Chapter 22 Brick
brICK
The trailer rocks once, hard enough to rattle the forks in the drawer, and then the door bangs off the latch like somebody means to break the whole rig to make a point. They’re fighting with the door, so I already know who it is before I see him. I can smell the whiskey and the pride.
Reno stomps in with his jaw set and his eyes bright in the wrong way. He doesn’t look at my shoulder, doesn’t ask about my head. He points a finger like a gun and fires. “What the hell, Dad?”
I’m sitting on the banquette with an ice pack that’s half melt, half good intentions. The concussion roar has dropped to a steady hum, but it’s still enough to make the world feel like it’s wrapped in felt. Nausea has come and gone a few times every hour, but I’m hanging in there.
I set the pack down on a towel. “Shut the door.”
He kicks it shut with his heel. It slams and wobbles, and he doesn’t notice. “You and Annie? That’s what we’re doing now? We’re fishing in each other’s past like we’re short on water?”
“You gonna ask me how I am, or you here to practice yelling at your injured old man?”
“I saw you get peeled off the dirt,” he snaps. “You’re fine.”
“Lucky,” I say. “Not fine.”
“Whatever. You deserve worse.”
There’s a lot I could say to that. I pick none of it. I let the quiet sit long enough to see if he wants to fill it with something besides anger. He doesn’t. He steps closer and leans on the table like he means to push it through the wall. “You answer me.”
“I will,” I tell him. “But you want the version that makes you throw punches or the one that makes you think?”
“Don’t be clever.”
“I can’t help that,” I say lightly, because if I let the room tilt his way, we’re both going to fall. “Sit down.”
“I’ll stand,” he says, and he sways a little with the decision.
“You’re drunk.”
“And you’re a traitor.”
He throws it like a rope, and I let it hit the floor. The part of me that stings at the word has had sixteen years to toughen up. The other part is busy hanging on to the memory of Annie’s hands steady on my chest and her voice in my ear when the bell in my head was ringing louder than my name.
And the memory of her not responding to my texts. It’s been a weird day.
“Ren,” I say softly, “don’t do this to yourself.”
He barks a humorless laugh. “To myself? You did this to me.”
“What exactly is this?” I ask, patient like a farrier with a horse that wants to kick. “Me being alive? Me finding someone I like talking to?”
“You like talking to her because she likes you,” he says. The words come sharp and fast. “She never looked at me like that.”
“She looked at you like you showed her the man you are.”
His mouth tightens. “You think you’re better than me.”
“I think I’m older than you. And I think I’ve already made most of the mistakes you’ve got lined up on your calendar.”
“You think you’ve got the right to take my girlfriend—”
“She’s not a thing you own,” I say, and this time the patience frays.
“She’s a person who decided she’s done with you.
That choice had nothing to do with me, and that doesn’t mean what we do is about you.
We met, we like each other, that’s all there is to it.
This has nothing to do with you. I’m seeing her.
I like her. I need you to deal with it.”
His face goes flat and mean at once. “You’re disgusting.”
“And you’re drunk,” I repeat, because it’s the only sentence in the room that keeps us from breaking furniture. “Sit down. Water’s by the sink.”
“Don’t you dad me.”
“I’m going to dad you until one of us is dead. That’s the deal we signed to be a family. We will figure this out.”
“Yeah? Well, the contract’s up,” he says, and he turns to leave, which is a relief for half a heartbeat until I see the keys spin in his hand.
I’m up faster than my head wants me to be.
The world bumps once, like a trailer going over a curb.
I cross the two steps between us and snatch the keys out of the air before he can argue.
I hold them tight in my fist and take the half step back that keeps my shoulder from remembering it’s made of damaged meat.
“No,” I say, simple as putting a hand on a horse’s nose. “You’re not getting in a truck right now.”
He snarls, “Give them back.”
“You think I’m gonna let you get yourself killed? You’re out of your goddamn mind.”
He takes a breath, then another, and then he moves quicker than he looks like he ought to.
It’s not a tackle, just a sharp reach and twist, the kind you learn at a kitchen table, fighting your brother for the last biscuit.
The keys bite my palm, drag the skin hard enough to bruise, and then they’re gone.
I suck air through my teeth because my shoulder tugs a complaint toward my ear. “Give them back, Reno—”
“You’re hurt,” he sneers, half-triumphant, half-shaky. “You’re too old for the chute. Too old to fight me. And definitely too old for Annie. You’re a fucking fossil, old man.”
“Ren, wait—”
But he storms down the steps and into the dark, and then he’s a shadow moving fast where he shouldn’t. The door bangs back against the frame and rattles until it remembers it’s supposed to close.
I stand there with my pulse in my mouth and the urge to throw up.
It takes me five slow breaths to find my phone.
Two more to decide which number to press.
The thought that shows up first is a bad one—call the cops on your own son—and it makes my hands sweat.
The thought that shows up second is the same one with a different name—call security, call someone with a flashlight and a clipboard who gets paid to be the asshole when you can’t.
If he gets into an accident because I didn’t call for help…or because I’m too old and injured to stop him…fuck.
I stand at the little trailer window and look for the shape of his back, the way he walks when he’s leaning forward to turn anger into speed. The lot is a mess of shadows and tires and metal, a junkyard of bad decisions, and I can’t spot him before the view gives me up.
The knock on the door is light, a courtesy tap instead of a battering. I’m halfway to barking “what” when Blaze slips in sideways, like she didn’t want to wake the place. “You alive?” she says, eyes scanning the room like she’s counting for blood.
“Technically.”
She studies my face, runs a thumb under her lower lid like she can swipe a better picture. “I heard a screaming match and saw Reno stumble out of your door. He nearly kissed the ground. You okay?”
“I’ve been better.”
She tips her chin toward the lot. “You want me to go after him?”
“You have a car.”
“What do you need?”
“I need him not to drive drunk. I need him not to die just to tell me he hates me. I need a lot of things I’m not getting.”
She snorts. “Oh, that?” She leans back against the door and crosses her arms. “I snatched his keys and chucked them in the bushes by the fence line before I doubled back to check on you. He’ll be looking for them for hours.”
My body does something ridiculous that might be laughter. Or crying. “Blaze.”
“I know my brothers,” she says, serious under the grin. “And I like them alive.”
“He might find them,” I say, which is both anxious and insulting.
She reaches into her back pocket with a flourish and holds up Reno’s key ring. “He’ll have to find me first.”
Relief hits so hard my legs forget they’re supposed to be the stubborn part of me.
I step forward and haul her into a hug before my brain clears the move with the part of us that doesn’t do that much.
She’s solid and warm and small in a way I only notice when I’m not looking.
She goes still for a second, surprised, and then she thumps my back twice, careful at the shoulder.
“What’s wrong, Dad?” she asks, softer now.
I stand back, embarrassed and grateful in the same skin. “He knows,” I say. “About me and Annie. He walked in pissed and drunk and decided it was a betrayal. Told me I’m too old for her. Too old for riding. Too old for all of it.”
She does a face like she smelled something that used to be milk. “It’s his pride talking. Once he figures that out, he’ll probably go back to being a good guy. But until then, he’ll be a dick, so don’t let him get to you.”
“When did you get to be so smart?”
“Haven’t you been paying attention? I’ve always been this smart.”
I can’t help it. I chuckle, even now. “Yeah. You have.”
We stand in the small quiet of the trailer for a minute, the kind of quiet that exists only between two people who know they’re supposed to be talking and are deciding not to.
Been a long time since we had a heart-to-heart, and until now, it’s always been her coming to me with a problem. Time the shoe was on the other foot, I guess.
“Be straight with me. You think I’m making a fool of myself?”
“With Annie?”
“Yes.”
She leans a hip on the counter and thinks about it for a beat. “It’s a big gap. Not gonna lie.”
“I know.”
“But people have made bigger gaps work.”
“Me and your mom were the same age,” I say, because my mouth is attached to the part of me that likes memory the way gamblers like noise. “It made communication easy. We—”
“Dad,” she says, not unkind. “You were childhood sweethearts. You can’t replicate that with someone else. Whatever you have with Annie, you can’t compare the two.”
“I know that,” I say again, because I do. It just doesn’t stop me from using the old map when the new roads don’t make sense.
She picks at a nick in the table with her thumbnail. “And maybe you are a little old for her,” she says, straight like a needle. “But that doesn’t really matter, does it? It’s not like it’s anything more than a fling, right?”
The word lands like a bucker who wants to see if I can still ride. I take a beat. My head hums. My shoulder argues. The part of me that wants the thing I’ve been pretending I don’t want stands up in a dark room and looks left and right for an exit I can live with.
“Right,” I say finally. “Just a fling.”
“So Reno will get over it, and next month when we’re in Kansas City, this will all be in the past.” She shrugs. “So, who cares, right?”
“Yeah. Good point.” But I care. I care too much.
If I tried to make something real out of Annie and me, Reno would be crushed—whether or not he has the right to be.
And Annie…Annie’s smarter than me. She’s busy and brave and being pulled in ten directions by bills and people and duty.
She’s probably in this because she’s tired of saying no to things that make her smile.
A fling.
She didn’t ask for forever. She didn’t ask for anything past the tent, the trailer, the kind of door that doesn’t lock right until you remember the trick. It’s not real to her. Why would it be?
I’m never real to the women I hook up with. Just the cowboy who’s floating through town until I’m onto the next one. I’m the memory they use to get off when they’re married and their husband is boring in bed.
I used to like that about my life. Now, it stings.
But that’s my problem. Not Annie’s. I’ll be the one left heartbroken. That’s on me. I’ve built an entire career on the long fall and the quick recovery. I can do it again.
Enjoy the fling. Move on. Put Annie behind me when we leave town. Be a man about it. Make up with Reno. Pay attention in Kansas City. Smile at the right cameras. Keep my hands off my own phone.
I just don’t know how to do that.
Blaze flips the keys once and pockets them. “You want me to go babysit the bush line to make sure he doesn’t find the decoys?”
“Decoys?”
“I threw my keys in there.”
“My brilliant girl,” I mutter with too much pride. “You already did more than enough. Text me if he shows signs of turning the evening into a tragedy.”
She grins, leans forward, kisses the air near my temple like she’s not sure where contact would hurt, and slips back out into the light.
I sit slowly, like I’m trying not to wake the number of years I’ve been dragging around, and I look at my hands. To do this—this pretending it’s a fling—I’m going to have to pull a piece out of myself and murder it.
I can. I’ve done harder things. I’ve watched men I love bleed and made jokes so they’d stop being scared long enough to let me carry them to the gate. I’ve watched a woman I love die and somehow kept my kids fed and their laughter alive even when I was dead on the inside.
I can do this. We’re a fling. Nothing more.
I pick up my phone and stare at a blank text screen. The words that want to go there are the wrong ones. I put it down again.
I’ll take the twenty-four hours she asked for, and I won’t ride.
I’ll check on my son without making it worse.
Hopefully. I’ll let Blaze be smarter than me in all the ways a person can be.
I’ll let Cash make the joke that keeps our dinner from ending in a plate thrown at a wall.
I’ll let Levi tape my elbow for me like I forgot how to do it.
I’ll walk past the medic tent without going in, and I’ll try not to read anything into the way the flap moves when the breeze wants to talk.
And when we leave town, I’ll bury that part of me that she brought to life.