I stormed off at a dead run, cutting across the land horizontally, hopped the fence that separated our farms, and kept on until I got to the barn. There I bent in half, pressing a hand against the very wood my beloved grandaddy had built, and vomited. I purged everything left in my stomach as the acid of her words continued to needle my gut painfully.
“What the hell you doing here? You said you’d be gone for weeks, maybe even months, not mere days?” My father’s slurred voice seared through the haze and hatred of Linda Goodall’s words.
I lifted my head and wiped the back of my hand against my shirt sleeve, not caring that I smelled of vomit. My life had gone to shit. I might as well muck out some stalls and add to the stench.
“Yeah, well, I’m back. And I’ve already wired the money I said I’d get into the accounts. We should be okay at least for a little bit.” I didn’t want him to know that Savannah’s deposit was sitting in another account waiting to be used by me when I had some time to look at the books. Nor would he get the first payment of money I’d scored when I married Sutton two nights ago.
My father tipped his bottle of Jack back, and I watched the amber liquid slosh as it slid down his gullet.
“Pa, it’s seven in the morning. Maybe you could take a load off the booze. Help out a bit around here?” I scowled as I went to move around him.
As I attempted to go around the corner to enter the barn, his arm shot out, and his gnarled fingers fisted the back of my hair. He yanked me so hard I screamed as I arched backward, my spine twisting in pain as I was flung to the ground.
My ass smarted the second I hit the hard earth, and I cried out, then looked up and noticed the chunk of my hair my father still held within his fist like a trophy .
I barely noticed the sound of a vehicle rolling up the gravel path just as my father shoved me down with a boot to the chest. I fell back farther, my palms grating along the dry, rocky earth, bits cutting into my skin.
“Don’t you dare speak to your father like that, missy. I’ll do whatever the fuck I want. You hear me? This is my farm. My land. Mine to do with as I please.” He belched out loud and spit at my feet. “And you are my spineless, useless daughter, just like your momma.”
I blew out a harsh breath as I pushed on my scraped hands and got up, testing the back of my head where he’d pulled out a chunk of hair.
“You’re running our family’s legacy down into the ground.” I narrowed my gaze as anger tore through my chest. “I won’t continue to watch you do it and neither will Savannah!” I hollered and stomped toward him.
His eyes were glazed over from alcohol, and his breath smelled of rotting sewer as I got closer.
“We’re going to buy you out, you disgusting piece of shit. Then kick you off your own land,” I threatened with a sneer. Which is when he dropped the bottle of Jack and jumped at me faster than I ever though he could for a drunk. He gripped me by the throat with both of his hands, cutting off any air, then slammed me up against the barn, the back of my head bouncing off the wooden surface with a mighty crash.
Stars flashed behind my eyes, and I kicked out desperately, but it wasn’t fast enough. Even as a drunkard, he was a swift and practiced bar brawler. He used those skills as if they were muscle memory when he smashed the back of my head against the barn again until those stars turned into swirling flecks of light and darkness, which was when he cocked his arm back and socked me straight in the face.
Excruciating pain imploded within my skull, and fire blasted against my cheekbone and eye.
I heard a fearsome roar that sounded like a lion or a tiger had found its way onto the property and was pissed as hell. Then my father was gone, pulled off my form by an unseen source. Then that lion was on top of my pa pounding his face into the earth over and over.
Only it was no lion. It was Sutton.
I slumped against the wall of the barn and slid to the ground, my head and my heart bursting with agony. Sutton’s mom exited his truck and rushed over to me, while a few of our ranch hands including Savannah’s Jarod ran to break up the fight.
“Oh, dear Lord.” Sutton’s mom cradled my cheeks. “You poor, poor thing. I can’t believe… Who does this to their own child?” She blotted at my face with a handkerchief, and I hissed at the pain as my vision went in and out. “We’re gonna need help. Someone call the doctor!” she screeched, sounding worried, when not a half hour ago, I’d been nothing but ugly to her.
“Why are you helping me?” I spoke and spat as blood spewed from my mouth, its coppery taste making my stomach jerk and heave once more. I must have bitten my tongue.