Out Rider

by Lindsay McKenna

  “When they don’t want to fix themselves,” Dev said, “that’s the stance they take. If you have a drug or alcohol addiction, you gotta wanna.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You gotta wanna quit,” Dev said with a slight one-cornered smile, opening her hands. “And most addicted people don’t want to quit. It doesn’t matter if they spend a lot of money buying the drugs, or what it does to their loved ones or their children. They really don’t care about anyone except themselves. It’s an awful situation.”

  “Yeah,” Sloan rasped, “it sure as hell was. After two more years, I divorced her because Cary used me as her whipping post, blaming me for everything, the way she was, said that I was making her unhappy…”

  “Because you were trying to get her well, and she didn’t want to go there. So, she used her anger to push you away from her, Sloan. I saw that happen between my mother and father. But my mother never divorced him, and I don’t understand why to this day. I watched her disconnect emotionally from him. Now, they’re like two strangers living in the same house. There’s nothing that I can see between them anymore.”

  Shaking his head, Sloan looked up at her. “I had five years of hell. I can’t even begin to imagine eighteen years of living in that kind of toxic environment.” Dev might appear innocent and vulnerable, but Sloan knew from his own experience with Cary that she had to have some serious underlying strength. Otherwise, she would not be as resilient, would not have a healthy way of living as she did today. “Being empathic, you had to absorb all their tension.”

  Dev snorted and looked up at the puffy clouds drifting overhead. “It left me exhausted every night. I tended to hide in my bedroom to stay away from them. There was so much unspoken rage between my parents,” Dev said, “you could cut the air with a knife. If my mother wasn’t screaming at my father, or he was angry and shouting back at her, that toxic silence filled the house instead. There was always ugly energy between them.”

  “You had a continual war going on in your house,” Sloan muttered darkly. Pain came to Dev’s green eyes.

  “Yes, and I went from an eighteen-year war inside my home, then stepped into the Marine Corps and went directly into another kind of war in Afghanistan. I made some bad decisions, too. Go figure…”

  “It’s all you knew,” Sloan said gently, seeing the anguish in her expression, the way her lips compressed for a moment.

  “But you came out of a good family, Sloan. And you didn’t know Cary was a druggie. I’ve discovered that, coming out of an alcoholic’s household, I can spot an addicted person a mile away.”

  “At least you haven’t married one like I have. I had no experience at all with people like that. I do now and I agree with you. I can spot an addicted person real easy nowadays. Helluva lesson.”

  “I’m sorry you had to go through it,” Dev told him, meaning it. “It’s a special emotional hell. I would never wish it on anyone. All an addicted person does is tear up their own life and the lives of their loved ones.” Her mouth curved downward. “The loved ones, the children, if there are any, all come in second place to them getting their drugs. It’s a terrible situation…”

  “It is,” Sloan agreed thickly.

  “You divorced Cary when you were twenty-seven, then?”

  “Yes. I couldn’t get her to change. The more I tried, the angrier and more accusing she became.”

  “You hung in there a long time,” Dev said quietly. “If I hadn’t been a kid, I would have walked out of my home situation long before age eighteen.” She laughed bitterly. “In fact, I was always running away. I didn’t realize why. I felt trapped and suffocated in that house. I felt like I was slowly dying. Starting at ten years old, I drove my father nuts. I’d pack my knapsack full of clothes and food, slip out my bedroom window and head on down the highway. I didn’t know where I was going, but I just knew if I didn’t run away, I was lost to myself.”

  Sloan studied her, the silence hanging between them. “Your spirit was dying.” He saw her tilt her head, giving him an understanding look.

  “Yes, but as a little kid, you don’t realize that. All I realized was if I didn’t try to run away, to leave my father far behind me, I’d feel like I was going to die. It was a terrible feeling to have, Sloan. I loved my mother, but she was gone three to four days at a time because of her flight demands. I was alone with him and he didn’t try to hide his drinking from me. He’d get so drunk, he’d pass out on the couch or bed after a while. I was relieved when he did. Those were the only times he left me alone.”

  “What do you mean?” Sloan asked.

  “He’d scream and yell at me. Tell me I was underfoot. That he wished I hadn’t been born. That I was a pain in the ass he had to always take care of.”

  “Damn,” Sloan growled, feeling anger flow through him.

  “My mom wasn’t around to protect me,” Dev said simply, smoothing the blanket out in front of her knees. “And when I tried to tell her what happened when she got home, she didn’t want to hear it. I think the long hours, the flying and knowing she was coming home to a drunk husband was just too much for her. I was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I was just one load too many for her to carry.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “You were caught in a trap that wasn’t of your making.” And then Sloan grimaced. “Unlike me, who walked into it with his eyes open, as an adult.”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself, Sloan. You had no experience with a drug-addicted personality. They’re chameleons. They become what you need them to be when you’re around them. When you’re gone, they revert back to who they really are. It usually takes people years to figure out what’s going on because they’re so good at manipulating other people’s minds and emotions.”

  Sloan gave her an admiring look. “What impresses me the most about you, Dev, is that you not only survived that family hell, but look at you now. You’re making a good life for yourself. You learned a helluva lot of lessons growing up in that snake pit. And you do good things for people.” He gestured to Bella, who sat near her. “You save people’s lives. That’s a pretty strong statement about who you are. You care. You’re connected with others. You serve in a positive way within society.”

  “I didn’t want to be like my father,” Dev said sadly. “To this day, I’m angry at him for what he did to me, to my mother. I just can’t understand why they’re still together.”

  Sloan raised his brows and ventured, “Is she an enabler? That’s what I learned when I went to a drug counselor to start understanding Cary and myself. I learned I was enabling her.” Shaking his head, Sloan muttered, “Those counseling sessions showed me how I was contributing and feeding into her behavior.”

  “Yes, but Cary knew exactly what she was doing to you, Sloan. If she really loved you, she wouldn’t have done that to you. Druggies see their entire life through a drug filter. They don’t really see you. Not ever.” Her voice grew hoarse. “My father never saw me. Nor did he see my mother. Not to this day…”

  Feeling her anguish, Sloan rasped, “I can’t imagine the pain it causes you, Dev. I really can’t, because I had a good family who loves me. I went back home after divorcing Cary to try to get my head screwed on straight. My parents had seen her behavior, but they hadn’t ever seen a drug personality around and couldn’t identify Cary’s issues any more than I could. But we sure all learned from it.” He picked up a dry piece of a pine twig and snapped it in two between his fingers. It was symbolic of his broken marriage. Of the bad choice he’d made. “And,” he said, “I was fighting PTSD. I didn’t understand what it was doing to me except that I felt numb.”

  “And where are you today with that numbness?”

  “I’m feeling again,” Sloan promised, seeing hope spring to life in her eyes. “Dr. McPherson has helped a lot.”

  “So you can feel anger? Happiness? Everything in between?”

  “Yes, the whole gamut.” Sloan sighed, relief in his tone. “I never thought I’d feel as g
rateful as I did when I felt my emotions starting to come back online as the cortisol reduced back to normal levels within me. I welcome them all back. I’d rather feel them, even the negative ones, than feel dead inside.”

  Dev nodded, frowning. “Maybe I should go talk to her soon, then. I have my feelings. I never lost them. But I hate this constant state of high anxiety I wrestle with when I’m awake. I have trouble sleeping, too.” She pointed to the darkness beneath her eyes.

  “Ask her to help you get your cortisol down to normal,” Sloan advised her, “and you will sleep like a baby at night. It also made most of my weekly nightmares go away, for good, too.”

  Dev pulled out her cell phone and clicked on her address book. “I’m sick to death of feeling like this. I’d like to have a normal life again.” She wrote the note to herself to call Jordana tomorrow. Dev managed a choked laugh. “Not that I’ve ever led a normal life…”

  CHAPTER NINE

  DEV KNEW SHE wasn’t a normal person, at least inwardly. Just seeing the understanding come to Sloan’s eyes at her last statement made her heart flutter. “I feel like I’ve done nothing but make one huge mistake after another,” she admitted. “I see now that the war in my family made going into the Marine Corps, and then deploying to a combat zone was more of the same pattern being played out.” She opened her hands. “When I got that, I left the military. I’d taken on a physical wound to mirror the emotional wounds I received from my family.”

  “Those wounds are never easy to see,” Sloan agreed.

  “Right.” Dev lifted her head and held his sympathetic gaze. Sloan made it so easy to talk to him. There was never judgment on his part. He simply listened. “The one good thing that happened in my life was meeting Sergeant Bill Savona. He was a Marine K-9 guy who helped me get my feet under me on my first deployment over in Afghanistan. At that time, I had a different bomb-sniffing dog. His name was King and he was a beautiful black Labrador. Bill showed me the ropes and would go out on patrol with me.” Her voice fell and Dev felt old pain move into her heart. “He was a good person, Sloan. I eventually fell in love with him.”

  “Well, if he was in the K-9 corps,” Sloan said, “there had to be a lot of good things about him going on. Animals like those who are highly sensitive and they wouldn’t tolerate what I’d call a flawed human being.”

  She smiled a little, her gaze moving to the mirrorlike pond. “You’re right. I had nine months working with Bill and we just sort of fell in love with one another over time. Not that we meant to or anything, because personal relationships aren’t encouraged by the military, as you know. It just happened.”

  “What kind of man was he?”

  The corners of her mouth softened. “The best. He was the one and only healthy guy I’d ever met. He came out of an Italian family in New York City, was street-smart, and that’s what he taught me out there while we were looking for bombs buried in the dirt. Bill could read the villagers and he showed me that how a person walked, their facial expressions, their body language, was making a statement we could understand. Many times, Bill would talk to a villager and he’d come away with so much good intel. The Marine company we were in always relied on his insights. He was phenomenal in that way.”

  “He also saw you.”

  Her heart fell. “Yes, and to this day, I don’t know how. All I do know is I was in love for the first time in my life. Bill made me laugh. He was such a joker. And he didn’t play mean jokes on people, either. He had this ability to pull a smile or laugh out of everyone. He really lifted me. Made me feel good about myself, who I was.”

  “Did he know about your family life?”

  She grinned wryly. “Bill was like his dog, forever snooping around and testing the air. Yes, that’s how we met after I got assigned to his company. I guess I was looking sad or something and he came over, pulled me aside for a walk and asked me why. I’d just seen my mother at an airport she was flying into before I left on a military C-5 for overseas. I’d finally got up the courage to ask her why she wouldn’t leave my father.” Rubbing her brow, she glanced at Sloan, whose expression was concerned. “She said my father was like a sick animal, and she could never leave a sick animal because he needed help.”

  “That’s enabling.”

  “Yep, sure was. By that time, I’d gotten some counseling myself and understood what enabling was. I think I cried half the way to Afghanistan over her answer. She was just as trapped as he is. Still is…”

  “But Bill pulled you out of it?”

  Nodding, Dev said, “He had a way of getting to the heart of the issue. And he was a good listener like you are, Sloan. Bill never judged me. He just listened and didn’t say anything until I was done talking.” She reached over as Bella crawled onto the blanket and placed her head on her thigh, her brown gaze reflecting concern. Dev knew Bella was picking up on her emotions, none of them good. All of them filled with regret and grief. “I found myself dumping everything about my family and growing-up years on Bill. It was a long walk and by the time we came back to HQ in the village where we were staying, he knew the good, bad and ugly sides of me. I’d never dumped any of this on anyone except my counselor. I was shocked and worried afterward that he’d gossip to the other guys. But he never did. He treated me like I was sacred or something.” Dev petted Bella and added, “He gave me confidence, Sloan. That nine months in the field with him helped me get so much that was wrong with me right. And he did it with his observations, his own life experience.”

  “He cared deeply for you,” Sloan offered.

  “Yes…it was love. I didn’t realize it at first, but the last three months we had together, I knew it was love. And I was so afraid to admit it to myself…to him.”

  “Because of the nature of your deployment? The daily danger?”

  “Yes.” Dev pushed strands of hair off her brow. “Bill had no trouble admitting it to me, however.” She smiled fondly. “He came up to me one day after we’d gotten off a six-hour patrol and had this handful of blue wildflowers. He gave them to me and then crouched down in front of me and asked me to marry him. I was so shocked, but I knew he was serious. I think he saw my surprise and told me he’d fallen in love with me. That he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. And that he could offer me not only his heart, but his big happy Italian family, too. He swore that his family would love me to pieces, like he did.” Tears burned in her eyes and Dev closed them, remembering that day so vividly. Pressing her fingers gently against her eyelids, she willed them away. Later, she opened her eyes and whispered unsteadily, “You have to understand, Sloan, that I didn’t think I was lovable. I know it sounds stupid, but at nineteen, I didn’t really know who I was. So his wanting to marry me just took me by complete surprise.”

  “I think he knew what he wanted,” Sloan said. “And he loved you. Even if you didn’t see yourself, he did.”

  Anguish thrashed through her and Dev choked out, “Yes… I saw that later…after…after he was killed.”

  Sloan slowly sat up and put the plastic container away. “Do you want to talk about that?”

  With a swift shake of her head, Dev said, “No…not today…”

  “Fair enough,” Sloan murmured. Looking up, he asked, “Are you about ready to start the ride back?”

  Relief jagged through Dev and she rose to her feet. Bella leaped up, staying close to her thigh, as if sensing she needed a little doggy support right now. “Yes, I’m ready.” Dev saw the thoughtful expression on Sloan’s face. There was such a powerful urge to walk across that red blanket and into his arms as he stood. In that moment, Dev realized just how much Bill Savona and Sloan Rankin were alike. Both men possessed a quiet confidence that radiated around them like warming sunlight. Both men had deep insights into people and animals. Bill had been like the father confessor to all the men in that Marine company. She would bet that a lot of other forest rangers just naturally gravitated toward Sloan in the same way. God knew she had.

  Her heart opened as she p
icked up the blanket, shook it out and then quickly folded it up and handed it to him. When their fingers met, Dev greedily absorbed the contact. Somehow, she knew Sloan would be a tender lover. Her lower body stirred, as if to reaffirm that knowing deep within her. She saw compassion in Sloan’s dark blue eyes—compassion for her. And that same wonderful, invisible embrace surrounded her as she got ready to mount Goldy. Now, she recognized it for what it was: Sloan’s care for her.

  As Dev mounted, she was careful not to try to name what she felt coming from Sloan. Settling into the Western saddle, she watched him bonelessly mount lanky Rocky, as if born to the horse. The Stetson darkened his upper face; his profile was strong and rugged. There was nothing to dislike about him. Sloan now knew her fears of commitment, of losing a man she had loved once. He seemed content to be her friend. As she turned Goldy around, with Bella leaping and catching up to them, Dev realized in that moment that Bill had been her friend first, too, before they fell in love with one another.

  As they rode slowly across the sunlit meadow, the lake behind them, Dev luxuriated in the sunlit warmth vying against the coolness of the mountains. At this altitude, it never got really hot. She heard birds calling to one another, but no warning calls from blue jays. She was grateful to Sloan as he trotted up to ride at her side. He was teaching her the finer points of being in this park. This one had more dangers to watch out for than her last assignment in the Smokys. Still, as her mind touched upon events in her life, Dev felt far more threatened by a human named Bart Gordon than any grizzly. She’d felt worry around Sloan when she’d told him about Gordon. Sloan was concerned about it, and she sensed his worry even now. Why?

  Dev watched Mouse and Bella gallop ahead of them and dive down onto the trail at the edge of the meadow. It was a narrow path, allowing only one horse and rider at a time. Sloan moved ahead of her and took the lead. Dev was content to follow. She was still amazed by the fact that being around Sloan dissolved all the anxiety that normally hung like a choke chain around her throat twenty-four hours a day.