Kristen Ashley - Play It Safe

That was when it leaked through. The real Casey. The one that faded through the years as he let life beat him down without fighting back.

The Casey who loved me.

And I saw it through the remorse that shown from his eyes.

And I didn’t care.

“Ivey –” he started but I kept talking.

“Even if Gray wasn’t here, in this town with these people, the way it is, I was happy here,” I told him. “I’d found a home.”

“Sis –” he tried to break in but I didn’t let him.

“But Gray was here and so not only did I find a home, I found a family.”

Casey closed his eyes.

I kept speaking.

“All I ever wanted, Casey,” I reminded him and he opened his eyes. “I told you that, I don’t know how many times. All I ever wanted and you, my own brother, all it took was ten thousand dollars and you took that away from me.”

He pushed up to sitting but stayed down, eyes never leaving me and he opened his mouth to speak but I got there before him.

“Seven years. You stole seven years from me.”

“I –” he tried again but I shook my head.

“There is absolutely nothing,” I leaned in on the last word, feeling my blood racing through my veins, the rush of it in my brain, “you could say that would explain or make me understand why you would do that to me. Not one thing.”

Casey swallowed.

“I loved him,” I whispered, the surge of anger disintegrating, instant sorrow taking its place. “I loved him with everything I had, everything I was. He made me happy for the first time in… my… life. And you took him away from me.”

Casey didn’t speak.

I did.

“You’re dead to me.”

His face paled, pain slashed through his features and I didn’t get that. I didn’t get how he could sit there and think for one minute that my reaction would be anything but what it was.

Then again, for a long time I didn’t get a lot about Casey.

“Dead to me,” I whispered.

Then I turned on my flip-flop, walked out of the living room, up the stairs and to Gray and my room.

I was standing at the window looking at the burned remains of our barn when Gray’s arms wrapped around me, one at my ribs, one at my chest and his lips came to my ear.

“Lash and Freddie need to know what you want done with him,” he said softly.

“I don’t care.”

His arms gave me a quick squeeze and he kept speaking softly in my ear.

“I get you feel that way now, dollface, but you gotta power through that just for a second ‘cause those two men are itchin’ to teach your brother a lesson. You open that opportunity to them –”

“I don’t care.”

“Ivey –”

I turned in his arms, put my hands to his waist, looked into his deep blue eyes with their russet lashes, eyes that were the last thing I should have seen every night for seven years and eyes I should have woken up to every morning and I repeated slowly and firmly, “I… don’t… care.”

His beautiful eyes held mine before they moved over my face then his hand came up, fingers gliding along my cheek and back. He slid them into my hair, cupped my head and dropped his to touch his mouth to mine.

When he lifted his head, he whispered, “Okay, honey.”

“Okay.”

He bent his neck to touch his forehead to mine for a second before he gave me a squeeze and let me go.

I watched his ass in his jeans until he turned down the hall.

Then I turned back to the window and looked at the burned out barn.

Twenty-two years of hell. Seven years of happy limbo.

Now I was home.

I was home.

I focused on that.

Then I drew in a steadying breath and waited until I heard the car start. Then I heard another one. I also heard them going down the lane.

Only then did I walk out of our bedroom but I turned away from the stairs and walked the few feet to the end of the hall where there was a window seat and a big, sashed window that looked out to the side of the house.

The cruiser gone. The Lincoln gone. The Cody cars remained.

And there it was. I had a house full of family, a kitchen table full of generosity so I had to get my ass downstairs and provide hospitality.

So that was just what I did.

Three weeks later…

I was in the kitchen doing the lunch dishes and smelling the cake I was baking in the oven for after dinner.

I looked out the window to the cleared out area where the barn was.

Gray with Shim, Roan, Danny, Barry, Gene, Sonny, Lenny and Lenny’s son, a seriously good-looking man with an easy smile like Gray’s and a quick wit who I put in his late twenties, Whit, helped him clear away the debris, pull out the dead horses and bury them.

Fortunately, the insurance company didn’t mess around with their inspection or getting us a check. Now, there was a massive pile of wood covered in see-through plastic tarps wrapped with thick wire and weighed down with bricks next to the skeleton of the barn that soon would be. So soon, the roof was done and, at the back, they’d already put up the wall.

The insurance company paid for us to have builders see to it but Gray and his posse were doing it themselves. They knew what they were doing and it saved money. It surprised me but the work was going quickly even though Gray did it with mostly just him and Sonny, who was retired so he had the time. All the rest of the men had jobs but a few always came at night to put in an hour or two. I fed them if they didn’t have women at home to do it and then they’d leave. Weekends, usually the entire posse was there. Gray reckoned, with the progress, the barn would be up and our horses would have their new home in another two weeks, at the most three.

Gray told me I got to pick the color he’d paint it. The house was white with two different shades of gray adorning the woodwork intermingled with hints here and there of barn red. The old barn was painted gray.

I picked barn red. It was a barn and I liked the idea of living on a ranch-slash-orchard with a barn painted the stereotypical red. I might be a cowboy rancher’s stylish girlfriend who often wore designer clothes and high heels but we lived the rancher life. Might as well go whole hog.

The quick raising of the barn was the good news.

The bad news was, Lenny’s nephew Pete was going down for what he did but Buddy wasn’t. He didn’t confess, even after his father put pressure on him to do so. And he might be an asshole with a freaky, scary obsession with Grayson Cody but unfortunately, he wasn’t a stupid one.

Pete bought the poison. Having once worked (and lost his job at) another orchard in the vicinity, Pete had the knowledge to procure the virus he injected in the trees. Cash withdrawals from Bud and Cecily’s accounts could be traced as to what Pete told the cops Buddy paid him to do his nefarious deeds but Buddy contended he gave him the money, “to help out a friend.”

Unfortunately, Ted and Jim, Buddy’s other two sidekicks, stepped up to throw Pete right under the bus, corroborating that Buddy, being a good guy, just wanted to help Pete during a tough time and Pete was talking shit to get his ass out of hot water.

The fact that Pete had no motivation to do what he did to Gray and Buddy had publically carried on a one-sided, seriously whacked feud with Gray since junior high was unfortunately all Pete had. All the material evidence was found at Pete’s house and he gave his confession. Outside of the payments made with timings that loosely coincided with the deeds done, nothing linked any of Pete’s activities to Buddy. With only the word of a man caught and going down to connect Buddy to the crimes, they had nothing to go with so they couldn’t charge him with anything.

Lenny gave us this information in our living room and he did it hesitantly and angrily. He didn’t like that he’d failed Gray but his hands were tied.

Gray’s were not.

Therefore, Gray had visited Buddy at his place of business. In his glass-walled office, he explained exactly what would befall Buddy at the hands of Gray as backed by the Brothers Cody if anything else happened on his land, to Gray or to me. No one heard any of the words, they just saw the exchange and it was the talk of the town.

I didn’t suspect this would stop Buddy.

What I did suspect would stop him was that the Mustang Police Department put our ranch on radar and they did this openly. Random but frequent drive-bys not only from cruisers of the Mustang PD but also the County Sherriff during which, often, the cruiser would coast up the lane. They were visible and meant to be.

They weren’t the only ones.

The Brothers Cody, Shim, Roan, Whit (the latter three when they weren’t working on the barn) or one of Jeb Sharp’s ranch hands were nearly always parked across from the mouth of our lane on the side of the road in front of our property, standing vigil. Also often, night or day, Shim, Roan or Whit would drive down the lane, saddle up one of our horses and take him or her for a wander through Gray’s land. Further, Gene, who was an electrician, set up random and very bright lights in the orchard that had motion sensors and would light up like a beacon if someone tripped them in the night. They made no noise but they could be seen from our bedroom window and anyone out there doing something they shouldn’t could wake up a rancher under fire who was not sleeping soundly (and, alas, this was true for my man) but also might make them visible to a passing cruiser or the vigilance of the Brothers Cody and Jeb Sharp.

It made me feel safer but I knew it didn’t make Gray feel that way as evidenced by the aforementioned light sleeping.

My man was struggling.

And I knew why because he talked to me about it.

He had no plays open to him. He couldn’t beat the shit out of Buddy to teach him a lesson because he’d not only done that before (several times) and got nowhere but also it was against the law and all eyes in Mustang were on him. He also was not the kind of man to play with him or get to him through making plays against Cecily or their children.

He had no options except the one he took, to warn Buddy off.

And he hated it.

But I also knew if Buddy did one more thing, Gray would lose it and then we’d both be screwed.

That said, Gray might not be the kind of man to play with Buddy but Janie, Chastity and Stacy had shared with me that others didn’t feel the same way. Since our barn burned down, Buddy and Cecily had had a lot of bad luck.

A lot.

Buddy’s car had had two flat tires then it quit working altogether and considering it was only a year old, this was suspicious. Their house had been vandalized, windows egged and the words, “horse murderer” painted on the front in blood red. Their mailbox sitting on a post at the road had been targeted twice by drive-bys and baseball bats. And Whit had shared with Gray that his Dad had shared with him that Buddy came into the station with a note Cecily found on their doorstep that was just one piece of paper in an envelope with four words computer printed on it, “Get out of Mustang.”

Cecily wasn’t showing her face in town and Janie told me she was doing what she needed to do in Elk but otherwise keeping a low profile. Rumor had it she was terrified.

I didn’t have it in me to relish this. They had kids. This stuff was not nice and although they’d brought it on themselves and arguably deserved it, their daughters didn’t.

I also didn’t know who did it. It could be Gray’s uncles but it also could be anybody. No one believed Buddy didn’t back Pete, everybody respected Gray and the filling in of the blanks from Casey about what Buddy did to Gray and me was spread far and wide, this, I knew, was by the Brothers Cody. Unfortunately, this wasn’t felonious so no charges could be lodged. But this also didn’t sit well with Mustangians as a whole.

So it could be anyone.

Further, I didn’t relish it because Buddy was not the kind of man to put his tail between his legs, sell his house and slink off to the next county, never to be seen again.

He was the kind of man who would want payback.

Considering what he’d already done, this could mean anything and after it was achieved, if Gray and I remained standing, Gray wouldn’t be able to control his fury.

I did not see good things.

So now I was doing the dishes and baking a cake and my man was in town picking up nails or something to continue working on the barn. Sonny was out there and I heard a hammer pounding. I also knew one of Jeb Sharp’s boys was at the mouth of the lane. I knew it because, it was a long way, but I could see the pickup sitting there. I also knew it because Gray would not leave me alone unless he knew Sonny and that pickup were there with me.