Chapter 4 Lines in the Sand
Stay Away
Damon spent the next three days trying to pretend Elliot Hayes didn't exist.
It should have been easy.
He had work.
Plenty of it.
The oil field didn't care about distractions, feelings, or inconvenient thoughts. It demanded attention every minute of every shift. One mistake could cost thousands of dollars. A bigger mistake could cost someone their life.
Normally, work was enough.
More than enough.
It had carried him through difficult years.
Long nights.
Bad memories.
Lonely seasons.
When Damon didn't want to think, he worked.
When he didn't want to feel, he worked harder.
The strategy had served him well for most of his adult life.
Unfortunately, this week it wasn't working quite as well as usual.
The problem wasn't that he kept seeing Elliot.
The problem was that he kept thinking about him.
The kid appeared in his thoughts at random moments.
While reviewing equipment reports.
While supervising new hires.
While driving home after dark.
The interruptions made absolutely no sense.
Damon barely knew him.
A handful of conversations.
A broken porch light.
A stupid handshake.
That should have been the end of it.
Instead, his brain seemed determined to keep bringing him back.
It was irritating.
More than irritating.
Dangerous.
Because Damon understood exactly where curiosity could lead if left unchecked.
And he wasn't interested in finding out.
"Boss?"
Damon looked up.
One of the younger workers stood nearby holding a clipboard.
"What?"
The man blinked.
"You've been staring at that report for five minutes."
Damon glanced down.
Sure enough, he'd been reading the same paragraph repeatedly.
"Then maybe the report's boring."
The worker laughed.
"Could be."
Damon handed the clipboard back.
"Get the pressure readings from Well Three."
"Already done."
"Then check them again."
The worker groaned.
"You're impossible."
"That's why they pay me."
The younger man shook his head and walked away.
Damon watched him go.
Then he rubbed a hand across his face.
He needed sleep.
That had to be the explanation.
Nothing else made sense.
The rest of the morning passed in a blur of inspections, meetings, and equipment checks.
The physical work helped.
At least for a while.
By lunchtime, Damon had almost convinced himself the strange distraction was fading.
Then Roy called.
The ringtone immediately made him suspicious.
Roy rarely called during work hours unless something important happened.
Damon answered while walking toward a quieter area near the trucks.
"What's wrong?"
"Nice attitude."
"You're calling at noon."
"I could hang up."
"You won't."
Roy sighed dramatically.
"You're annoying."
"Get to the point."
A pause followed.
Then Roy asked, "How's work?"
Damon frowned.
That wasn't the point.
"What do you want?"
"Can't a friend check in?"
"No."
Roy laughed.
Damon immediately knew something was coming.
After nearly two decades of friendship, he recognized the warning signs.
"What happened?"
"Nothing happened."
"Roy."
"Fine."
There it was.
Damon waited.
"Elliot likes the college."
The statement caught him off guard.
"What?"
"The college."
"I heard you."
Another pause.
The realization hit him.
Roy wasn't calling to discuss school.
He was talking about his nephew.
Again.
For some reason, the thought annoyed Damon.
Mostly because he knew exactly why.
Part of him wanted to hear it.
Wanted updates.
Wanted information.
And that was a problem.
A big one.
"Good for him," Damon said.
"He likes his professors."
"Wonderful."
"He made a good impression."
Damon leaned against a truck.
"Why are you telling me this?"
Roy was silent for a second.
Then he laughed.
The sound immediately irritated Damon further.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"Roy."
"You sound interested."
"I am not interested."
"Sure."
Damon ended the call before the conversation could get any worse.
The moment he shoved the phone back into his pocket, regret followed.
Not because of Roy.
Because now he was wondering how Elliot's first week was going.
Which was ridiculous.
Absolutely ridiculous.
The kid was twenty-one years old.
He didn't need Damon Blackwell worrying about him.
The afternoon brought more work.
More heat.
More opportunities to focus on anything except inconvenient thoughts.
For a while, it succeeded.
Then quitting time arrived.
And with it came freedom.
Which turned out to be the real problem.
Because idle thoughts had room to wander.
Damon stopped at a diner on his way home.
The place sat near Main Street and attracted most of the town's working crowd.
The food was decent.
The coffee was strong.
And the conversations were usually easy to ignore.
Usually.
He claimed a booth near the back and ordered dinner.
Several familiar faces occupied nearby tables.
Truck drivers.
Mechanics.
Oil workers.
The usual crowd.
Damon ate quietly while half-listening to the background noise.
The conversation at the next table barely registered at first.
A group of local men discussing football.
Weather.
Politics.
Nothing unusual.
Then one of them mentioned the college.
Another mentioned the new student.
Damon's attention sharpened immediately.
Without permission.
Without logic.
Without any desire whatsoever.
He hated that.
"...saw him downtown yesterday."
"Roy's nephew?"
"That's the one."
Damon kept eating.
Pretending not to listen.
The conversation continued anyway.
"Kid looks like he got lost on the way to Austin."
Several men laughed.
"Not exactly roughneck material."
"Looks too pretty to survive around here."
More laughter followed.
Something uncomfortable settled in Damon's chest.
He ignored it.
Or tried to.
The men continued talking.
One mimicked exaggerated gestures.
Another made comments about Elliot's clothes.
His appearance.
The way he carried himself.
The tone wasn't openly cruel.
But it wasn't kind either.
The kind of casual mockery people often dismissed as harmless.
Damon had seen it before.
Hell, he'd participated in it when he was younger.
Back when he cared more about fitting in than being decent.
The memory left a bitter taste in his mouth.
He set down his fork.
The conversation next door continued.
"Kid won't last six months."
"Probably not."
"College boys never do."
"Especially that one."
Damon glanced toward the group.
They weren't particularly bad people.
Just careless.
Thoughtless.
The way many small-town folks could be when someone different arrived.
Still.
The comments bothered him more than they should have.
Maybe because he'd seen the same thing happen throughout his life.
Different target.
Different reasons.
Same result.
People deciding who someone was before actually knowing them.
People creating stories.
People assigning labels.
He knew exactly how that felt.
For years, half the town had reduced him to a collection of mistakes.
Troublemaker.
Criminal.
Dangerous.
The labels had followed him long after he'd changed.
Long after he'd earned something better.
The realization hit unexpectedly.
Elliot probably understood that feeling too.
Not the same circumstances.
Not the same history.
But the same judgment.
The same experience of people deciding things before learning the truth.
A strange irritation flickered inside him.
One he couldn't quite explain.
The younger man hadn't done anything wrong.
He was attending school.
Helping his uncle.
Living his life.
Yet somehow that was enough for people to start talking.
Damon pushed his plate away.
Suddenly he wasn't hungry anymore.
The conversation next door continued.
He stopped listening.
Mostly because he didn't trust himself to keep doing so.
The protective feeling growing inside him made absolutely no sense.
Elliot wasn't his responsibility.
Wasn't his concern.
Wasn't anybody he should be thinking about.
Yet as Damon left money on the table and headed toward the exit, one uncomfortable truth followed him.
Hearing people talk badly about Roy's nephew had bothered him far more than it should have.
Far more than a casual acquaintance warranted.
Far more than a man trying very hard to stay away should allow.
And as he stepped out into the warm Texas evening, Damon found himself wondering whether Elliot knew people were already judging him.
Something told him the kid probably did.
Something told him he'd spent most of his life dealing with it.
For reasons Damon couldn't explain, that realization made him angry.
Not at Elliot.
At everyone else.
Which was a problem.
Because protective instincts had no business showing up where Elliot Hayes was concerned.
And yet, despite every effort to stop it, they already had.
Porch Conversations
Damon blamed the insomnia on work.
It was easier than admitting the truth.
The oil field had been demanding lately. Long hours, equipment problems, and constant responsibility were more than enough reasons for a man to struggle with sleep.
That explanation made sense.
The fact that his thoughts kept drifting toward Roy's nephew had absolutely nothing to do with it.
At least, that's what he kept telling himself.
Near midnight, he finally gave up on sleep altogether.
His bedroom felt too warm.
Too quiet.
Too full of thoughts he didn't particularly want to examine.
Throwing on a T-shirt, Damon headed outside.
The neighborhood sat beneath a blanket of darkness. Most homes were asleep. Porch lights glowed softly in the distance, and the occasional sound of crickets drifted through the warm Texas night.
Damon stepped onto his porch and settled into the old wooden chair near the railing.
The night air felt good.
Peaceful.
For several minutes, he simply sat there.
No phone.
No television.
No distractions.
Just silence.
Usually, he appreciated moments like this.
Tonight, however, his mind remained restless.
His gaze drifted toward Roy's house.
A light still glowed from the front porch.
That wasn't unusual.