Shattered Dreams (Dream #1)

Chapter Eleven

Charlie

I walk out of my house, coffee mug in my hand as I make my way across my backyard to the office. My eyes go to the red barn as I see some of the horses being brought out to start the day.

Pulling open the glass door and stepping into the office, I see Lilah sitting behind the desk. “Good morning, Charlie.”

She smiles at me. She’s been working for me for the past five years. As soon as she turned eighteen, I hired her. Six years ago, she was a client here when the boy she was dating brutally beat the shit out of her and threw her onto the road from his moving truck. A passerby saw her on the side of the road, thought it was a mannequin, and stopped before he ran her over and saved her life. All of that because she beat him at a horse race. She was in a coma for two weeks. They didn’t think she was going to make it. It was a slow recovery. But she eventually came out of her shell. She needed a job, we needed someone to handle the phones and schedule appointments, so it was perfect. She also handles all our social media since she is the only one who understands it: the right place, right time. She is still quiet; the only way she lets you see a piece of her is when she’s riding her horse. The confidence she has, the ability to ride and keep a handle on her horse. She rides better than most girls I know, and I grew up with girls who rode every single day since they could walk. She is also the only person I let handle skittish horses. Something about her and her touch soothes them.

“Morning, Lilah.”

I walk past her desk, and she looks up from her computer screen. “Anything I need to know?”

“Not really,”

she says right before the phone rings, and her hand reaches out to grab it. “We got a busy couple of months coming up.”

Putting the phone to her ear, she answers, “Mustang Creek Ranch.”

She turns her eyes back to the computer screen. “How may I help you?”

“Music to my ears,”

I mumble, taking a sip and walking to my office in the back, passing the wall of memories on the way. I’m not even fully in my office when I hear Emmett walking in from the back door. “Good morning, Emmett,”

I greet him before he even walks into my office, and I round my desk at the same time he fills the doorway.

“Yeah,”

he mumbles. He’s wearing light-blue jeans that are already filthy from the dirt, and I still have no idea why he keeps wearing the lighter colors, with a black shirt tucked into his pants in the front, showing off his big country belt. His cowboy boots have seen better days, and by that, I mean they are old as shit. “You’re late.”

I pull out my chair and look down to see that I’m two hours late. “Slept in this morning,”

I lie. “Didn’t know I had to clock in with you.”

“Slept in?”

He calls me out on the lie right away. “You haven’t slept in since I got here.”

He pulls off his yellow-and-white gloves, tucking them in the back pocket of his jeans. He studies me and I put on my fake face, which he probably knows at this point. The two of us have worked side by side over the years, and he’s become one of the only people who I would confide in. He knows the pain I feel. He knows the signs of when I’m having a bad day. He knows the signs of when all I want is to give up, and he’s made it a point to be there every step of the way. I can’t tell you the number of times I got up in the morning and found him sleeping on my couch because he knew it was going to be a bad night. I can’t tell you all the times he’s seen me break down and curl up into a ball. I can’t tell you all the times he literally picked me up and helped me walk.

“First time for everything.”

I sit in my chair, hoping he just turns and walks out of the room. But when I start the computer and look back up, he’s still there watching me. “Is that what this meeting is about?”

“I’m calling bullshit.”

He narrows his eyes at me. “But I don’t care enough to get on your ass about it. Especially with that shit on your neck.”

He points at my neck, and my hand comes up. The red-and-purple mark that I saw when I came home right before I stepped into the shower. I’m pissed at myself for how it got there, then pissed at myself when I closed my eyes and my cock got hard thinking about it.

“Thank you, I guess.”

I chuckle as I take a sip of the hot coffee, actually thankful he isn’t going to ask any more questions because, truth be told, I’d have to lie to him. That’s something I have never done, except for two seconds ago, but that was not really a lie. I did sleep in, just not in my bed.

“We have five new horses coming in today,”

he reminds me. “Should be here in about an hour or so.”

“Sounds good. I’ll be out there when they get here,”

I tell him. “Then if you're nice to me, I’ll buy you dinner.”

I wink at him, trying not to laugh at the face he gives me.

He pffts. “Fuck that, you want to do something nice, give me a day off.”

It’s my turn to pfft at him, putting one hand on the armrest. “Last time I forced you to take a vacation, you stopped talking to me for a whole month.”

I point at him. “And then came back to work after two days where you told me to get fucked.”

He shrugs. “I could do with a day off here and there.”

I can see the boredom all over his face as he says it. He has no family and came to us when he returned from serving two tours overseas. He was in foster care most of his life, enlisted when he turned eighteen, and finally had enough. My family adopted him since my cousin, Ethan, took him under his wing when he got out. Now he’s in his thirties and refuses to date anyone or have any ties to anybody. I know he gets laid, or else he would be a bigger pain in the ass. The question is, who is he having sex with? I’ve never seen him with a girl, not once in the past ten fucking years.

“Then take a day off.”

I pick up my cup. “Take two days off.”

“Now you’re just fucking with me.”

He turns on his boot and storms to the door. “Also heard from a couple of people that Autumn just almost got assaulted”—the blood drains from my face—“by Mrs. Cartwright in the middle of Main Street.”

My heart beats when he says who it was.

“I don’t know why you would think I care,”

I say tightly, ignoring the way my heart laughs at me. “The only thing I want to know about Autumn is when she is getting the fuck out of Dodge.”

“When are you going to give it up?”

he asks me, but he doesn’t wait for me to answer. “That girl did what needed to be done, and she has been paying for it ever since.”

He doesn’t wait for me to answer, and it’s a good thing because I don’t have an answer. All I can do is swallow down the lump in my throat.

I wait until I hear the back door shut before I close my eyes and let go of a breath I was holding. But closing my eyes doesn’t help, because all I see is Autumn, but not the Autumn from before, the Autumn writhing under me. Arching her neck as she took my cock. The thought makes the coffee in my stomach lurch.

Showing up at her house wasn’t something I planned to do, storming to her, also something that wasn’t planned. Fucking her, definitely not what I planned. Never in my wildest dreams would I ever think about fucking Autumn. Then if that wasn’t bad enough, I spent the fucking night. I collapsed on the bed beside her, opening my eyes and seeing the dark—not knowing where I was for a second—and then seeing her sleeping on her side, legs to her chest, shivering. I moved her as I covered both of us and then fell right back to sleep. It was to rest my eyes for a second, but the next thing I knew the alarm was blaring and I opened my eyes and saw her head. I was hoping to get out of there before she woke up but who was I kidding, the fucking alarm would wake the dead. I don’t want to think about last night and I most definitely don’t want to think about the shit show that was the morning after. Sadly, all I can do is hear her words in my head, Because unlike you, this is the first time I’ve had sex in eight years. She was lying, she had to be lying.

I don’t have a chance to sit down and think about it more when my phone beeps in my back pocket, and when I take it out, I see the text is from Emmett.

Emmett: Arrived early.

A man of few words, I get up, finish my coffee, and rush outside. The sun hits me right away as I make my way over to the barn, seeing the trailer is being unloaded. “It’s going to be a good day, boys,”

I declare when I get close enough to them. “It’s going to be a good day.”

“Who are you?”

Rowan, one of the ranch hands, asks.

“He got laid last night,”

Emmett says, trying hard to hide the smile, so he looks down but not before I glare at him. “You want to keep shit a secret, don’t come to work branded.”

“It’s a bite.”

I rub where I know exactly the fucking mark is. I can still feel when her teeth bit into me and then sucked in.

“Yeah, from a vampire,”

Rowan jokes. “I wouldn’t go back if I were you.”

“Trust me,”

I mumble, “I’m not going back there ever a-fucking-gain.”

I clap my hands. “Now, if we are done talking about where I put my dick last night, how about we get to work, boys?”

“I never want you to say that sentence again,”

Rowan grouses with a look of disgust over his face. “I don’t ever want to think about where you put your dick.”

He looks at Emmett. “Just thinking of his dick, I might be sick.”

We both laugh at him as he turns and walks toward the barn, shaking his head the whole time.

“You scared him,”

Emmett says. “Good job.”

I nod at him, walking to the fence and leaning on the top rail, watching the horses being unloaded. One of them catches my eye right away. She’s light brown, almost tan, her eyes look around like a deer in headlights, and she’s jumpy with every single noise that is going on around her. Walking around the fence and going into the yard, I go straight to her. She backs up two steps, her eyes on me. “It’s okay, girlie,”

I coo softly, holding out my hand. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

She lets me get close enough to her to pet her muzzle. “That’s a girlie.”

I get closer to her.

“I guess you picked another one,”

Emmett notes, and I look over to see him on his horse. “I was told she was the most skittish of the whole bunch. We might have to get Lilah in here for a bit,”

he says, almost annoyed that she has to come out. He tolerates certain people, but Lilah isn’t one of them. I don’t know what about her gets under his skin. Whenever she’s around or we have to bring her in, he’s the first one to leave and not be bothered talking to her, yet he’s the last one there watching her.

“You aren’t skittish,”

I whisper to her, “are you, girlie?”

I look over at Emmett. “Goldilocks.”

We spent the rest of the afternoon unloading the new horses and getting them acclimated in their new stalls. When the sun goes down, I walk out of the shower and head over to the kitchen. Opening the fridge, I look at what to make myself for dinner. I settle on grilling a steak and some veggies. Twisting open a bottle of beer, I stand here and wait for it to be ready, looking over at the barn and wondering what Goldilocks is doing.

I sit down at the island to eat my steak, ignoring how quiet the house is and how the silence is now almost deafening. Whereas for the last eight years, all I wanted was the quiet. I rinse off my plate and put it in the dishwasher before I walk out of the back door. My routine every single night is going for a walk after dinner. Except this time, I stop by the barn before I head for my walk. The sun has set, and the stars twinkle in the sky. The sound of crickets fills the night air as I walk through the grass toward the red barn. Walking in and going straight to her stall, I find her with her ass in the corner of the stall as she faces out, looking around. “Hey, Goldie,”

I say, “you having a good night?”

I open the gate and walk in. “Yeah, me neither,”

I tell her, walking to her side and rubbing her neck. “It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay.”

I stand in her stall and stay with her for I don’t even know how long.

Walking out and heading to the woods, I move with my head down as I walk the trail until it goes off the path. I don’t even know where I am until I look up and I’m staring at her house. The whole house is dark in the night. Not a light is on, but I see the swing moving.

She sits on it, not like she was lying down yesterday. No, today she’s sitting, holding her knees to her chest as she lays her head on them. The bottle of whiskey sits beside the swing. It’s exactly where it was this morning when I took off. My feet move before I have a chance to think about why I’m even here.

She must hear me walking toward her because her head comes up, and I see her glare. “What the fuck are you doing here?”