LITMIR.BIZ

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he turned and walked away from her, leaving her standing there in the middle of the muddy drive all by herself.

      Well, that was what she wanted anyway. Now, she could get to work.

      * * *

      GAGE HUNG UP with his business manager and leaned back in his chair. It was strange to be in a house like this. Someplace permanent. He was accustomed to motels that catered as much to roaches as they did to their guests. He was also accustomed to doing a little bit more hard labor than this.

      Letting Rebecca handle anything on his property went directly against his usual mode of operation. He needed physical labor to deal with his shit. Otherwise, he started to go stir-crazy. He had a good head for investments and money management, but it was boring as fuck.

      It had also made him rich, so he supposed he couldn’t complain.

      He heard a knock on the door downstairs and he abandoned his desk, taking the steps two at a time as he headed to the front entry. He half expected it to be Rebecca, so when he opened it and saw his sister Madison standing there, the shock hit him like a bucket of cold water over his head.

      “What are you doing here?” he asked.

      “Hello to you too, jackass,” she said, pushing past him and walking straight inside. “Nice place,” she said, looking around. “Colton didn’t mention that. I imagine his general rage and anger at you prevented him from saying anything nice at all.”

      “He’s mad at me, huh?”

      She snorted. “Do bears poop in the woods?”

      “I assume.”

      “Then assume he’s pretty mad.”

      “Everyone else?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest and rocking back on his heels.

      “Sierra is young. She’s also much nicer than I am. Colton is... Well, he’s as decent as cornfields and apple pie. Mom is as emotionally compromised as she ever was, and I think she’s...shocked. Yes, she’s surprised you came back.”

      So Colton had decided to fill her in, Gage assumed. But she wasn’t asking to see him. He couldn’t blame her.

      He was as surprised as anyone that he’d come back. But when he’d gotten that phone call, he’d known there was no other choice. Because he already knew there was no end to the running.

      He’d been doing it for long enough that if there was an end, he would have found it. So he’d decided that maybe the only way to fix it...the only way to end that gnawing, desperate ache in him, was to go back.

      So here he was.

      “And you?” he asked. “How do you feel about me being back?”

      “I’m reserving judgment.” She took another step, looking around the room, her eyes sharp, the same blue as his own. He remembered Madison as a little girl, and he could see nothing of the little girl in her now. “I didn’t exactly make it to this point unscathed. And believe me, there was a point in time when I really wanted to run away. Sadly, I couldn’t, because you already had. You realize, it puts a lot of pressure on the remaining children to stay put when someone else has already scampered off.”

      “I imagine,” he said. He also imagined that whatever Madison had been through, it wasn’t exactly his situation.

      “But, even saying that, I get it. I get why you left. I don’t know what happened, but I understand that sometimes things are just too hard. That this place—this place where everybody knows you—is just oppressive sometimes. I was seventeen, and I got involved with my dressage trainer. When I say involved, I mean I was having a relationship with his penis.”

      Those words, so flippant and hard, had been chosen carefully, he could tell. To distance her, to distance him.

      “Sure,” he said, keeping his voice as neutral as hers. “Those kinds of relationships make the world go round.”

      “Indeed they do. And, when you’re a woman, they can make things stop altogether. He was married. Which, I knew, but of course I bought into that tried-and-true line about how he was going to get divorced, and she didn’t love him and she didn’t understand him like I did.” She laughed, but the sound didn’t contain any humor. “The only reason it’s even remotely forgivable is that I was so young I didn’t realize what a cliché it was. Anyway, I came out of it with a big scarlet letter, and he ended up doing just fine. In fact, he even stayed married. So, I was clearly the villain.”

      “How old was he?”

      “He was almost forty,” she said. “It’s entirely likely I have daddy issues.”

      “That fucker is lucky I wasn’t here,” he said, meaning that down to his soul.

      “But you weren’t. Anyway, the point is I have my own stuff, and my own reasons for doing the things that I do. That means that I’m probably your best bet as an ally in this family.”

      “You said Sierra was nicer than you.”

      “She is. And she’ll forgive you. Trust me. She’ll probably even hug you. But she’s not going to understand you. I have a feeling you and I were created out of the same end of the gene pool.” She looked at him, her expression expectant. And he wondered if she was waiting for him to pour out his heart. To confess all. To say exactly what he’d been up to for the past seventeen years, and what had sent him running in the first place.

      Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen. Not today.

      “How is Dad?” he asked.

      “The same. Still in the hospital.”

      “I’ve been going over the finances.” He watched her expression closely, and it remained smooth, impassive.

      “We’re broke.”

      “You aren’t,” he said. “Your business is doing very well. In fact, most everything that centers directly around the ranch, around what you and Sierra do, works very well. It’s just that overall the family is in a lot of debt. And if I want to save the ranch, I have to manage all of that as best I can.”

      “Right,” she said. “But I don’t understand why you have to do it. I don’t understand why not Colton, or me. Not Sierra, because she’s about to produce progeny. But the rest of us. Why aren’t we doing it?”

      “Because I’m done running. This is my responsibility, and I’m going to see it done.”

      She swallowed hard, nodding slowly. “And after that?”

      “Well, then I start running again.”

      “That particular brand of denial is probably good for your quads, anyway,” Madison said.

      “Well, that’s good to know.” He cleared his throat, a strange uncomfortable sensation filtering through his chest. “I’ll walk you out.”

      Madison’s pale eyebrows shot upward. “Wow. Direct. I suppose I had better let you get back to all that brooding you seem to be so fond of doing.”

      “Do you have anything else to say?”

      “I always have something else to say, Gage. It’s best not to leave that door open.” Then, Maddy turned and walked out of the house. He followed after her, standing on the porch and watching her as she walked toward her sporty little car.

      “No truck?”

      “Do I look like I would drive a truck?” she asked.

      “Colton and Sierra do, don’t they?” He recalled that from the hospital when he’d been there visiting his Dad.

      “One of these things is not like the others. But I thought that maybe we might be.” She squinted. “I’m not entirely convinced we aren’t.” Then, she got into her car and backed out of the driveway. He watched her until she was gone.

      Having

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