Total pages in book: 104
Estimated words: 97836 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 489(@200wpm)___ 391(@250wpm)___ 326(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97836 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 489(@200wpm)___ 391(@250wpm)___ 326(@300wpm)
I nodded along, appreciating the intel. Silas kept a lot of his personal life to himself. He’d told me plenty about his sister, about his business. Other than telling me about his group of friends in vague terms, though, he hadn’t shared much. He tended to change the subject whenever I asked too many questions.
Dev regarded me thoughtfully, and I realized his quiet nature hid a keen insight.
Too keen.
“Why don’t you ask me what you really want to know?” he suggested.
I gritted my teeth and let out a breath. I hadn’t known what I’d been fishing for until he called me on it. “I want to know more about Justin.”
Dev’s eyebrows lifted. “Silas told you about Justin?” His lips turned down in an exaggerated frown. “Huh.”
“Yes. Sort of. No, not really,” I admitted, unable to even fudge the truth under Dev’s watchful eyes. “He’s mentioned him a little. I know Justin is his ex. And that Silas went to Vegas to stop Justin from marrying a woman who turned out to be as terrible as Justin.”
But I didn’t know how Justin was terrible. I didn’t know what he’d done to Silas that could make my levelheaded husband fly to Vegas to stop a wedding. And somehow, the fact that Silas never spoke of him suggested that, just like with his friends, there was a whole lot he wasn’t saying.
Dev shrugged. “Justin broke his heart.”
“Oh.” The truth stung. Be careful what you wish for, Waylon. “I see.”
“Silas craves being in charge. His self-assurance is through the roof. He trusts his own judgment more than anyone else’s, with the possible exception of Bash… Nah, actually, no. Silas trusts himself most of all. So when Justin betrayed him over a business deal, it broke Silas’s trust in his own ability to judge people. That is what broke his heart. He had to face his own fallibility.”
“Vegas is a long way away from New York.” I kept my eyes on the stream. “He must’ve been pretty angry.” Which meant he’d probably cared a whole hell of a lot about Justin at one time.
Dev shook his head, peering over my shoulder to make sure Silas was still too far away to overhear. “No. Silas went to Vegas because he’s a good man and wanted to save Justin’s fiancée from making a mistake. Only, it turned out, she didn’t want to be saved.” Dev met my eyes. “Even if Justin hadn’t turned out to be a lying user, though, he still wouldn’t have ended up being Silas’s life partner… or whatever Silas’s version of a happy ending is.”
“Why not?”
He hesitated and glanced back at Silas again, as if trying to figure out how much he could say to me without betraying his friend. Then he looked at me, as if he was trying to read my mind. He nodded to himself, as if coming to a decision.
“Silas needs to be needed. Serving others, helping them, brings him fulfillment. Justin was never going to admit to needing anything or anyone. He was all about himself.”
Dev’s words stayed with me the rest of the day as we continued separating horses out and moving them into place for loading up the next morning.
By the time night fell, Silas was sunburned and sore, but he still managed to cobble together a couple of sandwiches for us just before we showered and fell into bed. At 4:00 a.m., we started again.
This time, Sheridan and Silas stayed back at the barn to oversee the trailer pickups while Taza, ZuZu, and I continued to pull horses from the farther pastures.
When ZuZu and Taza left with the latest group, I hopped off Helios to close the gate and noticed a nearby horse stepping a little funny. Saya was one of our own mares and was most often used when ZuZu brought friends over for trail rides. I decided to check her shoes before leaving this pasture.
Just as I moved my hand down her fetlock and leaned into her to get her to shift her weight off that leg, a large bird took off noisily from a nearby tree, startling her and causing her to hop away from me. With my body weight already off-center from leaning against her, I fell toward her… which might not have been catastrophic if another nearby horse hadn’t also startled and lurched toward us.
Suddenly, I was pressed between two thousand pounds of muscular horse as they scrambled away from whatever had scared them. I tried kneeing and elbowing as much of their weight off me as I could, but my ribs, arms, and hips felt as battered as if I’d tumbled across a ship’s deck in a storm between two barrels of bricks.
After they both bolted away across the pasture, I was left writhing on the ground, trying to catch my breath. The guilty raptor dove and swooped above, meeting up with a second one, which explained the sudden and violent lurch out of the tree.