34. Beck
Beck
I’m trying to get some work done, but all I can focus on is the way my skin prickles under Kenny Rogers’ crooked stare. He’s been staying in my office ever since the flood, and it’s all the more motivation to get the repairs done.
Tonight, there’s two sets of eyes watching me as I go over the budget for the renovations. Lyla asked my dad to watch Critter while she went out with the girls tonight, and now my dad is asleep, which makes me the fill-in babysitter.
Critter and Kenny Rogers almost instantly took to one another, and formed an unlikely friendship that would be cute if they didn’t both freak me out. Now, they’re laying next to each other on Kenny Rogers’ bed in front of the fireplace while I work.
I scroll through the e-mails from the contractors I reached out to for quotes. The numbers on the estimates to hire someone to do it for me would eat up the prize money and then some, which I still can’t quite afford.
Most of the repairs, though, I’m confident I’ll be able to do myself, it’ll just be a matter of finding the time. And with fewer ranch hands and Austin and I being on the outs, it’ll be up to me.
Exhaustion weighs heavy on my shoulders, dragging down my eyelids. The e-mails all blur together. I lean back in the old leather office chair and scrub a hand down my face.
The lack of sleep I’ve had in the last few days has little to do with the stress of repairing the barn. I’ll get it done eventually.
What I don’t know how to fix is the rift I caused between me and Lyla, and the fight I had with Austin.
It’s like everything around me is falling apart at the seams. Everything I’ve fought to hold together came crashing down around me.
It’s like the tighter I held on, the more I pushed everything I wanted away.
Now, I’m left with nothing except a still struggling ranch, a three legged goat and some toothless chihuahua staring at me with their buggy eyes.
I glance up at them, and watching them lay there together does something funny to me.
They’re Lyla’s little band of misfits, and my heart melts a little when I think of how much she loves them.
It makes me fucking miss her, and it makes me hate myself for not fighting for her when I had the chance.
I get up and wander over to the pair of them, bending down to scratch them both between the ears the way I’ve seen Lyla do.
“You want to tell me why I have a pantry full of Biscoff cookies that’ll take me a year to consume?” My dad’s voice asks from behind me.
I stand, turning to face him.
“I guess you’d have to ask Lyla,” I answer, knowing she’s the only one who always made sure my dad had his cookie fix. My heart aches behind my ribs, thinking about how she’s still making sure he’s taken care of.
Lyla is many things, fierce, passionate. She would say she’s a lot to handle, but I disagree. Because when you’re on the receiving end of that passion, it’s like nothing else. She’s fierce in everything, including the way she loves.
My dad crosses his arms over his chest, leaning against the door jamb. “I have a feeling that after tonight I won’t have the opportunity.”
I don’t say anything in response, because I still haven’t accepted the fact that Lyla is leaving. I certainly don’t feel like explaining it’s because of me.
“I’m right, aren’t I? Lyla’s leaving?”
“She got a job in the city,” I say.
“And you’re okay with that?” he asks, his eyebrows twitching upward in surprise.
I sit back down behind the desk, and start rearranging a stack of papers to make me look occupied. “I don’t have a choice.”
He scoffs. “Bullshit you don’t. Your pride is wounded, but if you could look past it for once in your life, you’d see that you have something worth fighting for.
Just because you made a mistake, doesn’t mean you can’t fix it.
Take it from me, son. A little wounded pride can really get in the way of getting what we really want.
What we need. It’s fine to lick your wounds, but sometimes in order to heal, you have to do the hard thing. ”
I glance around the room as if looking at the entirety of my father’s handiwork. “Coming from the man who ran this place into the ground before he was ever willing to make the tough decision, do the hard thing.”
“Listen, I know I’ve made plenty of mistakes.
I wasn’t a perfect dad, nor was I ever close to being a good one.
After your mom left us, I was on my own to figure it all out and I know I fell short in many ways.
I’ve chosen to give myself grace for that, even though you may not want to.
But in doing so, I was able to learn how to let the past be the past, and focus on how I want to show up moving forward.
Sometimes there’s no way to fix our mistakes, so that’s all we can do.
It’s what I’ve tried to do for you, hiring Lyla.
Don’t let your ego get in the way of that opportunity. ”
I don’t have a chance to respond, because my phone vibrates across the desk, and when my eyes flick down, it’s Austin’s name that comes up on my screen.
“Hey man,” I say. The greeting feels wrong, too casual for the fact that this is the first time I’m talking to Austin since our fight.
Austin and I have never fought like this. We’ve had the occasional argument over work, or the usual kind of disagreements between friends, but we’ve never left it the way we did the other night. With him walking out on the conversation, telling me that I wasn’t even worth a punch in the face.
It left me gutted and raw. It was a kick to the gut when I was already down. I didn’t think I could feel much worse than I did when Lyla walked away from me, but having two Morgans do it in the span of an hour? It was a whole new low.
But it was my own damn fault, and I should have seen the consequences coming a fucking mile away. The lying and sneaking around was bound to catch up to me.
“I know I shouldn’t be calling this late,” he says, his voice almost breathless.
“You can call me anytime.”
“It’s Lyla,” he says.
Panic surges through me, because his tone tells me he isn’t talking about anything related to my relationship with her. It’s something else, something urgent. My dad is eyeing me from across the room, his brow furrowing in concern when he notices the shift in my demeanour.
“Skye and Sutton called saying she left the bar to walk home, but they can’t find her. They went after her but she was nowhere to be found in town. They think she walked home, but they called a cab and didn’t find her along the route back to Wild Sage.”
My thoughts scramble as my stomach drops, leaving behind a sweeping wave of nausea.
Lyla can handle herself, she’s shown me that time and time again.
But she’s also emotional, she’s been upset, and she’s been drinking.
The rational part of her brain is likely offline, and that’s a dangerous state to be in.
Fuck fuck fuck. The panic turns into sheer terror, and I have to force back the thoughts of what could have happened to her. She could have fallen in a ditch off the side of the road, gotten lost on one of the backroads, or any number of things involving wildlife, or worse.
“Have you tried calling her?” I can’t seem to hide the terror in my voice.
“Uh, yeah, we tried calling her.” Austin sounds annoyed, but I know that’s just his protective streak.
He only ever gets angry when someone he loves is in danger.
His voice softens a bit when he speaks next.
“She’s either out of service, or her phone is dead because it’s going straight to voicemail. ”
“I’m on it, Austin. I’ll find her,” I say.
I’m up out of the chair, striding toward the front door before I even have a chance to think about what I’m doing, where I’m going, where I need to start looking. My hands and feet work on autopilot as I grab my keys from the dish by the front door, and slip on my boots.
My dad follows behind me, waiting for me to get off the phone and explain. He’s become close to Lyla over the last couple months, loves her like a daughter at this point.
“Keep me posted, okay?” Austin asks. “I’m in Calgary. I’ll head home now, but I won’t be back for another hour and a half or so. Beck?”
“Yeah?”
“You gotta find her before then.” His voice wobbles, and my gut twists.
“I will,” I say. I hang up the phone, and look at my dad, worry etched into every line on his face. “I need to go get Lyla. No one knows where she is.”
I’m already halfway out the door when he calls out to me.
“Son?”
I glance over my shoulder as I stride over to my truck in the driveway.
“When you find her, do the hard thing.”
I give him a solemn nod, get in my truck and stick the key in the ignition. The engine turns over as it roars to life, and I slam on the gas. The tires squeal, a dust cloud forming behind me as I peel out of the driveway and head into town.
My eyes scan the road in front of me, looking for signs she might have twisted her ankle and gone rolling into the ditch, or that she’s been mauled by a pack of hungry coyotes. But with every kilometre I gain toward Sage Valley, the knot in my stomach tightens when I don’t spot her.
I grip the steering wheel with one hand, knuckles going white. I have the window rolled down in case I hear anything, but there’s nothing but the crickets chirping in the fields.
Where the fuck is she?
I slow the truck as I turn onto the main strip. Drunken bar patrons are scattered on the sidewalk in front of Lucky’s, and I squint to make out their faces, but I’d know that head of brown hair anywhere, and none of them are Lyla.
Finding her contact on the screen in my truck, I try her cell again. Straight to voicemail.
Shit.
Since I left the house, I haven’t given myself a moment to think. I peeled out of the driveway, and had there been anyone else living around us, I would have woken the whole neighbourhood. But now, I’m not sure where to go, so I pull over to the curb and think.
No new answers come to me, because the only thing I can hear in my mind are my dad’s words from earlier.
Just because you made a mistake, doesn’t mean you can’t fix it.
I can’t help but think Lyla running off like this was because of me, and it seems only fitting that I should drive around all night to find her.
I would. I would drive until the sun came up if it meant that I’d have another chance to tell Lyla how fucking sorry I am, how stupid I was, how much I love her.
How I’d set aside anything else just to be with her.
Including my friendship with Austin.
“Fuck!” I shout, slamming the heel of my hand into the steering wheel.
Lyla is my world, she’s my everything. She’s been that way to me ever since the day the Morgans walked into my life. Ten years, I spent trying to get over her. Ten years wasn’t enough, and I don’t think another lifetime would let me forget about her.
I heave a sigh.
Austin might be ready to disown me as a friend, a brother. But if there’s one last thing I can do for him, it’s find his baby sister.
Lyla is the last person Austin has on this earth.
She’s the last person who remembers his parents, who holds shared memories of them.
She’s the last person with the Morgan name, the last person who keeps Austin connected to his roots.
Losing her would mean losing everything, including the chance to rectify the mistake he made when he sold the property.
The property.
The Morgan’s acreage is technically behind ours, but in order to get there by vehicle, you’d have to drive through town and down the back road on the other side. I accelerate, and leave town, driving with a new, clearer mission in mind.
Because I know exactly where Lyla is.