Forty-two
Cooper
Bile burned my tongue and throat as I swiped the collar of my t-shirt over my watering eyes. Trembles cascaded down my spine, and I spat, adding to the puddle oozing through the gravel. I wasn’t sure why my dreams had revisited with a vengeance, but I was ready for them to leave me alone.
Those damn good days.
I’d had too many.
Straightening my spine, I finally stood, feeling lightheaded as I tipped my face toward the stars.
The twinkling lights swirled and pulsed in my vision until I blinked, clearing my eyes and steadying my breath.
When the door opened behind me, I whirled around to see Peter coming out of the bunkhouse.
“You okay?” He asked.
Everything in me wanted to say no and lay my soul bare, but I grimaced and held it all in. “I will be.”
“Do you always throw up after dreams?” He stepped up beside me, holding out a glass of water.
I took it, gulping half of it down. I lifted my t-shirt again, this time wiping my mouth. “Yeah, I usually do.”
Peter shook his head. “Must be terrible dreams.”
I gave a breathless chuckle because he had no idea. “The worst.”
“What are they about?”
For one crazy second, the answer toyed behind my lips, begging me to let it free.
Talking about the things that happened to me came easier the more I did it.
I went to rehab with my lips zipped, thinking wild horses couldn’t drag my past out.
But it didn’t take long for me to sob and confess my deepest darkest secrets with the rest of them.
But those secrets stayed in Austin at the rehab center.
Because as much as I’d shared with Hollie and Tag, what I dreamed about was too heavy for them.
It was probably too heavy for Peter, too.
Over the last month, I’d come to actually like the guy.
And I refused to share my dreams with the people I liked.
Watching them struggle with stuff they couldn’t change so that I could “heal” seemed kind of cruel to me.
So I gave a soft huff and said with as much nonchalance as my shaky voice could muster, “Trust me, man. You don’t wanna know. ”
“That bad, huh?”
My eyes drifted to the distant sky and I let myself hope for the thousandth time that one day I would disappear into that great expanse. But all I said was, “Yeah, that bad.”
After I drained the rest of my glass, Peter held out my Bic and half-empty pack of Marlboros.
I snorted. “I guess this means I’m predictable?”
“We all are to an extent.”
I wasted no time plucking out a cigarette and flicking my lighter.
For long minutes, we stood there, feet shifting on the gravel as heat scorched my trachea and my trembling eased one inhale at a time.
Over halfway through my smoke, I broke the silence with a mumble, “It’s gonna take me a while to calm down. Don’t feel like you gotta wait.”
“I haven’t been to sleep anyway.”
“Oh. Why not?”
He shrugged. “Just been thinking about Sarah.”
“That sucks.”
“Think you’ll be able to get a few more hours before your alarm goes off?”
I took note of the way my muscles twitched with anxiety, doubting it. “I hope so, but my muscles feel tight. Like I could just…run. Run and run. Off this ranch and out of Comfort until I just…fall off the face of the earth somehow.”
That made Peter chuckle, but the smile on his face wasn’t one of real laughter. It was sad, like he understood in a small way. “We could run.”
I threw a glance at him and my exhale lifted like a cloud.
“We wouldn’t fall off the edge of the earth, and we probably wouldn’t even escape Comfort. But we could run.”
Unsure what he meant, I stayed silent.
He continued, “It might make you feel a little calmer. And me, too. I’ve felt anxious.”
“Wait.” My hand fell away from my lips. “You want to actually go for a run?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“It’s pitch black out there.” As soon as I’d said it, I realized how dumb it was.
Peter’s face split with genuine laughter. “If I’m not allowed to be afraid of the dark, neither are you.”
For a second, I took him in—the resolved expression on his face. He wasn’t joking. He was genuinely offering to run off the stress with me. Something twisted deep in my chest because there weren’t many men in my life that I trusted.
Only Tag. And even trusting him was new, practiced.
But at that moment I realized Peter was reaching out of his darkness, straight into mine. And I’d never be able to put to words how much that meant to me. Blinking a few times, I asked, “You serious?”
“Yeah, I am.”
I tapped my light against the side of the bunkhouse. “Alright. Lemme get my shoes.”
Stepping into the bunkhouse, I shoved a flashlight in my pocket, grabbed my shoes off the rack, and laced them up on the front porch. “You ever ran in the dark before?”
“Nope.”
“You think you can?”
“Should be able to.” He shrugged. “I ran in the arena, didn’t I?”
I gave a nod, remembering that. “We’ll go down the driveway?”
“That’ll work.”
He started stretching his legs, and I did the same, grunting against the tension that kept them tight as guitar strings.
I followed his lead, genuinely not sure what types of stretches I should be doing.
But he seemed to know, flowing from one arm to the next then doing his legs, once muscle group at a time. “Are you a runner?” I asked.
He gave a shrug. “I’ve done some running. Mainly because of Sarah.” He shook his head with an affectionate huff. “She had a half-marathon on her bucket list.”
“That’s cool.”
He nodded. “Yeah, we had fun.”
Peter wanted to leave his cane, and I promised to let him know if I saw any obstacles.
We launched, silently running down Meadowbrook’s long driveway like it wasn’t almost two o’clock in the morning. Like the entire world wasn’t sleeping. Gravel crunched and horses in the pasture raised their heads as we shuffled by.
I finally asked, “Have you got ahold of her yet?”
“No. She has my phone number blocked. But I keep leaving her messages.”
“She can still get those if she blocked you?”
He shook his head. “No. I’m just leaving them for me.”
“How do you mean?”
His brow creased with pain. “I just…miss talking to her. Leaving her a voice message seems like the next best thing…at least I hear her voice for a few seconds.”
“Damn. That’s depressing.”
“Yeah, it is. Not sure what else to do though.”
I rolled my eyes. “Too bad we don’t live in the twenty-first century where there’s only a thousand forms of communication.”
He explained between breaths why tracking her down on social media seemed a little invasive in light of her obvious need for distance, and how he planned to write her a letter.
Nursing a stitch in my side, I said, “You gonna get it notarized, too?”
“What?” Picking up on my dry tone, he said on a laugh, “Does that seem too formal or something?”
“It definitely does.”
“Fine—what would you do?”
Squinting into the darkness, I shook my head. “I have no idea because I would never even be in that situation. I don’t do—”
“Relationships.” He finished my sentence. “I know. But hypothetically…”
For a few long moments, nothing but our footfall filled the silence. I spoke slowly. “What about flowers? Women like those, right? I might have a bouquet delivered and put ‘I’m an asshole please call me’ on the card thingy.”
“Cooper?” Peter’s breaths were heavy. “That’s a fantastic idea.”
Somehow, that run patched a hole in my chest I didn’t even realize existed.
Having been on the brink of death multiple times in my life, I’d had people rush to my side and try to help—pumping me with meds, holding my hand, sitting at my bedside.
But people stopped worrying about me when I wasn’t jeopardizing my heartbeat.
Hollie was an anomaly. And that’s why I adored her.
And, surprising as it was, so was Peter.
I realized he’d become a good friend. And, yet again, a flash of fear shot through my core. I didn’t want to be good friends with Peter. Because, eventually, Sarah and him would figure out their problems and he’d return to Colorado.
Before I could mentally spiral, Peter asked, his voice breathless. “You think—I could ride a bronc?”
I laughed—couldn’t help it.
Over the last week, he’d gotten pretty comfortable up on a horse and had even started trotting.
In fact, he’d learned the arena enough to lead a horse around without a guide.
Even still, the idea that he wanted to get thrown to the ground was crazy to me.
Of course, I thought of Terry Hughes and said, “Sure. Why not?”
“Cool. I want to try.”
“Why?”
He stayed silent for a moment.“I’m just sick—of feeling halfway alive.
I can’t explain it, but—sometimes I feel like I can’t fully experience life anymore.
When I do stuff that I used to do with sight—I feel frustrated like I’m missing something.
” He took a deep breath, his voice eking out.
“But I feel good with the horses, on the ranch, too. And I think that’s because almost everything I’m doing here—I’ve never done before, or at least I haven’t done it much. ”
I hummed, thinking through that. “So you want another new—blind—experience?”
“Yeah. That probably sounds dumb.”
“It doesn’t.” I laughed. “But you’ll definitely eat dirt. You know that, right?”
He smiled. “I know.”
“I think you can do it, but—you’ll have to learn how to fall first.”
“Can you teach me?”
“Nope. But Harlan can. We’ll ask him in the morning.”