Unbreakable (32 page)

Casper pushed up on his hat, rubbed at his eyes, then his jaw. “I didn’t think he’d do it. I should’ve listened to Greg.”

“Been spending a lot of time with the bastard?”

Casper gave Dax a look. “He’s not that bad of a guy.”

“I don’t think I heard you right. Because if I did—”

Boone stepped between them, a big hand on both of their chests. “Enough. You two fighting over Greg isn’t going to help Clay. Are we going to look for him? Go to the sheriff? Gather up a search party? What?”

Pacing now, Casper shook his head. “I dunno. The sheriff finds him, he’ll lock him up.”

“Maybe he needs to be locked up,” Boone said. When Casper started toward him, he added, “For his own good. Keep him safe. Out of trouble. It never hurt any of us, and we all spent more than a few nights behind bars when I, for one, would much rather have spent them at home and been served pancakes the next morning for breakfast.”

“Yeah, well, you had a mother who made you pancakes. I was lucky if the milk for the cereal wasn’t sour. Or if I didn’t pour out a bowl of bugs with the Frosted Flakes.”

“And what Clay has is you,” Boone said. “Not quite pancakes, but definitely not a bowl of bugs.”

He supposed. “Getting locked up again means I won’t be getting him out. It’s going to make the custody thing a lot harder.”

Both men looked at him, Dax the one who finally asked, “You’re filing then? For custody?”

Casper nodded, waited, got the lecture he’d been expecting from Boone.

“It’s gotta be about more than keeping him out of a bad situation. About keeping him from going through the shit you did. And it sure as hell can’t be about guilt. You may have bedded his old lady, but you did not have a hand in how he turned out, or any of what brought him here.”

Casper couldn’t think of better reasons, but he knew what Boone was saying. “It’s the right thing to do. He came to me. And I want him to know he always can.”

“Alrighty then,” Dax said. “We going out on horseback? Taking the trucks? Hijacking the sheriff’s chopper?”

Casper took another swing at Dax’s hat, the other man scrambling for it as Casper headed out of the barn. “Y’all take the roads to Luling and Fever Tree. I’ll check between here and Crow Hill, then the other side of town. It’s only been six hours. He’s on foot and he’s got a dog. He can’t have gotten far.”

“A
NY LUCK
?” F
AITH
asked as she pulled open her front door, tightening the belt of a short silky robe before pushing a mess of hair from her face.

He’d woke her. He hated that, but he’d had to see her. Being alone was driving him crazy, and no one else would get how worried he was. The boys, they tried, but they weren’t Faith. Faith knew what Clay had come to mean to him. Faith knew what he was going through.

He shook his head, took his first full breath in hours. “Nothing. We’ll start looking again in the morning. Dax threatened to take my keys and hobble both me and Remedy if I didn’t get some sleep. I told him I’d be back by midnight.”

She shut the door behind him, stepped into his arms, and hooked hers around his neck, holding him, being there for him. “How far could he get in twelve hours? And how are your ribs?”

He ached from head to toe, mostly in his midsection, but he was pretty sure that was his heart. “Ribs are okay. Sore. And he’s obviously gotten further than anyone’s searched. Unless he’s holed up somewhere waiting for the commotion to die down.” He thought back to Clay telling him he’d done just that on his trek to Crow Hill. “Or he could’ve hoofed it off road or something.”

“What about a search from the air?” She stepped back to look up at him. “Dan Katz has a private plane, and Mike Banyon a crop duster.”

“I wouldn’t even know where to start looking.” He tossed his hat to her couch, took her hand, and tugged her down the hall to her bedroom. “And I’m pretty sure that kind of attention would send him into hiding. He’s a smart kid. He’d know what was going on.” He sat in her desk chair to pull off his boots, watching as she shed her robe and climbed into bed.

She tossed back the covers, giving him room, inviting him in, waiting. “I’m so sorry. I wish there was something I could do.”

She was doing it, and she didn’t even know. He tore off his T-shirt, shucked out of his shorts and jeans and socks, crawled in naked beside her, going instantly hard. He needed her, to be inside her, to lose himself in her. “It’s my fault. I should’ve kept an eye on him instead of siccin’ him on the upstairs bathroom so I could get back to work.”

“This is not your fault.” She lifted her hips to pull off her panties, sat up just long enough to strip her short nightie away.

“Sure it is.” He rolled over her, used his knee to nudge hers open. The heat between her legs warmed him, and he thickened even more. “I make bad decisions and ruin things.”

“That’s not the first time you’ve said that.” She wiggled, drew one leg up his thigh to his hip. “About ruining things.”

That’s because around her he had a big mouth. “You get it
drilled into you enough, it becomes an easy excuse to reach for when things go wrong.”

“Who drilled it into you?”

“Who do you think?” he asked, slipping a hand between their bodies to toy with her, ready her, arouse her.

She closed her eyes, shuddered, dug her fingers into the balls of his shoulders. “You know it wasn’t true, don’t you? That she was just saying that to strike out?”

“I know she never wanted any kids. So she blamed me for everything in her life that went wrong.”

“Listen to me,” she said as he lifted his hips, as he found her entrance, as he slid into her in one long stroke that bound them to the core. She shuddered again as he settled, then squeezed him and pulled him in deeper, keeping him close, keeping him safe. “That woman may have given birth to you, but that woman was not a parent. You were around mine enough to know that.”

He’d been around hers a lot, as often as he could. “I got a kick outta coming home with Boone. I didn’t show it, and I owe your folks a lifetime of apologies for being an ungrateful ass, but I loved being there. Especially at supper. Sitting down to eat a real meal at a real table was as foreign to me as eating barefoot on a bamboo mat with chopsticks.”

She pushed up and ground against him, her voice shaky when she said, “You remember breakfast? Toast flying, juice spilling, permission slips for school ending up stained with syrup or milk. We were a mess trying to get all four of us out the door. Five, when you where there.”

“I loved those mornings. And it had nothing to do with the food.” He brushed her hair from her forehead, moved higher into her body, slowly withdrawing and watching the play of desire
in her eyes as he did. “I’d like them to know they had a lot to do with me holding on.”

She rubbed a thumb over his cheekbone. “They know that.”

“They say something?”

“No, but they wouldn’t need to. That’s just who they are. How they are. Ours was the house where everyone wanted to hang out. They know kids. It’s why they do what they do.”

“You were lucky. You are lucky.”

She nodded in answer, her eyes damp. He lowered his head and kissed her temple, the moisture there salty on his tongue. Then he surged forward when she walked her fingers from the base of his skull down his spine. “But I’ve never felt as lucky as I do now.”

Not as lucky as him. No one in the world was as lucky as him. He wanted to take his time loving her, enjoying her fingers and hands and mouth, her soles as she rubbed them from the backs of his knees to his feet, her cunt holding his cock, forgetting everything else because she was the only thing he needed to know.

But he was hungry and in pain and in need. He began to rock, and she pushed up, biting his earlobe before whispering, “Fuck me.”

He rocked harder, his throat tight with the impact of her words, her wanting him, her knowing he wanted her. He rocked harder, rubbed against her, skin to skin, the contact raw and primal. He rocked harder, harder still, burying his face in the crook of her neck, his head on her pillow, falling apart as she scraped her nails over his scalp and came beneath him.

He burned and he ached but he finished her, then finished himself, collapsing, spent, the spilling of his seed exhausting him, leaving him only enough energy for something he needed
to say. He pulled free of her body, rolled her away, and spooned in behind her, his arm beneath her breasts tethering her.

She cuddled against him, relaxed, and was on the verge of nodding off when he said, “I’m not coming to the party.”

It took her a minute to respond, pulling herself out of sleep’s clutches to turn to him. “Because of Clay?”

“No. Because I can’t,” he said, shaking his head. He’d been thinking about this a while. Thinking how it would feel to walk through those doors, have everyone look at him, everyone knowing what the house had been like when he’d lived there. Knowing about Suzanne.

“Why ever not?” she asked, reaching a hand to cup his face. “It’s your house. It’s a showpiece. You should be the one showing it off.”

No. That wasn’t his house. He didn’t know that house. His house was gone, and that’s what he was left to deal with. “Later, baby. Time to sleep.”

The next thing he knew, someone was pounding on Faith’s door, and at the same time he realized the shower was running. It was up to him to see what was going on or let it go. He preferred the latter, but the pounding wouldn’t stop, so he grabbed his jeans, walking barefoot through the living room, glancing through the peephole as he pulled on his pants.

“Shit,” he muttered, staring down at his bare chest, buttoning his fly before opening the door to Boone. When the other man did nothing but stare, he finally said, “Faith’s in the shower.”

“I came looking for you.”

“Here?”

“You weren’t at the ranch. You weren’t on Mulberry Street. Seemed the next best place to try.”

“You could’ve called Faith.”

“I didn’t want to talk to Faith. I needed to see this for myself.”

“And now you’ve seen it.” Casper had nothing else to say.

Boone ground his jaw, rubbed at his chin he hadn’t shaved. “Barrett’s been looking for you. Called me. Called the house. Get your damn phone fixed.” And that was that. He turned and walked away.

Casper closed the door, headed back to the bedroom for his boots and the rest of his clothes, trying not to think how bad this was on top of everything else.

“Who was that?” Faith asked, toweling her hair as she walked out of the bathroom.

He’d hoped to be gone before she was through. “You don’t want to know.”

“Boone?” she asked as he tugged on his shirt.

He nodded in answer, but couldn’t bring himself to look at her. “Greg Barrett’s trying to reach me. I gotta go.”

W
HEN
C
ASPER RODE
into the Braff pasture later that morning to resume searching for Clay, Boone was already there, leaning into his forearms stacked on Sunshine’s saddle horn, his gaze trained on Dax as the other man rode through the grazing pairs.

“I should beat the shit out of you.”

Unlike the rest of the beatings Casper had taken in his life, this one he deserved. “I’ll get the ax if it’ll make you feel better.”

“It damn well might take that.” The other man was hot, his anger like a brand in coals, burning away hair before searing flesh forever. “It’s not even about the rule. It’s about trust. You broke it. That can’t be fixed.”

This was what Faith had warned him about. That she’d end things between them if his actions drove her brother away. He couldn’t imagine that happening, that Boone would leave over
what really wasn’t any of his business. But he wasn’t going to risk it.

“I love her,” Casper heard himself saying, the words ones he hadn’t even said to Faith.

“You love your cock, you mean,” Boone said, still steaming.

“No.” He pulled himself straight, pushed back the brim of his hat, letting the truth of his feelings settle. “I love Faith. And I love her enough that I’ll leave her alone if that’s what you want. You staying here matters more to her than I ever will.”

Confusion swiped across Boone’s face. “Why wouldn’t I stay here?”

“I dunno, but she’s been afraid from the beginning if you found out about us you’d leave again.”

“I’m not going anywhere. But beating the shit out of you—”

“—or taking an ax to my head—”

“—is something else entirely.”

“You mean more to her than anything,” Casper said after a minute, wanting to fix this.

“Not more than you, it seems.”

“That’s…different.”

“I fucking hope so.”

“You know what I’m saying.” He was growing exasperated. He didn’t know how to talk about personal shit. Cows, horses, dead grass, the feed bill at Lasko’s. That he could manage. But not what he felt for Faith. “I’ll walk away. If this is going to cause trouble between the two of you, I’ll walk away.”

They both fell silent after that, the sounds of snuffling horses and cattle brushing through what remained of the grass the only noises for miles. The sun beat down, baking Casper’s back through his shirt, frying the strip of skin above his collar, browning his forearms.

These days, he looked more like he belonged to Diego Cruz’s
family than to the white man who’d brought him at twelve to Crow Hill. Or to the woman who’d spread her legs to support herself, throwing an occasional box of cereal and a Benjamin his way.

“Go buy yourself a pair of shoes,” she’d tell him.

“Go get a fucking haircut,” she’d say.

“Go find something to eat,” she’d bark, smoke from a cigarette spiraling upward to magically diffuse the hard look in her eyes.

He’d wondered more than once if she’d even been the one to pop him out, or if the two of them had picked him up at some carnival, needing the extra mouth to qualify for government handouts, not to mention a house slave to fetch their beers.

This was how he’d grown up, and this was the past he was offering Faith as part of who he was. Yeah, that’s exactly what someone who loved her would do, saddle her with a mountain of trashy baggage she’d have to pick up and carry when he dropped it.