Runaround

by Jay Crownover

  He came back.

  I knew that was important, but there were so many more pressing issues at hand. I was injured and couldn’t latch onto the significance of it at the moment.

  “I didn’t win shit. I’ve spent my life on the run. I knew after the first robbery I could never stay in one place too long, but it was the only thing I was good at. I didn’t get a chance at normal. I never had a shot at finding a woman who looks at me the way she looks at you.” My foot was roughly nudged. I dug my fingernails into my palms and ordered myself to stay still. I could smell the metallic tinge of blood in the air and had a moment of panic wondering if Webb was hurt. “She’s a former fed, for fuck’s sake. I thought for sure she was going to let the FBI take you. I couldn’t believe it when she rode to your rescue. It made me wonder what was so good about Webb Bryant? What made you so special that people are willing to risk everything for you? What did our mother see in you, and not me? Could she tell you were worth keeping and I was going to be someone who always got thrown away? Want to know what her last words were?”

  I swore the temperature in the room dropped twenty degrees.

  “She told you how to locate Wyatt.” Now both voices were Arctic cold and I couldn’t suppress a shiver.

  “Oh, she gave me the partner’s contact info without much hassle when I asked for it. She thought I was you. I just told her I got a new phone and lost all my contacts. She didn’t hesitate to hand over everything. Couldn’t tell us apart even though we were face to face. She didn’t guess who I was until I wrapped my hands around her neck and started to squeeze. She looked heartbroken that her darling Webb would dare raise a hand to her until she figured it out.” A bitter, broken laugh echoed around the room and somewhere in the distance, sirens wailed. “Before she took her last breath, she begged, pleaded, implored me to tell you that you were a good boy for always looking out for her. She might not have known how to say it or to show it, but apparently that bitch loved you. You and only you, brother. I regret not letting her believe it was you taking her life. Sometimes my ego gets the better of me. I wanted her to know it was the son she didn’t want who was sending her straight to hell.”

  A roar thundered through the room, and I could no longer play possum. The entire bed I was lying next to shifted, and I would’ve been crushed under the weight of two bodies and a mattress as the whole thing collapsed on the floor when Webb launched himself at his twin. I scrambled out of the way, choking back bile and lifting my hands to hold my throbbing head as I did so. I barely missed a flying fist as the two men tore into each other like they were trying to reach each other’s very souls and pull them from the other’s body. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched as a cowboy hat went flying in one direction and the black pistol in another. The meaty sounds of fists pounding into flesh filled the small space as I quickly crawled on my hands and knees to where the gun landed. I picked the weapon up in a shaky hand, pressing the palm of my free hand to my forehead. It really felt like my skull was cracked wide open and the insides were trying to escape however they could.

  The distinctive sound of bone breaking, followed by a howl of outrage made my ears ring as I lifted the gun and shakily ordered, “Stop it!”

  I was ignored.

  Both men were intent on tearing the other to shreds. Both were bloody and vicious in their attacks. Unfortunately, without Jacobs wearing the cowboy hat any longer, they were an exact match, including the way they fought. Dirty, rough, no holds barred. I had no clue which one was winning, which meant Webb could be seriously injured. I cringed as two big bodies slammed up against the wall of the hotel room sending a picture and mirror to the floor. One handsome face had an obviously crooked nose steadily leaking blood. The other identical handsome face had both the top and bottom lip split open. Both faces were flushed red with anger and assertion. Both sets of blue eyes glowed with hot fury, and neither showed any signs of backing down. It was unnerving that I couldn’t tell them apart when Webb was so angry and cold.

  My frown dug into my face and I raised my voice as loudly as my screaming head would allow. “Knock it off, or I’m putting a bullet in both of you and sorting it out later.”

  They both seemed to realize I was awake and armed at the same time. Twin blond heads snapped in my direction, and identical sapphire eyes popped wide.

  “You’re awake.” The obvious statement came from the man pressed up against the wall. There was no relief in his tone, so I assumed he was Weston, and the man holding him in a punishing grip was Webb.

  But then the other man flicked his eyes to the gun. “How did you end up with that?” Again, the tone was flat, and I was left staring at both the men trying to figure out who was the one I’d handed my heart to.

  I waved the gun and leaned back against the wall behind me, so I didn’t end up on the floor. I wasn’t sure how much longer I was going to be able to stay vertical or conscious. “Let him go and stand over there.” I needed space between them since I couldn’t see straight. I needed to watch them move for a hint as to which one was Webb.

  The men reluctantly separated and moved a few feet apart from one another. The one with the broken nose wiped his arm across the blood dripping down over the lower half of his face, and the one with the busted mouth grabbed for the discarded comforter to clean up his face.

  “You can’t tell us apart, can you?” The question came from the twin against the wall, his voice now nasally and thin as blood still trickled from the crooked bend in his nose.

  I shifted my gaze between them, squinting to try and pull them into focus. I was looking for a sign, a tell from Webb, but neither one of their faces was exactly clear.

  “Our own mother couldn’t, how could she?” The conversation was biting and sarcastic. Both men looked angry and ready to keep fighting. My head hurt too much to wrestle with the implications of trying to figure out who was who, but I knew if I got it wrong, I would never have the opportunity to make things up to Webb.

  Carefully, I cranked my head to the side and braced my wavering arm with my free hand.

  “Can’t you see it in my eyes?” Those baby blues went from furious to soulful and sincere in the span of a blink. I wanted to believe I would know Webb blindfolded, but the risk was too high if I picked wrong.

  “Why did you walk out on me?” I asked the question knowing the real Webb would give me the truth and his twin would simply tell me what I wanted to hear. Webb had handed me the truth over and over again, even when I didn’t want to hear it. Even when it made me look like the frightened, neurotic mess I actually was.

  The man leaning up against the wall shifted and gave me a slow grin. The smile was Webb through and through . . . or was it? My Webb only smiled like that when he was trying to play someone. “I shouldn’t have gone. I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. Bring me the gun. The sheriff is on his way.”

  The man near the bed spat out a mouthful of blood and rolled his eyes. “I left because I didn’t have a choice. I came back for the same reason. The idea of losing you hit me just as hard as the thought of losing Wyatt. I didn’t want to choose, but when I had to, I did. I chose you, Ten, and I always will. You come first.”

  Of course the guy by the bed was Webb. Challenging me and charming me at the same time. Never making anything but loving him easy. Him and his pretty words he saved just for me.

  I turned to face Weston Jacobs, but my coordination was still off, and my limbs weren’t exactly responsive. The hand holding the gun dropped dramatically, and I started to list wildly to the side. Jacobs let out a battle cry and flung himself away from the wall. He was closer to where I was falling than Webb was, and I knew if he got his hands on the gun it was over for all of us. I tightened my hand on the pistol and forced myself to lift my hand back up as the rest of my body moved backward.

  My finger flexed on the trigger, and suddenly I couldn’t hear or smell anything beyond the acrid burn of gunpowder. I heard a belated crack as the hotel room door was kicked ope
n, and I blinked away drops of blood that clung to my eyelashes as I went down under the weight of the body still barreling toward mine. Vaguely I heard someone shout my name, then the word ‘POLICE.’ I thought I heard Cyrus yell Webb’s name, then it all turned into another blur I couldn’t track as my poor head gave up the fight and shut down completely. This time before everything faded to black, I caught sight of a familiar pair of blue eyes. They were bright with worry and shiny with so many different layers of love. They were the eyes I would gladly follow into all kinds of trouble. They were the eyes I wanted to see every morning when I woke up, and the eyes I wanted to look into every night before I closed mine.

  “I won’t make you choose again.” I was pretty sure I got the words out before I passed out, but if not, I knew he was going to be there when I woke up and I would tell him again.

  I was going to get it right this time.

  Webb

  “Some folks are just born bad. Ain’t nothing that can be done to help them.”

  Aunt Clara’s words were soft as she sniffed into the handkerchief she had clutched in her hand. My uncle wrapped a bulky arm across her shoulders and gave her a squeeze. My other aunt, my mom’s younger sister, had been openly weeping nonstop since the moment the marble headstone went up.

  It was an overcast day, so the weather was muggy and stifling. The gray sky fit the somber events of the day and matched the darker colors swirling within the light-colored grave marker. Every time my eyes caught on the dates, I shivered. Ten would run her hand up and down my back in a soothing gesture, but nothing chased away the weirdness of seeing my birthdate on a headstone. It so easily could have been me or Wyatt under the bed of wildflowers, which had sprouted up not long after my brother and mother were laid to rest.

  At first, the family fought me when I asked that my twin be laid to rest next to Jolene. They said it was disrespectful and would further taint Jolene’s already tarnished memory. In my head, it was fitting that my mother spend eternity facing the son she’d given away. My mother was always running from monsters, always fighting against facing her responsibilities and the consequences of her actions. In the end, there would be no escaping the ramifications of her lifelong string of selfish, manipulative choices. Both mother and son ended up where they were because of Jolene’s selfishness.

  Besides, he was family. As fucked up as it was, someone finally needed to claim him as one of their own. It was the least we could do, and it gave me an odd sense of peace.

  “No.” Wyatt’s voice was sharp and cracked like a dry tree limb as it snapped across the gravesite. It was so harsh Clara stopped sniffing and Aunt Ana finally put an end to the waterworks. “No one is born bad, but some of us come into this world at the mercy of people who have turned bad, embraced it even, and the cycle just continues until someone dies. There is always a choice between right and wrong; it’s up to us to decide how many of each we’re going to make.”

  My older brother looked like hell. He lost a ton of weight the last month while he was in the hospital. His face was gaunt, skin pulled too tightly over his cheekbones and jawline. The doctors shaved his head when they drilled into his skull to reduce the swelling he suffered from the gunshot that nearly killed him. Luckily, he turned his head with millimeters to spare and only ended up with a wicked scar that cut across his temple and halfway around the side of his head. The impact put him in a coma for nearly a week, and he was struggling with some basic motor functions and memory loss, but he was alive. That was all I cared about. He also took a shot to the thigh and one through his hand, so he was using a cane and had his left-hand in a cast and strapped to his chest in a sling. Wyatt had been grumpy and short-tempered since getting out of the hospital. Having the agency you’d given your formative years to drop you on your ass—after stating you were a security risk because of what happened to you on assignment—was bound to put anyone in a mood. However, Wyatt’s perpetual glower and increasing dissonance screamed of something else going on.

  But today wasn’t about whatever was wrong with Wyatt. It was about saying goodbye to the bad parts of our past so we could move forward, toward a bright, unencumbered future. It was time to let go of the anchor we’d both let drag us down for so long. We’d both been cut free from the ties that had bound me to endless amounts of trouble and held Wyatt to the unbearable burden of responsibility. There was no longer anything left to hold either of us back. I didn’t have to run anymore, and Wyatt . . . well, my brother finally had a chance to know what it was like to live his life for himself, to pursue his own dreams . . . even if he looked like he was ready to keel over at the idea of having not one single responsibility.

  “I think you can make plenty of the wrong choices and still end up all right. As long as you make the right ones when it counts, you’ll end up exactly where you’re supposed to be, with the person you’re supposed to be with. And if you’re really lucky, that person will get that your wrong choices were just as important as the right ones were at the time you made them.” I caught Ten’s hand and brought the back of it to my lips. I gave her fingers a squeeze and sighed when she squeezed back.

  It was hard for her, looking at the headstone of a man who not only looked just like me, but one whom she put the fatal bullet in. She didn’t remember much beyond Jacobs lunging at her. She told Rodie she meant to pull the trigger but couldn’t recall if she did or not.

  She did, at the exact same time the deputy whom Rodie sent over and Cyrus broke through the door. My twin took Ten’s bullet through the heart. It was obviously a case of self-defense when they heard her story and got a good look at her face. Ten also ended up in the hospital with a severe concussion and a broken eye socket. She’d been forced to take an extended leave from the Rangers while everything healed. She let me baby her while we took up temporary residence in San Antonio, waiting for Wyatt to be discharged from the hospital. It was easy to see she was getting fed up with taking it easy, and even though she had two weeks left of medical leave, I doubted she would be using them. She’d been none-too-subtly hinting that she might be looking at a change in careers when we get back to Wyoming. She loved working for the Forest Rangers, but her mind was wired to solve puzzles and put criminals behind bars. She was ready to do more than find lost people. She wanted to prevent them from being lost and forgotten in the first place. Her true calling could no longer be ignored. There had been more than one hushed conversation with Rodie I’d walked in on over the last few days.

  “I think we’ll skip the part where we ask if anyone has anything nice to say in memory of the deceased.” Clara cleared her throat and used the silk cloth in her hand to wipe at her cheeks. “I think we all wish we could’ve done better by this poor boy. Maybe things would have had a different outcome, maybe they wouldn’t. All I know is we have to focus on what we have right in front of us and never forget how quickly it can be taken away. Let’s head back up to the house and have a little something to eat. We need to work on fattening you back up, Wyatt.”

  My brother swore softly under his breath. He acted as if Clara’s concern and care were bothersome, but I could see the way the grooves around his mouth lightened slightly and the way his locked shoulders shifted. Wyatt had waited his entire life for someone to mother him. He still hadn’t fully embraced the idea of letting Clara and Ana back into the fold. His trust was too fractured, and his expectations were simply too low, but slowly and surely our aunts were wearing him down. Clara even asked him to stay in the swamp until he was fully healed. The doctors told him he was more than likely going to walk with a slight limp for the rest of his life, and no one knew the full extent of the damage to his hand. He was going to need another surgery once the cast came off and extensive rehab on the injured extremity. Wyatt semi-politely turned her down, insisting he would be fine on his own in DC.

  No one was buying his assertions, but I knew my brother well enough to know there would be no pushing him. He would ask for help when he was ready, after he ran himself into the
ground trying to handle everything on his own. I was planning on keeping a close eye on him and had already asked Grady to pop in unannounced to do spot checks. The older man still felt guilty for his hand in leaking Wyatt’s whereabouts to Jacobs, so I had no doubt he would be all over my brother until he was back on his feet.

  I knew better than to offer Wyatt a hand. He was touchy and sensitive about getting around with the cane, and I’d already gotten my head bitten off more times than I could count. Ten didn’t have the same reservations. She slipped out of my hold and put a secure arm around my brother as he took the first wobbly steps to the collection of pickups needed to drive to this remote part of the property to finally say goodbye. My brother took her helping hand without complaint, partly because he knew I wouldn’t tolerate him being anything but grateful to Ten, and also because he genuinely loved her. She was a wreck when Wyatt finally came to in the hospital. She sobbed over asking me to choose between her and my brother. She admitted she forced me into a corner because she was scared I was going to be someone else who claimed to love her and then left. She was inconsolable until we got to Texas and she saw Wyatt for herself. When he woke up and heard everything that happened with my twin, he was convinced she saved my life, and not only because she killed Jacobs before he could kill me. Ten was the person who came along and finally was tough and persistent enough to give trouble a run for its money. My brother treated her like she was made of magic, and she was the only person he forced himself to smile for anymore.