Ray
I schooled my features as I sauntered my way back over to the head table, an extra sway in my step, knowing I was being watched.
Wade wasn’t going to keep me from enjoying my two other best friends’ wedding.
I wanted my happy-go-lucky, bubbly, full-of-life cowboy back—but I feared he had died the moment the doctor read off his test results. The killing blow came with his demand, echoing with finality, that Wade stop riding.
For Wade, riding was a form of therapy. Without it, he lost all sense of who he was at his core. The man had been born to be on the back of a horse, and I couldn’t imagine the pain he was in without the ability to escape and feel the wind in his hair when he needed the space to breathe.
But his insistence on pushing me away wasn’t going to fly. I knew Wade better than anyone else. We had been best friends since I was eleven, and he was thirteen. We had moments together that were special, things we didn’t share with anyone else.
Wade had seen me grieve the loss of my mom, get my first period, have my first broken heart, get rejected from every college I applied to, start my business, and so many more seemingly insignificant moments through the years.
Wade and I were kindred spirits. What he felt, I felt… deeply.
I watched as he walked back over to his table, a fresh glass of bourbon in his hand, and lifted his glass to his lips, taking a hearty sip. The dim lighting of the makeshift dance floor, accented by the facing sun, accentuated the furrow between his brows.
He’d been drowning himself in alcohol since he’d come home from the hospital. We all knew there was going to be a breaking point, but none of us knew how to approach him about it without causing an emotional blowup.
Max had tried talking to him before the wedding, hoping to keep the brooding to a minimum for his big day, but Wade was having nothing to do with him.
“Ray.” My best friend Stella’s voice, cheerful and insistent, broke my stare at the handsome and broody cowboy drowning himself in alcohol at a table across the dance floor.
“Yeah, sorry. What were you saying?” I asked, not having any clue what the conversation going on around me was about.
“I was saying that we were thinking about heading out,” she said as she stroked an errant curl away from her daughter, Charlie’s forehead, and placed a tender kiss on her temple.
Charlie was curled up in the lap of Stella’s new husband, Max, who was Wade’s fraternal twin brother and the remaining piece of our best-friend foursome.
Stella had stumbled into our lives the year prior after running from the drug dealers who had killed her ex-boyfriend, Charlie’s father. She and Max had danced around each other’s feelings for months before finally accepting that they were obsessed with each other.
Wow, what a thought!
The three of them had survived so much together in the past year. Someone had abducted Charlie, Stella had gone after her, and Max had saved them both.
That night had changed everything for everyone in our friend group. It was also the night Wade lost the one thing that was possibly most important to him.
Due to an unfortunate series of circumstances, Wade was shot in the back while he was leaving the building with Stella in tow.
Although the attacker was shot by my father, the sheriff, things had already been set in motion, and Wade lay crumpled on the floor, bleeding out and unable to move his legs.
As a lasting result of the incident, he was advised that riding a horse again could potentially put pressure on his spine, which would eventually lead to a permanent loss of function in his legs.
It had been a huge emotional blow to all of us, but the notion that Wade wouldn’t be able to ride again was a bitter pill to swallow, and he’d come home a different man than before that night.
Wade’s life was suddenly defined by the distinction between who he was before and after the incident.
He was lost, and the blame for his unfortunate circumstances being placed on Stella was unfounded.
Stella hadn’t forced him into the building with Max to save Charlie; she had been perfectly content doing everything herself—much to her own detriment.
Wade had gone in willingly because we were a family, and family sticks together.
I looked over at the happiness radiating from the newlyweds and the little family they’d been through hell for. I knew in my heart that Wade would survive this. If they could work through the trauma of the year prior, Wade could find his way back.
Max and Stella had done the hard work of going to therapy, dealing with the trauma of the event, and leaning on each other.
Wade had opted to forgo therapy and to lean into a bottle of bourbon instead. I’d never seen him so emotionless as right now.
His gaze caught mine from across the room, and the hollowness in his eyes gutted me. I felt the aching chasm that was once the man I knew. I needed to figure out a way to get my best friend back before it was too late.
“Do you think he’s going to be okay?” I heard Max ask hesitantly through the haze that Wade’s haunted stare had caused. I knew he was concerned; we all were, but I also knew Max had his own demons he was dealing with.
I sighed, not knowing how to answer his question. Did I think he was going to be okay? Eventually, yes. Did I think he was going to lose himself along the way? Maybe.
I went with the more diplomatic answer, not willing to bear the breaking of another Daniels boy’s heart. “I think he will be, eventually. He’s hurting, Max—badly. Right now, he can’t see the forest for the trees. He’s lost and self-medicating. Give him time.”
I patted his knee, offering comfort even if it felt somewhat hollow. I wanted to believe that Wade was going to be just fine. He just needed time to heal, but this was as reserved as I’d ever seen my best friend, and I wasn’t so sure the man I knew before was still in there.
“Thanks, Ray,” Stella chimed in, taking my hand in hers. “For everything.”
I shrugged off the compliment with a flick of my wrist and a forced smile.
There wasn’t much I wouldn’t do for the Daniels family, and that extended to Stella and Charlie now.
“It was nothing,” I insisted.
“Nothing, my ass,” she added. “You planned, organized, and executed the wedding of our dreams. All while dealing with Broody McBroodface over there.”
I didn’t bother looking in Wade’s direction, but I could feel his eyes on me. I could always feel when his eyes were on me.
“Honestly, Stell. It was nothing. You’re family, and you should know by now that family sticks together, no matter what.”
I watched as her eyes caught her new husband’s gaze, and an effervescent sense of peace washed over the pair of them. What I wouldn’t give to have someone look at me the way Max Daniels looked at Stella. The unspoken love that coursed through them radiated from every look and simple touch.
I sighed wistfully and flicked my wrists in their direction, again effectively shooing them away.
“Go home. I’ve got this,” I promised, standing up to start the teardown process of the nearly empty venue.
I smoothed out the skirt of my dress and turned around, catching Wade’s heated stare. Refusing to give him any more of my time this evening, I broke our standoff and began cleaning.