Chapter 14
WYATT
We shared a cab back to town.
All four of us piled into the back of a minivan taxi that smelled faintly of air freshener and old leather, Beth and Natasha chattering about the night, replaying moments, laughing at inside jokes I wasn't part of yet but appreciated, anyway.
Sophie sat beside me, quiet, her hand resting on the seat between us close enough that our fingers brushed when the cab hit bumps in the road.
I didn't say much. Just listened. Watched Charleston slide past the windows—neon signs fading to streetlights, the city settling into its late-night rhythm, restaurants going dark, bars still glowing with the last holdouts of the evening.
Sophie looked calmer now. Steadier. Like telling me about Jonesy had released something she'd been holding too tight for too long, a pressure valve finally opened after years of building.
The cab pulled up to The Palmetto Rose, and Beth and Natasha climbed out first, giving us a moment with exaggerated discretion that made Sophie smile despite everything.
She turned to me, and I could see the question in her eyes before she asked it.
"You all right?" she said softly.
"Yeah," I lied, the word automatic. "You?"
"I think so." She hesitated, biting her lip. "Thank you. For listening. For not running."
"I'm not going anywhere."
She leaned in and kissed me—soft, brief, enough to remind me what we'd started but not demanding anything more tonight. When she pulled back, she smiled faintly, her hand lingering on my arm like she needed the contact to ground herself.
"Goodnight, Wyatt."
"Goodnight, Soph."
She climbed out, and I watched her walk into the hotel with Beth and Natasha, the three of them disappearing through the glass doors into the warm lobby light before I told the driver to take me to Mama P's.
The drive was short. Silent except for the hum of the engine and the occasional crackle of the dispatcher's radio cutting through the quiet. My mind wouldn't stop turning, circling back to the same thought over and over.
Sophie had told me everything. Her brother.
The accident she'd witnessed, helpless and frozen.
The guilt she'd carried for years like a stone in her chest, getting heavier instead of lighter with time.
The way her mother had tried to erase Jonesy like forgetting would make the pain stop, like pretending he'd never existed would heal what was broken instead of making it worse.
And what had I told her?
Nothing.
Not about my father disappearing, leaving seven sons behind with expectations we couldn't meet no matter how hard we tried.
Not about my mother sitting in a facility in Marfa, her mind slipping further away every day, forgetting my name but remembering flowers with perfect clarity like nature was safer than family.
Not about the ranch I couldn't visit or the guilt I carried for leaving my brothers behind to deal with it all while I ran toward something I thought would fix me.
What kind of man does that?
A coward, I thought.
The word settled in my chest like ice, cold and sharp and undeniable.
The cab pulled up to Mama P's, and I paid the driver, stepping out into the warm Charleston night. The vacancy sign flickered above the door, casting strange shadows across the porch, the light unsteady like it couldn't decide whether to stay on or give up.
I was in a mood. Dark. Heavy. The kind that settled into your bones and made everything feel harder than it should, made breathing feel like work you had to remember to do.
Mama P was awake when I walked in.
She sat in her chair by the window, working on her yarn, needles clicking softly in the quiet like a metronome counting time that refused to stop.
She glanced up as I entered, her sharp eyes taking me in instantly—the slump of my shoulders, the tightness in my jaw, the way I was carrying weight I hadn't walked in with.
"You're wearing the weight of the world on your shoulders," she said matter-of-factly, like it was obvious to anyone who bothered to look.
I stopped in the doorway. "I'm going to bed."
"Have a seat."
It wasn't a request. It was a command delivered gently but with absolute authority, the kind you didn't question.
Mama P wasn't someone you said no to.
I sat.
She set her needles and yarn down carefully, arranging them in her lap like she was preparing for something serious, something that required her full attention.
Then she looked at me, direct and unflinching, the kind of look that saw past whatever mask you were wearing straight down to the parts you tried to hide.
"Is it PTSD?" she asked abruptly.
I blinked. "What?"
"PTSD," she repeated, her mouth twisting slightly like the word tasted bad.
"Though I hate that term. Makes it sound like a tribe.
Like a club you join and get a membership card for.
Everyone's out for a label these days, like naming it makes it cool.
Call it what it is—trauma. Repressed memories of youth.
The weight you carry because you don't know how to put it down. All of it."
I shook my head. "It's got nothing to do with war. Not my war, anyway."
She studied me for a long moment, eyes narrowing like she was reading text written too small. "Then what is it?"
I didn't answer. Couldn't find the words that would make it make sense without opening doors I'd spent years keeping locked.
Mama P leaned back in her chair, exhaling slowly through her nose.
"I repressed mine for years. Saw a lot of good men and women die in Vietnam.
Even some bad ones. Bodies I couldn't save no matter how fast I worked or how hard I tried.
Blood on my hands every day that wouldn't wash off no matter how much I scrubbed.
Decades went by. I lost two husbands to the disease of the past."
I looked up sharply. "Lost them?"
"They left me," she said bluntly, no shame in her voice.
Just fact stated plainly. "Because I became unhinged.
A terror to be around. Unpredictable. Crazy.
Couldn't sleep. Couldn't be touched without flinching.
Couldn't exist in normal life without everything feeling like a threat waiting to happen. "
She said it like it was history, something she'd made peace with instead of something that still haunted her.
"But I got lucky," she continued, her voice softening slightly. "I volunteered at the VA most Fridays. Liked Fridays because they're just before the weekend. Figured the broken ones think they can be mended on a Friday, sleep it off on the weekend, get back to it on Monday like nothing happened."
I didn’t see where this was going. I let her talk. Needed to hear it more than I wanted to admit.
"Those were the only times I felt sane," she said.
"Whole. Like I had a purpose that wasn't just surviving another day.
And that's where I met him. A man so broken, so close to the edge, you could see it on his shoes.
The way he walked. The way he looked at nothing like he was already halfway gone. "
"Who was he?"
"Navy SEAL. Tough as they come. Multiple tours.
The kind of man who'd seen things that would break most people in half and keep breaking them.
" She paused, her fingers tracing the edge of her blanket absently.
"One day he disappeared. Just stopped showing up.
I thought he'd done what so many had done—ate a bullet or a bunch of pills.
Another name on a list too long to read without crying. "
My chest tightened, something cold spreading through me like water finding cracks.
"But he came back a month later," she said, her voice lifting slightly with something that might have been hope.
"And he wasn't the same man. There was light in his eyes again.
Real light. Not manufactured. Not drug-induced or faked for the people around him who needed to believe he was okay. Real life."
I leaned forward slightly, hands clasped between my knees. "What happened to him?"
"He hugged me," she said simply, like that explained everything.
"First time I'd seen him smile in two years.
Started volunteering again, too. Laughing.
Talking. Living instead of just existing.
And one day, I gathered the courage to ask what had happened.
Because by then I was lying in bed with a pistol under my pillow—not because of burglars or safety, but because I was ready to be done with it all.
Ready to stop fighting a war that had ended decades ago but wouldn't leave me alone. "
Jesus.
"The SEAL told me he'd gone to Costa Rica," she continued. "To see an American doctor who was beginning to treat veterans with psychedelics. Psilocybin. Ayahuasca. Things the VA won't touch but that were saving lives, anyway, pulling people back from edges they'd been standing on for years."
I frowned. "Psychedelics?"
"I thought it was foolish, too," she admitted.
"Sounded like hippie nonsense. Snake oil sold to desperate people by charlatans who didn't care if it worked as long as it paid.
But I kept an eye on him for weeks after that.
Watched. Waited for him to crack, for the light to fade, for the darkness to come back like it always did. It didn't."
She met my eyes, her gaze steady and certain. "Finally, I asked for the doctor's name. That weekend, I flew to Costa Rica. And with the help of a caring team—people who treated me like a human being instead of a diagnosis or a problem to solve—I was given my life back."
I sat there, processing, feeling the weight of her story settle into the space between us like something physical.
"I'm not telling you this because I think you need to fly to Costa Rica," she said carefully.
"I'm telling you because I suspect you're like I was—hesitant and stubborn about asking for help.
Convinced you can carry it alone because that's what strong people do, because asking for help means admitting you're not as together as you pretend to be. "
I opened my mouth to argue, to deflect, to tell her she was wrong, but she kept going.
"You've got to ask for help," she said firmly, leaning forward in her chair. "If you don't ask for help, you're committing the world's worst sin."
"What's that?" I asked quietly.
"If you don't ask for help, you're preventing someone else from being of service." She held my gaze, unblinking. "Now isn't that selfish?"
I couldn't disagree.
The words hit harder than I expected, cutting through the justifications I'd built over years like they were paper instead of walls. This only confirmed what I'd been thinking on the way in, what had been eating at me since Sophie told me about Jonesy.
She'd trusted me with her pain. With the worst thing that had ever happened to her. And I'd kept mine locked up like it was a weapon I couldn't put down, like sharing it would make me weak instead of human.
"Thank you," I said finally, my voice rough with something I couldn't name.
Mama P nodded once, satisfied. "You need anything before you go to bed?"
"No, ma'am. I'm good."
"I'm always around, if I can be of service," she said, picking up her needles again, fingers moving through the familiar motions. "That's what we're here for. To help each other carry it."
I stood, patting her arm as I passed, meaning it as gratitude and goodbye and acknowledgment all at once.
She grabbed my hand, her grip surprisingly strong for someone her age, her fingers warm and certain.
"You don't have to do this life alone," she said, looking up at me with eyes that had seen too much and survived, anyway. "Ever."
A small part of me believed her.
Maybe more than a small part.
I showered, letting the hot water pound against my shoulders and neck, trying to wash off the weight of the night. But it didn't help. The heat just made me more aware of how tired I was, how heavy everything felt, how long I'd been carrying things I should have put down years ago.
When I finally climbed into bed, sleep didn't come.
Just the years stretching out behind me like a road I couldn't see the end of.
The cowardice I'd built into a fortress, brick by brick, justification by justification.
The lonely nights spent convincing myself I was fine, that I didn't need anyone, that being alone was safer than being known.
The time away from my brothers, from the ranch, from everything that had mattered before I decided running was easier than staying.
The distance I'd put between myself and Sophie without even realizing it— years of silence because I didn't know how to be the person she remembered, the boy who'd been her best friend before I learned how to be someone else, someone harder, someone who didn't need anything from anyone.
I wasn't sure if I was ready to face that yet. To crack open the walls I'd spent years building. To tell Sophie about my father and my mother and the guilt that lived in my chest like a second heartbeat, constant and unavoidable.
But maybe I could.
Maybe that was what Mama P had been trying to tell me. That asking for help wasn't weakness. That letting someone in wasn't surrender. That being seen—really seen—was the bravest thing you could do.
That being known was different than being seen, and both mattered.
I closed my eyes, listening to Charleston breathe outside my window—distant traffic, crickets, the faint hum of the city settling into sleep like it did every night, indifferent to the weight people carried inside these walls.
And I let myself imagine what it might feel like to stop carrying everything alone.
To tell Sophie the truth. About my father. My mother. The ranch. The years of running.
To ask for help instead of pretending I didn't need it.
Maybe tomorrow.
Maybe soon.
Maybe I was finally ready.