Total pages in book: 142
Estimated words: 133849 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 669(@200wpm)___ 535(@250wpm)___ 446(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 133849 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 669(@200wpm)___ 535(@250wpm)___ 446(@300wpm)
It wasn’t his place, though, and he needed to get warm and get out before morning when Barnes would surely figure out someone was using his land. There would be a price to pay if he got caught. There always was.
Barnes was mean, according to the people around him. Barnes had more than once threatened his stepfather.
Sometimes Jared wished Barnes would have taken his stepfather out.
He shoved the thought away because he was too tired to be mad tonight. He ached. Every muscle felt weary after the trudge across the miles that separated his ranch from Barnes’s.
Not his. It had never been his.
This ain’t your home. Get out. If you call the cops, you’ll get more of what you had tonight, boy.
And his mother had stood there, tears in her eyes, but she’d not said a word to defend him. His brothers had made sure he didn’t take anything that didn’t belong to him—and it had been made clear almost nothing belonged to him.
He found a bottle of water and sucked it down before shoving three more into his almost-empty backpack. He had a pair of worn jeans, two plain white T-shirts, and socks that had seen better days.
There was food in the cabinet. It was tinned stew, and he ate it cold because he didn’t know how to cook it. Boys weren’t supposed to do things like that. Women’s work. When he’d tried to help his mom, he’d been smacked and told to be a man.
So he ate it cold and then stole the rest of that, too.
He should move on, but the cot looked so cozy. The cot looked like paradise. He wasn’t even sure where he was going. He didn’t have any friends. His brothers were the friends God had provided. There wasn’t a homeless shelter in Willow Fork. He would have to make his way to a larger town. Godless Tyler probably had a place for people like him. Maybe.
He couldn’t think about it tonight.
He turned off the light and lay down on the cot, pulling the blanket over him. He would rest his eyes for a moment. Maybe half an hour, though he wasn’t sure how he would tell time since he didn’t own a watch. His stepfather gave his brothers watches when they were deemed responsible enough. Until then, time, his stepfather said, didn’t matter.
So it didn’t matter. His sixteen years on earth didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.
He yawned and his eyes closed.
Nothing mattered at all.
Jared stirred at the sound of hushed voices talking.
“Is that who I think it is?” a deep voice asked.
“Sure looks like Jared, though it’s been years since I saw him up close,” another voice said. “You know the kids call him Grim now.”
He stayed as still as possible, panic threatening. He knew they all called him Grim. Because he didn’t talk much, didn’t join in on the laughter even with his own brothers. Laughter was paid for with pain in his household.
“I heard he dropped out,” the voice continued, “and we haven’t been in school together since his momma quit her job at the resort. He moved over to the public school. You’re a snooty rich pants who went and built a whole school so Livie and I weren’t around the riffraff.”
There was a snorting sound. “Sure. I did it to keep you in your societal class.”
“I know why you did it, Dad.” This voice was younger, somehow, and softer now. “You protected us. If he is who I think he is, you protected us from his asshole brothers. Don’t. I’m working today. If I’m on the range punching cows, I get to cuss. And that is a family full of assholes. But Jared’s a good kid, from what I can tell. I know I liked him when we were younger.”
“He was your best friend in preschool and the cause of one of the weirdest parent-teacher meetings I ever had to sit through,” the deeper voice continued.
“We don’t run in the same circles now. I’m pretty sure his stepfather doesn’t let him be friends with anyone outside that cult of his, but Sarah and Jess told me they broke down a couple of months ago and he stopped and fixed their car for them. Said he seemed kind, but his brothers aren’t.”
Jared kept still. Joshua Barnes-Fleetwood. The golden boy of Willow Fork, Texas. He was known for being a bit wild, and every teenaged girl in town wanted to be with him. Some of the adult women, too, if the rumors were true. Josh, who had been his friend until his momma lost her damn mind and sent them all to hell while she was desperately searching for heaven.
Hopefully the other voice was Sam Fleetwood. Please don’t be Jack Barnes. Please don’t be Jack Barnes.
He’d screwed up. He’d fallen asleep, and now he would likely go to jail or worse.