Instead of saying I was sorry for the cruel nickname, I'd asked him if he was writing a journal entry. It had just been a way to open up the conversation so I could say my “I'm sorry” and get out of there, but he'd surprised me when he'd wiped at his nose and mumbled something about doing a math problem. I’d glanced at his notebook, and sure enough, it'd been full of numbers, fractions, division lines and all that other math shit I'd always failed in school. I’d managed to get him talking about the problem and then it had become impossible to shut him up.
Not that I'd wanted to.
He'd been super cute when he'd gotten all excited about explaining the problem that’d had to do with some kind of theory I'd never heard of. By the time he'd finished, I’d been so enamored with his passion for numbers that I'd forgotten why we were even sitting there. But when he’d looked up at me with his glistening blue eyes, I'd remembered. Before I’d even been able to say anything, he'd whispered something about not being like his father. It had been a surprising and stark admission, but I'd accepted it without question. There'd just been something in his eyes that had told me he was telling the truth.
That he wasn't like his father.
I had apologized and after that, I'd never used the nickname again. I'd also never minded when he'd followed me around again asking me a million questions about the horses, the ranch, and myself. I'd always sidestepped the questions about myself and my family, but I had talked endlessly about the horses. Our budding friendship had lasted only a couple of months. And then everything had gone to hell.
"Xavier is my new foreman," Curtis said. I listened carefully for any signs of shame on his part, but there was nothing but firmness and confidence.
"What?" Brooks said in disbelief, then yelled, "You hired him? After everything he did?"
I could feel the fire in my belly starting to build again, along with some other unidentifiable emotion that I didn't want to consider. I didn't care that I interrupted Brooks and his tirade when I said to Curtis, "If there's nothing else, sir, I'll go check on the new foal."
Curtis nodded and said, "You do that, son. We’ll talk later." Normally, those words would've scared me. But the comforting nod he gave me told me he wouldn't be approaching me later to tell me I was out of a job. I could only hope he could talk his dickhead of a nephew out of pressing charges against me. Or, at the least, tell the cops that I'd merely been defending myself.
Not that it would necessarily change anything when it came to the cops. The Sterling name held a lot of weight in the town of Eden, but so did the Price name. Unfortunately, the Price name was synonymous with values like failure, bad seed, and deadbeat. It hadn't always been like that, but the arrival of the Cunningham family had made the Price name go from invisible and unrecognizable to infamous in just a matter of months. So even if Curtis defended me, the sheriff of Eden wouldn't hesitate to toss my ass in a jail cell and notify my parole officer that I'd once again gone after the Cunningham family.
I turned on my heel and kept my pace even and confident as I began walking toward the barn. No way in hell I’d let Brooks Cunningham see how rattled I really was. I also refused to let myself focus on what might happen tomorrow, because one thing I’d learned from the cruel life of a prison inmate was that tomorrow wasn't guaranteed. It was ironic because every day had been the same in prison, at least from the standpoint of routine and structure. But when you were constantly on the lookout for the next guy who wanted to take you out for whatever reason, there was no such thing as routine. The only routine you really had to learn in prison was how to survive.
And how to watch your own back because there wasn't anyone else around to do it.
Several of the ranch hands nodded and called out greetings to me as I made my way into the barn, but I did nothing more than nod. I was the boss, so it wasn't unusual for the guys to be friendly, but they knew better than to expect the same response from me. They'd figured out that I wasn't a talker. Never had been, never would be. But I'd earned their respect in different ways. And with guys who broke their backs with physical labor in less than ideal circumstances, having a knowledgeable boss who wasn't afraid to get down in the dirt with them and do the exact same kind of work went a long way. They'd learned not to ask questions about my past, just like I never asked them about theirs. It was all business, all the time.