Chapter Sixteen
Gentry
Sunday mornings on the ranch were typically pretty quiet. Which was good. Especially considering last night. I left Krys in the barn and headed to my room like some sullen teenager. I found an old Tom Petty album and half a bottle of Crown Royal and started my way through both.
Neither was a distraction strong enough when I could hear Krys come up the stairs and turn on her own music an hour later. But the music and the reasonably thick walls couldn’t hide the sound of her crying and she was trying hard to keep it hid.
I thought hurting her would somehow make me feel better. Somehow make me ok. Make her feel the same shitty-ness I felt when she left me. That all backfired. I wanted to go to her, to comfort her. I couldn’t do that either. This morning I bypassed the horse barn, she was up and I knew she would tend to her four-legged friends.
I walked to the calving barn where I kept a small office and the hands typically gathered for morning assignment. Robbie and Brandon had the weekend off so I was left with Boots and Ethan. Ethan’s truck was parked by the bunkhouses and it was good to know he was back from daddy duty.
I pushed the door opened and was cold clocked, hard, in the left side of my jaw. I stumbled back trying to find my footing. I wasn’t expecting this shit at seven in the morning.
“What the fuck did you do to her?” my attacker yelled.
Fuck it was Boots. I charged him and he caught me in the stomach with a knee as I flipped him over my desk and sent us both to the ground. I got a good hit on him when I felt someone yank me off. No small chore on any day.
Ethan.
“What the hell are you two doing?” he shouted throwing me against a wall and positing himself between us.
“He started it!” I sounded like I was five and tattling to my mom.
“Ask him what he did to her!” Boots shouted back.
“Her who?” Ethan asked confused.
“Krystina! Everyone saw her leave with him. I come back an hour later to find her in the barn sobbing, looking roughed up as shit and she ran away barefoot barley covered by her dress when she saw me!” Boots lunged my way once more but Ethan pushed him back. “You better not have fucking raped her!”
“Would I ever do that!” I roared. I was very quickly losing what grip on reality I had this morning. “We’ve been friends for years Boots! You know me. If anything happened between us it was because she wanted it!”
“Since she came here you’re not yourself. She hasn’t been here three damn days and you’re as bi-polar as when I met you,” Boots looked at me and shook his head. “Stay the fuck away from her.”
Ethan let him pass and we watched him disappear outside and head towards where he kept his gear. I would guess he was going to the high range. So be it.
Ethan turned to me. “He got you good.”
I felt my lip. It had split open and there was a trail of blood down my chin. “What did he see that set him off? Used to be you and Boots were almost as tight as we were till this weekend.”
“I ended it with Brittany and there was a couple of dances with Krys,” I shrugged.
“Dances don’t start this.”
“We came home early. She wanted to ‘take a breath’ I may have convinced her otherwise.”
“And she ended up in the barn how?”
“It happened there. On the hay bales, in the aisle.”
“Oh, come on Gentry! You at least cleaned up the rubber? I work there, my horse lives there!”
I grimaced.
“Gentry,” Ethan was growing pissed now and I deserved it. “You didn’t.”
“She’s responsible. I’m sure she’s on something. I pulled out anyhow.”
“I love my daughter. I would die for her. But not wrapping it was one of my top ten biggest fuck ups. But that’s not the point. I mean, I could see sleeping with you leaving woman sobbing a few regretful tears…”
“That wasn’t it.”
“Then?”
“I may have done everything in my power to ensure that she hated me, and remember that I hated her.”
“After?”
I shook my head slowly.
“I want to kick your ass now. Get the fucking horses!”
“Can’t, Krys is in the barn. She likes the horses.”
“And the memories I’m sure,” Ethan muttered more than a few choice curse words all directed at me. I rarely pissed him, Ethan was the most laid back of us all. “Get in the truck, lets check the herd.”
***
Fifteen minutes later Ethan and I still hadn’t said anything to each other. He was waiting for me to confess more sins and I was in the talking mood.
“You are going to tell me. I’ll throw you off the damn mountain if you don’t.”
“I loved her. We were young and dumb. High school relationships don’t even count in the long run. None of it should matter anymore. We would have been together thirteen years, hell, this week. She wasn’t even sixteen yet. Her mom’s something special, granted my folks always had their issues but they treated Krys like one of their own.
“She was terrified at the thought of losing that. Not having some place to run, of changing the situation, of letting anyone know we were together. Every day she became more of my life and I was so stupidly in love that I told her I would marry her. We would come here to the ranch and build a life.
“Legal age in Illinois to marry is eighteen. She knew her mom would never sign the papers to set her free for a wedding and chances were slim of getting a judge to declare her emancipated. We decided to wait, I promised I would keep her safe.
“And one night after I graduated I had the chance to keep that promise and I did. Afterwards, my parents and Ed thought I be best to come here. I begged her to come but she was scared. By the time she turned eighteen in April her senior year she decided to finish out and graduate valedictorian. I came back to see her and Gloria get their diplomas. I waited for her. Thinking Boston was all some front. It wasn’t.
“I came back to Mirror Lake at the end of the summer and she left for college. She made her choice and I made mine. I spent a year working this place every day. Building myself into a man who could take care of her and building an ideal life in my mind for us. I went back to get my wife and came home alone. I was just nineteen and a dumbass. But it took a long time to forget it.”
“Why did you let her come here? You could have told Gloria, she would have understood.”
“I wanted to see her miserable after James and the divorce. Broken by the choice she made when she chose that over this. See her as fucked up as I was. To see here as this New York bitch I had made her out to be in mind and finally put the last nail in the coffin to forgetting her once and for all.”
“Backfired a bit didn’t it?” Ethan chuckled.
“Pretty much.”
“And now?”
“She hates me. She needs to hate me. She will either leave right away or stay on long as she can to make me miserable. Either way when she leaves Mirror Lake I will never see her again.”