Chapter 23 #2
My face crumpled. The fight left my body the instant his gray eyes met mine. A strong wind would have toppled me. I took a few steps to the side with my hands on my head, putting my back to both men as I took a breath. Layne must have known what I needed, and I heard him shake my dad’s hand.
“Cole, it’s good to see you.”
“Hey, Layne. Thanks for coming.”
“Where you at these days?”
At the small talk, I started walking. Wandering.
Meandering through the grassy area of the hospital.
It hurt in some way to hear one of my idols talking to my dad like he wasn’t the most disgusting piece of trash on the sidewalk.
Even though I knew Layne was only diffusing a bomb.
We needed him, but I didn’t have to listen. My phone buzzed.
Shelby: Everything okay? You need me to beat anybody up?
Despite myself, I smiled, picturing Shelby duking it out with an old, washed-up rodeo star. I’d put my money on her.
Me: Maybe later. Layne just got here.
Shelby: Good. We’re headed home now. Keep me posted.
It didn’t surprise me when Layne tracked me down a few minutes later. In fact, I was almost waiting for it when he found me leaning against a tree, texting Shelby.
“I think you could have taken him,” he said.
Straightening myself up from the tree, I said, “We were about to find out until you showed up.”
He huffed out a laugh and motioned toward his truck sitting in the parking lot. “Do you want to go sit for a minute?”
The walk and text with Shelby had cooled my boiling rage down to a heated simmer, but I would have followed Layne anywhere, and he knew it. So I braced myself for a lecture as I climbed into his truck.
“Listen, Jake—“
I held my hand up to stop him. “He wants to swoop in here and pay for everything like he’s some big hero. After he abandoned us. I’m not taking anything from him.”
Layne rubbed his face, and we sat there in silence for a bit longer.
“Why not?” he finally asked.
My eyes shot to his in confusion. “I thought that was obvious.”
His voice was soft when he spoke again. “Yeah. But, he’s taken so much from you. Why can’t he give a little back?”
I looked away. “I don’t need his money,” I said, when I trusted myself to speak.
“I’m not just talking about the money. You need to let him do this. You need this. He needs it. And your mother needs it. People can only change as much as we let them.”
When I didn’t say anything, he went on.
“You want to keep him how he’s always been to you, that’s your business.
It’s your life. But it’s a short life, and the older you get, the more you’ll realize that.
It’s been twenty years already. I’m not excusing him for what he’s done, but a boy has the potential to grow into a man in a twenty-year span. ”
I wasn’t sure if he was talking about Cole Evans or me, but my face was in my hands either way.
“You’re not a kid anymore. You don’t have to be friends with him.
You’re in control. You’ve got a good life here.
A good mom. Good friends. A daughter at home and a pretty girl on your arm.
” He peered closer, looking at me curiously.
My face gave nothing away. “Or about to be, I hope. Nothing needs to change at all if you don’t want it to. ”
I tipped my head back against the seat, my hands on my head, willing the emotion swirling around inside of me to subside. I wanted to balk at his advice, but I couldn’t do that to him.
Layne Marten couldn’t have known the effect he would have on me when he’d given a job to a fourteen-year-old wannabe cowboy all those years ago.
I owed my mother my life. I owed her for my drive and my will to provide and to succeed.
She taught me how to be strong and to laugh when I wanted to cry.
More times than I could remember, she would come home from working all night at the diner and stay up late enough to make me breakfast and see me off to school.
She’d mend my pants when I was always tearing holes through them.
She made it to every rodeo she could. Until recently, nobody’s hugs had even come close to hers.
She was my heart.
But if there was any other good thing of value inside of me, I owed that to Layne Marten.
He taught me how to respect women by the way he treated his wife.
He taught me to value the people in our lives more than the disagreements—a lesson I was still learning.
He showed up at every rodeo he could to watch me ride.
He’d challenge Dusty and me to a basketball game after chores whenever he saw us shooting hoops.
At least until we’d be beating him so badly he’d started faking injuries to get out of it.
He taught me the value of hard work. Of doing a job right the first time.
Fixing something when it was broken. He taught me that being a dad had nothing to do with the blood running through a man’s veins.
In his eyes, he had just given me a job. He couldn’t have known then that he’d be helping to raise me into a man because my father wasn’t around to do it.
And he wasn’t finished.
“But you’ve got a truck you’ve been holding on to for years.” I finally eyed Layne, who was blurry around the edges. “And don’t give me your crap about trying to find a landmine. Your heart’s too big to blow that thing up, Jake. You want it too much. And I’m not talking about the truck.”