My whole body started to shake. The words. The thoughts. It was getting to me. I had never talked to anyone about that night. Not really. Not in a way that I was telling Emma.
I held her gaze, seeing the deep emotions flash across her sweet face. A faint wetness glowed on the edges of her lashes. I wanted to reach out and touch it. Our eyes stayed locked in one of our probing stares. I saw a flash. She felt sorry for me. Somewhere inside that soft heart, she believed I was still fixable.
“They hated me.” I faltered, seeing a tear roll down her cheek. “My father didn’t sit at the hospital because he was worried about his son. He had to stay there to keep people away from me. I’m hated by just about everyone in Gibbs. I’m the guy who brought the whole town literally to their knees. They prayed for Marcus to live. And they prayed for me to rot away in jail.”
Her hands trembled. She balled those perfect fingers into a tight fist, working hard to keep her composure. Why couldn’t Emma just break and run out the damn door? I wanted this over. I wanted her gone. She needed to leave me here and go back to her life.
“But you said it was freezing rain. I mean, you were a kid . . . it was an accident.”
“It wasn’t any damn accident.” I slapped the arm of the chair, making her jump. “And I wasn’t any damn kid. It was just another incident by a guy who couldn’t keep his shit together. They tested me, you know. My blood alcohol was off the charts. Like a walking coma, but I was completely awake, driving a car down the damn road.”
I was yelling at this point, but I didn’t care. It was the truth. “It plays over and over again in my head. Every day like a horror movie, and I want to scream at myself to wake up. To not get in the car. But it’s not a dream. It’s all very real. I forced Willa to get in there. I let Marcus think I was better off than him that night. I did it. There’s no excuse or way for you to rationalize it. I’m responsible.”
“Then why aren’t you in prison?”
“My father. The judge. I don’t know. They waited for a couple of months to have the trial. The court didn’t know how to prosecute me because Marcus was in ICU. When they decided he would live, my father pushed for probation. They laughed in his face. Marcus’s dad is the mayor and half a city block burned down that night. The insurance office, the new bank, some clothing store, and the post office. Millions in damages.”
I let out a cryptic laugh. “People get really crazy when you burn down a post office. Between his dad and business owners, they fought hard for me to go to jail. And I wanted it. I had wanted it so damn bad. My father and I argued, over and over again. He said he was looking out for my future. But he didn’t understand.”
I would’ve done anything to trade places with my sister. With my best friend. But that wasn’t possible. So I wanted prison. I wanted to be there until someone figured out a way to fix them.
“Fighting for me was the last thing my father did before they fired him. The whole town had loved my dad until he went to bat for me, and then everyone turned on him. They wanted him gone. From his job. From town. But he didn’t budge. He fought for me anyway.”
Letting out a slow breath, I thought about the meeting that had sealed my fate. “The judge knew all of us and offered a choice. Three years in prison with possibility of parole. Or five years here on house arrest if I pled guilty to a couple of felonies. My father made the decision for me. And here I am.”
“He was right,” she whispered. “This is better than prison.”
“No. He wanted to control the courts and my punishment—the way he always wanted to control everything in my life. But this wasn’t about him. I should be locked away with the other selfish bastards who destroy people.”
“I don’t think. I mean. Wyatt, I . . .” Her eyes watered up again as she struggled to continue her faith in me. “But you aren’t that person. Not anymore. Not now. This place has done you good.”
“You still want to believe in the good even when you see the bad. But that’s not me, Emma.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I purposely got drunk. I got in a car. I drove down the road. I hurt people. I hurt their families. I hurt their friends. I hurt my family. That’s who I really am. That’s the person you want to kiss. The person you want to touch. The person you are trying so damn hard to save.”
Her brown eyes betrayed every painful emotion in her heart. Maybe I should’ve spat out the awful truth on her second visit when she insisted on hearing my story. I could’ve stopped the feelings. I could’ve shut them off with the slice of a knife. Instead, I let Emma get close. I let her think I was safe. And now, I burned this innocent girl with the heat of the same fire that had destroyed everything else.
“You should go,” I whispered, hearing the catch in my voice. The pain of telling her goodbye wasn’t something I deserved to feel. I didn’t deserve to care or mourn for her. I wanted to shut it down. Her sweet face stared back at me. Crushing me. Killing me.
“Get out!” My voice grated on the words with a slight growl. “I said get the fuck out! I don’t want to see you here again.”
Another tear fell off her long lashes. It rolled down her cheek, leaving a wet streak that trailed down her neck.
“I said leave. This isn’t a game anymore. I want you out of my damn house. And never come back.”
She stood up from the couch. Her leg twisted a little as she put weight on her right foot. I wanted to pull her against my chest. I wanted to carry her so it didn’t hurt. Those thoughts floated through my heart as Emma limped with her messed-up knee. She stopped just in front of me. Staring at me. She cried in open sobs. Her pain punched me in the damn gut.
“Get the fuck out!”
“Or what?” Her lips quivered just a bit. My fists clenched tight. The war ragged inside my heart. I wanted to kiss her so damn bad. Wipe away the tears. Taste the salt on my tongue. Run my hands over her soft skin. I needed to hold her. I needed to feel her body wrapped around me. I needed Emma and I hated the very thought.
“Or I will physically throw you out the damn door.”
The sadness twisted up on her face as she listened to my empty threat. “I know you would never hurt me, Wyatt. But I’ll go. Let you calm down.”
Emma turned to leave, her limp making those hips sway back and forth. She didn’t shut the aluminum door. Maybe she did it on purpose. Maybe she left it wide open, hoping I would call for her to come back. Instead, I got up from the couch and just stood in the doorway, making sure she got to the car without falling in the yard. Just like I always did when she left.
The motor came to life, and she slowly left the kennel. I let out a deep breath, feeling the weight on my shoulders grow heavier as she disappeared. I couldn’t even go after Emma if I wanted to.
Slamming the door shut, the whole trailer shook with the impact. I threw the lamp against the wall, sending the room into darkness. I fell into my old chair. My body found the familiar groove.
The silent air filled each breath of my lungs. I embraced the empty solitude. The pain in my chest grew stronger. She was gone. Emma wasn’t coming back. I deserved nothing. I deserved no one. I sure as hell didn’t deserve a girl like her.
They had banished me to the middle of nowhere, yet I still managed to hurt someone. As I stared into space, another layer of guilt pierced into my heart. I thought about the part I didn’t share with Emma. The part that still felt like a fresh stab wound in my chest.
Trevor had always struggled to keep his shit together. In those months following the accident—somewhere in the course of the hearings, and the hospital, and Marcus being in ICU, and me being in jail—Trevor must have decided it was all too much for him.
His friends were gone. The whole damn town was pointing fingers, blaming his parties and blaming the sheriff’s office for not condemning his rundown house years ago.
Right before they sent me out here, Trevor overdosed on a cocktail of drugs and alcohol. I don’t know if it was an accident or on purpose. As usual, his dad didn’t come home for day
s. Trevor had just laid there—his body mixed in with the trash on the dirty floor—forgotten even in death.
My fingers gripped the arms of the chair. They dug deep into the leather as I closed my eyes. I would be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about it myself—but death would just be the easy way out of my guilt.
MY EYES OPENED AT EXACTLY six in the morning. I knew this fact without ever looking at a clock. It had taken me almost three months of discipline to accomplish. Now, it happened like second nature—even after a day as fucked up as yesterday.
Pulling off the covers, I went straight to the bathroom. Everything progressed along like the cogs of a damn wheel in a grandfather clock. I put on a T-shirt and old athletic shorts before slipping into my running shoes.
Leaving the trailer, I felt the heat of the early sun as it rose in the sky. Sweat soaked my shirt even at this hour in the morning. I followed the familiar dirt path in the worn pasture grass—one I could’ve run even on the blackest of nights from memory.
My actions were not for the physical exercise. Instead, they served as more of a reminder of my confinement. I wanted to feel the exact extent of my prison.
Each morning, I ran a path based on my ankle monitor—every step exactly four inches from where the box would signal the authorities. It took me over a week to get it marked out with precision based on the yellow warning light.
As I went farther out in the pasture, I reached the area where Emma had fell down in the grass during her run. I cursed under my breath as she invaded my thoughts.
Ever since the day she’d appeared at the kennel, I’d woken with the same question: Would Emma come back today? The simple thought was always followed by the torrid ones, like how I imagined her lips would feel if I touched them with my tongue.
But today was different. I knew she tasted like cinnamon from the tube of ChapStick she kept in her pocket, always smearing it across her soft lips out of habit.
But that wasn’t the biggest change. I knew deep in my gut she wasn’t coming back. This fact caused my chest to catch. Emma wasn’t coming back because I’d told her the truth and then threw her ass out the door.
“Shit,” I cursed out loud, trying to snuff the thoughts. I wanted to punch something.
Instead, I pushed myself harder, pounding my feet into the ground until I was sprinting through the pasture. By the time I reached my trailer, my lungs begged for air. I sat down on the cement steps of my home. I hated the place. Diana had insisted on bringing the trailer out to the kennel even though I told her a cot in the office would’ve been just fine.
After I stretched my leg for a few minutes, I walked inside and took a shower. In my brief time in county jail, I’d never experienced the luxury of warm water. So I never used the hot water tank in the trailer. I always ran it cold, even last January when Oklahoma had the record-setting snowstorm.
I figured regular prison would be similar to those days I’d spent in lockup after Marcus’s dad had me arrested. The experience should’ve scared the shit out of me. But it didn’t.
I knew real fear, deeper than any damn prison. The kind that shocked the words from my throat and made my blood turn cold. I’d felt it every single time I’d witnessed Willa have a seizure. I’d felt the guilt like nails in my heart as I watched her eyes roll back in her head and her body beat against the floor while I waited to see if this attack would be the one to finally kill her.
The images gripped my whole body, and I couldn’t think. Willa in the ER. Willa lying on the floor of the living room. Willa flopping around in the front yard. My mom crying because there was absolutely nothing she could do to help my sister. Me looking into my mom’s eyes as she struggled to look back.
As those images paralyzed my muscles, I found myself frozen in place, holding the razor next to my cheek. My hand jerked, causing a small cut right above my jaw.
“Shit.” The word whispered from my lips.
I saw the red trickle down my skin. I watched it for a moment, remembering the bad seizure that happened when I’d taken Willa to the grocery store. The one where she’d fallen down in the aisle by the apples and blood rolled out of her mouth because she’d bitten her tongue so hard it had needed stitches. The one where everyone had just stared at us—at me—while judging and blaming instead of helping.
I let out a deep breath, blocking out the memory. I needed to get to work. Wiping the blood off with my thumb, I applied another layer of shaving gel and continued to remove every single hair from my face.
I dressed in jeans and work boots. After a bowl of Cap’n Crunch, I headed to the kennel. Gus and Gatsby were both still in the holding pen. I felt bad for sticking them in the kennel all night, but I hadn’t left my old chair until after midnight. The Labrador lifted his head as I approached. My sister’s Jack Russell was curled up next to him.
Willa had gotten Gus from this very place on her fourteenth birthday. Most girls her age begged for makeup and shit, but my sister wanted a pet. My dad had arranged for her to pick one from the assortment Diana had kept at her kennel. Back then, she only had a few dogs in residence even though she’d built the facility to hold fifty rescue animals. The place didn’t grow to its full capacity until I came to live out here to take care of them.
My sister had wanted Gus from the moment she’d seen the little guy. She brought him home, and he immediately ruled our house as king. She loved him. My whole family loved him.
My thoughts disappeared into the memory of the night Gus and I had come out here. They twisted away, paralyzing me, sending me back to that moment.
I leaned against the wall next to my closet. I just wanted to get this over with and not speak to them. I just wanted out of this damn house. I couldn’t bear to look at them. I couldn’t bear to see myself in their eyes. I’d caused so much pain and destruction.
I looked around the room. I was supposed to be packing, but I wasn’t planning to take a damn thing. Gus came into my room, resting his head on my knee. He knew something was up. I scratched behind his ears.
Glancing up, I saw Willa tiptoeing into my room. She took a seat on my bed. The sad look on her face just about destroyed me. My throat got tight as I struggled to look her in the eyes. I’d fucked up her head and now I was breaking her heart by being sent away.
I stared at the floor as she fidgeted around, twisting her fingers. If she broke down in a teary goodbye, I just might lose my damn mind. It was all too much. I couldn’t handle seeing her like this. My chest constricted into the beginning of another panic attack.
“I think you should take Gus,” she whispered.
My eyes flashed to hers. “No.”
“I know you blame yourself. You want to fix this. Fix me. You know that’s not really possible. I hate that you’re going away. We won’t see you. I’m so sorry. I never wanted this to happen. I’m going to worry about you every day.”
“Please don’t,” I whispered. “You need to just focus on getting better.”
“I will always worry about you, Wyatt. Don’t you know that? But it won’t feel so bad if I know that Gus is out there with you. I don’t think I can handle you being all alone. It will stress me out, and I don’t do so good when I get stressed out.”
I’d refused, but my sister had pulled out the king of daggers. I couldn’t say no to those words and that sadness in her eyes. So I packed a suitcase full of boxers, jeans, T-shirts—and Gus.
Snapping out of my twisted thoughts, I sucked in a deep breath, trying to calm the tightness in my chest. I let the two dogs out of the kennel. They followed me over to the door and down the path to the trailer. Gatsby walked a little sluggishly and the Jack Russell slowed his steps for the older dog. I think Gus knew who needed him the most these days. Opening the aluminum door, they went inside and headed for the bedroom. I knew those two would spend the day stretched out on the pillowtop mattress.
Returning to the kennel, I went to work on pit row. I did a few pens each day, instead of one massive cleanout. I’d learn
ed my lesson the first couple of months. Fifty kennels at one time was insane. Ten a day. Very reasonable.
There wasn’t much shit on the inside since each pen had a dog door to the outside. But the cement did get its share of dirt and other crap. I took a bucket of soapy water over to Lola’s pen. I scratched the pit behind the ears as she leaned against my leg. Her square head tilted up, grabbing my hand between her gummy lips.
Maybe I didn’t tell Emma the truth when she asked about my favorites. I thought back to the day Diana brought Lola out to the kennel. She had just picked her up from the vet. All the wounds had been still fresh as blood, and puss drained from the ripped-up sores. My boss handed me tubes of cream and a list of instructions for Lola.
It was the first time I’d asked Diana about the kennel. It was the first time I’d cared about my new world. As we talked, my questions had gone from Lola to the kind of people who did this sort of thing.
I’d never thought much about animal abuse before that night—or dog fight rings. But her words lit a fire in my chest. I’d wanted to beat the shit out of the man who had sliced up Lola. I’d fantasized about ripping his arms off and shoving them up his asshole. I might have done it too if that ankle monitor hadn’t been attached to my damn leg.
Regardless, that night had changed things for me. I couldn’t fix Willa or Marcus, but I damn sure could fix Lola and all of the other dogs. I had one job and one job only: make sure the animals lived, make sure their lives were better than where they had come from out there in the cruel world. From that day forward, I had taken my duties seriously.
Pulling my hand from Lola’s mouth, I led her out the kennel door to the fenced-in play area. I got Ponyboy and Indy, taking them out to join her. Returning back inside, I used a scrub mop on the cement. I cleaned each of their areas and then moved to the outside runs to scoop the shit from the ground.
Waiting for Wyatt (Red Dirt #1) Page 16
