“Charlie-Bravo?”
Garth rolled his eyes. “The dreaded C.B.”
“I’m going to need a translation because I’m not tracking.”
Another eye roll. “Cock-blocked. Charlie-Bravo equals C.B. equals cock-block. Shit, Walker. Get with the times.”
“If that’s all I’ve been missing out on, I’m not sure I want to get with the times.”
“Good, because you and your Puritan-ass ways will never catch up.” Garth shifted up onto his forearm and tossed a pebble into the dying fire. “You’re really not mad about her not telling you about that internship? You wouldn’t be mad if she took it, either? Come on, Jess, this is me you’re talking to. There’s nothing you could admit to me that would made me blink.”
“No, I’m really not mad. Present and future tense,” I added when Garth’s forehead lined. “I guess I’m more . . . worried about why she didn’t tell me.”
“Are you sure that’s worry twisting your stomach and not betrayal?”
I only needed to give that a moment of thought. “No, it’s worry. And maybe a little bit of hurt. I mean, was she worried I wouldn’t support her wanting to apply? Did she think I’d be disappointed in her if she took the job? What’s got me worried is why she kept it from me in the first place.”
“Maybe she didn’t tell you because she was worried of this.” Garth motioned at me. “Of you worrying your life away and your tender little heart getting hurt.”
“Always a pleasure discussing these kinds of things with you, Black,” I muttered.
“Chill your worried, hurt self out,” Garth said, tossing another pebble into the fire. “As much as you want to deny it, Rowen and I are cut from the same cloth.” Garth lifted his hand when I went to interrupt. “Hear me out. My point in saying that your girl and me are creatures of similar creation is that I understand where she was coming from when she decided not to tell you about the internship.”
I resisted the urge to cover my ears or get up and walk away. Garth Black was about as deep as a puddle.
“Deep down, Rowen and me are self-loathing types. We despise ourselves, so when life throws us shit, we accept it because that’s what we deserve. The people we let in, the people we love, we’re fiercely protective of. Those people are ten times more important to keep safe than ourselves. My guess is that’s why Rowen didn’t tell you. She wasn’t even sure she’d get the internship. Why make you worry about something that wasn’t even a sure thing?” Garth shrugged. “I mean, that’s what I would have done. I’d keep the truth from someone if I thought it would save them some pain.”
That was a lot to process. The wisdom behind the words and the fact that they’d just come from Garth Black’s mouth.
“While I’m working that out in my head, tell me one thing, Black. Who in the hell have you ever loved more than yourself?”
Garth rolled onto his back and folded his hands behind his head. “I was strictly speaking hypothetically about myself.”
“Didn’t sound like it . . .”
“Oh, blow me, Walker. I haven’t found my Rowen Sterling yet. I’m still, thankfully, in possession of my nutsac. Unlike someone else I know.”
“Two things. Don’t ever mention Rowen, blow, and nutsac in the same breath again. Ever. And two, what are you going to do when you find a girl who’s able to, miraculously, see past the piece-of-shit facade you keep up?”
Garth chuckled. “I’m going to run, Walker. And I’m not going to stop. Guys like me weren’t made for settling down.”
That was when a familiar and haunting sound rolled across the valley.
Garth burst up at the same time I did. “Wolves,” he cursed, tugging on his boots.
“They’re close, too.” As I grabbed the rifle we kept for exactly that kind of reason, my heart hammered. To hear wolves howling at night wasn’t uncommon, but that . . . hearing their yips and calls as they hunted was something I’d only ever heard once before.
“I’ll get the horses ready,” Garth called, rushing toward Sunny and Rebel. They had stopped their grazing to look in the direction of the crying wolves.
That was when I heard the next familiar sound. The one that unnerved me more than hearing wolves. The cry of a cow in distress.
“No time, Garth!” I hollered, running after him. “We’ve got to go now!”
Garth must have heard the same noise I had because, after pausing, he sprinted for Rebel and was just throwing his leg over him when I caught up.
“Easy, Sunny boy.” Both horses were clearly on edge, but they were ranch ponies, chosen because they didn’t shy away from just anything—not even a pack of wolves crying into the night. Grabbing onto his mane, I threw my leg over Sunny. Once I had the rifle strap around my shoulder, I sent Sunny after Garth and Rebel, who were already a good fifty yards ahead. Rebel was a tank—he had unparalleled strength when it came to a horse—but all that muscle slowed him down. It didn’t take long for Sunny and me to catch up.
The shrill yips, mingled with the low timbered cow cry, was getting louder, so we were heading in the right direction. I pushed Sunny faster until we’d pulled ahead of Garth and Rebel. I didn’t have a plan, I didn’t know if anything I could do would work, but I heard something crying out for help. That’s what propelled me forward.
The sky was clear and the moon was full—just the kind of conditions a rancher wanted when they heard a pack of wolves close by. Being able to see them at fifty yards was better than fifty inches.
There were a handful of wolves, four or five from what I could tell, that had taken down a yearling. One’s jaws were locked around its neck while the others tore into it. And the sound? The sound that yearling was making twisted my stomach. It was screaming, its cry muffled and wet from the wolf’s hold on its throat.
I knew it was the circle of life, I knew it was nature’s way, but witnessing it, hearing the life bleed out of a creature . . . there was nothing harmonic about it. There was nothing but violence and fear.
As a testament to the kind of horse Sunny was, he didn’t slow a bit. Garth was still a little ways back, yelling at me, but I couldn’t make out his words. All I heard was the animal crying out for help. The helpless creature restrained by its predators, dying at their whim. It was all hitting too close to home.
I slid the rifle off of my shoulder and had the safety off by the time I leapt off of Sunny. I was so close I could smell the blood. The wolves barely noticed me. They were too frenzied ripping chunks of flesh from the still-living animal. I fired off a shot. Then another. By the third one, all but one wolf, the one still at the yearling’s throat, had fled. One more shot, and that one let go and sprinted after its pack.
“Why didn’t you shoot those sons of bitches?” Garth flew off Rebel and sprinted the rest of the way to me.
I’d kept my eyes on the retreating wolves, but my gaze shifted to the yearling when I answered, “They didn’t deserve the quick death of a bullet.”
Garth came up behind me. “Damn it all to hell. Couldn’t they have waited until the thing was dead before they started tearing into it?”
The yearling wasn’t crying like it had been; probably because it was minutes away from dying. The only movement it made was an occasional muscle spasm. Blood covered the ground, and the thing had been so severely mangled, I saw portions of its anatomy. It was a gruesome sight, one that would make any man’s stomach churn.
But that wasn’t the reason I dropped to my knees beside it. A good quarter of the yearling was, at present, digesting in the stomachs of a handful of wolves, and the rest was coated in its own blood. It looked like any other yearling in the herd, but it wasn’t just any other yearling. It was the yearling.
The one I’d tumbled down Suicide Ridge to save. The one I’d broken bones and spilt blood to make sure it didn’t face that kind of fate. I didn’t need to check the tag in its ear to confirm it. I knew it.
“We have to put it out of its misery, Jess.” Garth put a hand on my shoulder.
“I know,” I said, forcing myself up. I knew what needed to be done. I knew the creature I’d saved last summer was the same one I’d have to put a bullet in that night. I’d saved its life only to have to take it months later.
My hands didn’t tremble when I brought the rifle into position. My hands didn’t tremble, but everything inside did. My finger had just covered the trigger when Garth shouldered up beside me. He moved the rifle barrel just out of range of the space right between the yearling’s eyes. The place I’d always known to put a bullet if one had to be fired, but it was something I’d never had to do.
“I can do this, Black.” I butted my shoulder into his and moved the rifle back into position.
“I know you can,” he said, moving the barrel aside again.
“I need to do this. It should be me.”
“No,” Garth said, looking between me and the yearling, “it shouldn’t.”
I wanted to argue, I wanted to force myself to take the shot, but when Garth grabbed the rifle, my fight was over. I was spent for the second time that week.
So instead of pulling the trigger, I kneeled beside the yearling and put my hand on what was left of its mangled neck, comforting it like the night I’d found it last summer. That touch had been to comfort the life that was safe; this touch was to comfort the life that was leaving.
The yearling’s eyes locked on mine at the same time a shudder ran through its body. And then, it wasn’t the yearling dying in front of me anymore. It was me as a young boy, curled into myself, not making a sound. I was about to squeeze my eyes closed when the image flashed into something else, and it was Rowen curled at my knees. Expressionless, motionless, a shell of the girl I loved. Gone.
My world was falling apart, one tragic bit at a time.
The gunshot ripped through the canyon, vibrating my insides, and after that, the blackness I’d been holding just barely at bay consumed me.
I COULDN’T BREATHE right. That’s just one of the few symptoms I’d experienced since Jesse walked out a few nights ago. My trouble with breathing normally might not be the worst symptom, but it was the most obvious. Every two seconds, I was reminded that my lungs just wouldn’t fill to capacity like they used to.
In addition to the breathing problem, I was unable to sleep for longer than an hour at a time, I’d eaten a total of two bowls of cereal that Alex practically had to force feed me, I couldn’t seem to remember jack, I broke out in tears over certain songs or commercials, and I couldn’t lift a pencil to paper, let alone actually make something that might count as art.
Oh, yeah. I also looked like shit and felt like shit. Life was shit once again, and that terrified me.
To skip the above, drawn-out paragraphs and provide the Rowen Sterling Present Day Cliff’s Notes, I was the hottest, messiest, hot-mess to have ever hot-messed the world. Hot. Mess.
Jesse hadn’t tried to reach out to me yet. No phone calls, texts, emails, or surprise appearances. I knew that meant he was still working out the things I’d heaped on him, but I really wished he could work them out while still managing to send me a daily text. Just some small measure of reassurance. The events of that night must have taken an overwhelming toll on him. I knew that from the words he’d said, the way he’d looked, and the way I’d feel if I was in his shoes.
I also knew a person didn’t just work all that out in a few hours of soul-searching under a blue sky. It was some deep, dark shit that made a person delve into the deep, dark shit within themselves. I knew that from experience. I knew that from wading through my own cesspool of deep, dark shit last summer to come out victorious on the other side. It wasn’t a permanent victory—scars like the ones Jesse and I had would never disappear—but it was a victory nonetheless.
I hoped—whatever Jesse was wading through—that he’d emerge on the other side soon, and with the same measure of peace I had from my battles. Or if he couldn’t beat it on his own, that he’d let me help him.
My brain knew what the right thing to do was: give him space and let him contact me when the time was right. But my heart wanted something so different. I’d picked up the phone, my finger hovering over his number, so many times I’d driven myself sick from the letdown of forcing myself to clear the screen and walk away from the phone.
The night after Jesse left, I wasn’t scheduled to work, but I still went in. I waited at the booth in the front, my foot tapping like I was on speed, watching every figure pass by. I wasn’t sure what I would have done if I saw Mar again, but something told me I would at least land myself an overnighter in jail. I’d been nice to the woman, let her into my life. I’d shared my sack lunch with her and sneaked her doughnuts. Hell, I’d found a woman’s shelter she could get a shower at and eat a warm meal. I’d trusted her.
I’d been so, so wrong. I’d trusted a person who deserved nothing for what she’d done to Jesse. I’d unknowingly brought the monster of Jesse’s past back into his life because I’d been naive. I couldn’t have known the homeless woman I’d met in an alley was my boyfriend’s childhood abuser . . . but I couldn’t help feeling like I should have known. How could I not know I was staring into the same eyes that had watched her child suffer at her hands? How could I not know that?
So in addition to the rest of my Jesse-separation symptoms, I felt a guilt so overwhelming I hadn’t been able to drag myself out of bed for three mornings. Fortunately, Alex had no problem doing the dragging for me.
And then there was the issue of the internship and Jax’s impeccably awful timing. I should have been the one to tell Jesse. I know I should have been the one to tell him months ago, right before I applied. I know he would have been supportive. The thought of spending the summer apart would have killed us both, but he’d never been anything but supportive of me fulfilling my dreams.
Once he’d shown up at Mojo that night, I knew I needed to tell him. I knew I couldn’t keep it from him any longer. And then the unthinkable mess with Mar happened . . .
How could I could tell him, the same night he’d come face to face with her, that I’d applied to an internship months ago without telling him and had just found out I’d gotten it? Hell, the internship wasn’t even on my radar at that point. Nothing but finding Jesse and comforting him was on my mind. I had been on the find-and-comfort-Jesse autopilot.
Then, barely a minute after Jesse had come back to me, Jax had burst in and dropped the internship bombshell. Worst timing in the history of bad timing.
I’d never forget the look on Jesse’s face that night when he looked into the face of the woman who’d given birth to him, and I’d never forget the look on his face when he found out I’d lied to him. Never.
So, betrayal. Yeah, I felt that hardcore, too. Not the betrayed, but the betrayer. After being on both ends of the betray spectrum, I could confidently say being the betrayer was just as bad. In my case, maybe worse. I’d done some serious damage to a person I loved, and that was something I’d hoped to avoid with Jesse. I guess I should have known better.
The past three days had been the worst, having no contact with Jesse being the pinnacle. I could have called Rose or Lily. Even Garth or Josie would have been better than sitting in “radio silence,” but I didn’t call them either. Jesse had asked me to give him space; calling any one of the four people closest to him seemed like cheating the system.
“Hey, Mopey. Stop crying into your coffee and go get some fresh air.”
Who needed to call anyone when I had that kind of support in arm’s reach? Yes, that was sarcasm. “No, thanks. I’m planning on wallowing the day away. You have fun with the fresh air, though.” I was sitting on one of the three folding chairs staggered around a card table, also known as our dining set, staring at closed blinds. I was back to keeping out the light.
“Please tell me you’re not going to wind up being one of those girls who throws her life away because she and her boyfriend got into a fight. Please, for the love of Julio, tell me I haven’t been roommates all year with a flak
e like that.” Alex dropped her backpack on the counter and grabbed a cup of coffee. I guess it was morning, time for classes. I’d lost track of time, and when the blinds were closed, I had no way of knowing if it was light or dark.
“I’m not throwing it away. I’ve just put it on . . . hold for a little while.”
“Why?” she asked, dumping a mountain of sugar into her coffee.
“Why? Why, Alex?” I said in disbelief. “Have you really not listened to a single word I’ve said over the past three days?” She’d been the only shoulder I’d had to cry on since I couldn’t call anyone at Willow Springs and Jax was still on my shit list.
“Well, I know what happened between you and Jesse, but why’s that deserving of putting your life on hold?”
If she had to ask, she really didn’t get anything that had happened.
“So what? You fucked up. You fucked up big time,” she added when I lifted an eyebrow. “We’re human, Rowen. An occasional fucking up big time is written in the fine print. You can’t just throw away, pause, fast forward, or delay your life because you made a mistake.” She slapped the counter when I lifted the other eyebrow. “When you made a huge mistake.”
“It wouldn’t be so bad if my huge mistake only hurt me, but it hurt Jesse in a way I’d taken a silent vow to keep from ever doing. I just can’t . . . It’s not so easy to move on when you devastate someone you love more than yourself.”
“Trust me. You love someone long enough and hard enough, you’re going to make an epic screw up or two along the way. Love makes us stupid sometimes,” Alex said, pouring a bowl of cereal and milk. “Deal with it.”
“I don’t feel comforted.”
Alex laughed a few notes. “I’m not trying to comfort you, china doll. I’m trying to bitch slap you back to reality.”
“Then you’re doing an awesome job. I feel successfully bitch slapped.” I rubbed my cheek as Alex dropped the cereal in front of me and gave me the Eat or else look. I’d had that look directed my way a bunch of times lately.
Near and Far Page 23
