Chapter 8
eight
He’d told Johanna he had this, but as he crossed the driveway to Boone’s still idling truck, Walker wasn’t so sure. The printouts felt heavier than they should in his hand, weighed down with information that could either save this man or push him further away.
Boone sat motionless behind the wheel with a cigarette burning between his fingers, staring straight ahead, though the truck had long since fogged up with his breath. The engine still rumbled, keeping him warm while he waited for... what? The courage to leave? The permission to stay?
Walker didn’t hesitate. He went straight to the passenger side and opened the door.
Boone started, one hand jerking toward the gearshift. “What the hell are you doing?”
He didn’t answer. He climbed in, brushing snow from his hat as he pulled the door shut behind him. The truck’s interior was stifling after the bitter cold outside. He settled into the seat, acutely aware of the pulse of Boone’s anger and anxiety.
Neither of them spoke. Outside, the snow continued to fall. The windshield wipers kept up their steady beat: swish, thump, swish, thump.
Walker didn’t rush to fill the silence. He’d learned long ago from Johanna that silence was a tool, same as any other. Sometimes you had to let it stretch until it revealed something. He simply sat there, watching the snow build up on the windshield before the wipers brushed it away again.
Finally, Boone broke. “I’m not staying.”
“Wish you would.” He kept his tone neutral and nodded toward the windshield. “With this snow, the roads will be shit tonight, and you told Johanna you’d stay. But if you truly feel you have to leave, I ain’t stopping you, son.”
“Then what are you doing in my truck?”
“Sitting.”
A harsh exhale of laughter burst from Boone. “You’re a real piece of work, old man, you know that?”
Walker smirked. “I’ll let that ‘old man’ remark slide for now. You wanna tell me where you’re headed?”
“Does it matter?” His hands flexed on the steering wheel. His knuckles were no longer bandaged, but the scabs had cracked open and were freshly red.
What—or who—had he hit this time? Hopefully, a wall or a tree, and not something that hit back.
“Yeah. Does to me.”
A muscle ticked at the hinge of his jaw, and he took another drag from the cigarette, then crushed it out in the ashtray with more force than necessary.
“Mom’s. For now. After that...” He trailed off, staring through the windshield at nothing. “Guys like me always end up back inside eventually. Might as well get it over with.”
“That’s a cop-out,” Walker said flatly.
Boone’s gaze snapped to him. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“A cop-out? You have no idea what it’s like being the town pariah, having everyone look at you like you’re some kind of monster.”
Walker just stared at him and waited, one eyebrow raised.
Understanding dawned in his eyes, followed by something like shame. “Right. Forgot who I was talking to.”
“Solace’s original pariah.” He spread his hands. “Difference is, I earned my reputation.”
“And I haven’t?”
Walker exhaled. “You tried to protect someone, Boone. You went too far, but your heart was in the right place. That’s more than I can say.”
A beat of silence, broken only by the windshield wipers.
“What’d you do?” Boone asked finally. “You’ve never said.”
“You never asked.”
“Well, I’m asking now. Hank said you were court-martialed.”
“I was.” He shifted in the seat and looked out at the snow building up on the windshield.
Coming faster now. The roads really were going to be a mess come Christmas morning.
“I gave orders I knew were wrong and got good men killed, then tried to cover it up. All in the name of power. When it all came to light, they court-martialed me and sent me to Leavenworth. I was supposed to be there a lot longer, but my conviction was overturned on a technicality, and I got away with time served. Didn’t make me innocent.
Just meant they couldn’t retry me. When I got out, I had nothing.
No career, no family, no future. Just anger and a bad conduct discharge. ”
He paused. The memory always brought a bitter taste to his mouth.
He’d been such a power-hungry tyrant back then, ruthless and cruel.
So far from the man he was now that he didn’t recognize himself in the old photos.
The man who walked into Leavenworth had been a stranger to the man who walked out six years later.
“So I came back home, but this town treated me like I had the plague. Wouldn’t hire me.
Wouldn’t talk to me. Crossed the street when they saw me coming.
My wife had already left by then and took our daughter to start a life away from me.
Can’t say I blame her. I wasn’t fit to be around anyone, let alone a kid. ”
He turned back to Boone. “I let that anger eat me alive for years. Pushed away everyone who tried to help. Told myself the world owed me something for what it took.” His throat tightened.
“By the time I figured out I was destroying myself, Stella, my daughter, was a teenager and didn’t know me.
Didn’t want to. And I had no one to blame but myself, so I walked into a support group in Missoula, met Johanna, and—”
He broke off, surprised by the words he’d been about to say: Met Johanna and fell in love.
No, he wasn’t going there with Boone, but he couldn’t leave the thought hanging, so he finished with, “and she helped me. She can help you, too, if you let her.”
More silence.
Boone rubbed his hand back and forth over the leather of the steering wheel. “I thought you were a hero. Mom used to talk about you when I was a kid. Said you were what a real soldier looked like. I wanted to be like you. It’s why I enlisted after high school.”
Walker felt that straight through his ribs. He hadn’t known Leonora Callahan remembered him, let alone spoke about him to her son. “I’m sorry. She was wrong. I was no hero.”
Boone looked away, jaw working.
Shit. He had come out here to give Boone a reason to stay, and instead, he’d just stripped away whatever illusions the kid had left.
But maybe that was necessary.
Maybe Boone needed to see that even broken men could build something worth having.
Walker reached for the folder on his lap, considering his next move carefully. There was a fine line between pushing too hard and not hard enough. Get it wrong, and Boone would be gone before the snow stopped falling.
“We found some things,” he said finally, holding out the folder. “About Crystal.”
Boone went completely still. For a moment, Walker thought he might refuse to take the folder, might kick him out of the truck and drive away with the door still hanging open. But then his hand moved, fingers closing around the edge of the manila paper.
“What is this?” Boone asked, voice suddenly wary.
“Read it.”
Boone hesitated, then flipped the folder open. He squinted at the first page, leaning toward the dim dome light. As he read, his expression changed, incredulity giving way to disbelief, then to something like pain.
“She opened a shelter,” he murmured, more to himself than to Walker. “For women like her.”
“Keep reading.”
Boone turned to the second page, and his hands started to shake. He flipped to the next page, then the next, reading faster now, his breath coming in short bursts.
Walker watched his face, searching for signs of what was happening beneath the surface. The boy had spent so many years hiding behind anger that even now, with evidence of redemption right there in his hands, he seemed unable to fully process it.
“She tried to recant?” His voice broke on the last word. “After the trial?”
Walker nodded. “Too late by then. System doesn’t work that way. But she tried.”
“Why?” There was so much raw disbelief in that one word. “She lied. She stood up in that courtroom and lied about what happened. Said I attacked them for no reason.”
“She was scared. Traumatized.” He paused, letting that sink in. “She’s doing good work now. Helping other women get out before it’s too late. Making something meaningful out of what happened.”
Boone stared down at the papers, his hands still trembling slightly.
“I’m still angry at her,” he admitted. “I don’t know if I can ever forgive her for not telling the truth.
She was genuinely scared that night. Yeah, I took it too far, and that’s all on me.
I deserved to be punished for not stopping once he was down.
But I know if I hadn’t intervened, she would’ve been the one who wound up dead that night.
And instead of thanking me, she accused me of cold-blooded murder. She wanted to put me away for life.”
“You’re allowed to be angry, but you don’t have to let it destroy you.
” He thought of his own anger, the rage that had consumed him after his court-martial, after prison.
How it had eaten through everything good he had left until there was nothing but bitterness and an empty house.
“Anger nearly destroyed me, Boone. I won’t watch it destroy you, too. ”
Boone’s eyes flicked up, searching his face. “Why do you care? Why does it matter to you what happens to me?”
The question sat there between them, demanding an answer Walker wasn’t sure he could give. His chest went tight. He’d been avoiding this truth since the day Boone arrived, but there was no dodging it now.
“Because I need you here,” he said finally, the words coming slowly, each one dragged from someplace deep and vulnerable. “Because I can’t build this place without you.”
Boone’s eyes widened slightly, surprise breaking through the anger.
“This ranch, this... whatever it’s going to be,” Walker continued, gesturing vaguely toward the house.
“It’s not just about giving guys like us a second chance.
It’s about building something that matters.
And I can’t do it alone.” He took a deep breath, steadying himself.
“And because you’re not alone anymore. You have family here. ”
The word ‘family’ landed like he’d hoped it would. It was exactly what the kid needed, and they both knew it. A real family, not the fucking Goodwins and all of their holier-than-thou bullshit.
Boone flinched, his hands gripping the folder so tightly the pages crumpled. “You’re not my family.”
“I can be, if you let me. Johanna, too. Family isn’t always just blood.”
Something in Boone snapped. His shoulders caved inward, and a sound broke loose from somewhere deep. He covered his face with one hand.
Walker didn’t reach for him. Didn’t say it would be okay.
Didn’t even scoot closer or pat the guy’s back.
He just stayed put, still and solid in the passenger seat, letting Boone fall apart in peace.
Some things you couldn’t fix. Some pain demanded you just shut up and let it burn through.
He could do that for Boone. Let the kid break without shame.
Outside, snow kept falling, erasing everything.
Every tire track. Every ugly truth. Just a white world swallowing up the scars and making everything new.
Inside the truck, something else was happening, something raw and ugly and honest—a bridge getting built, plank by crooked plank, between two busted-up people.
After a while, Boone straightened up and scrubbed his face on his jacket sleeve. They didn’t talk about the crying. Didn’t need to.
“I don’t know how to do this,” Boone said, voice muffled and shaky.
“Neither do I,” Walker said, and it was so honest it almost hurt. “We’ll have to figure it out together.”
They just sat there, not talking. Engine running, window fogging, Boone’s breath coming in ragged and uneven.
Finally, Boone reached forward and turned the key. The engine died, plunging them into a silence so profound that they could hear the soft patter of snow on the truck roof. It felt like a decision had been made, though neither of them had spoken it aloud.
“Come inside,” Walker said quietly. “It’s Christmas.”