I glanced at the door to the office.
At the logo.
Didn’t need to be able to read the company name splashed across the lit-up sign outside or the windowed door in front of me. Logo told me I was in the right place.
Dragging my hand through my hair, I forced my breaths to even before pushing through the door.
“Welcome, how can I help you?” the receptionist asked without ever looking away from the screen of her computer. Blonde hair wild and somehow matching her agitated voice, fingers flying across the keyboard.
“I’d like to talk to someone about a job on one of your rigs.”
She pointed to her screen before returning to the keys. “You can apply online.”
“Yes, ma’am, I know. I prefer to do things in person.”
“Applications are online, young man.”
I cleared my throat and fought the urge to move. To give myself away before I could begin. “I understand. I would still prefer to do things in person.”
At that, her eyes slanted my way. After another second, her fingers stopped tapping.
Then she was studying me, looking me over and lingering on my hands before loosing a long sigh and reaching for her phone.
“There’s a boy here wanting to talk about a position.” Her sharp stare flashed my way again. “He’s aware.” Without another word, she placed the phone down and resumed tapping away, not bothering to look at me when she said, “All the way at the end of the hall, he’s waiting.”
I nodded, looking to the doors on either side of her desk and heading for the one on my left when she pointed that way. “Thank you, ma’am.”
My heart was pounding as I made my way down the wide hall.
My fingers were twitching anxiously.
Because I needed this.
Over the last year and a half, I’d bounced around from job to job. Working in garages until the managers or owners realized what I struggled so hard to hide with my ability to learn in other ways.
One of the guys I’d worked with at the last shop had told me all about the company his brother had just started at—working on one of their offshore rigs, fresh out of high school.
The part that had caught my attention? He lived and ate there half the time.
I’d been living out of my truck since I’d left Amber. Anything else, even if only half of the time, would be better than that.
The door at the end of the hall was already open when I got there, but I stopped outside and knocked on the frame, waiting until I was called in.
I nodded to the older man leaning against a long, low set of cabinets. His expression hinted at his amusement and curiosity. His build and weathered skin showed he’d spent a lifetime working outside and was a stark contrast from the man rising from the chair behind the large wooden desk.
Polished. Pale. Clearly spent his life in an office, working up to this position . . . and now held my immediate future in his hands.
There was a nameplate on his desk, but that didn’t help me.
“Thank you for allowing this,” I said, stopping a few feet from the chairs.
I knew if I sat, I wouldn’t be able to stop moving.
My anxiousness taking over in ways they’d be able to see.
“Byron,” the man behind the desk said, loosely gesturing to himself before waving toward the other man. “AJ Wren. And you are?”
“Cayson Dixon.”
Byron scratched at his temple, his head shaking a little as a laugh left him. “We have applications online.”
“Yes, sir, I just prefer to do things in person.”
His stare shifted to the man who hadn’t moved from his spot at the cabinets before focusing on me again.
“And why is that?”
“Because there are a lot of things I’m not good at,” I admitted, head bouncing a little. “But I am good at working with my hands and I’m a damn fast learner. And those are things you can’t find out by an application.”
Not one done by me anyway, considering it would be left blank.
“I didn’t go to college—I didn’t even apply.” I lifted my hands a little before forcing them back to my sides. “I have a record. Nearly all of it is for things that small-town boys tend to get in trouble for, like hiding the mayor’s car after replacing it with a cow.”
Slight laughs left the men before Byron furrowed his brow, two of his fingers tapping a dull thud, thud, thud on his desk as he watched me. “You said nearly.”
“Yes, sir.” I dragged in a lungful of oxygen, silently praying this confession wouldn’t be what ruined my chances. “I took the fall for someone a while back. Drugs. But you can test me now, every day, at random—it won’t matter. You’ll never find anything in me because I’ll never touch it.”
Byron’s stare dragged over to AJ, everything about his demeanor shifting.
He no longer seemed interested.
He looked irritated that I was wasting their time.
A heavy sigh left him when he sat and focused on me again, head shaking, expression all dull annoyance.
“Let’s say I were to believe that one, which I can assure you, I don’t,” he grunted. “Enlighten us with why you took the fall with these drugs that weren’t yours.” The way he spoke was as if he were waiting for me to amuse them with some absurd story.
Except I didn’t have one, but I also wasn’t about to tell them what had gone down.
No one needed to know what really happened except Lee.
“Small town,” I said simply. “You do that kinda stuff to protect people.”
“It didn’t protect you.”
“He had a lot more to lose.”
Byron seemed to pause as he considered my response.
After nearly a minute, he picked up his phone and tapped a button. “Offshore,” he said a second later. “Entry-level. Yeah. Bring it.” Once the phone was on the receiver again, he cleared his throat and pointed to me. “You said you’re good with your hands.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I noticed the grease stains on them. Tell me what you’ve been doing before now.”
I told him about the garages I’d worked at since living in Amber and what kind of work I’d done at them.
“That’s quite a lot of different employments in a small amount of time,” Byron said as the harried receptionist came in, left a small stack of papers on his desk, and rushed back out. “Is there a reason you weren’t with any of them for long?”
My breathing turned shallow as I stared at the papers.
Papers Byron was gathering in his hands as he stood and rounded his desk, holding them out to me.
I reached out automatically to take them, but I couldn’t seem to move once I had them in hand.
Staring and staring and willing myself to understand what was in front of me.
That familiar hatred building and burning. Memories rising fast and unbidden. Filling me with more pain and self-loathing than I’d ever known.
Until I was trembling.
Eyes burning.
Jaw clenched so tight it ached.
“Cayson, was it?”
I somehow looked away from the top paper.
From the jumble of mocking words.
“Sir?”
“What was the reason for the job-hopping?”
I don’t know how much time passed as I stood there without responding, trying to rein in the overwhelming emotions.
But then Byron was releasing a sigh and tapping the stack. “Regardless, you’ve gotta fill out an application. Bring it back, then we’ll talk.”
My head was shaking.
Jerking.
My chest heaving as I shoved the papers into his hand and stalked out of the office and down the hall.
My dad’s insults mixed with employers’ ridicules from the past year and a half, filling my head until they were all I heard.
Until that humiliation that had been engrained into me, that loathing, was suffocating me.
Unt
il I was gripping at my hair and struggling to breathe as I rode the elevator down to the lobby because I felt like every goddamn thing they’d ever called me.
And I hated that whatever was wrong with me was taking over my life, even after I’d tried to escape it.
“Hey there, kid. Hold up just a minute.”
I glanced behind me on instinct, my steps slowing for a beat when I realized it was the other guy who had been in the office.
AJ Wren.
Fucking jogging after me.
And then I was shaking my head and turning, continuing through the business center’s courtyard and toward the parking lot.
“Kid, I’m—whoa,” he said defensively when I jerked away—arm swinging—when he grabbed my shoulder. He lifted his hands placatingly and took a step back. “I’m not the young man I used to be, you’re gonna have to slow down.”
I jerked my chin in a nod, my tone low and harsh when I demanded, “What?”
He whistled, head slanting a bit. “Damn how that attitude changed. You’re gonna have to think real careful about how you wanna move forward because I don’t have time for an angry kid. Understand?”
After a moment, I nodded.
After another, he returned it and lowered his hands. “Now, I’m gonna tell you something and then ask something of you, and we’re gonna talk like adults.” Without waiting for a response, he said, “You got balls comin’ in and requesting a face-to-face. And I can see that you’re willing to work. Also respect the shit out of you for laying out that you aren’t perfect. Those are the kinds of guys I need on my crew.”
My stare darted to his, hope swirling before I was able to stamp it down.
“Few of us were here for a meeting today, I just happened to be here still when you came in. I’m from Beaumont—run a crew out of Port Arthur.” He shrugged as if whatever came next didn’t matter to him. “Unless you need to stay in Houston . . . there are other rigs with great crews.”
“I can go wherever I’m needed.”
He nodded, something in his expression shifting as he reached for his back pocket. “Then I want you to do something for me,” he said slowly, almost gently. “Go on ahead and read this for me out loud.”
He unrolled a small stack of papers I was pretty damn sure was the same stack I’d just shoved at Byron, keeping it suspended between us when I didn’t reach for it.
In an instant, that hope shattered.
All the suffocating emotions were back, pulling me under and enjoying their torment.
With a hard glare at AJ, I started turning toward the lot but was stopped with another hand to my shoulder.
“If you don’t know how to read, that—”
“I know how to read,” I snapped, smacking the papers he continued to hold out to me. “I can’t. There’s a fucking difference.”
He didn’t let me turn that time, keeping his hand tight on my shoulder like he had a right to touch me.
This asshole I didn’t even know.
I whirled on him, already trying to jerk free from this old man that was ungodly strong. “That what you wanted to know?” I ground out. “That’s why I was let go from the garages. Because they found out their new hire was a fucking idiot who couldn’t do something as simple as read.”
When I was done, standing there in his iron-like grasp, chest heaving and humiliation dripping from me, he said, “Thought I said we were gonna talk like adults.”
I didn’t respond.
I wasn’t sure I could.
I hadn’t verbally admitted that I couldn’t read since I was nine years old.
All of my previous employers had found out one way or another, and I’d confirmed it by shutting down in response.
For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why I’d told this man.
“Said you can’t,” he said after a moment. “Explain that to me.” When I just stood there, he squeezed my shoulder and gave me a reassuring smile before holding the papers in front of me. “Why don’t you tell me what you see then? What does it look like?”
My eyebrows screwed up in surprise and confusion.
Because I knew he couldn’t be asking what I thought he was, but it sure as hell sounded like it.
AJ gestured to the papers with his chin. “I know I sure am purdy,” he drawled sarcastically, “but there’re no words on my face.”
A huff left me as I glanced at the top page.
At the letters and words that wouldn’t stay still.
“Has anyone ever asked you that before?” he asked after a while.
“No,” I said softly and then finally admitted, “I think there’s something wrong with me.”
“How so?”
“The words. They move.”
An acknowledging hum sounded in his throat. “And you can’t read any of them?”
“The more I focus, the faster they change. It’s like they’re laughing at me.”
“What does C-A-R spell?”
“I’m not five.” My eyes had narrowed into slits and trained on him. “I said I know how to read because I know how to spell—words a hell of a lot more advanced than car. But when they were teaching letters and words and shit, everyone else seemed to get it. Seemed to see it the same way. I wasn’t seeing it their way, and what I was seeing, I wrote. What I wrote only got me in trouble for not trying and acting out, so I stopped writing.”
“I see.” AJ rolled up the papers again, tapping his side as he folded his arms across his chest. “You’re not an idiot, kid. You’re dyslexic.”
My dad’s slurs came back full force, infuriating me and making me feel about two inches tall all at once as that foreign word bounced around and around.
My head shook roughly, refusing to believe whatever it was this stranger was calling me.
“No. No, whatever that is—no. I’m not that.”
Surprise stole across AJ’s face before shifting to understanding. “You don’t know what dyslexia is?”
“No, but it doesn’t matter. I’m not it.”
“Kid.” His voice was calm as he reached for my shoulder again. “It’s a learning disability—language-based.” Tapping my head, he held my stare and said, “Nothing wrong with you, and it’s common as hell.”
I didn’t respond.
I just stood there, attempting to absorb what he was telling me.
Because I’d been told most of my life that I was stupid. That there was something wrong with me.
I’d believed it.
But having a name for whatever was happening, that made it real.
And that tore at me almost as forcefully as relief and gratitude were swelling inside me.
“Nothing wrong with you, and it’s common as hell.”
“Anyone else in your family struggle with reading?”
I looked at AJ, blinking slowly as I fought with the wave of emotions crashing against me. “What?”
“Dyslexia . . . it runs in families. Do you know of anyone else who—”
A bitter laugh left me, stopping AJ. “No. No, just me.”
I would’ve known.
I wouldn’t have been the only one repeatedly shamed and told they were worthless.
“How do you know all this?” I asked suddenly. “How do you even know that I—you know . . . that this is me?” I jerked my chin toward the papers, unable to say that I have this.
“My wife,” he said after a second of hesitation, the words leaving him on a breath. “She had it. Her dad too.”
“Had? She got rid of it?”
“No gettin’ rid of it. Just learning around it. She used to say her letters danced—changed partners. ‘There they go dancin’ again,’ she’d say when she’d get her words all jumbled up.”
With the way he was referring to her and smiling softly, I had a feeling his wife had died and felt like an asshole for my question.
His head slanted my way. “She wasn’t all that great with spelling, though. ‘Car’ seems simple for you. It would’ve taken her a second
. You talk real well, and she did too for the most part. Every now and then, she had to slow down and think out the words she was trying to say.”
I nodded, struggling to swallow when it felt like I couldn’t breathe because my throat was so damn tight.
Because AJ talked about his wife as though he’d adored those things about her . . . and I’d been beaten for them.
Her family had known exactly what was happening when her words changed and shifted on her. She’d had the opportunity to learn through it.
Not hide it.
Not try to skate by.
Not die of humiliation because her dad was paying off teachers and schools so she could move on to the next grade and the next.
“I’ve heard them—the spelling,” I said, words strangled. When AJ looked at me questioningly, I said, “I hear things once, I remember them. I’m shown how to do something once, I remember.”
“You wanna know how many people in the world can’t do that?” He pointed at me, voice dropping to a whisper. “You’re smart, kid.” When my head started moving in slow shakes, he stepped back, saying, “Just cause some words like to go dancin’ on you doesn’t mean shit.”
I wasn’t sure when I’d clenched my jaw.
Or when my eyes had started burning.
But there I was, standing with some guy I’d met not even fifteen minutes before, willing the tears not to form after confessing my deepest shame.
My dad would’ve lost his mind. AJ just patted my shoulder as though he understood.
Didn’t know the guy and already knew that was his thing: Comfort and understanding.
Not right hooks and degrading.
“Said it earlier, need a guy like you on my crew,” he said as he resumed his position a couple feet away, arms crossed over his chest. “It’s hard and exhausting. Hours are long. But we’re a family, and I refuse to have anyone on my rig who doesn’t put their everything into their job—I have a feeling you would.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. How long until you can settle your life in Houston and head to Beaumont?”
“I’m settled. I can leave as soon as I get in my truck.” At his subdued shock, I explained, “I’ve been living in it.”
“We’ll have to figure something out about that in the meantime,” he murmured, glancing at his watch and then to the sky. “You can follow me, but there’s a condition to you working for me—figure you should be aware of it before you make a life change.”
Whiskey (Brewed Book 2) Page 25
