Where It All Began (Phoenix Falls Series)

Obviously I’m going to have to check the tapes.

I had every intention of checking them as soon as I stomped out of the hot tub last night but I was so riled up that I worried for what I’d do if Madden actually had done something terrible. Maybe some mild strangulation. After he got back into his jeans he picked up the rest of his stuff and headed into the barn without a second glance.

I knew what he was doing. He was waiting for me to go back inside the cabin before he came inside too, ensuring that I didn’t actually get murdered in the darkness – which, all things considered, is sweet and annoying. He came inside about five minutes after I did and he locked up everything outside too. And I mean everything. I know this because I was stalk-watching him from the shadows behind the banister, and I had to scamper like a ninja when he finally made his way through the back door.

Now I’m cross-legged on the counter and angrily crunching my way through a bowl of sacrificial teddies. River’s sitting next to me in solidarity, leafing through her pocket Bible like it’s the morning paper.

Irritatingly Madden is currently right in my line of sight given the fact that River and Tate were in “his” room yesterday, so instead of taking up Kaleb’s offer of using his room, and seeing as he definitely wasn’t staying in mine, Madden slept on the couch last night. Which serves him right. Asshole.

Tate descends the staircase, hair dripping from his shower, dressed in jeans and about to pull a plain shirt over his head. Madden uses it as his cue and enters the kitchen with him, probably thinking that I won’t claw him like an animal if we have an audience.

Not true.

Madden glances over to Tate, eyes flicking down his back.

“You need to get that girl a pair of mittens,” Madden mutters to him, probably thinking that we won’t be able to hear them from here.

I automatically have to shift my body, crossing my legs a little tighter. His voice is frustratingly gruff in the mornings and I freaking hate how much my body enjoys it.

Tate looks over his shoulder, the majority of his large back still exposed, and he attempts to glance down at himself, wherein there’ll undoubtedly be an array of small red kitten scratches marring the sides of his ribcage. Defeated he just breathes a laugh and gives Madden a man-to-man look. For some reason that makes me even madder.

River’s body stills next to me and she flashes me an apologetic look. We didn’t discuss what definitely didn’t happen between Madden and I last night but nothing needed to be said – no woman wakes up in this foul of a mood if she did anything worthwhile the night before.

I roll my eyes and shake my head, giving her my best forget about it look. Besides, she’s the one who came up with the merciful plan to give me some guitar practicing time today, and I’m all the more thankful that I won’t be anywhere near this sickeningly hot pain in my ass.

Madden’s looking at me with a slightly wounded expression, so that makes me perk up a little. At least he’s as put out by last night as I am.

Tate finishes pulling down his shirt and then comes up to the counter so that he can scoop up his fiancé, hitching her around his waist like a koala bear whilst she continues reading her book over his shoulder. When he goes over to the fridge to see if there’s anything that he can put in his tank Madden begins to walk cautiously my way. A dangerous game for him at this present time.

I shove in another mouthful of teddies to prevent myself from hissing at him.

He hooks his thumbs in the belt loops of his jeans and then looks up at me from under his lashes. His head is tilted low for the full puppy-dog effect.

“So,” he begins, voice all deep and quiet.

I continue my angry crunching. He rolls his lip-ring and then lets out a sigh.

“Did you watch the tape?”

“Nope.”

“You gonna?”

“Yep.”

He swallows hard. “When?”

“Don’t know.” A lie, but he doesn’t need to know my little plan.

He bows his head lower and nods, eyes on the floor. “Okay. Well, if you wanna find me later I’ll just be chopping up the old wood so that it can be added to the timber pile-”

“I’m going to need you to watch the livestock in the fields whilst I’m out this morning,” I say, as curt as I can manage whilst still being polite enough to ask for a favour.

His head lifts up, eyes molten with curiosity. “Out?” he asks.

“Yeah, I’m going with River to their place at the lake for a bit.”

This is also apparently news to Tate because he closes the refrigerator door and then starts talking in quick, hushed tones to his fiancé.

Madden opens his mouth as if to protest but then quickly snaps it shut again as he gauges my expression. At least he remembers his place.

“Okay, of course, anything. You just want me to keep an eye out or…?”

“Yeah.” I put the cattle out this morning like I usually do. Even though a midday Wild West ambush is unlikely, I’d still rather Madden kept an eye on them so that I don’t come back to a bloodied up massacre.

I scoop in my last spoonful of cereal and then slide off the counter. I’m so eager to not touch him that I practically dislocate my spine as I squeeze past his concrete-boulder frame.

I take my bowl to the sink and he tails me like a tomcat.

“Okay, I’ll do that, I’ll just…”

I scrub at my bowl like I’m trying to turn it into a diamond.

He sighs behind me and I try not to enjoy the warmth radiating from his body, seeping into mine. I quickly rinse off my bowl and then give it an aggressive towel-dry before putting it on the rack. I just want to get the hell out of this room without any further delay.

“You ready?” I ask River, who’s still sitting comfortably on the side of Tate.

She lifts her head and nods, and then disentangles herself from her fiancé, dropping down to the floor.

“Yeah, I’m ready. I just need to go upstairs to get that thing.” She gives me a meaningful look that’s about as subtle as a slap in the face. “Wanna help me?” she asks, eyes going crazy wide.

I almost laugh. She may as well have LET’S GO AND GET KALEB’S GUITAR written in ink across her forehead.

I roll my eyes. “Sure,” I mutter, amused, as we traipse out of the room and begin mounting the stairs.

“Good going Detective,” I mumble to her when we’re finally on the landing.

She turns to look at me with an innocent expression on her face and whispers, “Well, if Madden thinks that we’re up here for me then he won’t be interested in sticking around to see what we’re getting, so that means that we should be able to get the guitar out undetected and therefore maintain your, um, music-hating pretence.”

I breathe a laugh as we head to my room. I go to the corner where I’ve been resting Kaleb’s old guitar, tucked safely in its case. “I don’t pretend to hate music,” I whisper back to her. “I just don’t act like it’s something that I’m particularly interested in.”

River leans her back against my doorframe with a yeah, yeah look on her face and mumbles, “Some sense that makes.”

We leave the room and I shut the door gently behind myself, jerking my chin at the gallery railing so that River can scope out from a bird’s eye view if Madden’s still down there. She peers over the banister and then shakes her head.

“Must’ve gone out back,” she says. Then, as we quickly run down the stairs, she adds on a quiet, “Told you so.”

I nod, impressed. She did.

We hightail it to the truck that Tate drove here in and then River hastily opens the back door so that I can stuff the guitar inside. I hop in after it, and River climbs in behind me.

Tate turns around from the driver’s seat, giving River a questioning look. Having a plus one in the car probably isn’t how he expected his morning to go but with River’s blessing I know he’ll be more than amenable.

River leans over the centre console to give him a little peck on the cheek, and the physical effect that she has on him is visceral. He instantly relaxes like he’s just taken a sedative and then he turns back to the wheel without any further discussion.

He kicks the engine to life and soon after we’re easing off the gravel and out onto the blacktop.

“Tate’s got another motorbike comp next week,” River explains to me, fingers rubbing cherishingly up and down the book in her lap. “But we’re staying at the lake tonight and we’ll travel up during the day tomorrow.”

“I hope I’m not intruding.” I say it for Tate’s benefit seeing as the lake house is his property, but I’m pretty sure that he’s tuned me out like a very selective radio dial.

River shakes her head. “We won’t even be in this morning so you’ll have the place to yourself.”

“Where are you gonna be?” I ask her, hugging onto the guitar as Tate dodges a particularly grisly pothole.

“Church,” she replies with a smile, flattening out the skirt of her dress.

I give her a little once-over, admiring the lightness that seems to be emanating from her these days.

“Are they new frames?” I ask after a beat, only just registering her glasses.

Being so used to seeing her wearing them for so many years I hardly notice that they’re there, but I’m pretty certain that these ones are new. They’re large and rounded with pink champagne frames, big enough that they reach the middle of her cheeks and so retro in style that they make her look like a baby pin-up from the fifties.

She makes a cute face, twiddling with her Bible double-time.

“Oh, these?” she asks, fidgeting on her seat. “Um, yeah, they’re my new frames,” she mumbles quietly, turning away from me as an embarrassed dimple puckers her cheek.

My heart pulls tight. “They’re so cute,” I say to her, and then I give her a little prod in the waist, making a giggle burst out of her.

“They’re okay, I guess,” she mutters, the apples of her cheeks glowing Honeycrisp pink.

“They look amazing, baby,” Tate says from the front, watching her with a serious expression through the rear-view.

She wriggles her butt, eyes never leaving her lap. Tate’s eyes flash to me and I almost have a heart attack. I’m pretty sure that this is the first time in almost a decade that Tate Coleson has ever looked at me.

“I’ve tried to tell her,” he says in that deep drawl of his, glancing at the road again before returning his eyes to mine. “She just won’t listen.”

I nod and then turn back to River, giving her a squeeze around the shoulders.

She scrunches up her nose and then punches me in the arm.

“Ow!” I howl, but now we’re both laughing, so I sigh contentedly and lean back in my seat, head finally free from thoughts of the past week.

*

River and Tate leave to go to church about forty minutes after we get to his place, leaving me in peace to practice my chords. It’s been a while since I’ve touched this guitar so I do a little warm up and then I pull up the notes on my phone, testing out the strokes.

After I get the gist of it down I begin playing it from memory, adjusting a note here and there when I find one that I like better, and I strum leisurely whilst I look out at the lake, back reclined against one of the wooden deck chairs and my skin cool under the shadow from the porch roof. A light breeze trickles through the woods behind the water and the emerald canopy flutters like butterflies wings.

When I next check my phone an hour has passed and my curiosity has grown too large to be contained.

I strum out one last run-through on Kaleb’s Fender and then I lay it to rest in its bag. Then I tuck my knees up to my chin and unlock my phone, only one agenda pulsing through my mind.

Those cameras that were up inside and outside of the barn? I wasn’t lying when I told Madden that they don’t live-stream to my dad’s cell.

They livestream to mine.

I open up the app which has been pestering me with notifications in the absence of my using it, and I click on the file storing the last week’s worth of footage, bar the days since I disconnected the cameras. I know that I should have checked through the old files sooner but, given the fact that no animals went missing, I hadn’t felt the need to be excessive.

I click on the file storing the video from the day that Kaleb and Madden arrived and I speed through the footage, checking for anything amiss just in case.

Nothing unusual there, I click through to their second day.

It’s the last video on the app because this was the evening that I took them down. It starts with me feeding the cows before letting them out for the morning and then cleaning up the barn.

I remember this morning way too clearly. It was the morning of my run, my splinter, and then our semi-realised truce. I tap through the hour wherein I went for my unsuccessful run but then pause it when I see Madden entering through the large door.

He walks to the booth wherein we store some of the appliances – rope, barn clothes, equipment – and then he bows his head forward as if he’s taking a breather. The camera is on the wall right above him so I lean further into my phone as I try to work out what’s going on.

I wait a few seconds, narrowing my eyes at the footage.

Then I gasp, my phone clattering through the gap between my thighs as soon as I realise what’s about to happen.

Warmth burning up my cheeks, I pick up my cell and I hold it a few inches from my face, my lips parting more and more as I watch Madden reach into his jeans and begin to touch himself. When the sounds coming from his chest vibrate lowly through the speakers I quickly tap the volume until it’s almost mute and then I sink further down into my deck chair, belly swirling with throbbing heat.

Just as I think I know what’s about to happen Madden looks to his right and yanks my tank from the wall. He breathes it in deep, and then pushes it down his pants.

I stop breathing completely.

He only keeps it down there for a couple of seconds but it’s long enough for me to see that he’s been… utilising it. He slips it out, groaning, and then he fully unleashes himself, long, thick, and so painfully rigid that it makes me push my thighs together in trepidation.

I can’t believe what I’m seeing. He’s so big, so ready, that my chest begins to heave.

After a few more seconds of watching him pump his length, his biceps bulging and his strong hips thrusting fast, I press hard on the top button of my phone, forcing it to power-down and disallowing myself to see anymore.

My head is literally pounding, and my cheeks are burning with a warmth that has nothing to do with the weather. My whole body feels like a livewire, frazzled with a stimulus that’s now running riot in my system.

I press my hands against my belly, trying to calm the storm within.

That video, that audio, that footage of Madden… it’s not what I expected.

I take another shaky breath.

It’s a million times better.

I look down at the Fender, thinking about how it’s going to have to stay stashed here for a bit and I’ll collect it at another time because I have something that I need to do right now.

I need to get back to the ranch.