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I hit the ground with a thump, my face landing right in the mud. A big, dirty brown chunk of it goes into my squealing, open mouth, and I begin to gag as the man lying on my back leans down and growls into my ear. “That was a bad idea.”
You think?
I squeal and fight, but he’s heavy and pinning me down as if I weigh nothing and it takes zero effort from him to keep me here. Anger bubbles in my chest as I spit and cough, trying to get the mud out of my mouth. It tastes awful, like tacky filth, and the more he sits there, holding me down, the more I fight. “Let me go, you giant piece of dog turd!” I scream.
“Say please.”
He’s amused.
Amused!
“I’ll never fucking say please. Let me go. I have mud in my mouth, oh god, let me go.”
“If you want the mud gone, say please. It’s not that hard, just one little word.”
He’s not going to move.
I know it.
“Please,” I grit out, and with a chuckle, he gets off me. “You oversized, overbearing, blond-haired, Ken-doll-looking, ape.”
He bursts out laughing.
It’s the best sound I’ve heard in quite some time, gorgeous and deep, booming through the trees. I can’t help it, I crack a smile, even with a mouth full of mud, and then a laugh bubbles out of my throat, too. It has been so long since I’ve laughed, genuinely laughed. It feels almost foreign, yet scarily relieving.
We laugh until we’re coughing, and then we laugh some more.
“Come on,” Lake tells me, finally catching his breath. “Let’s go hose you off.”
He knows I’m not going to argue, because there is no way I’m going into town now.
“All I wanted was a beer,” I huff, wiping at my mouth, the strong taste of mud still lingering.
“If you don’t run your mouth the entire walk back, I’ll throw in a beer for good measure.”
Well damn, I can’t argue with that.
We walk back, the only light coming from the flashlight in his hand that flickers across the ground with every step he takes. A cool breeze tickles my hair back, and it’s eerily peaceful. By the time we make it back to the main house, I’m a lot less wound up and more than ready to be hosed off. Or showered. I’ll take either.
Lake leads me around the back of the beautiful homestead and unwinds a hose from the wall. He hands it to me. “I’ll turn it on slow, wash your face and mouth, then you can have a shower.”
I don’t argue, desperate to get this mud out of my mouth. He turns the hose on slowly and I lean down, bringing it to my face and washing the mud off. A sudden blast hits me so hard in the face I scream and launch backward. Lake’s laugh trails through the night as he stands, utterly amused with himself while I choke and sputter, drenched in water.
“What the hell?” I cry out.
“That’s for makin’ me run.”
I stare at him, dripping like a wet dog, mud and water running down my face. And then I lunge, hitting him with the still blasting hose. He barks out a curse as the water sprays into his face, too. Laughter bubbles out as I hold it on him as he frantically tries to turn it off. He spins toward me, grabbing my wrist and flicking the hose away, his laughter weirdly enjoyable.
“Okay, okay, truce,” he says between chuckles. “You win.”
“I’m not letting this hose go until you turn it off.”
He reaches in, turning the hose off and only when he does do I step back as his hand slides from my wrist. I put the house down and stare down at myself, then look back up at him. He’s drenched now, too. “What now?”
“Come with me.”
He turns and begins walking in the opposite direction to the house, and, soon, we find ourselves at a gorgeous lake only lit up by the lights on a nearby restaurant/café style building. I knew there was a lake here, of course, but I didn’t realize it was so damned big and beautiful. I can only imagine how it’ll look during the day.
“How original, Lake brought me to the lake.”
He gives me a look and then walks toward the water, tearing his shirt off before diving in. The splash is the only thing that can be heard, and I can’t help myself, I rush over, pulling my shirt off. As soon as it hits the grass, I dive into the water. It’s freezing cold, and yet the water making my skin prickle thrills me. I come up with a scream of joy that I feel so deep it brings a light to my soul I haven’t felt in so long. I’m free.
I’m finally free.
That hasn’t sunk in until this very moment, I guess because I still saw this place as a punishment and a way of keeping me in my chains without actually keeping me locked up. But, I guess I was wrong. It’s clear now that if I let myself, this place could be somewhere I enjoy. Still, the idea of being here for six weeks is a bit overwhelming, especially when I want to just get the hell out.
I want my answers.
I want her to answer for what she did to me.
For why she left me to rot in prison without ever coming forward.
“You know it’s nearly winter, we shouldn’t be in this water for too long.”
I glance over at Lake, who is watching me, the moonlight reflecting off his perfect face. “Do you want to know why I went to prison?”
He studies me. “Not goin’ to lie and say I don’t, because I am curious why a girl that looks like you got put away.”
“Looks like me?”
“You’re fuckin’ gorgeous, almost innocent in your appearance. It’s hard to believe you’d do something bad enough to get you locked up.”
“Looks don’t mean that someone isn’t capable of doing bad,” I point out.
“I agree, but it still doesn’t fit the bill.”
It’s not the first time I’ve heard that statement.
“I didn’t do anything,” I say, shrugging. “Well, I did. I did do something. I was there. I was there, and I shouldn’t have been there, but I didn’t intend for anything to go wrong. I wanted to back out, wanted to let it be, but ...”
“You’ve got my attention, tell me what happened, but let’s do it out of this water ...”
I have to agree there.
We shuffle out of the water, and I’m shivering by the time we reach our clothes. “Hang on,” Lake tells me and jogs up toward the building.
I stand, teeth clattering, waiting for him. He finally returns with a few towels, and I gratefully accept, wrapping one around me and holding it as tight as I can before I pass out from the intense cold.
“There is a fire up in the restaurant, we’ll go up there.”
Sounds good to me.
Anything to get me warm right now.
Hell, I’ll even take Lake, if he’s offering.
~*~*~*~
“ARMED ROBBERY,” LAKE says, staring at me, his eyes a mixture of impressed and confused. “That’s a pretty big deal. Why did you consider doin’ something so dangerous?”
“We were hungry, broke and, I don’t know, desperate. We talked about it, and I guess even right up to the moment we were outside that station, I still thought maybe it wasn’t real. When Davina made it clear we were actually doing it, I freaked out. I tried to convince her there were other ways, but there was this look in her eyes ...”
“She wasn’t goin’ to back down,” Lake finishes for me.
I shake my head. “Nope, and when I saw how scared that girl behind the counter is, I knew I had to stop her. I should have called the police before we even walked in, but ... I thought I could get the situation under control. I pleaded with her to leave, and then things just got out of control and the gun fired.”
Lake’s eyes get big. “The girl was shot.”
I nod. “Yeah, she was. Davina bolted, but I couldn’t. I could hear the sirens, and yet I couldn’t leave the girl on the ground. I stayed with her, I tried to keep her calm, and when the police arrived, she told them I was helping her, that I had tried to stop it, but when questioned further, she had to admit I was there to rob that gas station. The only thing that saved me was that she stood up for me and explained to the police that I had tried to stop it all and I stuck around to help her. My sentence was a lot less than it could have been if she hadn’t had my back.”
“That’s fuckin’ rough,” Lake murmurs. “How long did you get?”
I cross my legs, leaning closer to the fire. “Five years, but I got out after four. It wasn’t easy, I was seventeen at the time, which saved me in a sense because I probably would have gone away for a lot longer if I were older.”
“You’re twenty-one?”
I roll my eyes. “Surely you didn’t pick me as older?”
“I thought you were younger, actually.”
I grunt. “Well, I’ll have you know I’m twenty-two in four days, actually.”
“I’ll remember that.”
“It still feels like so much of my life was swallowed up. I’m young, I’ve got so much ahead of me, but it changed something in me, being locked away at such a young age.”
“Your friend never got caught?”
I glance down at my hands. “I never gave them her name. She bailed on me, but I wasn’t going to be as heartless as her. They tried, believe me, but I was never going to share her name. I told them I knew her, but not well and she had given me a fake name. In the end, they had me, and I think they had better things to worry about.”
“You shouldn’t have let her get away with leavin’ you there.”
“Trust me, she’ll answer to me, but she’ll do it to my face.”
His eyes rake over me. “That’s why you want out of here, you want to go and finish up those parts of your life.”
“You have no idea,” I exhale. “I want, more than anything, to put all of this behind me but the only way I can do that is to confront her. We were friends, the closest kind, at least that’s what I thought. She betrayed me. I want to know why.”
“So you never heard from her again?”
I shake my head.
“That’s fuckin’ low.”
He’s not wrong.
“Anyway, enough about me, what about you, River? Tell me your life story.”
He glares at me, and I throw him a grin.
“You’re fuckin’ lucky you’re so god damned gorgeous.”
That compliment hits me right in the feels, and I can’t help but smile, a genuine smile.
“I have that way with men, you know.” I wink at him. “Now go on, how’d you get here?”
He shrugs. “Known Rhett a really long fuckin’ time, always helped him, we’ve always been brothers, not by blood but that don’t mean we’re not all willing to die for each other. He has always had this ranch, and when he had the idea to do somethin’ different with it, we all agreed to help him. We’ve always worked here, always lived here, and now we’re helpin’ him with his dream.”
“What about your dreams?” I ask.
He grunts. “I live on a ranch, runnin’ retreats where most of the customers are beautiful women, I get to ride horses and live on the land. I’m fuckin’ livin’ the dream.”
“Oh, so you’ve had a few of the beautiful women then?”
He smirks. “One, I try to keep it away from the customers.”
I laugh. “Duly noted.”
He grins. “Come on, you should get to bed. It’s got to be early hours of the morning by now and tomorrow we’ve got a big day. You don’t want to miss all the fun activities we have planned.”
I stare at him, my expression grim. “You know I’m not excited about any of that.”
He grunts. “You’ll like it if you give it a chance.”
“I know that, but the problem is I don’t want to give it a chance. I respect what you’re doing here, but I just want to go into town, into that bar, and drink myself silly, and I will do that, by the way. You caught me once ...”
He gives me a look that tells me he’ll be having none of my nonsense. “You don’t want to cross me, little girl, I caught you once, and I will catch you again.”
I smirk. “Challenge accepted. Let’s get to bed, you’ve given me something to look forward to.”
“Mother of mercy,” he mutters.
I grin.
Maybe I’ll like it here after all.