“I’m not strong.”
Her hand traveled up his arm as if to make a point. He jerked away, taking his hand from hers.
“Okay. Wow.” Stefanie looked at the screen. “I thought movies were supposed to cheer people up.” She settled back in the seat. “I hope this ends well.”
“It doesn’t.”
“What, Lincoln Cash doesn’t save the day?” She winced at the sarcasm in her voice. Clearly she wasn’t as good as she had hoped at hiding her hurt. Maybe she should leave.
“Not this time. Not ever again.”
“Lincoln, what’s the problem?” This time she hoped he’d hear real concern. She regretted being so flippant earlier. She took his hand again.
To her surprise, his fingers closed around hers. Then, despite the volume on the screen, she heard him say, “My name’s not Lincoln. It’s Lewis. Lewis Carter.”
She glanced at him, fighting the burble of laughter that wanted to force through. Lewis? But even in the darkness, his face betrayed no humor.
“And Lewis Carter isn’t strong. Or brave. Or even that charming.”
She held his hand tighter because he suddenly tried to pull it away. He closed his eyes as if in pain.
“I don’t understand.”
“Lincoln Cash doesn’t exist anymore. Only Lewis.” He opened his eyes, and the look in them told her he’d lost some kind of battle. It made everything inside her tighten. “And Lewis has multiple sclerosis.”
CHAPTER 17
LINCOLN COULD SEE the horror in Stefanie’s eyes. The spark, that little flame of fire, blinked out as she stared at him, and he wanted to slink down and let his anger, his despair, consume him. Especially with the invincible Lincoln Cash taking out the villain on the giant screen in front of them. He wasn’t sure why he’d broken open the movies, perhaps something about needing to wallow in his misery, but ever since he’d woken up on the side of the road, soiled and with the keen awareness of the dismal life in front of him, all he’d wanted to do was hide.
And three days of watching Lincoln Cash take on the world had only made him sick to his stomach. He’d been thrilled about having his own theater. . . . Now it felt like a monument to a joke. He’d become a spectator in his own miserable life.
Thankfully, Nick had said nothing about how he’d found Lincoln, dirty and broken in the ditch. If Nick even suspected his true situation, well, maybe Lincoln could put him on the payroll and buy his silence. Or probably not. It hadn’t worked with Gideon, who told him he couldn’t put a price on loyalty.
Gideon was sticking to Lincoln’s story of a concussion; that was the story Lincoln planned on going with. But Stefanie had a way of tugging the truth out. The real him out . . . Lewis.
Lewis the wimp.
“Please, God, make me strong.” The prayer, spoken years ago through trembling, bleeding lips as he’d hidden from E-bro in his hiding place under a rattletrap car, came back to Lincoln now. Only then, he’d meant it in a turn-me-into-the-Hulk kind of way so he could metamorphose and hurt E-bro like the bully had hurt him. Now he just wanted to be able to stand. To eat on his own.
To not let Stefanie see him crumple in defeat.
“Multiple sclerosis,” Stefanie said, and hearing it from her lips sounded like a death sentence. Like he’d told her he had the bubonic plague—a foreign, deathly sounding disease. Although MS wasn’t usually fatal, life as he knew it most certainly had perished. “How long have you known?”
“I was diagnosed before I came here. Only . . .” Only he hadn’t believed it. Not really. He’d gotten over his first attack so quickly, and it just didn’t seem fair, after all he’d been through, that God would mock his prayers with such a vengeance.
“Not every suffering is discipline from God, but we can react as if it were—allowing Him to use it for good in our lives, producing a harvest of trusting God in all situations. We don’t have to let circumstances define us, but we can let them produce definition in us.” Pastor Pike’s words had haunted him since he’d walked out of church. All Lincoln could think was, what kind of God took away a man’s dreams? his life? This wasn’t discipline. It was a punishment for causing what had happened to his mother and Alyssa. And perhaps also for the way he’d treated women, a truth that he’d only begun to accept.
He deserved to be taken down by his own body.
“I wish you’d told me sooner, Linc. It’s not something you have to be ashamed about. I admit I don’t know a lot about it, but it seems that a lot of people have MS and live with it.” Stefanie had turned toward him, compassion on her face that he didn’t deserve after the way he’d lashed out at her. Especially after her attempts to cheer him up.
But he didn’t have anyone else sitting here with him in the dark, did he?
“It’s basically an autoimmune disease where my white blood cells attack the nerve sheaths on my spinal cord, blocking the nerve signals that control muscle coordination, strength, feeling, and vision. And yes, a lot of people live with it . . . but not people who roll out of cars and beat up people for a living. And . . . the name is Lewis.”
“I’m not calling you Lewis. And in case you’re confused, the person who jumps from moving vehicles is your movie character. The real Lincoln doesn’t have to do any of those things. You can show up and smile, and the fans will love you.”
Yes, but will you? The question almost made it out of his mouth, but he hurt enough for today. He shook his head. “I’ve always done my own stunts, always done my own fight scenes. I can’t stop now.”
“Wait—don’t tell me—you actually believe everything you see on the screen.” She turned to the movie. “Of course! Because you can truly dangle from a helicopter with one hand and fight the bad guy with the other. You are truly superhuman.”
She didn’t need to add the sarcasm. He got it. They’d filmed that shot on a soundstage in front of a blue screen, two ropes dangling from a beam overhead. “You know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t. I don’t get why you’d believe that something like MS might destroy the man you are.”
“Because the man I am isn’t real. He’s a fake. Haven’t you been paying attention?”
“Oh yes I have. Believe me, I have.” She got up, standing in front of him, blocking his view of the movie. Without the glow from the screen on her face, he could only judge her words by the tone of her voice. Which sounded a lot like what she might use with a scared horse.
Perfect.
“The guy I know, the real guy, is kind and generous. He’s got a good heart and is willing to give people—and horses—a chance. He’s brave and compassionate, and someone . . .” She sounded as if she might be crying. “And he makes a girl feel beautiful.”
He couldn’t speak. Especially when she touched his face. He put his hand over hers. “That’s because she is beautiful.”
“In fact, the Lincoln I know is exactly the kind of guy I’d like to have in my life.”
He closed his eyes, savoring her words for a moment, wishing—how he wished—they might even be close to the truth.
“No, he’s not, Stef.” He pushed her hand away. “I’m not your type of guy at all. The kind of guy you deserve isn’t a has-been actor, someone who’s made his career by pretending. By using people. By thinking he’s a hotshot. The very fact that you felt compelled to tell me about your . . . situation in college when I didn’t blink twice about my own behavior tells me that no, I don’t have a prayer of being in your league.”
Stefanie sat back down in the chair beside him. The movie was playing the credits. A sort of pictorial metaphor to the end of their relationship. The light cascaded over her face, and tears glistened on her cheeks. He wanted to reach up and brush them away, but that would only make him want to slide his fingers through her long hair, pull her toward himself, pretend that this day, this life, didn’t exist. Because that was what he was good at. Pretending.
Not anymore.
Stefanie’s voice shook, and a hint of real anger cam
e into it. “You think you have the world fooled, but you don’t. I’ve figured you out.”
“Yeah?” Lincoln didn’t even try to mask the derision in his voice. Maybe she’d get the hint and leave.
“I think you don’t want to be in my league. That you’re afraid of what it might be like to share yourself with a woman—all of yourself, not just your house or your cars or your horses or your fame, but all of you, your fears and hopes and dark places. Because that’s the kind of man I want, and you know it.”
He stared at her, at her intensity and frustration, a little scared to speak.
“You think your dark places are so much worse than everyone else’s. You think that it makes you weak to be honest and real. But it doesn’t. In fact, it only makes you stronger.” She touched his jaw. “You know why you’re a star? Not because you’re, well, way too good-looking for your own good, and not because you’re so invincible, but because you’re not. I’ve read your reviews. . . . Okay, I admit it; I’ve even read the tabloids. The fascination isn’t your romances and your near-death experiences—and if I ever hear of you doing that stuff again, I’m going to kill you myself—but because on the screen, you make us feel strong.”
Lincoln took her hand from his face and held it, feasting on her words. He admitted, when he played Lincoln Cash—not only the movie roles, but the real-life Lincoln Cash—he did feel strong.
And so gloriously apart from the Lewis he’d been.
But she wasn’t finished. “People go to movies to dream big and hope big and feel big. You bring to life all the dreams and hopes of your characters so well that it makes us feel that we know you and that we can be like you. You make us feel that we, too, can overcome those things in our lives that scare us. And you know what? That’s not pretending at all. You couldn’t portray that without tapping into a real place inside you.”
He knew that longing filled his eyes, knew that he might even be shaking a bit, because her voice softened, and a sweet sadness entered her tone. “It’s not an act . . . and possibly you’re the only one who doesn’t see that.”
He wondered what magical powers she had to look inside his soul and make him believe that everything would be okay.
“I figured out what you prayed for that you didn’t get, Linc.”
He stared at her, remembering their conversation. “How about I ask for you, and you ask for me?”
“You prayed that God would make you tough—that nothing could hurt you.”
Close enough. “How did you know that?” His voice barely edged over a whisper.
“You’re not so mysterious, Lincoln Cash. A girl can figure you out if she looks hard enough. What you don’t realize is that maybe God has already answered your prayer. Because strength isn’t in your arms but inside.” She touched his chest. “Strength is in who you are. And I promise, the man I know—Lewis or Lincoln—is a man of strength.”
How he longed to believe her words, to lean into them and let them pour over him. To see himself as she saw him. But with the images of the man he’d been, at least to the rest of the world, still playing in his mind, he only saw the man he couldn’t be.
“What would I do without you?” he said, drawing her into his lap, wanting more than anything to forget the past week, the future that loomed over him, and to live in the right now.
“Oh, I think you’d find some other neighbor to fill your life, Superhero.”
He forced a smile. “I’m not sure I’d call you just a neighbor.” His hand—thankfully today it had stopped trembling—went around her neck, wove into her hair, and tugged her down.
She smiled. “What would you call me then?”
He didn’t answer, just kissed her in the darkened back row of his movie theater.
Gideon’s car was gone by the time Stefanie headed back to the Silver Buckle. They’d watched a couple more movies and talked for hours, holding hands in the theater. She made sure the horses were put up for the night. Karen had made dinner, and Stefanie stayed for stir-fry, then a cup of coffee while staring at the stars over Spotlight Ranch.
She kissed Lincoln good night at the door and drove home under the silky spray of the Milky Way and the free fall of stars. The smell of grass and an occasional whiff of manure tinged the air, and a tumbleweed skittered across the dirt road as she replayed the evening in her head.
Multiple sclerosis.
The words dug into her brain, and although she wanted to keep the questions from her eyes and look at Lincoln exactly the same as she had this morning, everything suddenly filtered through that truth.
She hated that. Hated the barrage of questions, hated the pity that rose, despite her best efforts. Hated the fact that inside her favorite superhero, his body conspired against him to destroy the life he knew. The life he loved.
She’d meant what she said—that his strength, his so-called invincibility, came from inside. But she wondered how he’d live without Lincoln Cash at the helm. Hadn’t that identity made him the man he’d become?
But maybe now, this disease would give him a new identity.
She turned into the Silver Buckle drive. The moonlight washed the house in pale light, and she noted the absence of Clancy on the porch. Nick’s truck sat in the yard next to her father’s old red Ford. A slight wind bullied a pot of geraniums on the porch as Stefanie slowed and pulled up to the house. A rectangle of light from the kitchen window shone on the ground, and she heard Haley’s laughter streaming from the open screen door. Warmth curled inside her. Haley had turned into a regular chatterbox since that breakthrough day.
All because of Lincoln.
The fact that he’d told her this secret that issued from him like a leeching of blood made her ever more aware of the effect he had on her.
She was falling for Lincoln Cash, or Lewis, or whatever he called himself.
She stood on the porch, wishing that she might help him see his strength, might somehow give him a perspective through her eyes. Lord, make me a blessing in his life. Help me to be someone he needs.
She let the door bang behind her as the smell of a pot roast coaxed her inside, as Haley looked up, cookie crumbs on her mouth, as Macey turned from a sink full of dishes.
A swell of contentment, even happiness, nearly took her breath away and made her ache. Maybe, after all this time, this was exactly where she was supposed to be. On the Silver Buckle, helping Gideon, Macey, Haley, and even Lincoln heal.
“I’m not sure I’d call you just a neighbor.” Lincoln’s words found her as she toed off her boots, the depths of realization sweeping through her.
As she took a cookie and sat down beside Haley, a hundred other names drifted through her mind.
Not one of them was neighbor.
Libby had looked for Gideon every night this past week. She missed the discussions they had in his car after she got off work, the ones when he told her about his day, when she laughed at his stories of Lincoln and Stefanie and the new horses he was working with. They’d talk for five minutes or so; then she’d get out, and he’d watch as she walked home.
Her knight. Only, he hadn’t been there for nearly a week. So when she came out of the diner and saw the old Impala sitting on the street, bathed in streetlights, dusty and battered, to her, it looked like her fairy-tale coach, complete with four white horses and a prince at the helm.
She got in and frowned at the butterfly bandages over his eye. “That from the accident? Are you okay?” She’d heard the account of Lincoln and Gideon being run off the road through the conversations at the diner.
Gideon nodded, but he kept his hands on the steering wheel, staring ahead. She reached out to touch the bandage, but he jerked away.
“Sorry,” Libby said.
He sighed, shaking his head. “I don’t like doing this.”
“Doing what?” Her chest tightened at his tone. He sounded as if she’d asked him to break into the local convenience store.
“I want to be your boyfriend, not your . . . bodyguard.” He
turned to her, and something in his eyes—desperation, maybe—made her want to cry. “I like you, Libby. Really like you. And it’s not just because you’re nice to me, but because you’re nice to everybody. I watch you at night as you close up, and you don’t rush anybody; you even give Dugan extra pieces of pie—”
“That’s because they’re leftover.”
“No, it’s because you’re nice. And you always let Missy leave early.”
“Because you’re waiting for me,” she said.
“But you’re not just nice. You trust people. I know you called the Buckle a few days ago—Piper told me.”
“I wanted to see how you were.”
“I’m not good.”
Her gaze went to his head, but he grabbed her hand. “I want to go out with you. On a real date. Someplace nice, where I can treat you like you’ve treated me.”
Libby stared at his hand. Over the last two months, the flesh had become chapped and blistered, toughened.
His thumb ran over the top of her hand. “And by the way, I know why you . . . said we could only be friends.”
Her throat tightened. She wanted that date too, more than she could bear to let herself dream about. Why couldn’t her father see what she saw? Gideon deserved a chance.
“Because I don’t go to church.”
“That’s not exactly why. . . .”
“Here’s what you don’t know. I did go to church. Back at juvie, I went, and I even went to the altar and asked Jesus to forgive me and everything. I’ve broken a few rules since then—and maybe that’s what’s kept me from seeing it—but I’ve been thinking . . . maybe you’re right. Maybe God brought me here.”
She closed her eyes, hating how much hope she drew from his words.
“Yeah. He brought me out here to meet you.”
“I’m not sure He works like that, Gideon.”
“Why not? Why can’t I get something good in my life? Why can’t I have you?”
Libby let go of his hand. “I don’t know. I don’t know.” She was crying now, her face in her hands. She felt him move across the seat, put his arm around her.
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