CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Brett
One Year Ago
“I’ve heard of it happening. It’s real …” I can tell Barrett is trying to work it out in her head to make it OK.
She waffles back and forth, trying to decide which is more concerning; Colson’s revelation that he has a sleep disorder that turns him into a homicidal maniac or that I neglected to tell anyone that I was the target of an attempted murder three years ago.
Frankly, I’m shocked I’m able to get through the entire story with Barrett without having a panic attack. Telling Bowen was different—I didn’t know him very well at the time. But Barrett knows me. We shared an apartment when all of this happened. And she knows who Colson is.
“You know,” Barrett muses as I turn into the gravel drive, “this makes a lot of sense now.”
“Why?”
“Because now I realize a lot of the weird shit you do are just trauma responses. And you’re so avoidant, it’s no surprise you could just get up the next day, go to brunch, and sit there eating your eggs Benny like nothing happened.”
Like I said, I’m really good at compartmentalizing.
But Bowen isn’t as pragmatic.
“You think I’m overreacting, but I’m not,” Bowen’s deep voice has an edge sharp enough to cut stone.
He doesn’t look at me, but keeps concentrating on the TV where he’s been playing Dark Souls since I got home. He took off his headphones as soon as I walked in, but when I said Colson’s name, his jaw twitched and he became laser focused on destroying anything in his field of view.
After depositing my work bag next to the door, I stroll around the sofa and make my way to the cushion next to him. I take a seat and draw my knee up under me, about to respond when I catch something on the screen and do a doubletake.
“Does that say—” I crane my neck forward and squint at the TV, “is that person’s gamer tag American Ass Eater ?”
“Yeah,” Bowen snickers.
“What’s yours?” I ask, searching the screen before finally seeing it, “ Osama bin Laggin? ” I let out a laugh, “Why is your name Osama bin Laggin?”
“Why not?” he shrugs, sounding a bit more upbeat, “I’ve had it since high school.”
“And who is—” I squint at the screen, “ Finding Chemo? ”
Bowen’s grin widens, “Jay’s had his since high school, too.”
Oddly enough, that explains everything. A minute later, after he’s unceremoniously thrown into the abyss by some demon dragon, Bowen sets his controller down and rolls his head over the cushion to look at me.
“You really don’t see what he’s doing?”
“What’s he doing?” I ask, knowing full well what Bowen is going to say because I’ve already thought of it, too.
“You know,” Bowen raises his chin and eyes me expectantly, “I know you know.”
I shift my gaze to the sliding glass door, staring absently at the dense line of trees across the lawn. I run my tongue between my lips, dragging my bottom lip through my teeth. I know, but it doesn’t mean I want to say it out loud.
“You think he’s lying,” I murmur, giving him a weary look.
“I know you don’t want to believe it because it would be a lot more convenient if he turned out to be normal. But I know you, Brett, you avoid things that make you really uncomfortable or when you feel like you aren’t in control. And usually, that’s fine. But, this time, you need to pay attention because he’s not through with you yet.”
Man, you and Barrett both have me pegged, don’t you?
“OK,” I take a deep breath, “so, what do I do?”
“Stay away from him. Maybe don’t get chatty and give him a bunch of details about your life because I’m the one who’ll have to take care of it if he decides he didn’t get his fill last time.”
“Oh,” I perk up, “like waterboarding him?” I flash Bowen a smile, “Rip off some pinkies, perhaps?”
Bowen grins, probably for the first time since he’s been home, “You sound pretty excited about that.”
“I’ll get excited about that later. But I do actually need your help with something else,” I toss my hair away from my face, “because it’s finished.”
“What’s finished? ”
“My book,” I murmur.
Bowen smiles so wide that his dimples pop, “Really?”
I nod with excitement, grateful to change the subject, “Which means I can start querying agents. Most of them want the first one or two chapters, and they have to be stellar, so…” I bite my bottom lip, “will you read them and tell me what you think?”
Bowen arches his eyebrows, “Me?”
“Yes. Because you’ll tell me the truth, but maybe you’ll be nicer about it than some burnt out agent who gets 500 of these a day and doesn’t like my paragraph structure.”
He shoots me a salacious grin, “I thought you didn’t like when I’m nice to you.”
“You can be mean to me back there,” I toss my head back to the dark hallway leading to the bedroom, “but I need you to be kind and professional up here, at least right now.”
“I got you, baby girl,” Bowen rocks forward and sits up, “I’ll handle your hopes and dreams with care. Where’s your laptop?”
I jump up to retrieve it from the kitchen table, handing it over the back of the sectional.
He leans back into the corner of the cushions and opens my laptop, “What’s your password?”
“Beeswax.” I say as I collapse onto the cushion at the end of his feet.
“Why’s your password beeswax? ” he asks as he types.
I shoot him a side-eye, “Because it’s none of yours.”
Bowen looks up and stares at me for a moment, letting it sink in. When it finally clicks, he leans his head back against the cushion with a laugh, “God, you’re cute,” he shakes his head.
I should leave the room. I should go and do something mundane to keep me busy while Bowen reads the first two chapters of my book. I don’t know why I’m so nervous. Maybe it’s because I’ve never let anyone else on the planet read my writing. So, I space out, letting my eyes wander over the bookshelves, from the titles that were already there on the first two shelves to mine on the third and fourth.
The Outsiders, The Sun Also Rises, Carrie…
Carrie…
I shake my head as a chill runs up my neck.
Stop…
“You know,” Bowen finally glances up from behind the screen, “I can’t stand these kinds of books, but this is really good.”
I look over his shoulder at the bookshelves, “What are you talking about?” I furrow my brow, “You have Gillian Flynn on your shelf!”
Bowen doesn’t look up from the screen, “Those are Hildy’s.”
“Then why are they here?”
“Appearances. ”
“For who?” I snap.
Without a word, Bowen glances at me over the edge of the laptop screen while I stare back at him, waiting, “Worked on you, didn’t it?” he deadpans.
“ You don’t read? ” I scoff.
“Oh, I read,” he shifts his focus back to the screen, “just not those.”
I guess he has a point. He never said if he’s ever read the books on his shelf.
Finally, Bowen shuts the laptop and slings his arms behind his head, “I was right,” he casts me a devious look, “you do have some darkness in you.”
“Dark enough for an agent to pick me up?”
Bowen sets my laptop down on the coffee table and reaches out to me. I take his hand and let him pull me, crawling over his legs, to the corner of the sofa. I settle into his lap, straddling his hips as he wraps his arms around my waist.
“I want to read the rest of it,” he gazes at me with admiration, “that’s how good it is.”
“Seriously?”
He gives a sharp nod, “Send it. Make yourself famous, baby girl.”
●●●
I don’t see anyone else outside as I exit the building and make my way down the concrete path to the pin oaks. Colson is waiting for me at one of the steel picnic tables just as I told him to, munching on a bag of pretzels. When I sit down across from him, he reaches down and then slides something across the table. It’s a shaker bottle with a thick, orange liquid inside.
I pop the cap on the bottle and give it a sniff, “What’s this?” I immediately recognize the aroma and look up at him with a pursed smile, “Did you seriously bring me a mango smoothie?”
“Trust me, it’s way better than those Naked mango ones with the protein grit that you used to like.” Then he furrows his brow with suspicion, “You’re not lactose intolerant now or some shit, are you?”
I almost burst out laughing, “No, I’m not lactose intolerant now or some shit.” I reach into my bag and pull out a container of lemon-flavored Greek yogurt and drop it on the table. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he smiles, “I never understood why you liked them so much. It’s like drinking sand.”
“I like the grit,” I take a sip from the shaker, “and it guaranteed you’d never drink it.”
“Fucking hater,” Colson sneers and bites another pretzel in half.
“So, do you still have the Bronco?” I start with something benign, instead of a question that involves attempted murder or his neurological issues .
“Of course, I still have the Bronco,” Colson scoffs, “but I don’t drive it all the time. The suspension really sucks compared to anything that’s made now.”
I peel the foil off my yogurt, “What do you drive now?”
He looks over his shoulder and nods to the second row of cars, “That blue STI. I need to clean out the inside, though. It’s covered in dog hair.”
“What kind of dog to you have?” I ask, taking the opportunity to find out anything I can.
Colson reaches into his back pocket for his phone. A moment later, he rotates the screen toward me with a photo of a black German Shepherd sitting next to some rocks with a gorgeous backdrop of jagged mountains. I let out a chuckle when I realize it’s holding its own leash in its mouth.
“His name is Pony. He’s four. I picked him up as a pup when I drove through Colorado.”
“ Pony? ” I scoff, nearly spitting out my sip of mango smoothie.
“I let Dallas name him,” Colson shoots me a sideways glance. “Don’t ever let her name anything.”
“But you kept the name,” I point out, “you didn’t change it.”
Colson shakes his head, “No, I promised her I wouldn’t even though I thought it was ridiculous. Scariest dog in the neighborhood—” he tucks his phone back into his pocket, “until you call his name.”
I glance back at his car, “I used to have a blue Subaru.”
“I know you used to have a blue Subaru,” he replies without missing a beat.
“You remember that?”
Colson takes a drink from his black Nalgene water bottle, “I remember a lot more than you think.”
I flash my eyes at him, “Like my favorite smoothie?”
“That, and you like the book, Carrie , better than the movie.”
It feels like he was never gone, as if we picked up where we left off in the middle of a conversation that abruptly paused three years ago.
“Where did you go…” I stir my yogurt around in its container, “after?”
“I still went to Colorado,” he nods, “but halfway through Missouri, my friend I worked with at Katmai called and said I should come up there because he could get me a job. So, I did. Then I spent the next three years in Alaska and Canada.”
“Did you become a ranger, after all?”
“I did,” Colson smiles, “but I was in the backcountry more than anything, tracking and tagging bears and wolves with biologists. Then I started working Search and Rescue and I loved it. I did that at Katmai and then went up to Canada for one year.”
“Doing what?”
Colson tosses another pretzel in his mouth and chews it slowly, like he’s deciding what to say next, “I was a bear guard. ”
I blink, “A what? ”
He smiles and shifts in his seat, “If you’re a scientist or someone who works in the Arctic, or if you go backpacking with a group, a lot of times you have to hire an armed guard who stays with you and watches for polar bears.”
I stare at Colson with both shock and fascination, “How?”
“You scan the snow all day, every day, looking for bears. And you have to be on all the time, or else you’ll make a mistake. It’s always about non-lethal deterrence,” he explains, “but if you kill a bear, there’s an investigation because unless it’s sick or something, it means you screwed up. I loved it, but after a year, I couldn’t do it anymore.”
“Why?”
“It’s a lot of inactivity followed by bursts of adrenaline. One guy I worked with was in Iraq and said this job was a lot like that—waiting around, constantly on alert, and then suddenly everything goes off.”
I lick the yogurt off my spoon and shake my head, “Just thinking about it stresses me out.”
“Yeah,” Colson leans forward and lowers his voice, “which is why I can’t do it anymore.”
“OK,” I chuckle as I scrape the bottom of my yogurt container, “so, why are you here?”
He cocks his head in confusion, “Why?”
“Yeah. You were living out there doing the whole outdoor adventure thing. What are you doing back here?”
Colson rubs his fingers together, “Private companies pay a lot more than the government. But park rangers are federal law enforcement, so it’s not hard to transition to something like this. And,” he shrugs, “my sister works here.”
I shake my head, still in disbelief, “I can’t believe Dallas is your sister.”
Colson grins, “You know her?”
“Yes, and you all look nothing alike.” Then I add, “And you act nothing alike.”
“Yeah, I get that a lot. Cutest little hacker you’ll ever meet.”
“Are you all close?”
Colson nods, looking down at his bag of pretzels, “She’s one of the most important people to me.”
I have to smile as I study him from across the table. He’s so nonchalant about everything, but I can tell a lot about what kind of relationship they have just from the way his tone softens when he speaks about her.
Colson glances up from his pretzels, changing the subject, “You read a lot, right?”
I nod, licking the last bit of yogurt from my spoon.
“Did you ever read that book, The Outsiders? ”
Goosebumps skitter across my arms .
“It was my favorite book in middle school,” he begins, seemingly oblivious that I’m looking at him like he has three heads. “There’s this greaser named Dallas who dies in a shootout, so my friends and I started calling her Dally. Got a lot of her friends to start doing it, too.”
Dallas is a unique name, and Matt Dillon made Dallas Winston famous in 1983. Anyone can make that reference to her name. I’m just not sure that includes Colson Lutz.
“I bet she hated you ,” I snicker.
“She did. That’s actually why she named my dog Pony. His full name is Ponyboy . ”
Of course, it is.
“So, she finally got her revenge and then convinced me to move back here,” Colson leans on the edge of the table and looks me up and down, “and here you are.”
“I’m not immune to the algorithm.” I arch an eyebrow, alluding to the intrusive nature of social media, “How could you not know I worked here?”
Colson shakes his head, “I haven’t really been on socials since Alaska. I—” he hesitates, almost like he realizes he’s about to say something he shouldn’t, “had a lot going on.” He says the last part slower and with more intention.
I take a swig from my water bottle, “I imagine there’s a lot that’s happened since I last saw you.”
“I could say the same about you,” Colson gives a nod to my hand propped up under my chin, “married woman, and all.”
“Almost,” I glance down at my hand and touch the underside of my ring with my thumb. “I’m currently engaged.”
“Congratulations,” he smiles, tapping his finger on the table, “how’d you meet?”
It’s such a bizarre story. I look down at the table, wondering where to even begin.
“Um,” I can’t suppress my smile, “he called a wrong number. I went to Salt Fork by myself to write and this guy called my room looking for the front desk. The lines got crossed…whatever. And the next morning, he walked past me in the lobby and he recognized my voice from the phone call . It was wild. Then he asked me to go hiking with him, and the next day I met his entire family because they were camping at Salt Fork. And, here we are.”
I like telling the story. It sounds like something out of a romance novel rather than a horror story. I might write about really dark and unhinged things, but it doesn’t mean I want to live them out in real life.
“Wow,” Colson arches his brow, “that’s some story.” He gazes across the grass for a few moments before turning back to me, “Talk about a coincidence. Set a date?”
“No, not yet. I have to—” I hesitate for a moment and glance down at his finger, still tapping away, “I wasn’t going to until I finished writing my book. But I just finished it, so…” I trail off again .
A wide grin spreads across Colson’s face, “Yeah?” He doesn’t sound surprised. It’s more like he already knew it and he’s just been waiting for me to work up the nerve to say it.
“Yeah,” I suddenly realize what a big deal this is, and that maybe I should start owning it, “I guess I have to finally start talking about it like it’s a real thing,” I scrunch up my nose, “but I’m not good at hyping myself. I have no PR skills.”
“Eh,” Colson gives a shrug, dismissing my insecurities, “don’t sell yourself short. You have more skills than you realize.”
“How do you know?” I scoff. “You’ve been gone for three years.”
“True,” he tips his chin up slightly, “but I know what you’ll do to get something you really want.”
I inhale a sharp breath, ready to lob some witty comeback at him. Instead, I just purse my lips and looked across the table, unamused. He just sits there, smirking at me and burning holes in me with those pale blue eyes of his.
So, this is how it’s going to be.