Read Online A Cowboy's Home by RJ Scott - Free Book Online

down, passing it back to Sam.
    There were more pills then, painkillers, but
Justin had stronger ones from his foray into the Strachan house, to
what he assumed was Adam’s supply, and he took two more of those.
He tried to shake off just how damn unstable he was on his feet,
and attempted to move toward the gun, hand outstretched.
    Sam beat him to it. “You don’t need a gun,
and you don’t need to threaten me.”
    “I need….”
    Sam stared at the gun and then at Justin,
sighing. Very deliberately, he held out the gun to him.
    “What shit is this?” Justin mumbled.
    “Take it. I don’t want it.”
    “F-f-fuck…. Stupid….” Justin coughed as
spoke.
    “You won’t hurt me.” Sam sounded absolutely
convinced of that and remained still.
    Justin took the weapon and made sure to put
the safety back on before laying it close enough beside him that he
would reach it first. Somehow there’d been a truce of sorts, but fuck if Justin was
letting his guard down.
    Sam cautiously knelt in front of him, taking
a wipe from the packet and holding it out. Justin tried to take it,
but his limbs felt so heavy that he couldn’t move.
    “Can I?” Sam asked.
    “Uh-huh.”
    Sam leaned over him, letting a stream of warm
water from the plastic bottle trickle over the wound. The water was
both torture and relief, and when Sam wiped gently at the dried
blood, Justin gritted his teeth to stop himself yelping .
    “You need a shower,” Sam said, as if
conversation was the best thing right then.
    “N-not a
p -p-priority.”
    “No,” Sam began as he pushed up the soft
jersey of Justin’s boxers, a little too close to the wound again,
and sent a spike of pain into Justin’s groin. “Your clear priority
here was dying.”
    Justin said nothing. He couldn’t. His head
was a mess, heat racked his body, and anyway, what would he
say?
    That Sam was right? That guilt and shame
pulled him apart and he’d come here to the cabin to die because he
wanted to be on Montana soil?
    That he wished he’d never been born?
    No.
    Justin didn’t say a thing.
    And then he was falling, and he passed
out.

Chapter Seven
    Sam pushed a toe to the fallen man’s shin,
but the blond guy with the intriguing silver-gray eyes didn’t move.
From the way he’d fallen to the ground, kind of in one flail, Sam
considered it a faint.
    So what now?
    He looked at his cell phone. No signal. “Fuck
my life,” he muttered. He’d found the thief, and he had to be
honest, he’d never expected to. Crooked Tree was a big place, and
he’d only found the cabin because of the mud and his bike getting
stuck next to it.
    If he believed in fate, which he didn’t, he
would say that he was meant to be there at that moment for this
man. He’d long ago given up on the concept of fate ruling his life;
there was no room for it alongside the rest of the crap.
    Luck led him here. Luck and a need to know
who was messing with his stores.
    He crouched down next to the man and
considered one plus of the faint: he had full access to clean up
the wound and see what the hell was going on.
    Sam peered closer, but without artificial
light he had to shuffle the heavy weight of the unconscious man
into the ring of sunlight shining through a hole in the roof. Tough
Guy, as Sam thought of him, had used material as a bandage and
probably attempted to look after the wound the best he could, but
fever had pushed him over the edge.
    Blood poisoning was a thing, right? Tetanus
shots and all that sort of medical stuff. Really, the man should be
in a hospital.
    Sam didn’t know why he crouched there without
considering going far enough to get a signal and calling someone,
or getting on his bike for help, or—God forbid—actually getting
Tough Guy on the back of his bike.
    He checked his cell again, just in case there
was, miraculously, reception.
    Nothing, nada. Even waving it around gave him
no move in those bars set stubbornly to zero.
    He pocketed the cell and took out another
wipe, this