Knotted (Trails of Sin, #1)

by Pam Godwin

No sound. No fight. She’s either too exhausted or too broken. They’ve been hurting her for a while.

I don’t know how we’ll come back from this. It’s worse than the worst thing I’ve ever experienced.

I won’t walk away from this the same. But I will walk away, directly onto a warpath. I’ll take whatever road that leads to vengeance and bloodshed. Fuck the law.

He shoots me a look infused with regret. I don’t like it. There’s too much pain aging his eyes. And fury. It seeps in at the edges, black and sour.

My molars crash together. “It’s not his job to take care of me.” It’s yours.

I know he’s not trying to make me feel weak. It’s just the way he is with me. Possessive. Protective. Unbending.

“They were going to kill me.” I wrap my arms around my waist. “They…did…” Did things to me. “They…” A crack runs through the wall around my mind, and my defenses start to crumble.

I can’t fall apart. Not in front of Jarret. He’s already traumatized.

“This is going to change us.” “We won’t let it.” “You believe that?” “No.”

Jake was supposed to be my first. My one and only.

He’s built like Jake, his chest wide and muscled and his jaw a square slab of stone. I love him dearly and am glad he stayed with me. But I need Jake.

When he gets out in three years, five years—” “We’ll kill him.” I set the gun aside and face the group. “We’ll do it calmly, smartly, when we’ve had time to plan and make damn sure we don’t get blamed.”

How much has he admitted to the detectives? Do they know he rode out to the pasture with the intent to kill a man?

Apparently, they were on the run when they spotted Conor in town earlier that day and followed her home.

“He can’t keep us apart.” Conviction hardens my voice, sharp and solid. “As long as you’re under his roof, he’ll try.”

She’s my home, and I’ll never let her go. It’s not even in the scope of possibilities.

It was the first time he ever struck me out of anger. But it wasn’t the last. That was three months ago.

It still doesn’t make sense why Dad left home. He wants to start over? He’s too ashamed to show his face in Sandbank? There must be another reason. And what’s John’s motivation in this? Severing contact with the only family I’ve ever known is driving me into a black hole with only my self-destructive thoughts to keep me company.

I don’t care if he’s turned his back on me. How can he do this to Lorne?

And there won’t be a trial. During his arraignment, he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to ten years in Oklahoma’s maximum-security state penitentiary. Ten years.

I’ve sent dozens of emails and letters. Is Lorne even getting them?

Since he sold his shares of the ranch, he doesn’t need a job. But he needs something. A hobby, a passion, a thing to latch onto and distract him from drinking. He needs to be my dad again.

Grounded from what? I have no friends. He confiscated all my electronics three months ago, and every penny I earned waiting tables went toward that motorcycle—the riding lessons, repairs, licensing, insurance. I’m at a total deficit. There’s nothing he can take from me.

I just graduated from high school at the top of my class and was offered a full-ride scholarship to University of Illinois. But I turned it down. I’m going home.

That’s if they want to see me. They never called. Never wrote. Never reached out to me in any way. Not once. Are they missing me? Or forgetting me?

I’m already motherless. Brotherless. I’m terrified to be fatherless. Yet in the end, I still lost him.

He’s not alone. Not alone in his bed. Not alone and not with me. Not alone with fingers stroking bare skin. Sheets tangling around joined bodies. Feminine blonde curls fanning his pillow.

Paralysis seizes my limbs. Air evacuates my lungs. Rigor mortis sets in. This is what death feels like. The shattering, unstoppable separation between life and the bleeding remains of the soul. There’s no countermeasure. No resuscitation. I’ve taken my last breath as Jake Holsten’s girl.

Then whispering. Soft, shared words between lovers. I can’t hear them because that fucking song. It’s not a beautiful war. It’s disgusting and cruel. Make it stop.

Letters. Hundreds of letters written in metallic brown ink with gold flecks. I remember the day I bought that shimmery marker in Chicago. It was a terrible, lonely day, and that marker was everything. Because it matched the color of his eyes.

I fight the surge of tears, because dammit, I refuse to breakdown in front of him. “You knew I was coming.” It takes great effort to meet his eyes, and when I do, it’s like staring at a stranger.

“Conor.” Sara approaches, fully dressed. “I didn’t know.” Didn’t know I was coming? Does it matter? I won’t look at her face. I don’t want to see the pity there. There’s enough of it in her voice to curl my stomach.

“I had to let you go.” “Let me go,” I echo hollowly. “Why?” “It was easier.” “Easier than what? Shooting me a message and telling me to fuck off?” “Yeah.”

“You got my email and knew I was coming today. You wanted me to find you with her.” Muscles ripple along his locked jaw, and his gorgeous brown eyes pin me with frosty silence.

I feel myself falling in. Breaking beneath the heavy, jagged shards. Gulping for air at the bottom of oblivion. “Is it because I’m ruined?” I battle the instinct to hug myself, to protect the vulnerability. “What?” His eyes narrow dangerously. “The night in the ravine… I’m used. Dirty. Worthless.”

“Then what is it?” I grab his jeans and toss them into the hall. “Was Sara a virgin? Now that she’s not, will you be done with her, too?” “Dammit, Conor. No! I mean, yes. No, that’s not… Fuck!” Holding the sheet around his waist, he yanks at the far corner where it stubbornly clings to the mattress. “You don’t get it.”

I press my thumb against my own scar. Levi Tibbs has served two years of his seven-year sentence. The blood oath hasn’t changed. We both know it. I drop my arm. “I’ll see you in five years.” He goes still, lips flat, eyes hard. That’s how I leave him.

“I take it you got my emails and letters, too.” I don’t miss the guilty fall of his face as I push past.

It hurts. Fucking goddammit, it hurts so damn much I bite down on my tongue, tasting blood. Don’t cry. Don’t you dare unleash that shit here.

My letters never mentioned the man who used to be my father. I never wanted to burden them or my brother with my problems.

My blood runs cold. He used to represent protection and security, but that was before he hurt me with betrayal. Nothing’s stopping him from hurting me with fists, and as his hands flex and his chest expands with seething anger, I’m scared.

Has he forgotten that he doesn’t care? That he let me go and stuck his dick in Sara Gilly?

“That’s why you came home.” “No, Jake.” I fire up the engine, drowning out my whisper. “You were.”

When Lorne was hauled away, I lost a vital part of myself. When I was separated from the ranch, I became half a person. When I left Dad face down on the couch, more pieces of me tore loose. But I still had something left. I still had Jake.

Now I have no one, nothing, and nowhere to go. I’m completely carved out.

Then I think about being found that way. Being remembered as the girl who killed herself because she loved a boy. Because the boy didn’t love her back. Boo hoo. So sad. How fucking pathetic. I’m not that girl.

Nor am I the girl he wants. I want to be her. Sara Gilly. I want to wear her skin and feel his touch. I want to be her breath and fill his lungs. I want to embody every part of her he wants.

I leave the girl who loved a boy with her whole heart. I abandon her there on the side of the road. Let her rot in post mortem. Feeling lighter, calmer, I embrace the void of nothing at all and walk away. I leave Sandbank.

Conor didn’t mention it in her messages. She’d rather suffer quietly than worry us. And now she believes she’s truly alone.

I square my shoulders, brace for what’s coming, and turn to face my brother. His first strike hits hard and swift, directly across my mouth.