The Town Called Her Dangerous — A Cowboy’s Daughter Said ‘You’re Coming Home With Us – thuytien

She turned away, staring out the window at the darkening sky. He said that? He did? She heard the chair creek as he shifted. He also said he was wrong about everything.
He said he threw you out when you needed him most, and he’s regretted it every day since. Her throat tightened. She didn’t want to cry in front of this stranger.
Didn’t want to show any weakness. It’s been 3 years. If he regretted it so much, he could have come himself. He tried twice, got as far as Santa Fe the first time before his pride turned him back.
Made it to Albuquerque the second time before his health gave out. That’s when he sent me. And who are you to him? His foreman.
Have been for two years. He trusts me to keep his ranch running. And he trusts me to bring you home. She laughed, but there was no humor in it. Home? I don’t have a home.
You could. He stood up, moving to stand beside her at the window. Those boys need you. Your father needs you.
And if I’m being honest, it looks like you might need them, too. She wanted to deny it, but the words stuck in her throat. He was right. Damn him. She’d been alone in this town for three years. Tolerated, but never accepted, watched, but never seen. The women whispered about her past. The men either feared her or desired her in ways that made her skin crawl.
She’d built a life here, but it wasn’t much of one. Why would they want me? She asked quietly. After what happened, after what people said about me? I asked your father that.
He said, “Blood matters more than gossip, and family matters more than mistakes.” He said he learned that too late, but maybe you could learn it in time. Thunder rumbled in the distance.
The first drops of rain began to fall, spattering against the dusty ground. “I need to think,” she said. “That’s fair.” He moved toward the door, picking up his hat.
“I’m staying at the boarding house in town, Mrs. Patterson’s place. I’ll be there for 3 days. After that, I have to head back whether you’re with me or not.
He paused at the threshold, looking back at her. For what it’s worth, I don’t know what happened in your past. Your father wouldn’t tell me. Said it wasn’t his story to share. But I know this town. I’ve seen how they look at you, and I think you deserve better than that. Then he was gone, riding back toward town through the gathering rain.

She watched until he disappeared, then closed the door and leaned against it. The storm broke fully an hour later. Rain drumming on the roof, lightning splitting the sky.
She sat at her table in the darkness, not bothering to light a lamp. Memories came flooding back. Memories she’d worked hard to bury.
Her mother dying when she was 12. Her father remarrying a year later. the new wife, cold and suspicious. Then her father having sons, real sons, boys who could inherit properly.
Her place in the family shrinking with each passing year until she was more servant than daughter. And then the incident, the ranch hand who’d cornered her in the barn, the struggle, the way he’d torn her dress, the way she’d grabbed the branding iron and swung it at his head, the sound it made connecting with his skull.
He’d lived but barely. And her father, listening to his new wife’s poisonous whispers, had chosen to believe the worst. That she’d led the man on, that she was wild, dangerous, uncontrollable.