The Lonesome Young (35 page)

“No, I’ll get rich and out from under the thumb of my bitch of a mother,” Ethan said, shoving his too-long hair out of his face in a gesture that reminded me painfully of when we’d been kids together, playing ball in the hot sun. How could the big brother who’d taught me how to throw a curve ball have turned out like this?

How could he have gotten me mixed up in the very heart of it?

“You leave Mickey and those Whitfields alone,” Pa warned him, but his warnings rarely carried any bite when it came to Ethan, so we both ignored our father and stared at each other, instead.

I started toward Ethan, but my legs cramped and I staggered. I threw my hands in the air instead. “Why? Why do you even need me? There are no shortage of idiots who will be happy to be part of your gang.”

For a second, something dark flashed across Ethan’s face, and he looked almost trapped. Almost scared. But it was gone so fast I convinced myself I hadn’t seen it.

“I need you because you’re
not
an idiot. You met Baron. I can’t guarantee I’ll come out on top without help. I need family I can trust. Jeb is a buffoon.”

Ethan walked over to a cabinet and pulled out another bottle of water and tossed it to me. I drained the entire thing and immediately felt a little better.

“It’s an easy choice. You hold up your end of the deal, and you agree to stay away from Victoria Whitfield—and you mean it this time—and you get rich. Plus, I can guarantee that Jeb and Anna Mae stay away from her and her family,” Ethan said, staring at me speculatively.

“Why would I trust you on that? Where the hell were you last night?”

“I didn’t know about last night,” Ethan said, his voice troubled. “But you can trust me this time. I have something on Anna Mae that she really,
really
doesn’t want to get out. Plus this new gang—she made a mistake there. They don’t negotiate with women. I’ll be taking lead on this new deal.”

A goose walked over my grave at the casual way he mentioned blackmailing his own mother. His own crazycakes, criminal mastermind, psychopath of a mother. On the other hand, I didn’t mind the blackmail at all.

“What does he mean about Victoria? About you meaning it this time?” Pa asked me, but I ignored him again, my gaze trained on Ethan.

“I need your help, and you know why,” Ethan told me. “Or you can continue to be stubborn, we’ll drive the Whitfields out of their own damn county, and I won’t necessarily be able to protect Caro, the girls, or Pa.”

Pa’s face turned pale, and I saw a muscle in Ethan’s jaw jump.

“What do you mean, protect Pa?”

“Forget that, what did you mean about Caro and the girls?” my father said.

Ethan explained, and I thought my dad would stroke out.

“She’ll have police protection, too. You need to fix this, yesterday, Ethan.”

“I’m doing the best I can, Pa,” Ethan said tiredly. “Now listen to me. The Red Barons. They like to come in strong by taking out the local sheriff first. They say it makes everybody else more willing to deal with them.”

“Take him out?” I had to ask, even though I was sure I knew the answer.

“Kill him, Mickey. They’re going to kill Pa unless I make a very strong case for them not to do it,” Ethan said slowly, and this time there was no mistaking the pain in his face. Ethan might not think much of Pa, but he was his father, no matter the distance and difficulties that lay between them these days.

There was a pause, a beat that hammered in my head like a drum. Then I heard myself answer as if from very far away. “I’ll work for you, Ethan. I already said I would, and I will. I’ll work for you, and I’ll stay away from Victoria. We’ll find a way to protect Caro and the girls, and Pa, and we’ll make sure everybody also leaves Victoria and her family alone.”

“She’s too good for us, anyway, Mickey,” Ethan said quietly. “The farther away Victoria stays from Rhodales, the better off she’ll be.”

He smiled a little, and I knew he was right, but the bleakness of my future without her unspooled in my head, and I’d never wished so hard that my name wasn’t Rhodale.

I didn’t let any of that show on my face. “When do I start?”

Chapter 61

Victoria

V
ivi!” Buddy’s voice rang out with so much enthusiasm it made me smile in spite of the decorated white cast that sheathed his leg from knee to ankle.

I hugged him, burying my face in his soft hair for a moment, and helped him out of the car and into the wheelchair while Mom and Dad climbed out of the car and stretched.

“Isn’t it cool? The nurses signed it and Mom even bought me my own package of markers, so I can get everybody at school to sign! Do you think Mrs. Rhodale will sign it? I have purple. It’s her favorite color, she told us.”

He chattered on, and I tried to ignore the spike of pain that Mickey’s mom’s name caused me. I turned his chair around so he could see the newly renovated front of the house.

“We have a ramp to the porch!”

“Yes, we do, and there will be no wheelies or other stunts on it, young man,” Gran said, pretending to be stern before a huge smile spread all over her face and she bent down for her share of Buddy hugs.

We got Buddy installed with the TV remote, his game system, and his books on the couch in the parlor, which was going to be his bedroom until the cast came off and he could go upstairs again, and then I followed Gran to the kitchen, where Dad and Mom were sitting down having glasses of iced tea.

“That drive feels longer every time,” Dad said an uncharacteristic slump to his shoulders.

“Well, it’s been a pretty horrible week,” Gran said, patting his shoulder.

It struck me as if it were a new realization that she was his mother, after all, and so she had to love him, even when he was being a jerk.

Dad looked around suddenly. “Where’s Melinda? I would have thought she’d be here to welcome Buddy back.”

Gran and I exchanged a glance. I started to tell them, but she shook her head.

“This one is for me to do, honey.”

“What is for you to do?” Mom shot a suspicious look at me, but I just shrugged. Gran
wanted
to tell it, so I didn’t feel like a coward for throwing her under the bus.

“I took Melinda to rehab. It’s a perfectly nice place, one of the top facilities around, and she wanted to do it, which is the first step in recovery. She won’t be home for at least ninety days, and she can’t talk to you on the phone or e-mail just yet, so don’t even try.”

Gran delivered all this in almost a belligerent tone, her shoulders squared and her chin thrust forward, but in the end none of our prepared arguments were necessary. Dad simply nodded, rubbing his forehead. His eyes were suspiciously shiny.

Mom, on the other hand, was more dramatic.

“Oh, thank God,” she said, sighing. I nearly fell over.

“What? You . . . I mean, I’m glad you agree, but you were always blocking me on this,” I said, bewildered.

Mom tossed her head, briefly reminding me of one of the horses. “I just can’t deal with her drama right now, Victoria.”

With that, she sailed out of the room, leaving me and Gran to stare at each other in disbelief.

“You know, Victoria, the universe can only revolve around one fixed point at a time, and with your mother it’s always going to be her,” my dad said ruefully. He drained his iced tea glass. “I’m going to go see if Buddy wants to challenge me to a game so he can demolish me in five minutes, and then I might take a nap.”

After he left the room, Gran and I just sat there and stared at each other.

“Do you think they put something in the water at the hospital? Some kind of nice pill?”

Gran wagged her finger at me. “Remember, that’s my son you’re talking about.”

Then she glanced at the doorway he’d just walked through. “I wouldn’t rule it out, though.”

• • •

I spent the rest of the weekend with Buddy, playing games and watching movies, fetching snacks, and helping him learn how to walk on crutches without destroying everything in the house. We had to break the news of Angel’s death, and he took it very hard, but we simply told him she’d gone to horse heaven, leaving out any mention of the violent way she’d died.

Gran told my parents what had really happened, though, but whatever fury Dad felt over the situation mostly played itself out in his conversations with the sheriff’s department and the insurance adjustors. At least he left me alone, and that’s really all I wanted from him right now.

But every second of every minute of every day, the lack of any communication from Mickey weighed on me. I finally called the sheriff’s office again, and they told me he was home safe, so on the one hand I could relax, and on the other hand I was forced to realize that he must be deliberately avoiding me.

What I couldn’t figure out was why.

He
loved
me. He’d said it straight out. I kept reminding myself of this every time I felt like my heart was about to shatter into Mickey-shaped fragments. The horse I’d loved and grown up with was dead, probably because of this stupid feud, and yet Mickey couldn’t even bother to call me to see if I was all right.

I kept trying to forget everything I’d heard about boys who said “I love you” to get sex and then dropped the girl like a hot potato—or damaged goods.

Damaged.
Yes
.

I was certainly damaged, but Mickey wasn’t like that. I knew better. He was a good person, trapped in the unhappy expectations of Rhodale evil. I wouldn’t add insult to injury by thinking the worst of him, too. I was the one who’d initiated the lovemaking, anyway. I’d still believe in him until he proved me wrong.

Even though he never called.

• • •

Monday morning, when I pulled into the school parking lot, everybody was staring at me. Again. These people must not have had much in the way of lives before my family came back into town and provided almost daily entertainment. I climbed out of the truck and ran the gauntlet of curious stares and speculative whispers, almost wishing somebody would just ask me outright and get it over with.

When I got to my locker, Mickey was leaning against it. I forgot that I was angry with him and drank in the sight of his long, lean,
uninjured
body and his gorgeous,
uninjured
face.

“You’re safe,” I said, barely able to resist the urge to throw my arms around him right there in the hallway. “I was so worried. Why didn’t you call?”

His eyes blazed with emotion, but he quickly shuttered it, so that within seconds the only clue I had that he was feeling anything at all was the muscle that jerked as he clenched his jaw shut.

Mickey looked around at the audience staring avidly at us. His upper lip lifted for a second, baring his teeth, and then he hardened his face into a contemptuous expression that shocked me because of how much it made him look like Ethan.

“I had things to do, babe. More important things than listening to you whine about a dead horse,” he said loudly, as if he wanted everybody to hear him. “Maybe if you weren’t such a spoiled rich princess, you might realize that the rest of us have real lives. Like all those kids your dad put in the poorhouse by firing their parents.”

His words rocked me back on my heels, and pain swamped me, crushing the air from my lungs. “How—but—why?”

“Don’t be pathetic, Victoria. Let’s spare everybody the memory of that,” he said, and the cruelty of it dug into me like that bullet had into Pete.

I couldn’t think; I couldn’t process this. Every instinct I had was screaming at me to run. Just
run
. Get away from this monster who was wearing Mickey’s face to torture me. But I had to slow down. Think. This wasn’t right.

Slowly, I shook my head.
No
. It didn’t make sense. Mickey wouldn’t say these things to me. Not my Mickey. Not the boy who’d touched me with so much love and caring only two days before. I opened my mouth, trying to form words, but he started laughing.

“Nothing to say? Admitting I’m right? Look, we’re on opposite sides of the game, here. Rhodale and Whitfield, and never the two shall hook up, right? See ya.”

“Mickey!” I caught his arm before he could leave. “What are you doing? What happened to you this weekend?”

I could feel the anguish clogging my throat, but I fought it back. I didn’t understand what was happening, but there was no way I was going to break down in the middle of the hallway at school.

He yanked his arm away and laughed nastily. “Why is it always the innocent-looking ones who can’t get enough of the bad boys? Sorry, babe. Just because I kissed you once doesn’t mean you own me. Good thing I never got your panties off, isn’t it?”

A few of the guys lurking around started laughing, elbowing each other. “Struck out, huh, Mick?”

He shrugged, but his eyes were hard. “You win some, you lose some.”

“Mickey, what is going on?” I was whispering by then, afraid if I spoke too loudly I’d shake apart from the force of the pain reverberating through me.

He closed his eyes for a second, but then turned away from me and called out to a girl who’d been walking by.

“Hey, looking good. What are you up to after school?”

When she giggled and he strode off down the hall after her, my knees buckled and I fell back against my locker.

No.

What?

How could I have been so wrong about him?

Denise came running up, looking angry and concerned and so, so sorry. She’d clearly seen the whole thing.

“Help me? I have to go home,” I whispered.

She nodded and helped me back out to my car, but the caustic whispers and mocking voices branded my skin like a lash all the way down the hall.

“She thought she could catch Mickey Rhodale?”

“Serves her right, after what her asshole dad did.”

“Wow. He smoked her.”

“Think he tapped that?”

“Nah, he even admitted he didn’t. Ice princess Whitfield.”

I stumbled again, but tried to cling to that small bit of comfort. Mickey had made a point to deny having sex with me, so at least that part of our relationship wouldn’t be open to gossip and scrutiny and mocking speculation.