Finders Keepers

  “When was the last time you stayed on a full eight?” Will asked when I turned to him, after waving both of my middle fingers at Jason and his jackass apostles as they left the arena.

  “A little over three months ago.”

  Will grunted, nodding. I’d never talked about it with him, but it was a small town. Will knew what had happened to Clay, how it’d happened, and when. That he’d never felt the need to bring it up or ask if I wanted to “talk about it” put him that much higher in my esteem.

  “I went through a dry spell once myself, too. My issue was a woman. A crazy, vivacious one I couldn’t get out of my head. I was so consumed with her that I’d already be out the chute before I realized I was on the back of a pissed off bull that wouldn’t think twice about stomping me to death.” Will’s eyes went somewhere else. “That woman . . .” When he came back, he shook his head and studied the ground.

  “Well? How did you beat it? How did you get her out of your head and end your dry spell?” That was the point of the whole segue, right?

  Will smiled. “I all but hog-tied her, drug her to the closest church, and married her.”

  I hadn’t seen the marry-the-crazy-distracting-woman one coming. “And marrying her helped your riding?”

  “I earned my highest score my first ride after saying I do.”

  “How in the hell did that work?” If a woman was my problem, marrying her would be the worst possible solution.

  “Because I’d fallen so completely in love, my mind and body and every other part of me wouldn’t rest until I’d made her mine forever, for God and everyone else to know. I couldn’t be some other man to her when I wanted to be the man for her.”

  The conversation was getting a little too touchy-feely for me. I stepped back in case Will was close to breaking out in tears and needing a hug. I wasn’t the person to hug when someone was in the midst of a meltdown. I was the person who shook the hell out of someone and ordered them to get their shit together. “Well, that’s a Precious Moments story, but it does me a whole lot of no good because my problem ain’t no woman.”

  “Your daddy?” At least if he was going to bring it up, he didn’t beat around the bush and he looked me in the eye.

  “Daddy, ashes to ashes, dust to dust—literally—dearest.”

  Will didn’t blink. I suppose when a person had lived as many years as he had, there was little left to be seen or heard that could surprise them. “And what makes you think your daddy dying is causing you to lose your head when you’re up there on a bull?”

  “Because he’s probably some poltergeist following me around, giving me a ghosty shove when I’m up there, and getting a good laugh in his hereafter watching me eat dirt.” Will raised an eyebrow. “Because, okay? I know.” He lifted his other brow, waiting. “You’re a stubborn one, aren’t you?”

  “Only about as stubborn as you are. But I’ve had fifty extra years of experience, so don’t you think for a moment your stubbornness can outdo mine. Older men than you have tried and failed.”

  I got why Josie was such a fan of the eye roll when I was around. Being around someone as bull-headed as me almost made me want to roll my eyes. “The only thing Clay ever said to me that wasn’t insulting, derogatory, or slurred in a drunken haze, was that men like him and me—men without land or cattle or a lot of money—could only find glory one way.”

  “Eight seconds on the back of a bull,” Will stated, no hint of a question.

  “The only kind of glory men like us could ever hope for.” I dropped my hands on my hips and exhaled.

  “Well, I can tell you what I think about that.”

  “That it’s a whole load of shit?” I almost hoped Will would say that. Then I’d know one other person in the world felt the same way. Most of the time I accepted Clay’s glory axiom, but a few times—moments like those—I wanted to believe it was the biggest, falsest load of shit to be spread.

  Will’s hand clamped my shoulder. “That it’s a whole load of sad. A person’s glory doesn’t come from trying not to fall off, but picking themselves up when they do. That’s the measure of a person’s glory.” He headed toward the end of the arena. Apparently his confounding work was done and he was calling it a night.

  Proverbial whiplash . . . why, yes, yes I am your most recent bitch. “So since I’m covered in a mixture of bull shit and mud, I must be swimming in glory? Is that what you’re saying?” I called after him.

  “You’re not swimming in glory until you find someone to swim with you. Glory isn’t glory if you don’t have someone to share it with. It’s just pride and bullshit on your own.”

  Unbelievable. Will Jones wasn’t only one badass cowboy; he pretty much could have been the love child of John Wayne and Yoda.

  “I think I get why you married the crazy one!” I hollered. “You needed someone to keep up with your special brand of it.”

  Will glanced back for a second, tipped his hat, and kept going.

  And I thought the bull had fucked me up good.

  IT WAS ANOTHER Thursday night, and somehow I’d wound up with more bruises and dirt between my teeth than I had last Thursday. The whole “things can only go up from here” concept hadn’t made my acquaintance yet. I’d run out of pain reliever a few days earlier and had yet to restock my supply, so I let half a bottle of whiskey have a go at it instead.

  My brain still felt like it wanted to burst out of my skull, and the rest of my body felt like it had been tumble-dried with a load of rocks and needles. To say I was in pain was like saying I was freezing. One of Montana’s notorious cold snaps had set in, and my breath wasn’t just fogging—it was about a degree away from crystalizing. The one positive to the frigid temperatures was that it made my body numb, thus dulling the pain.

  Who ever said I wasn’t a silver lining kind of guy?

  I’d just burrowed down in my sleeping bag and closed my eyes when a loud thump lurched me awake. The sound had come from behind me so, after defogging the window, I gazed out to find the face I’d been trying for weeks to forget about. I’d failed miserably.

  “What the hell, Black?” Josie yelled, thumping the window again with her mittened hands. “What the hell is this?”

  So much for flying under the radar. Sighing, I cranked down the window and stuck my head out of my truck. “I was in the middle of a sweet dream, Joze.”

  “That wasn’t a sweet dream, you idiot. That was your body shutting down thanks to hypothermia.”

  At that stage in my life, they were the same thing. “What are you talking about? It’s balmy in here.” I hadn’t seen Josie so pissed in . . . well . . . Actually, I’d never seen her that pissed.

  “I bet. That must be why your nose looks like it’s about to fall off.” She was bundled up in her knee-length down jacket, a hat and scarf coving all of her face but her eyes. If I’d never seen her so pissed and two-thirds of her face was hidden from view, she was close to going nuclear. “You really are a bastard. You know that?” I was about halfway through my nod of agreement when she narrowed her eyes even more somehow. “Your dad burns to death, and his son freezes to death three months later. Isn’t that just a goddamned fairy-tale ending?”

  She sounded like she was just getting started, so I decided to use the silence while she sucked in a breath. “Did I miss something? Why are you acting like you want to hang me up by my toenails and skin me?”

  “BECAUSE I DO!”

  Even through my hat, that scream did some permanent damage to my eardrums. “Mind explaining yourself before you scream me deaf?”

  I hadn’t even said it with sarcasm, and she was glowering at me like she was willing me to die on the spot. “You told me you were staying at a friend’s place. You told me you were somewhere with a roof over your head, with running water . . . with a kitchen . . .” Okay, she was starting to break. As much as she was trying to fight them, a couple of tears surfaced in the corners of her eyes. “You told me you were safe . . . and . . . and warm.” She gestured at wh
ere I sat in my truck, close to breaking out in shivers. “And here you are, camped out in your truck in front of your burnt out trailer in the middle of negative degree temperatures. You lied to me, Garth. You lied to me.” From the looks of it, there was no greater offense.

  I had lied to her. Not because I’d wanted to tell Josie a lie, but because I wanted to admit the truth much less. I’d been living out of my truck for months on land I’d essentially been evicted from because I didn’t want to burden anyone. I’d clearly been a burden on Clay all twenty-one years of my life, and since I was free of him, I didn’t want to pass that burden baton on to someone else. The Walkers or Josie especially. If I was going to be a pain in the ass leech, I sure didn’t want it to be on one of my real friend’s backsides.

  “What do you want? An I’m sorry? Because I’m not.” The only good thing about arguing with Josie was that it was heating me up. Which brought my Thursday night war wounds back in all their throbbing glory.

  “No. Screw I’m sorry. You owe me a hell of a lot more than that after what you’ve been pulling the last couple months.” Grabbing the door handle, Josie flung the door open. “You owe me the decency of getting out of that ice box of a truck into mine, and then I’m taking you to my place. You can thaw, eat a warm meal, and figure out what the hell to do next. Because living out of your truck isn’t a viable long-term solution.”

  I inhaled. “Let me make my answer to your suggestions sweet and succinct.” I leaned across the seat until my face was in front of hers. “No.”

  Wrong thing to say. I saw the flash of something go through her eyes that would have had me shaking in my boots if I had any on, and then she grabbed my arms, dug in deep, and pulled. She didn’t stop pulling until my sleeping bag and I had fallen in a heap at her feet. I was adding bruises on top of bruises.

  “Shit, Josie. What the hell was that for?”

  “That was because I asked you once and I won’t ask again.” Kneeling beside me, she pressed her face so close to mine our noses rubbed together. “Get up and get in my truck. Now.”

  “What is the matter?” I worked myself free of the sleeping bag and grabbed my boots.

  “You. That’s what’s the matter.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you.”

  “Care to expand on that?” I had to grit my teeth as I stood because, on top of her finding me camped out in my truck in near Arctic temperatures, I didn’t want her to know I was probably in need of yet another E.R. visit.

  “No, I do not. The only thing I care about right now is getting you in my truck and taking you back to my place.”

  I managed a weak crooked grin. “Now that’s what I’m talking about.”

  “Leave the dickhead here. I don’t care if that part of you freezes to death.”

  “I’m not leaving any part of my dick here to freeze.” I stuffed the sleeping bag back in my truck before closing the door. I wasn’t in the mood to argue with Josie, and I could almost feel the heat from her truck cab.

  “If you don’t stop being ‘cute’ with me, I’m going to knee your entire dick all the way up into your throat.”

  If I wasn’t a frozen, pulverized popsicle, Josie getting all bossy probably would have turned me on. But really, being turned on was the farthest thing from my mind right then. “Fine. You win.” I followed her as she marched to her truck.

  “Whoop-dee-doo. Look at my grand prize.” She glanced over her shoulder long enough to run her eyes up and down me in a way that was the opposite of approving. I couldn’t figure her out. She’d just threatened my manhood if I refused to go with her, and I was. So why did she look about as thrilled as if she’d just learned she had five minutes to live? Josie had never been a tough one to read, at least not until the past couple of years. Lately, she’d been like a faulty Rubik’s cube. There was no figuring her out, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to take a crack at it.

  As soon as I opened the passenger door, warm air rushed over me. She had the heater cranked so high the cab was almost as warm as a sauna. It felt so good I actually sighed. Crawling into her lifted truck took a little effort, but as soon as I was seated, with the door closed and warm air enveloping me, I could have fallen asleep in thirty seconds flat. Josie threw herself into the driver’s seat, muttered a curse word I’d rarely heard her say, and shot another death glare my way. For someone who’d seemed like they wanted to help me, she sure changed her tune after I went along with it. Oh, well. It was late, I was bushed, and all of the warm air was clouding my mind and making me one heartbeat above comatose.

  She pulled her downy mittens off, threw them at me, and punched the gas. “I can’t believe you did that. You’ve done some crazy shit since I’ve known you, but this is beyond your usual brand of crazy shit.” The way the woman drove . . .

  “Joze,” I said, my voice raspier than usual. Probably because of the extreme temperature changes. “Buckle up.”

  Her eyebrows came together. “Huh?” She was obviously so worked up that my simple request wasn’t computing.

  Reaching over her, I pulled the shoulder strap across her body and clicked it into place. “Buckle up. The way you drive when you aren’t certifiable is scary enough. I don’t need to lose another person.”

  Josie blew out a breath. “Well you keep camping out in this kind of weather, and you won’t have to worry about losing another person. Because you’ll be dead.” She practically spat the last word at me.

  “Okay, so back to the crazy shit bit you were saying earlier”—I clicked my seatbelt into place, too—“I’m sorry. I’m not going to pretend to understand why you’re so pissed at me, but I know you are. For that, I’m sorry. Me doing what I do isn’t meant to make you so upset.” It was a vague apology—I wasn’t quite sure what I was apologizing for exactly—but it was an apology nonetheless. I issued one about as often as a lunar eclipse.

  “You’re sorry about what exactly?”

  Of course that would be her follow-up question. Burrowing deeper into the seat, I cupped my hands over the heaters and planned my words carefully. Think before you speak was something I reserved for times like those. When Josie Gibson was at the wheel, hot on the heels of threatening to knee my dick into the next county. “That I was camped out in my truck—”

  “In Arctic temperatures,” she interjected.

  I nodded. “In Arctic temperatures. I’m sorry for nearly freezing myself into a popsicle-like state. But, you know, maybe if I was kept frozen, I could come back a few hundred years later and—” Another look of death stopped me mid-word. “I’m sorry for nearly freezing myself into a popsicle-like death. There. Is that better?”

  “It’s a start, but you’ve got a lot to be sorry for, Garth Black, so keep going.”

  I’d rather eat my boot than apologize to just anyone . . . but Josie wasn’t just anyone, so I sucked it up. “And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you where I’d been staying.”

  She kept silent and gave me the And? look.

  “And I’m sorry I’ve been avoiding you and not returning your calls . . . but I knew if you cornered me, you’d figure where I’d been laying my head every night and you’d do something crazy like this.” I twirled my finger around the cab. I’d also been avoiding her because that was the right thing to do and my number one priority in life. Given her current state, I didn’t think it best to go into how I needed to stay away from her for all eternity.

  Her only reply was that same expectant look. It seemed And? was the tone of things right then.

  “And I’m sorry you had to come out in this weather in the middle of the night to look for me.” I still didn’t know why she had or how long she’d been looking before making it to my truck, but again, that wasn’t the time to clarify. The more apologies I made, the angrier she seemed to get. Either I was missing something, or she was. Like her sanity.

  “And I’m sorry you had to dry up an entire oil field from the amount of gas you went through driving from your place to mine?” Yes, my
apologies were starting to tip more the smart-ass scale than the genuine one, but I was running out of ideas.

  She gripped the steering wheel so hard, her knuckles blanched white. Okay, what was I missing? What kind of an apology was Josie waiting for? Sure, over the span of the fifteen years we’d known each other, I had a whole universe of things to apologize to her for, but right then, what was the apology she was looking for after I’d lied to her about where I was staying?

  Ah, yep, that was it. Since my eardrums were still ringing after she’d gone off about being lied to, I had a good idea what she was waiting for. I twisted so I could look her straight on. “I’m sorry I lied to you, Joze.”

  Her anger melted off, one layer at a time, until the face of the girl I was used to came back. It took a moment, but when Josie’s eyes flashed to mine, I knew the screaming and glaring was past. At least for my latest offense.

  “So? Am I forgiven?” I dropped my hand on her shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. Even though she had on a cushion of down and fleece, the touch still felt intimate. More intimate than I’d expected, and too intimate for the distance I needed to keep between us. I dropped my hand and made a note not to touch her again if I could help it.

  “I haven’t decided yet,” she replied matter-of-factly, making me chuckle.

  “Well what more do I need to say or do to get you closer to a decision?”

  She gnawed her lip for a few seconds. “Just try to explain, get me to understand why . . . why you’d rather camp out inside your truck than stay with one of your friends. Because that makes no sense to me. None. Actually, as far as sense goes, that makes, like, negative sense.”

  Of course it didn’t make sense to Josie. Someone like her, who’d lived right and said and did the right things, wouldn’t have any qualms or guilt about taking a friend up on a generous offer. She would have been invited out of love and respect. Me, on the other hand? I’d been invited only out of obligation. That Jesse, Rowen, and Josie had even thought to extend the invite after Clay’s death wasn’t something I was spitting on—not even close. They’d been the only people to ever offer help, and I’d never forget it. I wasn’t fool enough to believe they’d invited me because they actually hoped I’d move in though. We were friends, but I wasn’t exactly a ray of sunshine to be around. They’d issued invitations simply because I didn’t have a home anymore. Therefore, those invitations had come out of obligation.