17. Cash
CASH
I’ve been sitting behind Makai’s shack for three hours with a bottle of whiskey, nursing it until the liquor bleeds into my veins.
Earlier today, I knew Grandpa wasn’t feeling his best and suggested he go back in versus helping me today like he likes to do. By the time Dawson found him, he was gone. He barely made it inside and to the kitchen table.
There was nothing any of us could do.
He was seventy-five, his heart was strong, and his mind was sharp, but none of that mattered because a goddamn blood vessel in his brain decided his time was up.
I take another swig of Jack Daniels and shake my head.
The main house is about thirty yards away, so I can hear the commotion. Everyone is in there; most are probably crying. I couldn’t be there—watching my dad break down with Mom and Rhett. I couldn’t breathe and I came out here.
That was four hours ago. About three hours ago, I broke into Makai’s and stole the whiskey I bought him since he’s underage.
Now, the bottle is almost all gone.
Benjamin Thornwood built this ranch.
It started out as Grandma’s father’s ranch, but he was too old to really run it anymore, and Grandpa was in his early twenties and kind of deadbeat.
But he loved Grandma, and when he asked for her hand, Grandma’s father told Grandpa no—not unless he took over the ranch and could prove he could provide.
So he promised that he would. He broke his back over it and built this ranch into something. And Grandma helped too. They built the main house together and began to raise three boys together, much like my own parents.
My grandmother died when my dad was eight, leaving Grandpa Ben to raise those three boys alone. All while still running this ranch. Even when everyone told him it was worthless, he looked at it and was determined to prove to my grandma’s father that Ben Thornwood is a man of his word.
He never talked about his life like it was hard—never asked for recognition.
He did it because that’s who he was. Even at his age, he still went out to check the fence lines.
Still wanted to know the ins and outs of the business even though Luke, my dad, and Rhett did most of the admin of the business.
He still got up before anyone else and went to bed after and never once suggested that maybe it was time for him to just rest.
I take another drink.
He built this ranch from nothing at twenty years old.
What the fuck am I even doing at twenty-two?
The entire family looks at me the way you look at a golden retriever that keeps digging under the fence—completely tired of my bullshit, but they don’t do anything except shake their heads in disapproval.
I’m the one who has spent twenty-two years being the one nobody worries about because the bar is already so low that clearing it doesn’t require any effort.
The one who is currently sitting in the dark behind Makai’s guest house drinking because he couldn’t stand to be in a room full of people who are grieving a man he was named after.
The golden retriever role suits me. Nobody expects anything, nobody’s disappointed, everybody’s happy to see me, and equally happy when I leave.
So why is it bothering me all of a sudden?
The sound of footsteps pulls me away from the torrential storm in my brain.
I assume it’s Makai coming to check on me, or Dawson sent to retrieve me, so I don’t look up.
I’m not going back there yet.
Nobody can make me go back there yet.
Then, I smell her.
I know that smell; I’ve been memorizing it since before I admitted to myself that I was memorizing it—something warm underneath the night air. I know it’s her before I look up. When I do, she’s coming around the corner of the guest house and she stops when she sees me.
The state of me. The bottle. The ground. All of it.
She doesn’t say anything, just looks at me.
I look back.
Something happens when I see her face. I get up, not gracefully.
I’m slow because of the liquor and I have to use the wall to brace myself.
Halle takes a half step toward me on instinct when I trip over my own damn boot.
And then she’s there, in real life, and everything else that has happened today fades behind a glass window. I close the distance and kiss her.
Anyone could look out the window—I know that. And I don’t care, because she’s the only thing in the world right now that feels like solid ground, and I need solid ground.
She kisses me back.
Then she pulls back, gently, her hands on my chest. “Cash.”
I look over her shoulder. Colt and Rhett are both watching from the porch. Rhett, with his arms crossed and his face contorted in utter disbelief. Colt, looking at his sister, red with anger.
Halle doesn’t turn around, she just waves her hand flippantly, ushering them away. Colt puts his hand on Rhett’s arm and says something low, steering him back toward the door, and they go inside.
“Sit down,” she says.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. Sit down.”
“I said I’m fine, Halle.” I slur my words as I slide back down the wall because my legs have made their own decision about this.
She sits down next to me. “I’m sorry about Ben. I loved him too.”
“Everybody loved him.” It comes rude and sharp. “Sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“I know.”
I look at my hands, tears forming, but I push them back. “Dawson found him,” I say. “He went in after breakfast—figured it was nothing. And Dawson found him slumped over the kitchen table at noon.”
She doesn’t say anything.
“We let him go,” I say again. “We didn’t check on him sooner …”
“There’s nothing you could have done,” Halle says.
I know that. But knowing it doesn’t help. “I know that, I just—I keep thinking about all the times … All the times I figured there was more time.”
I tell her all about Grandpa and his life on this ranch and his purpose. I stumble over many of the details and words as I fight back the tears.
“—And I have his name.” I laugh. It comes out all wrong. “I have his name and I don’t even know what to do with my life.”
“Cash—”
“No.” I pull my hand back. “I’m the family joke—that’s what I am. Rhett runs the ranch, Dawson runs the horses, and I’m the one everybody loves because they don’t have to expect anything from me. I’ve been fine with that. I’ve been more than fine with that my whole life.”
“You’re grieving. You don’t have to figure out your whole life tonight.”
That pisses me off. I know she means well—it’s the right thing to say—but it pisses me off anyway.
“I’m not talking about tonight,” I say. “I’m talking about every night.
Every morning. Twenty-two years of deciding nothing and being fine with it because being fine with it is easy and I like easy and now he’s gone and I’m looking at the next fifty years and I don’t know what the fuck I’m building.
I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know who I am without someone who thought I was worth something. ”
My voice cracks on that last part and I take a drink to cover it.
“Cash, Ben loved you; he saw something in you. That didn’t go away because he did.”
I stand up.
“Be with me.”
It comes out before I’ve decided to say it, slurred at the edges. All of it, right there on the surface, with nowhere left to hide.
She blinks. “What?”
“Be with me, for real. Not just—not the thing we’ve been doing.
Actually be with me. Let me be something to someone.
Give me a reason to live.” I look at her and I know I’m a mess, and I know this is too much but I can’t stop.
“If you can’t do that, then I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do with any of this. ”
“Cash …” She stands, reaching for me.
I step back. “Forget it.”
“I didn’t say—”
“If you can’t make me an honest man then no one can, and I’ve just been out here drinking and being dramatic and you should go back inside.”
I turn toward the dark of the fields.
“Cash.” Her voice is sharp now. “Don’t walk away from me.”
“Go away, Halle.” I keep walking. “I’m sorry you saw that.”
She calls my name again—maybe twice, but I keep walking.
The dark opens up and I go into it, walking until the light from the main house is just a glow at the edge of the field.
Then I sit down in the grass and sit there until the bottle is empty and the cold gets into my shirt, watching the lights in the main house starting to go out one by one.