Kristen Ashley - Play It Safe

When my eyes went back to my brother I saw he was making movements like he was going to get up but Gray stepped closer to him, leaned over and whispered, “Stay down. You say what you gotta say from right there.”

“Man, I gotta get up,” Casey clipped.

“No, man, you gotta learn when you’re beat and stay down. You’re beat. Stay down and…” he bent further at the waist, “talk.”

Casey glared at Gray then he put his hand at his throat to the floor, looked beyond Gray to me and finally got smart.

“That guy, name’s Sharp, the one you beat at pool, he sent a tracker out to find me.”

Gray straightened and took half a step back. Everyone else in the room also partially retreated.

I kept my eyes locked to my brother.

He kept talking.

“Tracker found me, brought me to him. He offered me ten K to get you outta this shithole and keep you out. No one knows, no one sees us leave. When I got you gone, no phone calls, no comin’ back, nothin’. I made it so you ceased to exist for Cody for good and forever.”

I guessed it, deep down I knew it but it still hurt like hell to know it.

Casey continued, “Five K up front, five more after I got you gone. They came up with the story I was gonna feed you and to convince you, him and his three friends took free shots at me.”

My head started shaking at how stupid and greedy and just plain stupid my brother was but I didn’t tear my eyes away from Casey.

“You take the note?” Gray asked and Casey looked up at him.

“No,” he answered, showing he knew exactly what Gray was referring to. “But when I called to confirm we were gone, told him she wrote it. He told me it was seen to.”

“The rest of her stuff, he tell you about that?” Gray kept questioning and Casey shook his head.

“He didn’t tell me shit but I reckon, he had someone go in and nab the note, they took the rest of her shit. Objective, she vanished. I did my part, he did his.”

Everyone was silent.

“Ten thousand dollars,” I whispered into the silence and Casey looked back to me.

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.