Waiting for Wyatt (Red Dirt #1)

by S. D. Hendrickson

  “You know what I think? I think your heart is too big for your own good. That’s why you get like this. You’re overanalyzing it all. We can be friends, Wyatt.”

  “You don’t know anything. Don’t be twisting shit up in your head and making me into something I’m not. I just want to be left alone.”

  “I don’t have to twist things up. I see it. You don’t have the pokerface you think you have either. And no one likes to be alone. You like it that I’m here. Just admit it.”

  “You are here because you won’t stay away. You show up here, knocking on my door, making me feel guilty. Girls like you are used to always getting their way. No one ever tells you no. It doesn’t work that way with me.”

  “I’m here because you invited me back, you jerk!” I spat at him. “You think hurting my feelings will make me leave?”

  “I hurt your feelings? You rebound faster than Charlie, running around here, sticking your nose into things, no matter how many times I tell you to mind your own damn business.”

  “Why are you such an awful person?”

  “Do you think asking a hundred annoying questions will make me finally answer one?” He glared back at me as we slipped into a competitive stare.

  “Yes.”

  “The answer is no. There are things you don’t know about me. And I don’t want you to know them. I am not some do-gooder here who takes care of a bunch of mutts. I’m the bad guy. You need to get that through your blonde head. And . . . I’m taking back my invite.”

  “You can’t take it back.”

  “I can, and I just did. Go home, Emma.” His voice bit hard on my name.

  “Wyatt, come on.”

  “Go say goodbye to Charlie. Then get your shit and leave. We’re done here. Don’t come back.”

  With that, Wyatt opened the play area and Gus came trotting out. I stood frozen in place, watching the backside of the most complicated and irritating person I’d ever met. He was no bruised or rotten apple. Wyatt was an onion; the nasty purple kind that ruined everything.

  I pulled Charlie out and carried him toward the kennel. His giant ears stood alert, looking for Gus. Hugging him tighter to my chest, I felt sad and angry. I couldn’t say goodbye to Charlie forever. Not yet anyway, and not because Wyatt had decided to have a temper tantrum.

  “Charlie. Don’t listen to him.” I scratched behind his brown ears and then under the gray chin. His sweet eyes watched me talk. “I’ll be back to see you again.”

  Closing the gate, my flip-flops clicked as I walked over to his trailer. Pain twisted under my knee, but I ignored each stabbing jolt through my leg.

  I knew he watched my every move from behind the thick curtains. Stomping all the way up the steps, I came to a halt in front of the aluminum door. I wanted to snatch the handle and barge into his cave. Let him react to that kind of probing into his life.

  “You can’t get rid of me that easy, Wyatt Caulfield,” I shouted loud at his presence just on the other side of the thin wall. “I know you can hear me. I’m coming back.”

  STILL FUMING MAD, I PULLED in front of the library to get Blaire. She climbed into the passenger’s seat, wearing her blue crocheted wool hat in the hundred-degree heat. Her dirty-blonde strands stuck out the bottom like long pieces of straw. My identical brown eyes stared back from her face. “So the unsub’s pissed at you.”

  “Don’t start that again.” I pulled out before she got the latch buckled on her seat belt.

  “Slow the hell down,” she shrieked.

  “I’m going the speed limit.”

  “You are not. I can see the damn numbers.”

  “You don’t even drive. You know nothing about what the limit is on this road.” I took the corner, hearing the tires screech.

  “Shit!” Blaire yelled when I floored the gas through the yellow—well, red light. A car honked as I cleared the intersection.

  Wyatt plagued every confusing thought on the twenty-minute drive to our hometown of Beckett. He took back my invite. Who takes back invites? People don’t take back invites! Once the words left your lips, you had to grin and bear it. Every word said better come out as a good one because you had to pay the price for them.

  I pushed the gas down to the floor as I topped the hill on the outskirts of town, feeling the tires lift slightly off the pavement. My stomach caught in my throat, and Blaire gasped. “Shit, Emma. Stop messing around.”

  I ignored her words. Wyatt and his complicated issues wrapped through my head. I didn’t know how long he’d been barricaded up in that trailer. The socially awkward recluse spent way too much time by himself. Whatever had pushed him to shut down had pushed him good. All a big, guarded mystery behind his closed-off mind that he refused to share with me.

  I parked in front of my parents’ house. It wasn’t a big one. Average I guess, for Beckett. Our mother worked as a teller at a bank while our father worked at the car dealership over in Stillwater. He’d been employed there in some capacity since high school. After we were born, he’d moved up to a sales position. And he’d bought us the Fusion for our eighteenth birthday.

  In the world of parents, they were good ones. Loving. Caring. Encouraging and very involved in our lives. They were standing faithfully at the track meet on the worst day of my life. The day my running career ended. Even though I was cursed with the short legs of a Smurf, I had placed second in the state track meet my junior year. My coach said I may be little, but I had Hulk-size determination, beating in the heart of a cross-country runner. He said I was guaranteed a scholarship as long as my performance continued.

  But my senior year, I fell in the middle of the season. It was just a regular track meet. Nothing special. My knee had been acting up. I had iced it the night before, which was the usual protocol. During the tenth mile, I hit the ground just right, twisting my knee, causing splintered pieces of bone to burst right through the skin in a bloody mess. I had surgery and drain tubes for a week, followed by four weeks bound in plaster and another four weeks trapped in a horrendous boot.

  The accident had devastated me. I loved to run. I needed to run. My body craved the euphoric moment that happened like clockwork. I missed it every single day.

  Losing the ability to run wasn’t technically the worst part of my fall. I had counted on the scholarship for school. After the accident, I didn’t have many options. My sister went to college, and I had followed along with her as she moved closer to campus. And now, she was going to graduate with a double major in business and music education while I had a few credits that might get me into nursing school one day.

  “Emma? Are you getting out of the car or going to Talladega for a qualifying round?” Blaire looked at me from the driveway. My mother’s newly planted yellow flowers glowed like happy beacons from the flower bed behind her. Opening the car door, I stepped out in the driveway, feeling my knee jerk at the weight required to lift my body from the seat.

  “Can you just cut me some slack? I’ve had a rough day.”

  She studied me for a moment. Worried creases outlined her puffy lips. They were the same as mine, like someone had shot three pumps of collagen into each one. “Fine. Let’s do this girly shit. Why do you like him so much? There’s lots of guys out there with way less problems.”

  “I didn’t say I liked him.”

  “But you do. I feel it. And something happened today.”

  I let out a deep breath, sitting down on the front steps of the porch before going inside the house. “Wyatt told me not to come back.”

  “Why? Did he see you drive?”

  “Blaire.” My voice shot her a warning.

  “Okay, okay. So I guess you got into a fight.” She sat down on the front steps beside me. “What happened?”

  “I said some things that upset him. I pushed, and he didn’t like it very much.” I frowned, remembering all the words I’d spat at Wyatt. None of the angry words were that horrible, but for a guy who refused to come out of his trailer, I might as well have flung the whole boo
k at him.

  “Like what?”

  “I yelled some things about Wyatt having cancer.”

  “He has cancer!” Her eyes got big. The serial killer had suddenly become human in her robot-functioning mind.

  “No, he doesn’t have cancer. I asked if he had cancer. And I may not have exactly asked. I may have yelled it at him as more of an accusation.”

  She snorted a laugh. “Wow. You really know how to help people. Don’t look into being a counselor.”

  “It’s not funny. The guy has problems.” I frowned at my sister thinking, So do you. “I just can’t figure out how to help him.”

  “Maybe you should listen to him and just leave him alone.”

  “I can’t.” I couldn’t possibly leave him alone at this point. “He needs me.”

  “Emma. You can’t help people who don’t want it. Whatever shit is going on with him, maybe you should just let it go and not get involved.”

  “It’s too late. I’m already involved. And I’m going back tomorrow.”

  “Really? After he threw you out?”

  “Yes. I screwed up. He needs help. And I have to keep trying. I have to fix this.”

  “Maybe you can’t fix him, Emma. Some shit can’t be fixed. Maybe he’s just a jackass. And there’s nothing actually wrong with him.”

  I leaned my head against the shoulder of my eccentric sister. She just didn’t get it. “I wish it was simple, but it’s not. At least, not anymore.”

  “So I guess that means you are ready to admit that you like like the jackass too?”

  I contemplated her question even though I already knew the answer. He was so awful at times, but something changed when he talked about his dogs. His voice came alive with compassion and understanding. There was a good person hiding behind the pain and anger. And maybe I was attracted to that person.

  Maybe. Just a little.

  But that wasn’t my motivation.

  “It’s not what you think,” I whispered.

  “Hmm. I don’t think you are supposed to fall for the people you are trying to help. That’s like a classic textbook violation or something.”

  “I know. That’s why I’m not getting involved with him.”

  “You are such a liar.”

  I decided not to argue with her. We sat on the steps for a few more minutes as I thought about Wyatt. I thought about him and the dogs. His lonely existence. I thought about where I went wrong. What I could do differently. I pushed too much and too fast. I pictured his sad face, and it pulled at my heart.

  Wyatt had never said that his life was filled with nothing. He had never said it was a life of solitude. He had never shared that part with me. But I just knew. I felt it. Something in my gut said, Don’t give up.

  Everyone deserved to have someone think about them, and I wasn’t sure anyone thought about Wyatt. So I thought about him. I thought about his soft lips. I thought about his dimples. I thought about his sadness. It drew me in and twisted up my insides.

  I created all sorts of backstories in my head. Maybe he was ex-military. Maybe the time away had screwed with his brain, and he was out there, spending time with his dogs until it felt right again. Maybe he’d lost someone. The girl he loved. Maybe it was a little of both. Maybe he cheated on her. Maybe she cheated on him while he was away and he went crazy when he returned home. Maybe she died. Maybe she was the one who had cancer.

  Either way, I wanted to save him from the depths of whatever was making Wyatt this way. I wanted to pull him from the dark pit that made his eyes ache in pain. The guy needed me whether he wanted to admit it or not.

  I rubbed my forehead as the thoughts tumbled around inside my head. I jumped up from the steps, holding out a hand to pull my sister to her feet. “Come on. Let’s go in the house.”

  It did me no good, sitting around thinking up a hundred different stories because none of them were his story.

  ON FRIDAY, I WENT BACK to visit Wyatt. I knew the soft approach wouldn’t work again. Once inside the fence, I mashed the Fusion’s gas pedal to the ground. The grass exploded under the car as I drove fast and reckless. The back tires fishtailed over the ruts. I skidded to a stop in the dirt parking area in front of his trailer.

  Wyatt ran out of the kennel room. Jumping from the driver’s seat, I headed straight toward the building’s door. I’d caught him off guard. Good. He needed a nice rattling.

  “I’m back.” I walked straight past him, never making eye contact. My flat lips spat out the words. “And don’t worry. I didn’t bring any peace offerings to offend you.”

  Entering the kennel, I heard footsteps, following close to my own tennis shoes. I’d pulled my hair into a ponytail today. I knew it was my imagination, but I swore I felt his breath steaming down my bare neck.

  I stopped at Cye’s gate, trying to compose myself before I sent the wrong message to my scared friend. Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath and hummed a little song. My shoulders relaxed and my eyes opened clear, with a purpose.

  Once I was calm and collected, I lifted the metal handle and crawled on my hands and knees inside the entrance. His single eye watched from the corner. I went a few inches further than the last time and put the bone on the cement. I scooted out backward and stood up.

  I felt his presence a few feet away. Waiting until I had Cye’s gate closed, I turned around to confront Wyatt.

  “You not trust me now? Going to watch everything I do? Are you afraid I’ll set them all free? Steal them? Whisper bad things about you in their ears? Really, Wyatt? Just go back to your trailer.”

  He seemed confused at the huffy outburst. I stormed past Wyatt to the wall with the leashes. I removed two and crossed back in front of him. I pulled Charlie out and latched him to the end of the black one. I opened the kennel that held Ricky Bobby. I attached the rat terrier to the red leash. Wyatt followed my every step with his bewildered eyes.

  “We are going on a run,” I said matter-of-factly. “Please get out of our way since you insist on standing here watching me.”

  “Should you do that with your leg?”

  “My leg is none of your business.”

  Our eyes caught for a split second, then I pulled away. I left at a small trot out the front entrance. Charlie was happy to be free of the kennel. Ricky Bobby bounced along on three legs. I hobbled on my two, feeling the pain in my knee. It hurt, but I kept going. I wanted to fly fast across the open space. I wanted to feel the wind in my face.

  I picked up the pace. Each step over the rough grass vibrated the cells of my skin. The rush started in the pit of my stomach. I tilted my head back, feeling the smile on my lips. I was no longer just running through the open field—I was part of the blades of grass. I was one of them. Suddenly, my body got all tingly and warm as I transcended into sweet oblivion. I floated across the ground, savoring the release.

  It was better than being drunk on tequila or having sex. Not that I’d had any real experience to use as a comparison. I’d gotten drunk a couple of times after work with some of the girls from the bookstore. It wasn’t that glamorous. As for the sex part, people said it was better than running, but I’d yet to find out. Maybe one day the right guy would prove me wrong.

  Kicking it up a notch, I kept going faster and faster, stumbling along the uneven ground. The air felt hot in my lungs. It was too early in the afternoon for a run, but I didn’t care. I kept going, farther and farther away from the kennel.

  The pain gripped tighter around my calf. It rolled over my knee and into my thigh. I kicked my leg forward, and then I went down. I face-planted, leaving a trail of scrapes on my arms and legs.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” I muttered to myself. Grabbing the leashes, I held tight to the dogs. I tried to get up, but it was too much. It hurt. It hurt really bad this time.

  The words of the doctor haunted me as I rolled over on my back, staring up at the sun as it beat down from the sky. Ricky Bobby licked my nose. Charlie licked my hand. I stretched my leg up into th
e air, flexing the muscles.

  “Are you happy now?”

  I jumped at the sound of his voice. “Do you have to keep doing that? Don’t sneak up on people.”

  “You okay?”

  I glared at Wyatt. “I’m fine.”

  “Come on. Let’s go back and look at the damage. ” He reached down, scooping me up in his arms.

  “What are you doing!” I struggled to get free. “Put me down.”

  “Just relax, Emma.” My name flowed softly off his tongue. “Let go of the leashes. They’ll follow us back.”

  Wyatt carried me across the meadow with one arm under my legs and the other around my back. I felt small against his large body as he touched me in a hundred different places. His smell came from everywhere.

  I relaxed into his chest, feeling the firm muscles under his shirt. My eyes followed the curve of his neck to his face to his lips. They were soft and full today. Wyatt’s a good kisser. I contemplated the thought. I could only imagine how those lips would feel against mine—all angry and soft.

  He glanced down at me, then quickly looked away. “Don’t go there, Emma,” he muttered.

  “What?”

  “You know what.” The edge of his jaw grew tight like he’d read those thoughts I’d had about kissing him.

  We reached the kennel, but he kept on walking until the trailer door came into view. With little effort, Wyatt opened the door and balanced me at the same time. I scrambled to look at everything in his trailer as he placed me on the couch. I was finally inside his cave.

  “I’ll take them back to the kennel. You just sit there a minute.”

  He turned around and shut the door. The dark-brown curtains blocked the hot sun from inside the trailer. My eyes scanned the room. Everything screamed simple and organized. The living room was almost bare except for a large bookcase where most people would put an entertainment center.

  I looked around, taking in the whole living room and kitchen area. Wyatt had no television, radio, gaming system, or computer. The guy had nothing of the kind in any corner—just a giant bookshelf of paperbacks and a few hardcovers on the top row.