take it anymore. The obnoxious high-pitched tones scratched away at the bitchy side of me.
“You gonna answer that, Cat, or is the ringtone just for shits and giggles?” Nathan asked from the driver’s seat, glancing at me in the rearview mirror.
I rolled my eyes and grabbed my phone, answering without looking at the caller id.
“Hello.” My voice sounded as irritable as I felt. But underneath it was fear. Fear that I would hear Cash’s voice and crumble.
“Hi, Catnip.”
I let out a breath of relief.
“Hi, Dad,” I said, recognizing the familiar nickname my father had given me. “Where are you?”
“I’m in Dubai, sweetie. Dry as hell here. I’ve got sand in places I never thought sand could go,” he said in his deep, gruff voice that could bark orders at rapid speed or sweet talk a business deal in his favor. “How are you doing, Catnip?”
I shifted in my seat again, seeking a cooler spot on the hot leather. “I’m fine, Dad. Nathan and Tate are taking me back to campus. We’re in the car right now.”
There was silence on the other end of the line. I frowned, wondering what I had said wrong. My dad was never silent. He always had an opinion and wasn’t afraid to voice it.
“Dad?” I asked, wondering if he was still there.
He sighed with irritation, making him sound like he was sitting right beside me instead of thousands of miles away. “Hell, I wish you kids had stayed put. There’s been some chatter.”
“What kind of chatter? Like government stuff?”
“Yes. My contacts say something is going on. The Syrians and Iranians are up to something. North Koreans too. The government is on high alert but keeping it secret. They’re scared, Cat, really scared. And whatever they’ve heard has got their panties in a wad.” He took a deep breath, coughing in the middle of it. “You kids need to stay careful, you understand?”
I furrowed my brows. My dad had contacts in the White House, Congress, and the CIA. He rubbed elbows with the elite, just to get what he wanted for his company. I knew foreign diplomats were in his back pocket and government officials and politicians were on his payroll - under the table of course. You couldn’t own a billion dollar oil business without getting your hands a little dirty with bribes and deals.
Most of the time his business trips took him to places and introduced him to men that were dangerous. Rulers of countries and soldiers of warring regions. Men who were crooked behind closed doors and saviors in front of the voting public. If anyone knew what was really going on in the political and world arena, it would be my father.
“Do you understand me, Cat? Stay alert,” my dad’s deep voice boomed in my ear. “No more trips. No more driving across the state. Stay put.”
“Sure,” I said, knowing he wouldn’t let it go until I agreed. “I’ll stay at the apartment.”
“Good. Now I’ve got to go out into the field. I’ll probably be unreachable for a few days, but I’ll check in when I can. Okay?”
“Yeah. Got it,” I answered, watching the land zoom by outside the window. “Do you want to talk to Tate or Nathan?”
“Can’t. I gotta go. People are waiting for me. Tell them ‘hi.’ Okay, Catnip?”
I looked at Tate in the front seat. I could only see his profile but I knew he was hoping…wishing that our dad would pay at least some attention to him. But from the moment he was born, my dad had only ignored him.
“’Bye, Dad,” I said, hiding the resentment for the man that had donated his sperm to our mothers and money to us, but never his undivided time or love. Tate needed him. I needed him. He wasn’t there when Luke died and he was absent when I started my downward spiral to crazy. But like always, the business needed him more.
I dropped the phone to the seat beside me, disgusted. Tate turned in his seat to look at me. I avoided his questioning stare and glared out the window.
My dad’s warning was forgotten, my anger with him dismissed. All that mattered was getting back to my apartment. Forgetting about Cash.
Return to being me.
~~~~
My apartment was on the third floor. It had a balcony, a kitchenette, and one tiny bedroom. It wasn’t the greatest but it was decent. My dad had wanted me to get a luxury condo in an upscale area of Austin, but I had put my foot down. I wanted to experience college like a real student, not a filthy-rich girl with her daddy’s money.
“You got too many damn stairs in this place,” Tate complained as we headed up the building’s stairway at a snail’s pace. It was sweltering, the kind of heat that made a person move like molasses. It sucked all the energy from you and replaced it with a shitty attitude.
“I wish to God that you would stop cussing, Tate. You’re too young to have a mouth like you do,” Nathan grumbled with irritation, carrying his duffle bag and my overstuffed suitcase up the stairs.
“I wonder who I learned it from?” Tate whipped back, the heat making him cranky as hell like it did every other person in the city. “You say ‘fuck’ like every other word, Nate.”
“Bullshit,” Nathan snapped, dragging my suitcase over a step carelessly.
I tuned them out and trudged up to the third floor landing. The air was thicker that high, hotter. I caught a whiff of stale beer from one of the apartments. It welcomed me like an old friend, wrapping an arm around me and asking me where I’d been. It was a normal smell in the college apartment complex. One that I had missed.
I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with it and city air. Austin was not some little podunk town with old, blue-haired ladies with sticks up their butts or with cowboys with too much shit on their boots. That life wasn’t for me. Not anymore.
In Austin, I could disappear. I could be crazy and warped and damn near anything I wanted to be. I could party and drink and sleep with every goddamn man if I wanted to. There was no one to stop me. To judge me. To remind me of the past and things that I had done.
I unlocked the door to my apartment and stepped inside. Cool, artificial air blew in my face from an overhead vent, drying my sweat and welcoming me home.
I flipped on the nearest light. Imported leather furniture and expensive end tables greeted me. I headed straight for the kitchen I pretended I used.
Tate was right behind me. He dropped his bag in the middle of the floor and rushed to the fridge.
“No water?” he asked, flinging the refrigerator door open and sticking his head inside.
“Nope,” I said, reaching down to pick up his duffle bag from the floor. “We’ll have to make a grocery run later, Tater Tot.”
Nathan appeared in the kitchen, rolling my suitcase behind him, one of the wheels slightly off.
“You know there’s this thing called a faucet. Last I heard water comes from it. Get your drink that way, Tate,” he said to Tate.
Tate gave him an annoyed look. “Last time I drank tap water, it tasted like shit.”
“Language, little brother,” Nathan warned, heading back out of the kitchen. There were still two more suitcases in the car and a laundry bag full of my dirty, designer clothes waiting to be brought up.
Tate marched past me, grumbling about big brothers with sucky attitudes and the lack of groceries in my shitty apartment. I swear the kid was always hungry.
I sighed. If Tate and Nathan were going to fight the whole time, I needed to get drunk. It was the only way I would survive the two of them in close quarters.
With that in mind, I hurried out of the kitchen and across the living room. Dropping Tate’s bag near my leather couch, I headed for the front door. The sooner I helped Nathan bring in the luggage, the sooner I could make my drunkenness happen.
I had only taken a few steps outside my apartment door when I ran smack-dab into a girl.
“Oh my gosh! I’m so sorry!” she exclaimed, jumping back.
I recovered quickly, but looked down at her and frowned. She was short and nerdy. Her light blonde hair was limp and flat. Sad-looking curls hung down past her shoulders.
Her lips were full and pink, absent of any lipstick. They were pulled back in a friendly smile, showing even white teeth. She wore cheap khaki shorts and a black t-shirt with the words World of Warcraft slashed across the front. Her black-rimmed glasses magnified her light-colored eyes, making her appear owl-like. Not one ounce of makeup was on her face, but she somehow managed to pull off the natural look perfectly.
At first glanced, she seemed too bubbly and happy to be normal. Great. One of those types of people. I didn’t like girls like her. Life just wasn’t that great to be overly cheerful. I knew just by looking at her that she had never had to watch her life fall apart, one drink at a time, one man at a time. She never regretted in the morning what she had done last night. Or wish to God sex and men weren’t her go-to drug to hide from reality. She was normal and cheerful and all the things society said women should be like.
I disliked her instantly.
“Excuse me,” I muttered stepping around her, careful not to touch her again. I didn’t want her good girl cooties on me.
“Are you my neighbor?” she asked, sounding too sweet to be real.
I skidded to a stop, feeling dismay. When I left campus a couple of weeks ago, the pimply guy that lived next door had been in the process of moving out. He had graduated with a master’s in accounting and was leaving for a new job. At least that’s what he had told me while he was hitting on me for the umpteenth time. So now this…girl…was taking his place? Great.
“You just came from 304, right?” she asked, pointing to the rusted gold numbers on my door then pushing her glasses higher up the bridge of her nose. “That’s next to mine. I’m 303.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Yeah. I’m 304,” I said, looking her up and down. Blonde hair. Green eyes. I cocked my head to the side. Wait. There’s something familiar about her…
“Hello.”
Whatever nagged me about Blondie was forgotten as Nathan appeared. He was hauling the laundry bag behind him as he walked toward us, staring at the girl and checking her out the way only Nathan could – with a James Dean kind of coolness.
His gaze traveled up and down her small frame, taking his time and touching on each of her features. I wanted to roll my eyes. Nathan was a player. Oh, he didn’t come across as one, but I heard the rumors. My brother supposedly had game.