Page 3 of Boss and Brat

His father’s grip tightened on the wheel. “You don’t get choices out there. You listen, you work, you keep your head down.”

A muscle jumped in his jaw, the only sign he was still holding back more. “Higgins runs this place tight. You screw around, he’ll straighten you out.”

Not a threat. Not a warning. Just a fact.

Ethan stared at the back of his father’s perfect collar, the crisp line of it cutting across his neck like a blade. The message was clear enough:

This wasn’t a negotiation.

This wasn’t about “terms.”

This was exile, and Higgins was the warden.

A cold knot tightened in Ethan’s gut. His mother had mentioned Carter Higgins in that careful voice she used when she didn’t want to start a fight. She said he runs the ranch like a barracks.

One story stuck with Ethan—the way Higgins made the ranch hands redo an entire week of chores because someone had left a gate unlatched. Not open. Not broken. Just not clicked all the way. The man walked the fence line every morning before sunrise, checking each latch as if he expected the world to fall apart if one wasn’t perfect.

Ethan couldn’t remember the last time he’d clicked anything all the way.

His mother also mentioned a rule about boots lined up outside the bunkhouse—heels touching the wall, toes pointed the same direction. Anyone who messed up the line got woken before dawn to “fix their priorities.”

The kind of guy who noticed everything. The kind who’d take one look at Ethan and see every loose end, every half-finished attempt, every mistake he tried to hide under sarcasm and smoke.

Yeah. Higgins wouldn’t need a full minute to decide exactly what he thought of him.

“I can’t believe you’re moving me into the barn,” Ethan muttered.

“You deserve worse,” his father snapped. “And don’t smoke in there either. You’ll eat with the workers or with Mr. Higgins. And he’ll decide how much of your salary goes to you and what goes to me.”

Ethan dragged his suitcases out. His father didn’t help. Didn’t look at him. Didn’t say goodbye. He peeled away, leaving Ethan in a cloud of dust. He stood there for a long moment, staring at the dilapidated barn. It looked bigger than he remembered, but emptier too, like a place meant for tools and hay, not people. Not him.

When he pushed the door open, the smell hit him first: old wood, dust, leather, and the faint lingering scent of horses. The inside was dim, lit only by sunlight slipping through the cracks in the walls. The floor was swept, but still gritty. A few empty stalls lined up on one side, and on the other was a makeshift room with a small corner sectioned off with plywood walls. Inside that corner was his room.

A narrow cot sat shoved against the wall, its thin mattress sagging in the middle like it had already given up. The cover felt rough under his palm, stiff from age and chilly nights. A metal locker stood beside it, paint chipped down to raw steel. Thesurface held a chill that clung to his fingertips, the kind of cold that sank straight into bone.

A single bulb hung from a cord overhead, swaying slightly in the draft sneaking through the gaps in the plywood walls. Each gust rattled the seams, making the whole room shiver as if it wasn’t built to keep anything—weather or sound—out.

The floorboards creaked under his weight, announcing every shift of his body. Cold air pooled around his ankles, sliding up his legs like water. The smell of hay and old leather seeped into the space, settling into his clothes.

This wasn’t a room. It was a corner someone had boxed in with whatever they had lying around.

And it felt exactly like the kind of place you put someone you didn’t plan on keeping.

A shaky breath slipped out of him. “This is a fucking joke,” he said into the stale barn air.

The suitcases hit the floor with a dull thud; the sound swallowed by the wide empty space. Springs complained as his body dropped onto the cot, the entire frame shuddering like it might give up under him. A puff of dust rose around his shoulders, drifting through the slanted light as if it had been waiting for someone to disturb it.

The ceiling stared back—cracked boards, cobwebs in the corners, a knot in the wood shaped almost like an eye. His lashes fluttered fast, the burn behind them threatening to spill over. The mattress pressed into his spine, unforgiving, as if the ground itself had been dressed up in a thin sheet and called a bed.

Grit from the floor scratched at the back of his calves. The smell of old hay clung to the air, dry and lonely. Somewhere outside, a horse snorted, the sound echoing through the walls and making the silence inside feel even bigger.

The weight of everything he’d messed up settled on his chest—heavy, immovable. Not just the screwups. Not just the moneywasted. The exile. The way this place was a punishment cell dressed up as “character building.”

His parents’ absence pressed harder than the mattress. No calls.

Just this barn, this cot, this nothing. Like they’d scrubbed him out of their lives and left him here to dry out in the dust.

The springs groaned again when he shifted, the noise sharp in the emptiness. It sounded too much like the world agreeing with the thought he didn’t want to say out loud: