23. Emery

23

EMERY

I understood that hospital cafeterias weren’t here for the fine dining. I got that. But you’d think they could at least get the coffee right. Genuine question: How many patients have died because the surgeons here were given substandard coffee?

Disgruntled, I sat at a little table in the corner, needing a moment to myself before returning to Stevie’s room. As much as I hated being away from her, I couldn’t stand the thought of her seeing how devastated I was.

And God, was I devastated.

I’d always known that Woody was a flight risk. It was obvious from the start, and I wasn’t surprised that he’d purposefully said something ugly to me. I was, however, shocked at how much it hurt.

Anyway, I’d be fine. I just needed a minute.

“You’d think they’d at least have better coffee,” Rowdy said, dropping into the seat in front of me, setting his go-cup on the table.

“You don’t need to babysit me, Rowd.”

He shook his head. “I’m not babysitting you.”

“Then why are you here? Why aren’t you with your cousin?”

“He done cried himself to sleep, so I figured I should get some coffee.” He scowled at his cup. “Come to think of it, that may have been an error in judgment.”

“He cried himself to sleep?” I asked, my heart breaking.

Rowdy sent me a sad smile. “He’s in love with you and it’s killing him.”

“In love with me?” I asked, ordering my heart not to get its hopes up. “That doesn’t make any damn sense.”

“Oh, gawd,” he said dramatically. “Not you, too.”

“What do you mean?”

He shook his head, took a sip of coffee, then recoiled from the bitter brew. “I can only deal with one emotionally unavailable man at a time,” he said with a weary sigh.

“I’m not emotionally unavailable,” I protested.

“Whatever. You love him back.”

“It’s not like that.”

He held up his hand. “Please shut up. If I have to deal with this nasty coffee, please don’t make me have to sift through the lies you’re telling yourself. You’re a big boy, and you have your own friends. Work it out with them.”

“I’m not lying.”

He raised his brow.

“I’m not! Why would I fall in love with somebody who is clearly not ready to be in love?”

He raised his other brow.

“What? Are you saying I’m not ready to be in love?”

“No, I think you’re both so overdue for something real that y’all don’t know what to do when it smacks you upside your stupid, stubborn heads.”

“Wait.” I shook my head, not making sense of it. “What he had before wasn’t real?”

“I think for a time it was, but...” Rowdy sighed. “You have no idea how badly Shane fucked him over.”

“Tell me,” I demanded, then immediately regretted it.

That someone would hurt Woody, possibly on purpose, made me so angry I wanted to find that asshole and beat him. Hell, I’d looked up that old dentist motherfucker, and it was a good thing he was already dead.

“Shane never actually broke it off with Woody. He just left. Sold the house and immediately started posting pictures of him and his new man on Instagram. Then a month later, this rich guy from Austin and his little girl moved in next door and it was like Shane never existed.”

“New man? Just like that?” I wrinkled my nose, hating that Woody had been with someone so callous. Hating that he’d been with anyone else, if I was being honest.

Rowdy stuck his finger in my face. “See? That there? You hate that he was hurt because you love him. Admit it.”

“Shut up,” I muttered.

“No, I don’t think I will,” he said, then clucked his tongue. “Because Woody’s been struggling to keep all the goddamned balls in the air, while this jerkwad is on easy street, not caring that he broke my cousin.”

My lip curled at the thought of it. “Is that why he doesn’t trust me? Why he doesn’t trust this?”

“It’s not that he doesn’t trust you, Em. It’s that he doesn’t trust himself. He’s mortified that Shane got one over on him.”

“But that’s not how you approach love,” I protested, shaking my head. “Why would he assume that anyone else would do that? Shane was clearly some sort of charlatan, not caring who he hurt in his wake. Woody certainly can’t blame himself for that.”

“You should try and tell him that. See how it goes,” Rowdy said, rolling his eyes as he tried another sip of the coffee. He pushed it away with a shudder. “I swear, they’re trying to kill us with this stuff.”

I snorted. “Pretty solid business model, if you think about it.”

Rowdy gave his cup one more disgusted glance, then got up. “I’m not taking another sip of this swill,” he said, grabbing his cup—and mine—before walking them over to the trashcan and dropping them in. “You want a coke?” he asked, pointing at the machine.

“I’d appreciate it, thank you,” I said, going for my wallet.

He shook his head. “Let me at least buy your sorry ass a drink.”

Not waiting for my response, he made the selections, then walked back, setting the curved plastic bottle on the table in front of me. We both took a drink, and I appreciated the caffeine as it hit my bloodstream.

“I know he’s prickly,” Rowdy started.

I snorted. “That’s an understatement.”

“People keep showing him over and over that they think he’s worthless. And that’s not just his love life. His momma...” Rowdy cursed and looked away.

“I thought he loved his mom,” I said, thinking about the way he’d talked about her with Stevie.

“He does, and I swear, that makes it all so much worse.”

“In what way?”

“I doubt she’d ever have been the lovey type, but my aunt never fully accepted her son—anyone could see that.” Rowdy tightened his jaw. “Anyone but Woody, that is. Even when we were kids, I could see it, but he just loved her so much.”

Rowdy went quiet as a few people walked by, his eyes following them until they disappeared around the corner. “One of his favorite poems is about being willing to accept love from a knife when you can’t get it any other way.”

“Yeah,” I said, immediately recognizing the work of one of my favorite writers. “Lauren Eden. She’s a poet, like Woody. Doesn’t rhyme, either.”

He cursed under his breath. “Of course you would love one of his favorite poets.”

“What does this have to do with Woody’s mom?”

A sad sort of angst flooded his features.

He let out a soft breath.

“She was never gonna cut him off because he took care of her. Near the end, though, her mind wasn’t right, and she said some of the most awful things to him. He always tried to brush it off as her illness, but we both knew she’d merely lost her filter.”

“She was saying what she really thought.”

“Exactly. He was upset when I told him that the EMTs had cut off that ratty old ThunderCats T-shirt, but he straight up sobbed when I told him that they had to cut off those goddamned bracelets.”

God, that broke my heart.

Rowdy then speared me with a look. “Truth is, the driver’d retrieved the bracelets from the back of his rig, but I told him to throw those fucking things in the trash. And if you ever tell Woody I did that, I’ll call you a liar to your face.”

I held up my hands. “Maybe it’s wrong, but I’m glad you did it. She doesn’t deserve to be remembered fondly.”

“Thank you.” Rowdy swallowed thickly, shaking his head. “You’d think as ornery as he is, he’d have built up a scale to the shitty things people say and do, but that’s just his cover. God, even with this community that we’ve grown up in...”

Rowdy let his words drift off, but I needed more.

“What do you mean? Are they shitty to him?”

“Worse, actually. Out here, most of the ranching families, save for the Goodnights and one or two others, don’t even acknowledge him.”

“Is it because he runs more of a sanctuary than a ranch?”

“Believe me, they aren’t caught up on semantics. The good old boys here think he’s a fool for refusing to sell to the exotic-game hunters.”

“But he’s all about making sure that the animals are healthy. Surely they see the conflict of interest there.”

“It’s not the conflict of interest, Emery,” he said with an annoyed gesture. “It’s that he’s gay and doesn’t have the years or the dollars that the Goodnights have. It’s just him on that land. And he’ll never admit it, but he’s prickly because he’s actually so fucking sensitive.”

“Yeah, I picked up on that.”

I thought about the times he’d given himself up to me, unable to hide that soft underbelly of his.

“Eww,” Rowdy said, tossing a napkin at me. “You’re thinking about him in bed, aren’t you?”

“Wasn’t gonna give you any details, Rowd.”

“Still.”

We shared a brief laugh, but the mood quickly grew serious again.

“So,” I started, a heavy sadness in my chest. “He’s trying to hide how sensitive he is and it’s fucking over his life.”

“Ding, ding, ding. He can’t seem to grasp that the sensitivity which makes him feel so vulnerable is the same sensitivity required for his words. His art.”

I played with the cap on my soda, taking it off, taking a sip, screwing it on, then unscrewing it and taking another sip. Rowdy looked unimpressed.

“That does actually make some sense,” I finally said. “He doesn’t strike me as someone who feels safe.”

“Exactly. And that’s why he does everything on his own. I also think financially he probably can’t afford to do much else, but it’s why he refuses to ask for help. He can’t stand anything, anything that exposes him as a fallible human.”

“So, if he feels soft about me . . .”

“Utterly terrified. He is shaking in his fucking boots because I can promise you that, from my vantage point, what he felt for Shane was nothing compared to how he feels for you.”

I unscrewed the cap but didn’t have it in me to take a drink.

“But it’s all so new.”

“Exactly,” he said, smacking my shoulder with the back of his hand, like maybe I was finally getting it. “Terror upon terror. You are the scariest motherfucker out here. Some deranged asshole could hold a gun to his head, and he’d be less afraid of that gun than he is of you.”

“But I’m not scary. I enjoy looking after the people I care for.”

“Coward,” he muttered, then took a deep drink.

“I’m not a coward. I bought this place to teach myself how to do these things. That’s not the act of a coward.”

“Care for,” Rowdy said with dramatic air quotes. “Even now you dilute the words.”

“How could you possibly know how I feel?”

Rowdy flicked his cap at me, and it hit my forehead before bouncing on the table. “It’s the way you look at him, asshole. It’s the way you look between him and Stevie when they’re off in their own little world.” He grabbed the cap and pointed it at me. “You don’t have to admit this to me, but I know what I saw. I know what I see when all three of you are in a room together.”

“What do you see?” I asked, taking a sip to cover how terrified I was to hear his answer.

“The beginnings of a family.”

Coughing on the sharp bubbles, I choked out, “You are getting way, way ahead of yourself, Rowd. And besides, if you wanna talk about trust, what about that shit he said to me back in the room? It felt like he took a knife to my guts, and I don’t let people treat me like that.”

“You’re right.” Rowdy held up his hands. “And you shouldn’t. But, maybe you can give a little grace to someone who just saved your daughter’s life. Maybe you can give a little grace to someone who blames himself for every bad thing that happens around him. The guilt he feels right now? There’s no way he feels safe enough to express that to you.”

“Guilt?” I asked, confused. “Why guilt?”

“He forgot about the tire. It created the perfect environment for those bees to thrive, right next to your property, and he feels one hundred percent responsible. This thought that he can’t properly care for the people he loves? Today was his biggest nightmare come true.”

“Mine too,” I said softly.

Rowdy reached out and took my hands. “He loves Stevie so much, and the idea that she could have died in his arms...I know it doesn’t compare to how you’re feeling. You’re her father, I get it. But it broke something in him. You should’ve seen him, Emery.”

“Tell me. Please .”

“He was fading, Em. He was swaying so badly, I don’t know how he stayed upright. He ran, holding her. All that venom. The doctor was surprised he didn’t have a heart attack. They still don’t know all the damage that could be done. His kidneys, his liver...They’ll be monitoring him for weeks. And he won’t say it, but he has no idea how he’s gonna pay for this.”

I bunched my eyebrows together. “He’s not going to pay a damned thing. I’m covering his hospital bills.”

Rowdy snorted and took another swig. “Good luck with that.”

I stood up. “He’s asleep now?”

Rowdy nodded.

“Then this is the perfect time to take care of his balance and leave a credit card for any future expenses.”

“He’s not gonna be happy about that.”

“Who’s gonna tell him?”

Rowdy made the zipper motion across his lips. He then reversed the gesture.

“I know he’s prickly. I know he’s tried to push you away. And I’m telling you, you can’t let him get away with it. You need to show him that he is more loved than he has ever been and that his prickly nature can’t push you away. You should also know that the words he said are not his. I promise you, I promise you, I promise you, they aren’t. He is in so much pain right now, physically and in his heart. I swear, if you can just convince him of how much you care,” he said, wincing at the watered-down word, “he will show you the kind of love you’ve only dreamed about.”

“Rowdy, I?—”

“We got the final count, Em. He took over three hundred stings for your daughter. Painful, awful stings. And he would do it over and over again. You’re right, he can’t go around being a moody asshole all the time, especially not around Stevie. But if you show him that he doesn’t need to armor up, that he’s safe enough to be soft with you, I promise you’ll see something different,” Rowdy insisted, his voice cracking at the end.

“Okay,” I said, trying to moderate my hope. “Let’s get past this and I’ll let him show me what he’s made of.”

“That’s all I ask of you.”