It was enough to drive a man insane. Or drive a man insaner.
I got it, we all loved her, but they didn’t understand where I was coming from and I didn’t know how to help them understand. I had to stay away because of my love for her.
I pulled up to Garth’s trailer slowly, stopping a good hundred yards out. I’d killed the lights a hundred yards earlier. I knew from plenty of experience that I did not want to wake Garth’s dad, Clay, if he was already passed out from his nightly drinking binge. That was like waking a sleeping bear who could lift a shotgun and make a decent aim.
I stepped out of the truck and shut the door. It closed silently. No squeaks or groans. I’d been driving Dad’s truck. Mine hadn’t only died on me; it had mysteriously disappeared off the side of that North Idaho highway. When we’d gone back to get it a few days later, it was gone. Highway patrol had no record of it being towed away and none of the impound shops or tow companies had any record of picking up Old Bessie. She was just . . . gone.
Like so much else in my life.
Great. My thoughts were gloomy and, from the feel of it, about to get gloomier. Garth was going to be thrilled he’d invited me over. Speaking of Garth . . . The man in black looked especially pissed off. As I got closer and saw the shattered beer bottles dotted around where he sat in his lawn chair, I understood why.
“Clay asleep?”
Garth glanced back at the dark trailer. “Either that or he’s dead. My hope’s for the latter.”
I stood in front of Garth, checking out the trailer. It had been a long time since I’d been there. Actually, the last time had been . . .
“Shit, Walker. Would you take a seat and chill? You’re freaking me out standing there looking all deep in thought.” Garth waved to a lounge chair beside him, and my throat ran dry.
That had been the last time I’d been there. When Rowen had been curled up in that chair. I could see her in front of me, her lips parted, her face wrinkled even in sleep, her hand curled around the arm of the chair like it was grounding her.
“Chair.” Garth waved at it. “Ass.” He lifted his just enough to smack it. “Beer.” He pulled one free from the six pack beside him. “Sit.”
“Repeat?”
Garth’s eyes rolled as he tossed me the beer.
“Well, thanks for having me over for a . . . a . . . boys’ night?”
Yeah, that term didn’t sit well with Garth. I could tell that from the way his face screwed up. Hell, when I thought about it, the term didn’t sit well with me either.
“No, this is not a boys’ night. Are you kidding me right now? Did you really just go and call two men in a couple of white-trash chairs, in front a white-trash trailer, drinking white-trash beer . . .” Garth’s eyebrows came together as he lifted his bottle in front of his face. “Yep, that’s the cheap stuff. This, my friend, is not a boys’ night. This isn’t a polo shirt-wearing get-together at some club where guys think it’s okay to down drinks that are more fruit than they are alcohol.”
I raised my hands. “Sorry. Thanks for clarifying.”
“Come on, Walker. I mean, shit. Boys’ night? Really? Really?”
Another reason I enjoyed hanging out with Garth? I was so busy either trying to or avoiding insulting him that a couple of hours could fly by. “Then what do you call this?” I circled my beer around before twisting it open.
“This is motherfuckin’ cowboy game plan time.”
“Game plan? Don’t we have to be coming up with one in order for it to be a game plan?” I took a sip of the beer and put it down. It was bad.
“That’s right,” Garth answered as I sank into the lounger.
I leaned back and tried to relax, but it was hard to do when I could have sworn the chair even smelled like Rowen. “And what game plan are we coming up with tonight, Black? The one that addresses and puts together an action plan on how to fix your screw ups?” I smiled and shoved his arm hard enough that he teetered in his chair.
“Not quite. We’re going to address and put together an action plan to fix yours.”
I chuckled. “Yeah, that’s funny, Garth. Good one.”
“Do I look like I just made a funny?”
Looking at Garth stopped me mid-laugh. He was as serious as Garth Black could get. “What? And you, the guy who wrote the book on how to make a better screw up of your life, is going to give me advice on how to fix mine? Talk about painting the kettle black.”
“I don’t know about no fucking kettle, but I am kind of partial to black.”
I wasn’t sure at first, but with every passing second, I realized just how serious he was. “Let me save you the time and effort because nothing you could say could make me feel any worse about my screw ups.”
“Rowen.”
I winced. “Shit. Okay, you just made me a liar. What else have you got?”
“You still love her.”
My eyes closed as my wince went deeper.
“And she still loves you.”
My hands curled around the arms of the chair, bracing myself against the pain coursing through my body. “Uncle. I cried uncle. I’ve had enough.”
“You’re living in fairy land if you think I’m letting you off that easy, Walker.”
Great. Garth Black had joined the army of people bringing Rowen up at every opportunity. I moved to get up, but Garth moved faster. He shoved me back down and towered over me.
“You’re going to listen to what I have to say whether you like it or not, Jess. That’s not negotiable. And if you want to kick the shit out of me and run over me with your daddy’s truck right after, then bring it on . . . but you’re going to hear me out first.” Garth lowered his face right in front of mine. “Understood?”
“If I agree, will you get your ugly mug out of my face?”
“Yes, but only if you take back the ugly part.” Garth butted his nose into mine.
“Fine. Get your dastardly mug out of my face.”
Garth shook his head and moved away. “You should have been a doctor or something as smart as you are. What the hell are you doing working a ranch when you’ve got words like ‘dastardly’ in your vocabulary?”
“I like it,” I replied, thankful Garth had stopped hovering over me with his beer breath.
“But do you love it?”
I thought about that for a while. Ranching was what I knew. It was in my veins. I liked it, for sure, but it was tough to say if I’d classify it into the love category. “I don’t know. I can’t say I love it, but it’s what I know. It’s what I’m good at.”
“And what can you say you do love?” Garth asked, shifting in his seat. Probably because he’d said the L word. He wasn’t big on mentioning that one.
“I think you know since her name just popped out of your mouth a minute ago.”
“So what are you doing here, doing something you like, might sorta love, when something you know you love is a few states away?”
I reached for the bad beer. Given where our conversation was going, I’d need a beer, and bad beer was better than no beer. “You know why. I messed up, Garth.”
“So you messed up.” I lifted both eyebrows. Garth rolled his eyes. “Big time. So you messed up big time. We all do. It’s time you start practicing what you preach and forgive yourself. If any guy deserves a second chance, it’s you, Jess.”
“Practice what I preach? What the hell preaching have I done that you’ve ever paid attention to?” I wanted to buy what Garth was saying, but messing up big time and what had happened to me the past couple months were two totally different things. I hadn’t just messed up big time. I’d taken a vacation in the darkest side of humanity and lived to tell the tale.
I’d lived to tell it, but I’d lost so much.
“You’re always talking about taking what you want from life. Having the chance to make a different life for yourself each day. Not letting your past define you. Not pushing people away in an attempt to protect yourself. All that shit you tell everyone else bu
t are obviously too chicken shit to tell yourself.”
I was gripping the arms of the lounger again. “First of all, Black, what I’m doing, what I’ve chosen to do by letting Rowen get on with her life without me, is not the chicken shit thing to do. It’s exactly the opposite. If I was a chicken shit, I’d do the selfish thing and beg her back into my life again. A chicken shit wouldn’t wake up every morning wanting to send his fist through the mirror so he wouldn’t have to look at himself and remember what he’d done. A chicken shit wouldn’t let the girl he loved go knowing another man will soon fill his spot. A chicken shit wouldn’t take the hard path when there’s an easy one. So don’t talk to me about being a chicken shit.” I was practically trembling from the anger bubbling inside of me.
“Are you done yet?” Garth asked, looking completely unfazed.
“I’m just getting warmed up.”
“That was a rhetorical question. I don’t really care if you’re done yet or not because I’ve got a hell of a lot more to say before you have the floor.”
“A rhetorical question?” I said, taking another drink of beer. It actually made me pucker with each sip; that’s how bad it was.
“Yeah, you know, a question that doesn’t require an answer.”
I threw my head back against the chair. “Dear god, Black, yes, I know what a rhetorical question is.”
“Good for you. Now why don’t you get up out of that chair, head to Seattle, and tell Rowen what an idiot you’ve been and how you’ll spend the rest of your life making it up to her?”
“I can’t.”
“Why the hell not?”
“I just can’t.”
“Jesus, Jess. Man up, grow a pair, and give me a straight answer.”
I worked my jaw, fighting to get out the answer. “I have to protect her.”
“Protect her? Protect her from what?’
“From myself.”
Garth shook his head. “You’re staying away from her because you’re trying to protect Rowen Sterling from Jesse Walker? Do I have that right?”
“You’ve got that right.”
Garth snorted. “Well, either that’s the biggest line of bullshit I’ve ever heard, or you need to explain yourself a little better.”
I could have gotten up and left. I would have if I didn’t know that Garth wouldn’t let me go without a fight. I’d been in my fair share of fights with Garth Black, and while the scales were pretty level, it was something I tried to avoid. “Sometimes the only way we can protect the ones we love is to protect them from ourselves.”
“Yeah, but most of the time doing that just makes both of you want to put a bullet to your head.”
I scowled into the dark night. “I’m not kidding, Garth.”
“Neither am I.”
“Fine, let’s say for the sake of argument that I am able to get past my hang up of trying to protect Rowen and I do call her up and apologize and tell her I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to her. You think she’s just going to forgive, forget, and get back to loving me right where she left off?” Saying it out loud was more painful than a silent stream of thoughts flowing through my head. More definite or something.
“What I know of Rowen, yeah, she would figure out a way to move on from it all. She figured out a way to do it with her life, right? Seems like she could figure out a way to do it with yours too.” Garth took the last swig of his beer and slid the empty bottle back into the case.
“Garth, I’m starting to believe you don’t have the full picture of what happened. Did you even hear the rumors? Because, for once, they’re not an exaggeration. Hell, you were the one who had to pack me home on your horse after I lost it. I messed up. I lost it. I fucked up.” That conversation was heading south fast, but I couldn’t take another sip of that beer. It was only making a bad situation worse.
“I don’t know much about these kinds of things,” Garth started, his voice a few notes quieter. “But it seems like you don’t fall out of love with someone because of their fuck ups. It seems like if you really love someone, you love them in spite of their fuck ups.”
Those words hit me like a punch to the stomach. Actually, they hit me like each word was a punch to the stomach, every one hitting me that much harder. What Garth said hit me not because I’d never heard it before, but because I’d believed exactly that. To know if I really loved someone, the test was not in loving them during the good times, but during the bad times.
That was the way I loved Rowen, and that was the way I knew she’d at one time loved me.
“You think I’ve still got a chance?” It was a fool’s hope, but I didn’t mind being a fool if that’s what it took to get a little hope back in my life.
Garth leaned toward me, a twisted smile moving into place. “There’s only one way to find out.”
I FOUND THE strangest thing when I was cleaning out my bedroom. Actually, it had been buried in the back of my closet, inside one of the steel-toed boots I used to wear every day. I had the day off last Saturday, and that meant a mine field of thinking about Jesse all day. So I’d decided to clean my room, top to bottom.
After throwing all of my shoes out of the closet, I’d noticed something bounce out of my boot. I had to crawl over to see what it was because it was so small. It was a button, a small round white one with three holes. Nothing fancy or elaborate. It could have been from a man’s or a woman’s garment. Even though I tossed it into the garbage at first, I went and dug it out right after. As if that wasn’t mental enough, I actually slid it inside my pillow case.
I had been sleeping on it for the past week. It was a button. A two-cent, non-descript button . . . and I felt some kind of a connection with it. If that wasn’t an indicator of how much I missed Jesse and how our break up had affected me in the cranial region, I didn’t know what was.
After working the night shift at Mojo, I was biking my way back to the apartment, feeling like I was going to pass out from exhaustion. I’d hardly been able to sleep for a month straight. Every time I lay down, my mind began racing and I couldn’t fall asleep. It was a vicious cycle.
Once I’d made it home and alive in one piece, I locked up my bike, unlocked my apartment door, and stumbled inside. Alex had the night off, and that usually meant she was out living it up somewhere in the city, so I didn’t expect to find the lights on and two people sitting at our dining table.
“Man, Rowen.” Alex stood and shot me a wink. “How many hot cowboys do you know?”
“One,” I answered instantly.
“Aw. I missed you too, sweetheart.”
If I hadn’t felt so deprived of all things Willow Springs, I probably would have rolled my eyes and tossed another insult his way, but instead I crossed the room, kneeled, and wrapped my arms around Garth. He felt solid; he felt like home.
“Um, yeah . . . Are you okay?” Garth patted my back stiffly and cleared his throat.
“Just keep your mouth closed, let me hug you for a little longer, and then I’ll be temporarily okay,” I replied, inhaling the scent of his dark shirt. It smelled like the laundry soap I’d used countless times in the laundry room at Willow Springs. Garth continued to pat me awkwardly, but he managed to stay quiet as I soaked in a few more moments of Willow Springs. I rubbed my arm over my eyes before pulling away. “How long have you been here?”
“A couple of hours or so.”
I settled into the chair Alex had just been sitting in. The shock of seeing him was over, and the questions started. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to check out your apartment. Check out the city. See if it’s a place I could live.” Garth’s eyes flicked around the apartment.
“Garth Black, you’d be more comfortable living on Venus than in Seattle.”
His smile stretched wide. “Yes, I think I would.”
I waited, but after a few seconds, I couldn’t wait anymore. Patience wasn’t a strong point of mine. “Are you going to tell me the real reason you’re here, or am I to ass
ume you’ve been kicked off of Willow Springs and need a place to crash?”
“I just might after this . . .”
“After what?” The man was infuriating.
“I’ll let you two talk. I’ll head over to Sid’s for the night.” Alex grabbed her purse, waved, and took one last longing look at Garth.
“Nice meeting you, Alex.”
“Nice meeting you, Garth.”
“Thanks for your help. And the coffee.” Garth lifted his cup.
Alex stopped in the doorway. “You know where to find me if you need any more coffee. Or help.”
“Alex,” I snapped. “Left hand. Ring finger. Sid. Bye-bye.”
She blew me a kiss before closing the door behind her.
Alone together, the air became very thick. Garth and I couldn’t seem to figure out what to say next.
“Are you hungry?” I asked.
“I’m all right.”
“When was the last time you ate? Dinner? That was over eight hours ago, and I know from experience you guys are ready to devour a refrigerator if you don’t get fed every six hours.”
“Actually, the last time I ate was lunch. I left Willow Springs an hour or so before dinner.”
“Lunch?! Okay, you really need to eat.” I headed for the fridge and moved things around to see what we had.
“Don’t bother, Rowen. Really. I’m good.”
“But you are not a good liar because I can hear your stomach grumbling from here.” I lifted an eyebrow and waited for him. His expression and body language looked more uncomfortable than when I’d hugged him.
“Garth. It’s a meal and, judging from the contents of our fridge, not a very fancy one. It’s not a favor, a bribe, a handout, or something you’ll have to repay one day.” Grabbing hold of the cheese and butter, I lifted them. “It’s a toasted cheese sandwich.”
Garth shifted in the chair. “It’s never just a toasted cheese sandwich.”