Finders Keepers

  “Whatever. Getting in a bar fight will be the single most exciting thing that ever happens to Colt Mason.”

  “Yeah, because being with me or potentially marrying me one day wouldn’t even register.” She tossed the stuff back in the first aid kit, still taking out her irritation on something else instead of me.

  “I guarantee if that son of a bitch even thought he had a chance at marrying you one day, that would be the highlight of his life.” I leaned forward, waiting for her to look at me. “But that douche has as much a chance with you as I do.”

  She grabbed my hat and settled it back on my head, adjusting it until it was right how I wore it, just a hair off the brow. “He’s an awful lot like Jesse. What makes you think I’d never marry him?”

  I wasn’t sure if she was intentionally baiting me, but it was working. “First off, that little dick is nothing like Jesse. Nothing. Other than wearing the same kind of hat, although Colt’s has never so much as seen a speck of mud, Jesse and Colt are about as alike as Jesse and me. Secondly, you’re not going to marry that boy because, well, you’re not going to marry that boy.” I lifted an eyebrow and waited for her to argue. Josie might try to deny it, but she couldn’t lie to herself. She was as likely to marry one of the Mason boys as I was.

  “How descriptive.” She leaned back and crossed her legs. Damn Josie Gibson’s legs and that dress that barely covered them. It barely barely covered them when she went and crossed them like that. I tried not to stare for too long, but when I did manage to shift my eyes back to hers, she was giving me a look.

  I cleared my throat and tried to forget about Josie’s bare legs a few inches to the side of mine. “Fine. Here’s just one of the million ‘descriptive’ reasons I’ve got for you.” I leaned toward her until I could smell her shampoo again, and I knew she could smell the whiskey on my breath. And then, I leaned in closer. I waited until her eyes met mine. It took a while, but when they did, my point was proven. “You look at me with more fire in your eyes than you do him.”

  Her eyes narrowed, but they stayed with me. Continuing to prove my point. “That’s enraged fire, Black.”

  Damn. At that proximity, forget the shampoo; I think I could smell her strawberry lip gloss. Which, of course, made me remember the way it’d tasted that night . . .

  Get your shit together, Black. This is Josie. Josie Gibson. The girl I needed to stay away from for both of our sakes. When I leaned back that time, I was sure to give my chair a good slide to put some more distance between us. “It’s still fire. And if it isn’t there in the beginning, it sure as shit isn’t going to magically crop up out of nowhere.”

  “Says the love non-expert.”

  “I’m the expert because I’m the only person on the face of the planet smart enough to know better than to fall in love. That right there is the reason I’ve earned my expert badge in love.” I glanced toward the bar, hoping to catch Brandy’s attention, because a few shots right about then would really dull the pain. Both kinds.

  “You’ve got one warped view of love.”

  “Why, thank you. That’s the best compliment I’ve heard all week.”

  Shaking her head, Josie stood, grabbing her purse and first aid kit. “You want a ride home? Now that I’m dateless and covered in your blood, this girl’s Friday night is a wrap.” Josie smiled at me, that same gentle ghost-of-a-smile she’d given me the second day of kindergarten when I realized I was either going to marry her or no one. It took me until the end of the school year to realize I’d never marry Josie Gibson. For all of the reasons I was being reminded of.

  Just like that, I dropped the curtain on those memories and the small part of me that didn’t feel permanently hardened. It had become like second nature over the years. I gave Josie a slow, crooked smile. I don’t know why I even gave her that smile anymore. She’d seen through it the first time I’d tried it on her. She was immune, unlike the rest of the girls. “What kind of a ride are you asking about?”

  “When you find that guy who had my back instead of plotting for ways to get into my panties, let me know okay?” I was still in my seat, but she gave my chest a solid shove. “I’m sick of being treated like the other girls you’ve banged. I might have made a mistake, but I still deserve your respect. Until you figure that out, I don’t want to be around this new Garth. I’m not so hot on him.” Sweeping her eyes over me, she shot me one last glare before marching toward the door.

  “You call the sex we had a mistake? Because the first word that comes to my mind is mind-blowing,” I called after her. I was partly hoping she’d come back and give me one more shove and partly hoping she’d keep on marching. “The kind of sex that makes a man keep his fingers crossed for an encore production.”

  That stopped her in her tracks. She spun around, crossed her arms, and lord . . . If I thought I’d seen fire in her eyes before, I’d been wrong. “It wasn’t just a mistake. It was the biggest one of my life. I lost two of my best friends in exchange for the asshole with his nostrils packed with tissue in front of me now.” She didn’t give me the chance to reply before shoving through the door and out of the bar. Which was good, because I didn’t have a fucking clue how to respond.

  Garth Black. Brought to his legendary, come-back knees by a few words from Josie’s mouth.

  “It looks like you need another shot.” Brandy stopped beside me and slid a glass in front of me.

  “No, I don’t need a shot. I need the whole fucking bottle.”

  HALF A BOTTLE of whiskey later, I’d closed down the bar. After telling her three times that I didn’t want to pay for my night of drinking with her in the back room, Brandy finally took my money. She called me a name even I wouldn’t dare repeating that close to Sunday and told me to get out and never come back.

  I wasn’t planning on it. At least not until next Friday night.

  Brandy’s bar was a fifteen-minute drive from my place, but it took a little longer since I probably had about as much alcohol in my bloodstream as I did white blood cells. The general consensus was that a person shouldn’t get behind a steering wheel after drinking a bottle—or was it closer to two?—of whiskey, but I had a tolerance that would put the Irish to shame. I wasn’t seeing double, my vision wasn’t blurred, and my reflexes weren’t sluggish. I was good.

  Of course, if I got pulled over and tested, I’d be up shit creek without a paddle. The one and only positive thing about having Clay Black as a father was that the cops and the law gave us both a wide berth. The cops had had enough experience with my dad to know they didn’t want a repeat, so they turned a blind eye on our minor law breaking and basically forgot the two Black men were part of their jurisdiction.

  I’d lost count of how many times that unsaid agreement had kept me out of jail.

  About the time I turned down the overgrown drive leading back to the trailer, the alcohol had worn off just enough that thoughts of Josie were returning. Well, they were flooding back. Whatever curtain I’d dropped, whatever dam I’d built, whatever I’d constructed to keep her out of the forefront of my mind crumbled. I was swimming in thoughts of her. The way she’d chewed her lip as she doctored my face. The way she looked at me with disappointment on her whole face before walking out. The way she’d felt that night a couple years back.

  After pounding the steering wheel with my palm, I slapped both of my cheeks. Josie Gibson was off limits, and if I kept thinking about her, I would have to find someone who could remove the part of my brain that kept long-term memory in good working order. So what did my mind go and skip to after issuing that ultimatum?

  The last day of kindergarten. The bus had just picked me up, and I was furiously wiping my nose with my sleeve, hoping my nose would stop bleeding before my sleeve got soaked through. I’d accidentally woken Clay when I’d been checking the cupboards for something that could constitute breakfast. I’d finally settled on a dry package of ramen noodles. My punishment for rousing the sleeping bear had been the backside of his hand across my face. It
had caused a bloody nose that wouldn’t stop.

  The bus driver barely noticed. He’d grown accustomed to my bloody noses and swollen lips, along with the rest of the kids on the bus. For some reason, that morning, someone noticed and scooted into the seat next to me.

  “Here. Use this.” Josie, complete with her pigtails, had pulled a napkin out of her lunchbox and held it out for me. A note was written on the napkin, along with a few hearts. At the end, it said, Love, Mom.

  “I’m not using your special note to wipe my blood off,” I’d said, trying to will my nose to stop bleeding.

  “It’s okay. She leaves me one every day in my lunch.” Josie’d shrugged, holding the napkin out for me again.

  I remember being shocked, floored by the fact that Josie had someone who loved her so damn much that not only did they pack her a lunch every day, but they actually took the time to write a note on the napkin. I wasn’t familiar with that kind of love. It was a kind I didn’t even know existed. That day, Josie had opened my eyes to the realization that love wasn’t just a bullshit concept. To some people, it was so much more than circumstance and disappointment.

  After the napkin had remained in her hand for a few more seconds, she lowered it to my face, holding it just below my nose. When my hand replaced hers over the napkin, she leaned in and kissed my cheek.

  “What was that for?” I’d demanded, so shocked I almost leapt out of my skin. That had been my first kiss, at least the first one I could remember, and not the romantic kind a person means when referring to a “first kiss.” My mom had been gone for too long to remember if she’d ever kissed me, and the only affection my dad showed me was slowing his fist just before it landed on me. It was the first time I’d ever been kissed, and even though I was only six years old and I had a lot of life still ahead of me, I knew no matter who or how I was kissed in the future, nothing would compare to that one on the bus.

  None never had.

  “It looked like you needed one,” she’d replied before moving back to her seat up front.

  Slamming the brakes, I pounded my forehead against the steering wheel. “Fuck me.” I’d turned into the bleeding heart, nostalgic chump I’d had nightmares of becoming. What the hell was wrong with me? I’d managed to repress all of those memories and feelings for so many years I’d almost convinced myself I’d forgotten them. Boy, had I been wrong.

  So why now? Why those memories? Why couldn’t I contain and control them? The longer I thought about it, the more questions cropped up. Loads of questions, zero answers. If Jesse wasn’t two states over, I might have raced to his place and forced his ass out of bed to keep me company and get my thoughts off their current track. But no, the pussy-whipped sucker was probably cuddled up beside his girlfriend—correction: fiancé—having pussy-whipped sucker dreams about white picket fences and honeymoon destinations. As much as I wanted to tell him he was making the biggest mistake of his life marrying Rowen Sterling, I couldn’t. Marrying the woman he loved at twenty-one wasn’t a mistake for a guy like Jesse Walker. Shit, Jesse could have married the woman he loved at any age and it wouldn’t have been a mistake. Jesse was the marrying, loyal, loving type.

  Me? It didn’t matter what age I was or how much I thought I loved the woman. Marriage, rings, and vows were not created with people like me in mind.

  Other than Jesse, Rowen wasn’t bad to talk to, but since she was where Jesse was—spooning two states away—she was out too. There was Brandy, but she and I never did much . . . talking. At one time, Josie had been one of my most trusted confidants. Given she was the one I needed to talk about, not to mention the one I had to keep my distance from, I had to scratch her off the list, too. After that, there was no one. I had three people—well, two—I could talk to about things that needed talking out.

  My dad had figured it out twenty-one years ago: I was a good-for-nothing bastard.

  Pounding the wheel one last time with my forehead, I was about to punch the gas, hoping that Clay left a few swigs in his bottle before he passed out, when something in the distance caught my attention. A bright ball of color lit up the night. Almost like someone had started a huge bonfire in the middle of nowhere. In the middle of nothing but hundreds of acres of barren land and our trailer. Which meant . . .

  I punched the gas so hard my truck fishtailed out of control. I eased off the gas just enough to regain control then tore down the bumpy road, watching that ball of light get bigger and brighter. I was still a half mile back when I saw the actual flames rolling off of the trailer. We had a not-quite-dried-up well, but it was clear by the time I slammed the brakes in front of the lawn chairs that there was nothing left to salvage. The entire thing was engulfed in flames, close to the point of being unrecognizable. Everything was burning. Everything was gone.

  “DAD!” I yelled, throwing the truck door open and leaping out. Panic settled in my stomach. Dread soon followed. It was after two in the morning, which meant he was passed out drunk. Since he only left the trailer to restock his liquor supply, he couldn’t be somewhere else. His truck had been repo’d years ago, his license revoked years before that, and no one in our county or the next one over would loan him a car. As much as I wanted to cling to the hope that he was somewhere, anywhere else, I knew exactly where he was.

  That was when an explosion rocked the trailer and vibrated the ground below my feet. Probably one of the propane tanks. My body and mind flipped to autopilot and, despite the beating I’d taken earlier, I sprinted toward that trailer like I was good as new. I was still a good ten yards back when the heat hit me. The fire was so hot it scalded my face. The bruises and slashes from earlier probably didn’t help any. A few yards closer and even if I wanted to breathe—which I didn’t because the air was so hot it burned my nostrils and lungs—I couldn’t have. The fire had sucked all of the oxygen out of the air.

  As I moved closer, I squinted and covered my nose and mouth with my arm to keep the smoke from hitting me full force. The closer I got, the more I realized nothing was left in that trailer to save. The man I’d lived with for twenty-one years wasn’t going to be draped over his chair in the back, snoring and unscathed. I knew that, but the autopilot I was on wouldn’t accept it. I couldn’t have stopped moving forward even if I wanted to.

  By the time I made it to the burning door, I was coughing so hard I felt like I was expecting a lung to come up. I didn’t think—I simply reacted. Grabbing the handle, I pulled on it as a scream ripped through my body. White hot pain shot from my hand up my arm, so intense I felt close to passing out. The only time I’d felt pain close to that had been when that behemoth brahma down in Casper had come down on my shin a few years back, fracturing my femur.

  The smell hit me next. That acrid, metallic scent was so thick in the air I could almost taste it . . . and I knew what it was. I didn’t have to have smelled it before to know that human flesh was the only thing that could smell as unforgettable as that. I reassured myself it was my flesh, my palm, causing the smell. Nothing or no one else.

  Setting my jaw, I cried out and charged for the door again, not consciously recognizing why I had to get in. My hand was inches from wrapping around the scalding doorknob again when a firm set of arms wrapped around my chest and pulled me back.

  “Garth! What are you doing, son? You’re going to kill yourself!”

  I struggled, but no amount of fight worked. “Let me go, Neil! Clay’s in there! He’s in there!” The fight slowly faded from me the farther Neil wrangled me away from the trailer. “My dad’s in there!”

  Another explosion blasted from inside the trailer. Another propane tank. That’s when I realized and accepted that the father I never really knew I’d never know because he was gone. He’d been gone for a long time, but his body had followed the rest of him.

  “No, son.” Neil stopped pulling me away but kept his hold on me. “He’s not in there anymore.”

  E.R. VISITS HAD been a pastime of mine for as long as I could remember. I was about as comfortabl
e in a hospital bed as I was in my own bed. Since my own bed was nothing but ash and soot, I suppose the hospital bed was even more appealing than it had been before. The fire department had shown up a few minutes before Neil got me into his truck and booked it for the hospital. He was the second person that night to suggest an E.R. visit, and since I was too exhausted and in shock to argue with him, I went with it.

  The nurse had fixed up my hand, and the doctor stopped in a few minutes later to pump me full of pain meds. He’d seen me plenty of times growing up. My dad had threatened him when he’d recommended I take the summer off from bull riding after I broke my leg. The doc was a decent guy who seemed that much more decent as the drugs worked their way into my system. I guessed he’d given them to me more for the mental than the physical pain.

  The benefit to having perfected repressing stuff was being able to do it again. My dad had just been barbecued inside our “home,” and I still hadn’t cried a single tear. I hadn’t broken down, punched a hole in a wall, or dropped to my knees. I didn’t face it; I couldn’t yet. So I repressed it. I didn’t think about what tomorrow would bring, and I didn’t think about what the day after that would. I focused on my bandaged hand, still pulsing with pain, the hospital bed I was curled on which, for all I knew, might be the last mattress my body felt for a long while, and the antiseptic smell surrounding me. Those were the realities I obscured real reality with. Those were the things I centered my attention on when my father’s funeral needed to be planned.

  I was close to passing out in a drug-induced haze when the curtains whooshed open and a figure slipped inside. “Garth? Oh my god . . .” A sniffling, bleary-eyed person approached.

  “Hey, Joze. What are you doing here?” Talking hurt, thanks to the fire singing my throat.

  “Neil called Jesse, then Jesse called me . . . He and Rowen are on their way. They were leaving when I was talking to him.” She approached the foot of the bed slowly. “I’m so sorry, Garth. And, wow, that sounded as pathetic and petty as I always thought it would.”