Bend (17 page)

“He probably meant to leave the ranch to this…this brother of ours all along,”

Annabelle said. Rory mumbled an agreement. Annabelle slid off his lap and looked at Chance. He was less affected by this and therefore the more clearheaded of the bunch, besides Josh, but Josh didn’t know anything about her dad, not really.

“What else did Navarra have to say?”

Chance’s eyes narrowed as his expression shifted into one of anger. “He said Ian left the ranch to his other son, and that none of the ranch hands had called because they were pretty much loyal to Ian. The new guy—your, uh, brother, fired them all first thing. As for Navarra, he wouldn’t even tell me this brother’s name, said part of him inheriting was that he couldn’t have contact with us. Navarra said he would have called sooner but there was nothing with our numbers on it, nothing pertaining to you or Rory at all in the house.”

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Rory turned misery laden eyes towards her. “Dad wiped us from it as if we never existed.”

Annabelle had so many questions to ask, but they wouldn’t quit spinning around in her head long enough for her to grasp them. She settled for the first one she could think of. “Why this Navarra guy? Where was our…brother,”
shit, that is messed up!
“Where was he while this was going on?”

“Now, there’s a question I wondered myself, but Rory needed me, and this Navarra guy was in an all-fired hurry to get off the phone. I don’t have an answer for that. Wish I did.”

“Dad would make not talking to us a condition for our mystery brother to inherit the ranch,” Rory muttered. “Anything to hurt us. Maybe even hurt the son he decided to claim.”

Annabelle agreed with Rory’s assessment. That’s exactly something their father would have done. Even dead, he’d manipulate them if possible. “Rory, do you want to challenge the will?” Annabelle held her breath as Rory considered her question. She hoped…

Rory finally shook his head. “No. I don’t want the place, I don’t want Dad’s money, none of it. I wanted his respect, his love, but we both know that would never have happened.

I loved him because he was my father, but sometimes I hated him for it, too.”

“Me, too,” Annabelle admitted. “Does that make us horrible people?”

“No,” Josh pitched in, “That makes you both human. You
might
have been horrible people if you high-fived each other and danced to celebrate his death.”

Annabelle gave her best buddy a watery smile as she laid her head on his shoulder.

Chance and Rory excused themselves and left the room to check in with Max and Bo.

“You’ll be all right, sweetie,” Josh muttered as he stroked her back. “You have a lot of people who love you, and you have Justin and Evan, who both care about you a great deal.

You really should give them a call as soon as you’re up to it and tell them what’s happened.

Justin has been texting me nonstop, and the last several texts have been rather bitchy ‘cause I won’t tell him what’s going on. Not my place to,” he tacked on when she started to ask why.

“That’s gotta be either a blessing or a curse of a ménage, having two people to fret over you.”

A strangled sound from the living room doorway startled both Annabelle and Josh. Her head snapped up and clipped Josh’s chin. Shards of pain spread from the point of impact as she looked up to find her brother staring at her with a horrified expression on his face.

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Fuck!
She’d hoped to have time to break her new relationship to Rory gently, but it was too late now. His eyes narrowed into thin slits as his cheeks turned ruddy. Annabelle braced herself for the coming explosion.

Rory’s thunderous look darkened as he stepped into the room. “Annabelle, what the
fuck
is Josh talking about? He’d better be joking or someone…” Rory blanched then, though she’d have sworn it impossible, he looked even more furious. “Several
someones
are going to be getting their asses kicked.”

“Oh shit,” Josh whispered.

Yeah, oh shit indeed.

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The fury that rolled through her wasn’t all for Rory—or maybe it was, because that hot ball of anger spewed up before Rory even finished speaking. Annabelle wasn’t thinking about her dad, or the mysterious new brother who lucked out and got it all.

No, as she glared at Rory, she was thinking,
here’s the one person I thought I could always
count on, the one I walked away from the ranch for when that ranch could have been mine, the one I
didn’t judge or sneer at, and in return for all of that, for unconditional love and constant support, I get
this shit in return?

“Is it true?” Rory demanded. “Are you fucking two guys at the same time? The three of you—” he stopped and shook his head, curling his lips into a grimace. “I can’t believe you’d do something like that. Are you just trying to out-do me, find something that would have pissed Dad off worse than me being gay? Because I think you might have succeeded!”

The attack from Rory may have seemed mild to someone who didn’t know him, but for the normally calm, loving man she knew her brother to be—had thought him to be—each word was like a poison barb digging into her soul. Rory had never spoken to her like this, not even when she’d insisted on moving out of his and Chance’s home and into the bunkhouse.

They’d argued then, but it hadn’t been a personal attack that left her bleeding inside.

Annabelle hated the way Rory hurt her so easily, and she turned her pain into anger, the way she always had. It rolled through her and filled her in hot and cold flashes through her veins.

Annabelle was so furious she actually felt calm, a dangerous occurrence. She stood and shook off Josh’s attempts to stop her from moving, and two long strides had her in front of her brother. Rory tensed as his mouth pinched into a tight line, his nostrils flared with each breath, and he was vibrating with indignation, or self-righteousness, or something else that, combined with his appearance, reminded Annabelle of a pissy bull. Any second now he’d start snorting and pawing at the floor. “What makes you think you have the right to judge me, or Justin, or Evan?” Annabelle asked, seething as she glared at Rory. “How dare you, when I’ve never once done that to you?”

“It’s different! I never went out and fucked two guys at the same time!” Rory closed his eyes for a moment then didn’t look at Annabelle when he opened them again. “Chance is the BEND

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second man I’ve been with, and he’ll be the last. I can’t understand doing something—

Annabelle, I can’t understand why you’re doing this! I’m trying not to make it about you being a woman, but you know there’s still that double standard and if people find out you’re screwing two guys, and if those guys are, you know, together, do you know how hateful people can be about stuff like that?”

“I’m seeing how you’re being about it, aren’t I?” Annabelle retorted as she moved closer to Rory. “And it shouldn’t matter if I’m a woman, your sister, whoever! It’s my life and what and who I chose to do behind closed doors is no one else’s business!”

“It doesn’t work that way!” Rory shouted, his face turning almost purple as he did so.

“They don’t care if it’s in private, you should know that!”

She did know that, but living her life by someone else’s standards wasn’t going to happen. Not even if those standards were her brother’s. “And I don’t care if they don’t care!

I’m not changing for you or them. It’s not like I’m out fucking everything that has a dick, either. There are two men, two men I actually feel something for—and yes, it’s more than lust. I don’t know how much more, and I’m not willing to walk away an never find out. I suggest you deal with it, or maybe you want to cut me off like our father did us?” The thought added to the fear she’d tried so hard to ignore, and Annabelle shivered slightly as she stopped in front of Rory.

“Annabelle, maybe now’s not the best time—” Josh began at her side.

Annabelle waved a hand to silence him while staring her brother down. This close, she could see the worry and fear etched into his expression, and her temper cooled a few degrees. This was her brother, she reminded herself, her sweet, innocent, idealistic brother who thought everyone had a soul mate. Maybe that was so, but Annabelle couldn’t help but believe some people had at least two.

“Maybe Josh is right and this is the wrong time, but there’s no help for it now, not with you looking at me like I’m some kind of slut. I’m not.” Annabelle took a deep breath, knowing she’d need it to push the rest of her words out. “What is happening between me, Evan, and Justin is something more than getting together to have sex. I care about them a great deal, and they feel the same for me.”

Rory looked sceptical for a long moment, then his shoulders slumped as he glanced away. “I just don’t see how this…something like this can be good for you. I don’t want you hurt.”

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Well, God damn it, there went the rest of her mad, leaving her feeling sad and hurt.

Annabelle let her arm drop and she took a step back. “You hurt me, Rory, with the way you reacted, the things you said. Justin and Evan haven’t.”

Annabelle turned around and slammed into Chance’s broad chest. He gripped her arms and steadied but didn’t let go once she’d found her footing. Annabelle looked at him and wished to hell she could tell what he was thinking.

“If I heard correctly, you’re in a ménage.”

She doubted ‘Duh’ would be a prudent response, so Annabelle merely nodded. Chance darted a glance at Rory before focusing his attention back on her.

“I think you can see how that might shock someone who cares about you, especially if that person is as innocent about things like that as Rory is.”

“I guess,” Annabelle muttered, feeling unjustly scolded. It wasn’t like she’d decked Rory or anything, though the thought had crossed her mind.

“And added onto the news about y’all’s dad, it’s probably a lot to take in for someone like him.” Chance looked at Rory again, and this time Annabelle could read the apology on Chance’s face. “He’s not like us, or the way I used to be, at least. Rory can’t separate love from sex. They go together for him.”

Yeah, she knew that. “He looked disgusted.”

Chance grunted, his hands tightening briefly around her biceps. “Your brother loves you. Are you serious about these other guys, or are y’all just having some fun? There’s nothing wrong with either of those things as long as everyone involved agrees to what’s going on.”

“Did you miss the part where I said I cared about Justin and Evan? And they care about me, too?” Maybe Chance had selective hearing.

Chance’s lips twitched before stretching into a grin. “No, I didn’t, but I thought it might be a good thing for Rory to hear it again.” Chance’s amusement faded as he looked at Josh.

“Would this Justin happen to be the brother you’ve told us about?”

Josh looked like he was considering making a run for it. He was all big eyes and slack-jawed fear. In other words, he wasn’t very coherent. Annabelle answered for him. “That would be the Justin, yeah, and his partner Evan.” She craned her neck around to glance at Rory, who was looking less and less angry and more than a little confused. “And they don’t BEND

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play. They are very serious about finding the right woman for them. We’re trying to figure out if that’s me.” She was both hopeful and terrified that it may be so.

Chance let her go. “I think Rory just needs a little time to digest everything. Why don’t you go on back to your men, although”—Chance smirked as he looked her over from head to toe—“You might want to change into some of your clothes so you can give those nappy things you’re wearing back to whichever boyfriend of yours lent them to you.”

Annabelle’s natural inclination to make others see what she wanted them to made it difficult, but she finally nodded. “I’ll do that.” She turned to her brother and wished she could give him a hug, but she wasn’t sure how he’d react. “Let me know when you’re ready to talk,” she told Rory. “I don’t want to lose you over this. I don’t want to lose them. Don’t make me choose.”

There was nothing for it now but for her to leave, so she did, her heart aching over Rory’s reaction. Surely he’d come around.

Annabelle was opening the bunkhouse door when the front screen door squeaked then popped back into place as the sound of heavy footfalls caused her to pause. She turned and found Rory standing only inches away.

“I don’t understand,” Rory said, “but I’d like to. I love you, Sis.” He pulled her in for the hug she wanted so badly. “I’m sorry I was a jerk. I’ll do better. As long as these guys make you happy, that’s good enough for me.”

Annabelle smiled as tears slid down her cheeks. Josh had kind of done her a favour, forcing her to come clean to Rory. She owed him big time for that. Now she just had to think of a way to repay him.

BEND

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Annabelle walked into her bedroom. She looked at the bare walls and unadorned surfaces. There was nothing on her dresser, and the only things on the nightstand were an alarm clock and the lamp. The bedding was a blah shade of beige. She hadn’t bothered with curtains for the window, only a cheap plastic blind from Walmart. All in all, the room was depressing and didn’t reflect anything of herself.

Had she always seen this place as a temporary resting point? Or was she just too worn out at the end of the workday to bother with decorating? Maybe she should ask Josh…Annabelle snorted. Like that wasn’t stereotyping. Josh was gay and therefore must be eager to decorate and damn good at it. She knew better, she’d seen his apartment. Josh’s fondness for hot pink didn’t stop with his favourite scrubs. Neither did his love of penguins.

“Are you okay?”

Annabelle turned to find Josh giving her an odd look. Was she okay? Truthfully, she was a little unwilling to delve too deep into her mind and emotions to check. “I’m fine. Just thinking this room has the personality of a snail. Or not even.”