Shay barely nodded. “O-okay . . . I just didn’t expect any help.” She shared a soft look in Reese’s direction. The steely expression in his eyes, the way his mouth was set, she could feel him in warrior mode. There was no other way to describe it and Shay felt an incredible amount of care radiating off Reese toward her.
“One of our problems,” Reese told her, removing his hand from her shoulder, “is that we forget we can ask for help, Shay. This is one of those times for you. The guys at the ranch saw how hard it was on you to visit your father. They’ve been watching you go down a little more with each visit. They love you, Shay. They care. And so do I. We don’t like to see women, animals, or children hurt. Their hands were tied because you never spoke up about it, you never confided in or trusted any of them enough to let them help you. Because they would have. That’s what you have to learn out of this experience. Okay?”
“This feels like an intervention,” Shay whispered. “Mine. And I deserve it. You’re right, Reese. I should have spoken up. And I do trust all of them. But”—she sobbed once—“I didn’t want to put one more brick on their load. They’re all hurting. This ranch is supposed to be a place where they can heal, not come running to protect me from my father.”
Reese groaned and twisted around. He put the briefcase up on the dashboard and growled, “Come here, Shay.” He eased his arms around her, drawing her against him, holding her.
Shay sobbed against his shoulder, tears dampening the blue plaid shirt he wore. She felt his arms come around her, holding her tightly against him, as if to shield her. It was an incredible feeling of safety. Her heart opened wide and Shay felt all those carefully closeted feelings for him, come to bright, burning life within her breast.
Tears flooded her eyes even more when his trembling hand grazed her hair, as if to try to soothe her, take away all the pain she’d carried for so long by herself. Her cries were strangled and she couldn’t hear anything except her own sobs. Reese held her a little more tightly, as if wanting to silently absorb them, love and protect her. And never had anything felt so right, so wonderful to Shay as she wept ceaselessly, decades of hurt pouring out of her.
Chapter Sixteen
Garret, Noah, and Harper stood with Reese in the barn the next morning as they saddled their horses to ride the fence. In as few words as possible, Reese told them what had happened. When he finished, he saw relief on all the men’s faces, nods of agreement and grimness in their expressions.
“You did the right thing,” Garret said, praising him and slapping Reese on the back. “That old bastard needed to be put in his place. My teeth have hurt, gritting them, not saying anything to Shay about him being an abuser.”
Noah grinned as he tightened the cinch on his horse, who stood quietly in cross-ties. “Shay needs our protection until she can get on her own two feet. And I know she can do it with a little support from us at the right time.”
Harper, who had finished saddling his horse, Socks, walked up, reins in his gloved hands. “Yeah, but we all know that at some point, Shay has to talk it out with her father. Reese gave her breathing room, but the old man isn’t going to change unless she confronts him and tells him, herself, to knock it off.”
Reese double-checked the cinch on Smoke, his horse. “You’re right, Harper. I’m just a bandage to the larger abuse pattern she’s dealing with.”
“Well,” Garret said, unsnapping his horse, Jak, from the cross-ties, “right now, you’re stepping in on Shay’s behalf. That’s all right. In time, Shay will see on her own what she has to do to fix it permanently. She just needed a leader to show her how to do it.” He gave Reese a proud look of “well done.”
Reese couldn’t disagree. “She’s got a lot to think about,” he said, leading Smoke down the concrete aisle toward the barn door. Dawn was barely on the horizon, grayness tipping the tops of the evergreen forest on the eastern slope of the Salt River Mountains. “And with this arena-raising coming up, she’s pressured from another direction.”
Garret walked out of the barn at Reese’s shoulder. He glanced toward the ranch house to make sure Shay wasn’t nearby. “Give her time to absorb this, Reese. Don’t push her too far, too soon.”
Glancing over at the wrangler, Reese said, “Right now, I think we need to be there for her in whatever capacity she wants us to be. We’re all going to be busy this coming weekend.”
“Hey,” Harper said, sliding his foot into the stirrup and mounting, “maybe it’s good this arena-raising is soon. Shay can focus on something positive. Her old man can sit and rot in his room for all I care.”
Reese mounted, the chill in the air near freezing. There was a thick coat of frost on the green grass in the nearby pasture. “I have no idea what he’s going to do.”
“For sure,” Noah said, riding up, “one thing he can’t do is come out here. He’s refused to use a wheelchair, so he’s stuck in that bed of his. That’s probably good, because Shay doesn’t have to be around him 24/7.”