Chapter 37
Sawyer
The buzzer goes to Wolfman’s apartment—where I’ve been staying since Christmas—interrupting the basketball game we’ve been catching up on from yesterday.
It’s technically my place too, so when he came home to me on his couch Christmas night without warning, he didn’t exactly beg for an explanation.
Even if he has occasionally tried to get something out of me since, dropping subtle mentions of Honey into conversation or reminding me of the many missed call notifications on my phone.
I stopped charging it when that became overwhelming.
Wolfman eagerly jumps up from the couch opposite me, rushing over to the door and pressing the button to let whoever the visitors are in without even checking.
‘We expecting someone?’ I ask from where I’m horizontal on the couch, a bag of chips resting on my chest.
What if it’s Honey? I don’t think I can face her yet.
I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to face her.
Just planning on waiting it out here until I know she’s left the ranch—I sent her one text after I left saying, stay at the ranch as long as you need, so they still have somewhere to stay.
No one else will get hurt because of me, then. It’s better for everyone that way.
Even if my heart and head has been swarmed with shadows since the moment I left.
I knew her and Noah brought a hell of a lot more sunshine into my life, but I’d almost forgotten how dark it had been before …
Stupid of me, really, for letting myself get used to their light.
To think the flowers they bloomed into the darkest corners of my soul could live on forever. Everything dies eventually.
‘Oh, yeah,’ Wolfman says, heading back to where he was sat. ‘Invited the guys over—you don’t mind?’
‘Not at all,’ I reply, though it doesn’t alleviate the tightness in my muscles. Or the dread beginning to swirl in my stomach.
I’ve already said no to going to the bar for New Year’s Eve tonight; are they going to try to convince me to come again?
It takes a minute or so before the door’s opened and Wyatt and Duke bustle in, Duke carrying a small crate of beers. I swallow down the nerves creeping up my throat and throw on a casual smile—the kind they know me for, the kind they think signals everything’s okay.
‘Alright?’ Wyatt asks as he shucks off his coat and throws it over the back of the couch. He offers out his hand to me as I sit up, and I give it a light smack in greeting, doing the same with Duke when he settles next to me.
Duke hefts the crate of beers onto the coffee table in front of us and offers me one as Wyatt and Wolfman lean over to help themselves.
‘They’re non-alcoholic,’ Duke states just as I’m about to reach for the bottle he’s holding out to me, which makes me pause.
‘Okay …’ I’m not sure why that matters.
I’m met with waiting eyes as I glance at Wolfman and then Wyatt, who grabs his keys from his back pocket where a bottle opener is attached to his keychain.
He flips off the cap then tosses his keys over to Wolfman who follows suit, stretching over to hand me the bottle opener.
They both lounge back into the couch and perk a brow at me while I warily take my beer and wrench it open.
Suddenly this feels like an intervention.
‘You should have told us about your rule,’ Wyatt finally says.
It takes me a second to realise what he’s talking about—my three alcoholic drinks rule with Duke. ‘Why? It’s not a big deal.’
Wyatt shakes his head, sighing, as if that wasn’t a satisfactory response.
My free hand curls into a fist, aching with the need to give him something better, not to disappoint him again.
‘Wolfman could’ve looked out for you better that night if we’d have known.
We can step in then when Duke isn’t at the bar. ’
Makes it sound like I’m a kid or something.
I’m not that much of a liability. It was one time.
‘And,’ Wolfman adds on, resting his legs up onto the coffee table, ‘it means I wouldn’t have to carry your sorry ass home when you get too drunk because you’re a fucking lightweight.’
I don’t get why they’re bringing this up—that was over a month ago. The air suddenly feels thicker. Heavier. Hotter. I tug at the neck of my sweater. ‘Guys, I don’t have a drinking problem if that’s what you think …’
That’s the whole point of the rule. Never to drink enough that I might end up like my dad.
‘We know that.’ Duke rests a hand on my shoulder for a brief second and I realise how much I’ve missed being touched.
For the past month or two I’ve been surrounded by touches—kisses from Honey, feeling her delicate fingers run over my scarred body, holding Noah’s hand, or that adorable time when he cuddled into me while watching movies—but the last week has left me cold and craving comfort.
The warmth I got too used to from them.
Warmth I’d never experienced before.
Duke then runs a hand over his buzz cut, glancing to Wyatt who nods at him. ‘We just … we don’t talk enough.’
‘We’re talking right now,’ I point out—too quickly.
‘Not like we should be,’ Wyatt chimes in. He sighs, considering his beer bottle for a beat before turning his hard eyes to me. ‘We’re not good at telling each other how we feel. Duke and I learnt that this summer.’
Duke raises his beer to Wyatt in a moment of understanding.
I don’t know what went down between the two of them when Wyatt found out at the end of the summer Duke had been secretly sleeping with Cherry, Wyatt’s little sister—something I was unlucky enough to have walked in on and forced to keep secret.
Wyatt continues, ‘We need to do better. I know it’s not how we’ve been raised.
We’re told that when we fall we’re supposed to just get up and ride again—hell, you know that better than any of us with bull riding, I guess.
’ Wyatt picks at the label of his beer, brow furrowing before he glances back up at me. ‘And with your father.’
The weight of their stares is almost unbearable.
‘We should’ve asked,’ Duke says. ‘We shouldn’t have accepted that you would just talk to us if you needed to. Especially when he passed.’
My scoff just about gets through my unexpectedly clogged throat, so I add on a silent nod, because ultimately, I was never going to bring it up to them.
Duke’s never been the loudest of the group—of course he hasn’t, because it’s always been me—so for him to be the one to say that is almost unexpected.
‘And when we’re not around, it would be good to talk to some professional too,’ Wyatt suggests.
‘Uh …’ I scratch the back of my head. Not like I haven’t thought about it before, but I think I’m passed fixing. ‘I don’t think I’d be very good at that.’
‘Neither did I,’ he quickly rebuffs.
My head instantly rearing back at this new information I need to process. ‘You go to therapy?’
‘We all do, Sawyer,’ Duke answers instead, stunning me even more. ‘It helps me deal with the grief of losing my mom and grandfather.’
‘Rory suggested I try it, and honestly, it’s helped me deal with my dad’s expectations of me a lot better,’ Wyatt then explains.
‘Work stress,’ Wolfman chips in, shrugging. ‘Them damn teenagers are getting more badly behaved each year and my workload only increases. It gets overwhelming sometimes.’
One by one I look at my friends—men I’ve always seen as strong and admirable, men whose lives I’ve wished on too many nights I could’ve had instead of mine, and realise that they’re all dealing with their own shit too.
But it doesn’t make them any less of a man.
In fact, I’m almost more envious of them now for being able to admit they needed help and that they’re not ashamed of it.
There’s a moment of silence where I just nod, appreciating them sharing their experiences without pushing it onto me.
‘So, you gonna tell us what’s happened with Honey?’ Wolfman asks, offering me an apologetic smile.
The problem is my friends are right. It’s the one thing our world seems to have lagged in, especially in these small towns—getting us guys to say how we feel.
To speak our mind without fear that we’ll be judged, when we’ve been raised to lock our emotions away, to run when it gets hard. That’s what us cowboys are known for.
And I did exactly that with Honey.
It’s laughable, really. Here I am, Sawyer Nash, supposedly the cowboy with no fear, yet I’m drowning in it.
My body screams at me every day to go back to Honey and Noah, but I’m too paralysed with fear that if I do, they’ll only push me away again, having seen the truth of how broken I am.
I’m suffocating under the weight of wanting to talk to my friends about everything that’s happened with Honey and Noah—yet I’m terrified of their judgement.
That they’ll see me for who I truly am. Or worse—they’ll just brush off my concerns like it’s nothing, when it’s everything to me.
But if I can ride a beast of a bull for eight seconds while it tries like hell to throw me off—hell, if I can get thrown off and have my leg snapped by its goddamn hooves—then I can do this.
I can find the courage to talk.
So, I take a swig of my beer and settle back into the couch as I try to ignore my heart pumping, and admit to my friends, ‘I fell in love with Honey Goldman in senior year, lost my virginity to her, and then she got scared and ran away. She’s the only person I’ve ever loved, and I’m terrified that I’m not enough for her. ’
They all stare anywhere but me for a few beats, absorbing the information and I wait in the crippling silence.
It’s Duke that speaks first, his dark eyes softening as he says, ‘Thanks for telling us, Sawyer. I bet that’s been hard to keep inside all these years.’
‘Wait, Noah’s not your kid, right?’ Wolfman asks.