Chapter 14 - Lennon
FOURTEEN
LENNON
The next morning, Carson and I are waiting for the truck to warm up when a Grizzly River sheriff patrol SUV pulls into the driveway at Dark Skies. I see it because I’m standing at the sink, washing my hands after putting our dishes in the dishwasher.
“Carson,” I yell over my shoulder.
He’s coming out of the downstairs bathroom, buckling his belt. “Yeah, what’s going on?”
Nodding toward the driveway, I immediately grab a towel and start drying my hands. “Is it Reagan?”
Rushing over, he puts his arms around me, leaning forward to look out the window. “No, it doesn’t have the insignia that his SUV has on it. It’s a deputy.”
Right then, Johnny Willows gets out of the driver’s seat. I went to high school with him and have always considered him a friend, but right now I’m not sure who I can trust.
“Want me to go talk to him?” Carson asks, letting his arms slip around my waist.
“No, I don’t need you to fight my battles for me. I’ll do it,” I say, stiffening my back. I’ve been fighting my own battles my entire life, and just because this man has taken me under his wing, I’m not about to stop now.
“All right. I’ll be in here in case you need me.” Just knowing he’s right here is everything I need to know. It gives me the strength to go out there.
“Thank you.” I lean over, dropping a kiss on his lips.
Grabbing my jacket off the hook by the back door, I shrug into it as I step out onto the porch. The morning air is freezing, burning my cheeks, and I shove my hands in my pockets to keep them warm. Johnny spots me right away, lifting a hand in a wave that feels more cautious than friendly.
“Hey, Lennon.”
“Johnny.” I pull my jacket tighter and walk down the porch steps, stopping at the edge of the gravel. I’m not going to make this easy for him by closing the distance between us, not until I know what he wants. “What brings you out here?”
He tugs the brim of his hat down, a nervous habit I remember from high school. He used to do it right before Coach Daniels called on him in team meetings. “I’m not here in any official capacity,” he starts. “I want you to know that right up front.”
“Okay.” I take my hands out of my pockets and cross my arms over my chest, watching him.
He glances toward the house, then back at me. “Is there somewhere we can talk? Just for a few minutes.”
I nod toward the fence line, and we walk in that direction together, his boots crunching over the gravel until we hit the soft dirt at the edge of the yard.
There are horses out in the near pasture, and one of them lifts its head to look at us before going right back to grazing. I wish I could be that unbothered.
“What’s going on, Johnny?”
He takes a breath before rolling it out slowly. “There’s talk. And not the kind that just fades out on its own.” He pauses, like he’s choosing his words carefully. “You know Claire Reagan?”
The chief’s wife. “I know who she is.”
“Well, she’s been busy.” He looks out over the pasture, and I can tell this isn’t comfortable for him.
“Everyone in the department knows she’s the one who hired Shawn to dig into things so that she can get custody of their child.
Everyone knows that, and it makes everyone in the department dangerous. People are loyal to Sheriff Reagan.”
A cold feeling settles into my stomach that has nothing to do with the morning air. “He knows?”
“It’d be hard for him not to.” He turns to look at me then, and I can see that whatever else Johnny Willows is, he’s not enjoying this conversation.
“The chief has been trying to keep his distance, let everything die down with Claire. But that’s not going to last much longer, Lennon.
He’s getting impatient. And when Reagan stops sitting on his hands, things are going to move fast.”
I let that land, let myself feel the full weight of it.
I’ve known something was coming. I’ve felt it at the edges of everything for weeks now.
Hell, I got shot at, and I’m still not sure that my flat tire was something that happened organically.
But hearing it said out loud, plainly, by someone standing in front of me in a uniform, makes it real in a way it hasn’t been before.
Before I was able to pretend like it was happening to someone else.
But this? It’s fucking happening to me, and I need to find out how long I have.
“How fast are we talking?”
Johnny shakes his head. “I don’t know exactly. But I don’t think you’ve got the kind of time most people would want to believe they have.”
I look at him for a long moment. Johnny was two years ahead of me in school.
He was always the quiet, responsible kid, the kind of person who showed up and did what he said he was going to do.
He was kind to me when a lot of people weren’t sure what to make of me, the girl raising her little sister out of a double-wide on the edge of town.
“Why are you telling me this?” I ask.
He’s quiet for a second, looking off toward the tree line. “You remember junior year? When my sister was going through that rough patch, and nobody would give her a job, and you told her she could come work at the diner with you?”
I hadn’t thought about that in years. “She needed work, and I needed help back then.”
“She needed someone to give her a chance. You didn’t have to do that.
” He looks back at me. “I watched you your whole time in school, Lennon. Taking care of Atlee, keeping the two of you together when most people would’ve given up or let the system take over.
I always admired that about you. Still do.
” He pauses. “And what you’re doing now, not backing down from this, that takes guts that most people don’t have.
It wouldn’t sit right with me if you walked into whatever’s coming without at least knowing it was coming. ”
My chest tightens, and I have to press my lips together for a second before I can speak. “Thank you, Johnny. I mean that.”
He nods once, like we’ve settled something between us. “You didn’t hear any of this from me.”
“Hear what?” I say, and he almost smiles.
He tips his hat, walks back to the SUV, and pulls out of the driveway without another word. I stand there watching until the patrol unit disappears around the bend in the long gravel drive. Then I just stand still for another minute, staring at the place where it was.
The horses are still grazing. The sky is that pale, washed-out blue it gets before the sun climbs high enough to warm things up. Everything looks exactly the same as it did twenty minutes ago, and somehow nothing feels like it did twenty minutes ago.
I pull my phone out of my jacket pocket and find Shawn’s name in my contacts. It rings twice before he picks up.
“Lennon.” His voice is careful, like he was already expecting me to call. More often than not, though, I text him. The call has to surprise him.
“We need to talk,” I say. “In person. Can you come out to Dark Skies? I think it’d be better out here, away from town.”
He is silent for a beat. “When?”
“Right now. As soon as you can get here.”
He curses under his breath. “Give me a couple of hours.”
“I’ll be here.” I hang up before he can ask questions I’m not ready to answer over the phone.
When I turn back toward the house, Carson is standing on the porch, leaning against the post with his arms crossed and his eyes on me. He doesn’t say anything. He just watches me walk back across the yard, and when I climb the steps, he reaches out and catches my hand.
“You all right?”
I think about it for a second, really think about it, instead of just saying yes the way I usually would. “I don’t know yet,” I say honestly. “But I will be.”
He squeezes my hand, and I lean into him just for a moment, letting myself take that. Letting myself have this moment where I’m weak, and he’s holding me up.
“Tell me,” he says quietly.
So I do. I stand on the porch of his ranch in the cold morning air, with his hand warm around mine, and I tell him everything Johnny said. He listens without interrupting, without pulling me close to try to take the stress away from me. He just listens, and that’s exactly what I need.
When I’m done, he’s quiet for a long moment. His jaw is set like it gets when he’s thinking hard about something, and I watch him work through it.
“Shawn’s coming out?” he finally asks.
“In a couple of hours.”
He nods slowly. “Good.” His eyes find mine, and there’s steel in them. “Whatever is coming, we deal with it. Together.”
I’ve been alone in things my whole life.
Alone in keeping Atlee fed, alone in showing up to jobs that wore me down to nothing, alone in building something out of whatever scraps were left over after everyone else had taken what they wanted.
Being alone was just the shape of my life for so long that I stopped noticing how lonely it was and how heavy the burden was to carry it.
I notice now. Because for the first time in as long as I can remember, I’m not.
“Together,” I agree, and the word feels more foreign coming out of my mouth than it ever has before.
He brings my hand up and presses his lips to my knuckles, just briefly, just enough to calm my galloping heart. Then he straightens up and nods toward the door.
“Come on. I’ll make more coffee while we wait.”
“You need to go to the ranch.”
He shakes his head. “I need to be right here, and as soon as we bring everyone into this, they’ll all say the same thing.”
With a nod, I follow him inside, and the door closes behind us. It shuts out the cold and the indecision I’ve lived with most of my life.