A Hard Ride Home (8 page)

"You been a whore all your life?" Emmett asked abruptly, rapping his fingertips against his empty glass.

Jesse snorted out a breath and traced the rim of a shot glass. "Well, I was a child before that. But it didn't pay as well."

"And nothing in between?"

When Jesse paled, not answering him, Emmett followed his gaze and saw his father standing just inside the swaying door. Warren Grady seemed to fill the doorway, his silver hair and broad frame and stern jaw giving him the look of some mountain god come down to walk amongst his people.

The whole saloon quieted.

"What is my father doing here?" Emmett muttered under his breath. It was already clear by the raids on the farms and homesteads outside of town that Warren had been presiding over the town in name alone. He wasn't keeping townspeople safe. He collected taxes and loaned money and lived up in his big house with no regard for anyone or anything. He had no business here at the Weeping Willow, and Emmett wasn't sure he could stand to be in the room with him without having words.

Jesse didn't answer him. He picked his way across the room and melted against Warren's body like a stretching cat, taking Warren's hat and easing his coat off. "Mayor Grady," he crooned, smiling. "In our little saloon."

Card games resumed, and the conversation rose back up to a low, coarse rumble. One of the girls went back to singing an off-key version of something that might have been opera. But Emmett could barely hear any of it over the ringing in his ears. He started for them, but Roscoe reached over the bar and took his wrist in a tight grip.

"Ain't worth it, Sheriff. Not here, not now," he said very quietly, his tone just sharp enough to cut through the dizzying rage Emmett felt as he watched his father pull Jesse into his lap at the card table.

Jesse wrapped his arms around Warren's neck and nosed and kissed at Warren's ear as Warren looked right into Emmett's eyes like there wasn't anybody else in the room.

"Why, a family reunion," Evelyn drawled, sidling up to Emmett's hip and wrapping an arm around his back to steer his gaze back to the dusty bottles behind the bar.

"You knew."

"Of course I knew. You'd know too, if you had half a mind to listen."

"Does he love him?" Emmett asked, barely able to squeeze the words out. They felt like grit in his throat.

He didn't have to look to know the sort of spectacle Jesse was making of himself, squirming in Warren's lap like a—like a—

"Have you lost your damn mind, Emmett Grady?" Evelyn said in a low hiss. Her long, pale fingernails dug into his forearm.

"It's a simple question."

"You gonna get yourself shot down acting like a lovesick fool over a whore? Leave him be before you cause trouble."

"I can take care of myself. I'm not afraid of my father."

"I didn't mean trouble for you, you lunkhead. Roscoe," she called out, gesturing at Emmett's empty glass. "No one's gonna start trouble tonight with the mayor in here. Sheriff's drinks are on the house."

Emmett knew he was being coddled, that Evelyn was trying to distract him, that the pain in his gut was foolish. He drank anyway, letting the whiskey burn on his tongue and claw down his throat until his face felt hot and windblown.

When Rose came to him and pulled him to the back room to watch Josephine and a skinny farmer play darts, he leaned into her and fingered ironed ringlets and eyed the sweaty press of her tits and blamed the whiskey when his prick didn't rise to attention, even when she tried to tickle her hands into his trousers.

He was drunk. Drunk enough that he probably would have hauled himself to the jail to dry up.

"Not causing trouble," he said solemnly, looking at Rose. She had blue eyes and they weren't the right kind of blue at all.

*~*~*

The last time Warren had come down to the Weeping Willow was a day Jesse failed to show up when he was expected. Warren had ridden down the hill in such a tempest the girls said he'd looked like Satan on horseback.

That was when Jesse had taken with a fever and didn't wake at all for days. The girls told him Warren had gathered him up and took him back up to the house and had Doc Milton fuss over him for a week until he could lift his head without coughing like he was fit to toss up his lungs.

That had been years ago. Warren didn't come to the saloon. He entertained up at the house in his big fancy parlor.

Jesse's palms were cold and sweaty as he smiled and kissed Warren and moaned when Warren palmed his crotch and sucked on the soft spot under his ear. Emmett was gone, off somewhere else in the saloon. The knowledge fluttered in his gut, a small comfort.

"Why don't you take me home?" he asked Warren, whispering. Warren squeezed him in response, responding eagerly the way he always did when Jesse pleaded. But Jesse really meant it this time; he didn't want to be here, not with the girls and Evelyn and the sheriff and everyone watching. He didn't want to do this.

Warren took him by the jaw and held him still as he spoke at his ear. "You've been consorting with the sheriff."

Jesse tried to nod, but Warren was holding him too tightly. "He's your son," he said helplessly, not sure why that was the first thing that came to mind.

"Do you tell him secrets, Jesse?"

"I don't—"

"My man Curtis is riding out to Willie's camp tonight. Should I send him into Fairhaven? Check on the town?"

"No."

Warren's grip slipped down to Jesse's throat, softer now, his fingertips warm against Jesse's racing pulse. His thumb slid over Jesse's lips and Jesse closed his eyes, swallowing against the sour taste of bile.

"They shouldn't test your mother's… hospitality?"

"No. Please. Let's get out of here. Go be. Alone."

"I didn't come here to be alone," Warren murmured. He bit Jesse's earlobe hard enough to draw blood.

The others at the table carried on with their game. It was just a couple of Warren's thugs, Wild Jack Reuben and John Harley and some long-haired cattle baron, and they didn't even look up when Jesse swallowed back a cry.

"I didn't tell him nothing, I won't!"

"That's right." Warren released his throat. "You wouldn't hurt me like that."

Jesse shuddered in a breath and wiped the blood off his ear with the back of his hand. "No, sir. I wouldn't."

"Go on now," Warren said, voice loud and pleasant. He pushed Jesse off his lap and gave him a solid swat on the ass. "We've got business to discuss. You run along, clean yourself up."

Jesse's legs trembled, his feet feeling heavy and numb in his boots as he walked across the saloon for the back room and the back door so he could get outside, out into the night, maybe hide in the barn or drown himself in the trough.

Right as his breath caught on a panicked sob, he stumbled into a man and mumbled, "Pardon." Then he saw that it was Emmett.

"You," Emmett said, flushed and drunk, heavy-lidded with it. He backed into the doorway, blocking it, arms spread and eyes hot.

"Move!" Jesse said, hearing his voice go too thin.

"Why din' you tell me?"

Jesse shook his head and tried to push past Emmett, angling to duck under his arm and out the back door. He nearly made it, until Emmett moved with his momentum and fell out the door with him, dragging him and wrestling at him like a grizzly.

"Tell you what?" Jesse yelled, raw and edging on hysteria. Emmett got him by the arm and twisted him around. He was too mad to hold still and kept struggling despite the hot jab of pain in his shoulder. "Thought you'd caught on to the whorin' when you had yourself a piece, Sheriff!"

The breath kicked right out of him when Emmett propelled them both into the wall beside the door. Wheezing, Jesse got a hand free and tried to push back, earning himself a palm full of splinters.

"Fuck," he grunted, trying to step on Emmett's foot. It seemed like Emmett was just pawing and swiping at him aimlessly until Emmett's fingers hooked into his trousers like he was trying to yank them down.

"Don't." Jesse's limbs went heavy and cold. "You're drunk. Don't."

There was no sense in fighting, but he kept talking, dizzy as Emmett fumbled at him.

"Don't," Jesse said. "Don't. Not you. Not. No. Emmett. Please."

Emmett stopped moving, his closed mouth pressing against Jesse's shoulder. He shook like he was laughing, but made hoarse sounds like he was crying. His palms shifted to the wall on either side of Jesse.

The saloon door was still open, noise buzzing out into the quiet night.

The moment Emmett stepped back, Jesse whirled and punched him with the sharp-snapping aim of cold rage, like the only thing left on Earth was Emmett's square jaw. It wasn't much of a punch, but it was solid, and when Emmett reeled back, he followed it with another, deeper hit to Emmett's gut.

Emmett dropped to the dirt, clutching his middle.

The sounds from inside the saloon were muffled, far away. There was a big huge moon rising over the barn. Jesse heard his own ragged, sobbed breath.

"You can't just take anything you want!" he yelled. "You can't—"

Roscoe caught around him from behind, nearly bowling him over as Evelyn rushed to Emmett. He tried to fight, still wanted to fight, wanted a gun in his hand, wanted to see Warren run down by a herd of wild horses or burned down in his big house.

"Shh, shh," Roscoe was saying at his ear, hugging around him and dragging him up the stairs.

"I can't breathe. Oh God, I can't. I can't breathe." Each wheezing sob felt like rusty nails scraping through his chest.

"You can too, you're talking. Shh, now. Shh," Roscoe said.

It was dark up in his room where Roscoe dragged him to the floor and Elsie hovered in front of him, spooning something awful onto his tongue.

"Rest, poppet," she said.

He swallowed and Roscoe kept holding him as his heart beat got slower and slower. "I can't," he said thickly, trying to keep his eyes open to see if Roscoe was listening to him. "He can't. I can't."

Roscoe sighed and hung onto him until he couldn't open his eyes anymore.

*~*~*

"You alive in there, Sheriff?"

Emmett peeked just one eye open. The floor tilted and he reached out in a hurry to stop himself from falling off the world while it spun.

"He doesn't look to be," a woman said.

Evelyn wavered into focus, wearing bright yellow. When she crouched outside the bars, her skirts sent a warm puff of perfumed air toward Emmett, and his stomach lurched.

"He's breathing, more or less," Charley Green said. "I'll go brew up some coffee." His retreating footsteps sounded like bells ringing inside of Emmett's eyeballs.

"What happened?" Emmett croaked, not recalling a fight. And if he'd been shot, he ought to be with the doctor or in a bed, not lying in filthy straw in his own jail.

"You drank your weight in cheap whiskey and tried to rough up one of my whores, is what happened. Thankfully, Charley Green was on hand to lock you up. Consider him temporarily deputized."

Emmett sat up slowly, creeping up the wall and covering his mouth so he didn't retch onto his boots. His stomach tightened again, and he barely had time to grab onto the rusted spittoon beside him before he vomited until his whole middle hurt and his throat felt like it was on fire. There was nothing he could say, once he remembered. He looked up at Evelyn, and she looked at him like she felt the same way. He'd seen her mad before, but nothing like this. She was pale with it, wearing her rage from her eyes to the tips of her carefully curled fingers.

"There's a balance in this town," she said quietly. "People are going to die if you upset it."

"I never meant—"

"You never should have come back here, Emmett."

Before Emmett could reply, Charley came back with the keys to the cell and unlocked it. Neither of them offered him any help getting out, so he all but crawled to the bench where Charley had set a cup of coffee and a biscuit for him.

His bruised jaw throbbed with the beat of his pulse.

"Is he—"

"He's fine," Evelyn said, clipping the words the way she did when she was too upset to lie properly. "Sleeping it off, same as you. Couple of damn fools."

Charley glanced between them. "If you'll pardon me, ma'am, I think you two are both fools. Sheriff Grady's the law in Silver Creek. If you're fearing for someone's life, you might should tell him why."

Evelyn's jaw tightened like she wasn't too pleased at being overheard or told what to do, but her eyes squinted up thoughtfully for a few long breaths.

Emmett's head was pounding too hard for him to make sense of anything.

Finally, Evelyn looked at him and said, "Emmett, it's your father."

*~*~*

Despite what Evelyn had told him about his father, and the more he suspected, Emmett couldn't focus on the town or the law, or what the future might hold for Silver Creek.

All he could think about were the blurred moments he remembered from outside the Weeping Willow two nights before. He knew he'd been rough with Jesse, that he'd pawed at him and tried to—he tried to take advantage in the most uncouth, disreputable way.

He put on a fresh shirt and went for a shave so that he'd at least look respectable when he headed to the saloon to try to make things right.

When the town was quiet and no one was giving birth or getting shot at, business was slow for the doctor. Milton set up a barbering station outside his front door and threw in boil-lancing and tooth-pulling for free, if required.

"Seems like you were just here for your first haircut, Emmett," Milton said as he wrapped Emmett's face in a towel so hot it felt like it was meant to scare the whiskers off his chin. "The ladies in town carried on for days about the demise of your red baby curls."

Emmett couldn't recall that day, but he had many other memories of Milton's care. Having his arm set after jumping cattle fences and falling off his pony. The time he knocked three of his milk teeth out fighting a rancher's son who'd insulted his mother.

Milton gave him a reproachful look, one ghostly eyebrow wandering up his forehead. "You're looking a mite worse for wear."