Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
JOSH
I’d behaved at the Sawyer farm, however boring that made me. I hadn’t beat up Drew. Yet.
He hadn’t been there for the cow’s hoof abscess, nor had I seen him over the past ten days.
Somehow, Erika and I avoided any serious arguments.
We worked opposite schedules without the overnights being too bad.
Neither she nor my mother would tell me much about her visit out there to see that jerk of a mini horse.
The only reason I’d agreed to meet Milly at the spring festival in Norton Park on this Friday night was to spy on Drew and Erika’s “date.”
I never attended town festivals, not since the tragedy when I was twelve.
I fisted the locket in my left palm and willed myself to get out of the truck.
The entrance gate into the chaos was a few hundred yards away.
I tried to ignore the prickly panic crawling up my chest to my throat.
The colors of the Ferris wheel and throngs of people kaleidoscoped my vision.
This freak-out wasn’t just because it’d been one hell of a day. My overnight emergency threatened a lawsuit after her horse colicked and died. She refused to pay and somehow blamed me for not pulling a miracle out of my ass after she waited too long to call for help.
Mid-morning brought an unannounced state inspection by a picky bastard who cited petty crap.
I could already hear the fines stacking up.
Then, right after Erika left to get Vinny, a client stormed in with a shepherd chewed up in a dog fight.
I couldn’t get near the dog without risking a bite and told the guy I’d need to sedate his dog.
When I quoted the cost, he screamed that I only cared about money and demanded I treat the dog for free.
I refused. I wasn’t getting bitten by a non-rabies-vaccinated shepherd for charity.
I shut it all out. The memories of threatening clients and the noises of the festival. I slammed the walls down as tight as I could. I was old enough to be over this thing about festivals.
The musical noises and intermittent screams of happy people wouldn’t let me ignore them no matter how hard I tried.
I tried so hard.
Fuck, fuck, fuck…
“Come on. Let’s go.” Milly’s fist slammed against my window.
I jolted so hard my knee smacked the steering wheel. The work truck groaned when I shoved open the door, the hinges protesting. Mud crusted the sides—splashed high from a farm job, it had dried in jagged patterns like scars.
“You didn’t even change?” Her mouth pinched tight as her eyes scanned my mud-stained jeans and faded scrub top.
“I ran out of time.” The words crawled out steadier than the chaos bucking inside.
She rolled her eyes. “Whatever.” Her fingers grabbed my wrist, tugging me toward the entrance gate. I didn’t remember pulling out my wallet or paying to enter the festival.
Each step tightened the band around my ribs.
The crowd grew closer—laughter, shrieking kids, carnival music too loud and too bright.
My lungs shrank, breaths thin and jagged, like sucking air through a pinhole.
The rides loomed in front of us with their metal skeletons thrashing, lights flashing too fast for my eyes to track.
I halted and stared at the tree line that signaled the bank of the creek next to the park. Brian’s sightless blue eyes after I tugged his small body out of the creek flashed in my head.
I slammed my eyelids shut and fisted the locket tight in my right hand until the metal edges bit into my fingers. Until the vision of those eyes left my head.
I needed a moment. A few breaths and I could do this.
“What’s wrong with you?” Milly unclamped my fingers around the locket and took it.
A choking sensation closed my throat. Need it back.
She dangled it from a finger. “I don’t know why you hold onto some old necklace.”
Everything blurred as I stared at her pendulum the locket from her fingers.
A warm hand squeezed my left forearm. “Hey, Whiskey.”
Erika.
Erika said softly, “I have something important from work I need to talk to you about in private. I saw the work truck as we came in. Can we talk in there for a few minutes? Drew is going to take Milly to do the Ferris wheel. We can meet them in a bit.”
My gaze sought Drew’s. Where I expected to see anger, I found only concern. He gave me a nod of approval.
Milly made a step toward me, but Drew held onto her arm. “Let ’em talk. It’s important. Business stuff.”
Erika took my hand and gently led me away from the chaos.
The locket. I couldn’t leave it. What if Milly misplaced it on purpose?
Somehow, I ended up back in the driver’s seat of the truck, but I didn’t remember opening the door. I gripped the steering wheel and dropped my head. Only then was it possible for me to take a deep breath. And another.
Erika’s hand was on my back making slow circles. I heard her typing on her phone with her other hand.
“Are you better?” Erika asked.
I forced out, “Fine.”
She put her phone in her jacket pocket. “Is this about the asshole with the aggressive dog at the end of the day? Marty phoned me about it.”
“Nah. There was a lot of shit at work today. It was a lot, just like any other day. We’re going to get fined for some stuff from the inspection. Also, I had a client who will either sue me or take me to the board over her horse dying, even though it wasn’t my fault. Then…here.”
Her hand still made circles on my back. “It wasn’t your fault he died.”
I knew the “he” she referred to wasn’t the horse. It was my brother from so long ago. “He was my responsibility. I lost track of him.”
“You were eleven…no, twelve. That’s only a few years older than Vinny. What if someone asked Vinny to watch a kid who didn’t listen? Would you get mad at him if the kid slipped away and something happened?”
“I know.” I leaned back against the seat. For the hundredth time since I’d parked the truck, my little brother’s dead face flickered in my head. His eyes had been wide open, glazed in death. For the thousandth time I shut it down. At least, I tried. It wasn’t as easy as it sounded.
To distract myself I stared out the windshield and asked, “Where’s Vinny?”
“Knox took him to play games while I hung out with Drew. This didn’t really feel like a date. More like time with a friend.” Softly she added sure and steady, “It wasn’t your fault.”
I steeled myself to look her way. She stared back without a hint of pity.
“Milly was selfish to do that to you,” she said.
“I don’t think she knows about all the stuff from the past that makes me like this.”
“She knows. She wanted to have you here to show off. That’s not what I was talking about, though.”
“I thought I could handle coming here.” God, I was so ashamed I couldn’t walk through the festival.
“She was an asshole for this.” She dangled the locket from her hand.
I stiffened, mortified. For Erika to know I’d kept it and held it when stressed…
For me to admit to the need to grab it and fist it tight…
She opened my right hand, put the locket into it, and closed my fingers around it. How did she know I needed it?
Hoarsely, I said, “I’m sorry I kept it. I couldn’t—”
“I want you to have it.” There was no judgment or laughter in her tone.
“It was a gift from your mother.” I gazed out the windshield.
“I meant to return it, but then I was off at school. So were you. I found it in the car.” It was one of the hardest things I’d ever done, but I held it out to her.
My stomach cramped at the thought of not having it.
“After I found it in the car, it kind of gave me good luck in baseball. That day I got hurt I thought I lost it. I didn’t have it on me. ”
She pushed my hand away from her. “I told you a long time ago it’s magical. It’s yours now.”
“Thanks.” I fisted it. We sat in silence for a while, at least until my mind settled.
She said, “It was brave of you to try to do the festival for Milly.”
I tried to take a deeper breath, but it was rough, uneven. “I didn’t do it for her.”
My phone dinged to signal an incoming call. I hoped for an animal emergency that would take me far away from here, but it was Marty. I answered.
“Hey, Dr. Hurst, I heard you’re here at the festival. We could really use your help over at the raffle tent. I had a no-show and need someone to sell raffle tickets.”
The tent was on the periphery, away from the rides. Maybe…
Erika stared at me expectantly. I had no doubt she arranged this.
“Sure. I can help,” I heard myself reply when I longed to drive away. I hung up. “Did you ask Marty to do that?”
Erika got out of the truck without answering and rounded the front of the vehicle.
She opened my door. When I didn’t move, she took my left hand and laced her fingers between mine.
She stared at our locked hands. “You need to do this. You can stay in the raffle tent, away from all the other stuff. Be a part of the festival for the first time. Go sell some tickets. One smile from you and every woman in town won’t be able to resist buying. ”
“That’s not true.”
“Oh, my God, Josh. You’re hot. Women would do anything for you when you turn on the charm.”
My face prickled with heat.
She tugged me out of the truck. “Every unattached woman in this town wants you naked. They’ve all been sure to inform me of it. Use that to make a little money for whatever group they’re raising for this year.”
“Is this you saying you want me naked?”
She blinked up at me with a smile that started as a question and ended as a dare. “Why did you come to the festival if it wasn’t for Milly?”
I wouldn’t answer that.
Fully intent on ignoring the question, I closed the door. One step away from the car, she put a hand on my chest and pushed me backward until my back smashed against the truck. Her entire body leaned into me.
Jesus, I wanted this woman. I forced myself to stare over her head.
She put a hand on my cheek to drag my head down and look at her. I swallowed hard and stared at her pink lips.
“Josh, why would you come to this festival, knowing full well you’d freak out?”
My gaze flew to hers.
What got me wasn’t her demand nor the flattery, but the way she saw through the wreckage I desperately wanted to hide from the world. She saw the rawness beneath the guilt and shame. She didn’t just see it, she understood it. And she still wanted me.
It was right there in her honey brown eyes.
She’d been there in the aftermath of those days after my brother died. Back when Timothy beat the hell out of me in middle school for stupid reasons, probably unable to process his own grief. Of course, I egged him on, thinking I deserved it for letting everyone down.
She’d seen me panic at the festival before. Not once did she criticize or make me feel bad about any of it. She just held my hand and told me none of it was my fault.
I missed this—this one person in the whole mess of the fucked up world who could look at me and get me. This one person who saw the ruined person with lost dreams that I was and still thought me worthy in some way.
“Whiskey,” she rasped out hoarsely. “Why are you here?”
“For you.”