Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
NOW
W e both stare at the bed in the middle of the motel room, arms crossed over our chests as we contemplate our next move.
After Wells got his hands on the first-place prize money for bronc-riding (dropping Kasey down to second place by mere points), we all celebrated at the Dirty Cowboys Saloon in downtown Fort Worth. Wells and Kasey snuck pints of beer to my side of the booth, careful not to let any of the staff catch on, and I was thankful for it. I hoped it might take the edge off the adrenaline that flared through me as I watched Wells take The Hammer, a beautiful Buckskin male, all the way through a tumultuous eight-second ride.
I’d seen Wells on a bucking horse a hundred times by now, but this time, something was different. Wells exuded his usual steady confidence, only there was something else beneath the surface of today’s ride: a hunger for the violence of it all.
Even from a hundred feet away in the stands, I could feel the wave of aggression that rolled through him. It wasn’t directed at the horse—he was beyond careful in all the ways his body moved with The Hammer. But there was an unusual thrill in the performance, an outpouring of pent-up emotion that needed release. It’d taken a long time to dislodge the fear in my throat that I was about to watch Wells get seriously hurt—but he’d prevailed.
And dammit if the relief didn’t twist something inside of me.
After getting our fill of fried chicken and cornbread—and plenty of Coors Lights from the tap—the three of us made our way to the small motel where Kasey had booked rooms for him and Wells weeks ago. They’d tried to pay for a third room for me, but the man behind the desk in the lobby said they were booked solid because of the rodeo. My buzz had me waving it off, assuring them both that it was fine. It was just for one night.
But I never considered the sleeping arrangement.
“I can sleep on the floor,” Wells mutters softly, his gaze intently focused on the decorative pillows that rest against the simple pine headboard.
I turn to look at him, noting the dirt on his jeans and where it’s collected along the nape of his neck, mixed with the sweat from his exertion earlier. It’s clear his back is stiff, and I noticed at the bar he’s leaning a little more on his right leg. He’d never admit it, but he’s sore from getting thrown around on that ride today, and the floor is the last place he should be sleeping.
“No,” I say softly, the lightness from the beer still coursing through my veins. “It’s okay. I’ll take the floor.”
His dark gaze tracks over my face. “I’m not letting you sleep on the floor, Layla. Don’t be stubborn. Take the bed.”
I roll my eyes. “ You’re the stubborn one,” I argue, holding his stare as I square my shoulders. Twenty seconds must pass before I let out a sigh. “We can both take the bed, can’t we?” Even as the words roll off my tongue, my heart begins to pound. It’s impulsive. Reckless. A terrible idea.
Surprise splashes across his face. “We could . . .” He looks at the bed again, at the ordinary green comforter and white pillows. “Are you sure?” he asks, sliding those deep brown eyes back to me.
I shrug, feigning nonchalance. The regret is instantaneous, but now that the idea of sharing this bed is out there, I have to commit so I don’t risk making things more awkward. “I don’t see why not.”
He nods, the movement a little overexaggerated. I wonder if he’s just as buzzed as I am. I almost hope he is. It would ease the magnitude of what sleeping next to each other would mean.
I’m his best friend’s girl, after all.
Well, at least . . . I was.
That identity feels uncomfortable now after learning about the existence of Emma, and as I watch Wells fold himself to sit on the foot of the bed, leaning over to pull off his boots, I can’t help the question from spilling out. “How are you?”
He looks up at me, one dusty and well-worn boot clutched tightly in his hands, and something dark passes over his face. “What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean,” I say with more confidence than I feel. “How are you?”
He drops the boot to the floor between his feet, leaving the other on as he studies the sand-colored carpet. Seconds pass, and I’m just about to walk back the question when he finally speaks. “I miss him so damn much.” It comes out in a whisper, and his face twists into a riot of emotions before he swipes a hand over his face, scrubbing at his jaw with the backs of his knuckles. “Today was a good distraction,” he continues, and I think he’s avoiding my gaze, looking everywhere but at me. “But . . . with you here . . .”
It’s like he’s thrown a bucket of ice-cold water directly in my face. “You invited me—” I start to say, but he quickly interjects.
“No, no—god, that’s not what I meant, Layla. Fuck.” His eyes are wide as they finally find mine. “I’m glad you came,” he insists. “I wanted you to, I promise. It’s just . . .” He doesn’t finish his sentence. But he doesn’t need to.
“A reminder,” I say.
His eyes drop to my mouth before falling to my feet. “Yeah.”
I can’t say that the clarification makes me feel any better, but at least it’s honest. And honesty is something I’m a bit needy for right now, after learning that so much of what I thought was my life has been a lie. Wells isn’t normally so open about his feelings, so I appreciate that he’s trying now. “I’m sorry,” I whisper.
He shakes his head. “You shouldn’t be. None of this is your fault. It’s just . . . so fucked up.” He digs the heel of his hands into his eyes, as if to block any emotion from surfacing. When he drops his hands to his lap and looks at me again, the skin around his eyes is red and his ears are flushed. “His mom came to the ranch yesterday.”
My mouth falls open. “She did?” He nods, and I suddenly feel stuck, like I’m seven years old again, playing freeze tag on the playground. It takes at least four steadying breaths to find my voice, but it still comes out shaky. “What did she want?”
The question sounds harsher than intended as it rolls off my tongue. As if Georgia Moore has no right to step foot on Bennett Ranch, despite her son having been there so much it was practically his second home. But for as much as Jason and Wells orbited around each other, Jason’s parents kept a safe distance from the Bennetts, just like everyone else did. I’m not even sure Wells has ever stepped inside Jason’s house. I’ve been there for dinner countless times, but I’d never once seen Wells there.
Whatever she went to the ranch for, it must have been bad because there’s no mistaking the emotion in Wells’s eyes now. They shine even under the dull light of the motel room ceiling. “She wanted to know about . . . the last few weeks, before the accident. What he was like.”
Suddenly my chest is like a vise and I can’t breathe. My legs give out from the weight of new stabs of pain pressing through me. I sink to the floor, curling in on myself, and force more deep breaths into my lungs. “Did the police find more evidence?” I finally find the bravery to ask, though I’m not confident I can handle the answer.
Wells watches me carefully but stays seated at the foot of the bed. “No. Not that I know of anyway.”
I force my eyes to meet his. “Then why?”
“She wanted to know about Emma,” he says simply. “I guess she wants to understand what might have happened. If Jason was . . . depressed.” The word hangs in the room around us, stealing all the air before he continues. “I think she was looking for answers.”
The night Jason died, there was only one set of tire marks on the road where his Mustang careened off the cliff, and his blood alcohol level was twice the legal limit. If there was another car involved, there’s no proof of it. Everything seems to point to two possibilities: Jason was too impaired to drive and lost control, or he purposefully went off that cliff.
“What did you tell her?” I ask, my voice so small I hardly recognize it.
Wells straightens and finds a spot on the wall across the room to focus on. “I told her what I told you at the cabin, that I figured out he was cheating on you. That I confronted him. That I . . . that I punched him.”
I suck in a breath, closing my eyes against a wave of nausea.
“There’s more, Layla,” he says evenly, looking like the weight of the world is on his shoulders. Like of all the personal hells he could be in, this is the worst one.
“What?” I croak out. “What do you mean there’s more?”
He sighs. “His mom told me that she talked to Coach Jones. Apparently, the day before the accident, Coach told Jason that he was going to start Stevens in the next game. Jason had a few missteps in some of our recent games, and he was starting to slip at practice too.”
“Oh my god,” I whisper. Football was everything to Jason, more than school or his family or even Wells and me, and we all knew it. Learning that his coach intended to pull him from the starting lineup would have been . . . devastating . “Do you think . . . ?” I start, but promptly stop. I can’t force the words out.
“What?” he asks.
I close my eyes and say the words as I hug my knees close to my chest. “Do you think he was distracted by Emma? Was that why he was messing up?”
Wells’s eyes soften. “I don’t know, Layla.” He finally pulls his second boot off, giving himself time to think through an answer. “It’s possible he was feeling the mounting pressure of not being the golden boy on campus like he was at home, which could have driven him to be impulsive. I’m not sure which one led to the other. Either way, he was struggling more than any of us realized.”
My skin burns hot and I almost can’t stand it anymore—combing through the web of Jason’s lies is ruining me.
“But he was also really fucking careless,” he adds, and it’s tinged with his own hurt. His own frustration.
I nod through the burn of tears, knowing if I try to speak this dam will break. My mind spins with a flurry of thoughts. One of the things I keep replaying in my head is one of my last phone conversations with Jason. It was after Thanksgiving, when I thought he’d just returned to campus from his trip home with Wells. He’d been noticeably vague as we recounted our holiday weekends, but was still curious how I spent mine with Chantal. It would have been a perfect chance for him to let me in on his side of things, to share anything that might have been bothering him.
I’d handed over six years of my life to him like a sacrificial lamb. And in return he fed me lies and ultimately turned to someone else for comfort during a real time of need. I’d bet money that Emma knew he was being pulled to the bench—it’s not something he would’ve been able to hold in and process on his own. And while I always knew the pressure was often unbearable for him, I thought I was giving him the support and encouragement he craved to round it all out. I thought I was on the front lines of his needs.
It’s a whole new feeling of betrayal to think even that might have been for show. An orchestrated slow dance in a room that was crumbling all around us.
I try to fight against it, but the tears break through like the crash of a wave against the shore. It’s only moments before I’m sobbing into my palms, fighting for air.
Wells is there in an instant, lowering himself to the floor next to me and pulling me into a warm and sturdy embrace. He doesn’t say a word, but he doesn’t need to.
He knows.
You’re the love of my life, sweetheart , Jason had murmured the last time I saw him, the end-of-summer bonfire in front of us growing high enough to lick the ink-black sky.
I can’t wait to call you Layla Moore.
The phantoms of our younger selves haunt me, and I can do nothing but succumb to this grief that’s become so wide I’m not sure how to fill it with anything but pain and anger. Pain for the girl I once was: resilient and unwounded. Anger for Jason who set fire to it all, and then went and fucking died so I’d have no one to anchor any of it to.
I’ll never leave you.
My skin turns to ice, and I’m not sure if the heat of fury dissipates or if the room is just cold, but I shiver against Wells’s chest. He runs his wide hands up and down my arms, creating a friction that feels like a relief. “I hate seeing you cry, sunshine,” he says low, the vibration of his voice against my cheek. “I don’t have the stomach for it.”
I huff out a small laugh as I pull back and wipe my eyes. “I’m sorry . . . There’s just still so much love in my heart for Jay, for who he wanted to be, and it hurts. I believed in him, you know? I don’t know the right words for how I feel. Shame, maybe? Regret? ”
He tucks an errant strand of hair behind my ear. “It’s okay to be mad at him, just like it’s okay to still love him. He was your first love . . . there will always be something special that exists between you and his memory. But he wasn’t perfect. Not even close. And you deserved a hell of a lot more from him.”
I suck in a deep breath, keeping my eyes trained on the cotton of his T-shirt, now spotted with my tears.
“Look at me,” he says softly, lifting my chin with his fingers until our eyes catch and his dark gaze burns into my skin. “This isn’t the end of your story, Layla. You’ll fall in love again, and it’ll be with someone who can love you back and give you everything you need. You won’t have to earn it.”
The words crack me right down the middle. Can it really be so simple? “Thanks, Wells,” I say. A long sigh spills out of me. “Look at us . . . on the ground again.”
The corner of his mouth quirks. “You have a thing for crying on the floor,” he says plainly.
“Name a better place,” I quip.
He shakes his head. “Can’t.” And then his smile flattens, and his gaze tracks across my face. “Come on, let’s get you to bed.”
Later as I fall asleep, the room is dark and cold, but the warmth of Wells’s body next to mine cocoons me. And just as I tip into the edge of empty black nothingness, I hear him say it in the midst of his own dreams.
Sunshine .