Chapter 4 – Kev
CHAPTER FOUR
KEV
“Yo, space cadet!”
Kev’s head snapped up, and he met Tex’s stare. The thin, middle-aged white man’s hands were on his hips, one eyebrow cocked under the tattered brim of his one-hundred-year-old cowboy hat. He looked like he’d been standing there for a while, waiting, watching Kev toil away on his section of the mountain biking trail in the shade of a cluster of pines whose dry brown needles blanketed the ground he’d been mindlessly driving his shovel into.
He’d requested the shovel today. Needed that particular job. Needed to thrust the sharp, pointed edge into the ground over and over until he couldn’t feel anything but the vibrations rattling his bones. Couldn’t hear anything but the rasping scrape of metal on dirt. Couldn’t hear her flat, cold words echoing between his ears. I’m glad you’re doing well . We’re fine . I’ll get out of your way.
“Sorry,” Kev said, pulling out the T-shirt he’d stripped off earlier in the day and stuffed into his back pocket. The T-shirt he’d grabbed from the Little Timber community-clothes pile, because aside from one pair of jeans and a flannel, he didn’t have any clothes of his own. In jail, he’d worn a blue jumpsuit. In rehab, he’d borrowed tagless shirts and drawstring-free hoodies and sweats. The clothes Madigan got for the men who needed them here were nicer, but they were still shared. Still not his.
Using the borrowed shirt to wipe the sweat beading on his brow, he asked, “Did you say something?”
“Just to pack it in.” Tex tilted his head down the trail where all the other men were packing up, clapping each other on their backs, smiling in the late afternoon sun. “It’s quittin’ time.”
“Sure, man,” Kev said, realizing how heavy faked lightness could feel. Like a balloon filled with concrete. “Sounds good.”
It had been a week since he’d left Willow Creek. A week of trying to slip back into the groove of Little Timber days. A week he’d spent hoping Madigan and the guys didn’t see all the ways he was failing. He couldn’t be present. He couldn’t be here. He couldn’t get her out of his head.
From the moment he’d seen Davis in the dining hall, the rigid set of her shoulders, the determination in her tightly clenched jaw, that single fucking tear she hadn’t been able to hold back—the tear he’d made her cry just by existing in her world again—he’d remembered what pain was. Pain wasn’t physical. It wasn’t craving or depression or even the body-shaking spasms of withdrawal. It was making Davis Thompson cry. It was the gulf between them that he’d dug out himself. It was knowing how badly he’d fucked everything up. That no matter how badly he wanted to, no matter how hard he might try, he’d never be able to fix what he’d broken.
And now that he was back, he suffered that pain every day, because he saw her every day. Walking through the dining hall, when she helped them work on the course, when she raced her bike down the finished trails so fast it terrified him. When she made small talk with the other guys, her bright smile fading to a dull glow whenever her eyes met his.
Each time he saw her, each time she didn’t speak to him, each time he couldn’t summon the courage to speak to her, something inside his chest twisted, cranked, tick-tick-tick ing louder and louder. Threatening to explode. Threatening to wrench the earth-shattering roar out from the place beneath his ribs where he’d been keeping it caged. Where it needed to stay. Because he’d brought this all on himself. Because if anyone deserved to roar, it was her. And she was silence personified.
After packing up his tools, he headed down the mountain a few paces behind the other guys. Behind Tex and Ace and Stanley and several new guys Kev didn’t really know yet. Everything had changed so quickly. No Clay. No Brian. No Sam. People he’d cared about, people he’d thought had cared about him too, all of them gone now, moving on while he’d stumbled backward.
“I think we need a group tonight,” Ace, a tall, friendly man from the Crow Nation who’d come to Little Timber only a couple weeks before Kev had decided to leave, called out over his sun-bronzed shoulder.
“Absolutely, brother,” Tex agreed, fanning his narrow face with his hat. “Haven’t had one in over a week.”
When Stanley said, “I know I need it,” Kev couldn’t help but notice how loud all the guys were being. So loud he’d hear them even though he’d fallen far behind. “I’ve got lots of things to get off my chest. It’s been a rough week.”
“And it does no good keeping it all in,” Ace said. “Right?”
All the men agreed in low, conspicuous murmurs, and Kev shook his head while sunlight pierced the trees, shadow and light dancing down the trail back to their cabins.
He’d done this before too, back when he was doing well. Banded together with the guys to subtly—or not so subtly—call one of the other men out. Someone who was withdrawing or hiding or not fully embracing the process. All the things he was currently doing. All the things the guys were apparently not content with letting him get away with anymore.
He should be grateful they were looking out for him. This was why he’d come back to Little Timber, after all. To get better. To get well. Hopefully to stay that way this time. But he just didn’t have it in him to pretend. As hard as he’d tried, he couldn’t find the energy to convince them that he was okay. To set them at ease and make them stop worrying about him. It used to be so easy, flashing smiles, laughing at jokes, being whatever he needed to be to skate by, go unnoticed, be safe.
It was fucking next to impossible now.
“What do you think, Kev?” Tex asked, waiting on the trail until Kev caught up with him. “A group sound good?”
“Sounds real good,” he said, forcing a stale grin onto his face while he snatched Tex’s hat from his hands and put it on. “How do I look?” He tugged on the brim, working harder to seem okay, making the impossible possible, smiling wide enough to pop his dimple. “You know, I used to be a cowboy too.” So many years ago. Back when his childhood was happy for half a second.
“Damn.” Tex clicked his tongue. “You look like one of the studs on your romance book covers, you handsome bastard. Why don’t I look like that?”
Kev repositioned the hat, shading his eyes. “Back on my grandparents’ ranch,” he said around the dull ache in his chest, “I used to spend more time on a horse than off.” Sunlight dimmed, shadows enveloping him at the memory of how it all ended. “Never had a hat like this, though.”
“Well”—before Kev could react, Tex snatched the hat, flipping it back onto his head—“if you want to be a real cowboy, you’ll have to get one of your own.”
Feeling his smile slip, like holding it there on his face was as draining as holding a boulder above his head, Kev said, “I might just do that.”
“Come on, pup.” Tex threw an arm around Kev’s shoulders. “But do me a favor, don’t tell Boss I called you a bastard. My old back can’t handle bathroom duty anymore.”
“Oh. Hi, guys.”
Kev wheeled around, her sweet voice grabbing his shoulders and spinning .
“I didn’t see you there.”
As a chorus of Hi and Hello and Hey, Davis erupted around him, his gaze followed her every move, tracking her while she hopped off her bike and removed her helmet. While she shook out her hair, her golden waves falling around her shoulders, glowing in the afternoon sunlight.
“How’s training going?” Ace asked her.
Kev hadn’t heard it from her, because they didn’t talk. But Tex had told him that she was training for a mountain biking race. Something about “fifty miles of pure hell.” Kev had actually laughed, relating to that more than he’d wanted to.
“Good,” she said. “Better now that the smoke’s cleared out again. How’s the trail?” When she pointed her chin up the path they’d been clearing all day, Kev narrowly avoided clutching at his chest, remembering the feel of her chin under his fingertips, his lips against her throat. That one night in the back seat of her car, the softness of her skin, the delicate line of her jaw when he’d kissed her there. It was imprinted on his memory in permanent ink.
“Getting better, but still sketchy,” a new kid named Brayden told her. “Be careful if you’re gonna ride it.”
Brayden was barely twenty-one years old and classically good looking, with dark brown hair, a jawline chiseled from marble, and one of those irresistibly charismatic personalities that drew everyone in.
Kev squinted at him, overtaken by a sudden bone-deep jealousy. Especially when Davis tossed a grin Brayden’s way and said, “Thanks for the heads up, B. I think I’ll give it a try.”
B? She calls him B? Grinding his teeth together, Kev wanted to tell her that Brayden—because there was no way in hell he’d ever call him B —was wrong. The trail was not better. He wanted to warn her that it was still too dangerous. It was uneven and narrow and riddled with rocks and roots. But he wasn’t the guy who could tell her these things anymore. He wasn’t the guy who could put her helmet back on for her, clicking the chin strap into place, letting his fingers graze the curve of her cheek, brush that soft curl back off her shoulder. He was the guy who could only press his lips together into a neutral, well-meaning grin when their gazes caught, letting even that go when her smile flattened out in response.
She was so quiet around him now, so reserved. He despised it more than if she’d shoved him, slapped him, screamed in his face, told him she resented him and that he was a terrible person and she’d never, ever forgive him. It would hurt like a sword through his gut, but he’d take it over the silence draining him slowly through a thousand tiny cuts.
But silence was all he got while she hopped back onto her bike. Polite, reserved, awful silence. Maybe it was what he deserved, seeing as silence was all he’d given her in the weeks before he left. Was she healing from the thousands of tiny cuts he’d given her then without meaning to? Without even knowing it? Was the way she always seemed to ride off in the other direction, all her silence, all her polite smiles and chilled, guarded expressions his payback? Was this his karma?
Watching her go, he wondered for the first time if she wasn’t just mad at him for what he’d done. He wondered if she actually hated him.
“Have I mentioned how much I love this firepit?” Madigan asked, sitting on a stump with his jeans-clad legs spread wide, directly across from Kev while the rest of the Little Timber men sat on their own logs or stumps around the crackling flames in the clearing between their cabins. “I don’t know why it never occurred to me to put one out here.”
“Maybe Cole is just smarter than you,” Tex suggested.
While most of the guys laughed, and Kev pretended to as he stared up at the scattered stars twinkling above them, Madigan scoffed. “Please. I outscored that little punk on every test in school.” He scratched his head. “Until I dropped out.”
“Don’t be mad, Boss,” Brayden said. “It’s okay when our friends are smarter than we are. What?” he cried, flinching when Stanley smacked his arm.
“You don’t know Boss well enough to give him hell yet,” Stanley grumbled, only half joking.
Kev felt a little smug at the way Brayden’s shoulders caved in. But then he regretted it. He’d been Brayden more than once, the new guy just trying to fit in. Trying to make friends, to find his place in a world he wasn’t even sure he belonged in yet. He’d give him a pass, even if Davis did call him B .
“So,” Madigan said, and Kev stiffened. He knew that so . He felt the weight of that so like hands pressing down on his shoulders. Shit was about to get real. “I’ve been thinking about something lately.”
“Here we go.” A smile slanted across Ace’s handsome face. “Boss has been thinking .”
A few of the guys snorted. Kev’s stomach roiled.
With a charitable laugh, Madigan said, “I’ve been thinking about how we show up for each other here. I think it can be hard for men, in particular, to support each other.” His deep voice echoed around the suddenly quiet firepit. “The distant and surface-level way we interact with other men isn’t necessarily our fault. It’s something that’s deeply ingrained in our society. It’s something we learned on the playground as kids, especially in my generation. Be tough, don’t cry, don’t hold hands or hug each other, don’t support each other in a way that anyone else might see or judge. But as adults, as men trying to break the chain of unhealthy habits, I think it’s important to challenge our deeply ingrained beliefs. With that said, I’m wondering, before you came here, how did you support the men in your lives? How did they support you? Did you have healthy male relationships?”
“I’m not even sure I know what a healthy male relationship is,” Stanley said, and Kev took that one like a gut punch. The other guys must have too, judging by the nods and affirmative grunts around the firepit.
“Okay. Let’s start there.” While he tossed another log onto the fire, Madigan asked, “What is a healthy male relationship? What does it look like? Feel like?”
“I don’t know,” Brayden said, his shoulders jerking into a shrug. “You’re, like, friends. Like my boy Mikey. He’s got my back.”
Madigan nodded evenly. “So a healthy male relationship has something to do with being able to count on each other.”
Everyone agreed. And Kev thought of the few real friends in his life. Of Thom. He might have played a big role in convincing him to leave Little Timber, but he always had his back too. Even now, if Kev needed him, he knew Thom would be there. Probably high. Most likely broke. But he’d be there. That had to count for something.
“A lot of us have issues with abandonment,” Madigan said, interrupting Kev’s thoughts with a piercing blue-eyed stare in his direction. “So it would make sense that being accountable is important in a relationship. It might feel like the most important thing to us.”
Kev blew out a relieved exhale, thinking, yes, exactly that . Until Tex spoke up.
“I’m not so sure,” he said, pulling off his hat and cradling it in his lap. “There are lots of people from my past, guys who I thought were my friends, who were always there while I was using, always ready to hook me up or share my scores or get into trouble with me. But I’m not sure any of them were there when I really needed them. I mean, I haven’t heard from a single one of them since I’ve been living here. That can’t be healthy, right? Just being there for each other during the good times?”
Despite the fire’s heat, Kev shivered. Thom and Trish, they were good-times-only people in his life. On their side of the relationship for sure, but also on his. He didn’t know if either of them were struggling. He didn’t even think about checking in on Trish at her rehab. And part of that, he knew, was for self-protection, severing himself from that world since he was obviously too weak to keep one foot inside it, even one toe. But still, maybe he didn’t have friends. Maybe, he thought while his stomach sank like he’d been eating bricks instead of the meager diet of cheese sandwiches and peanut butter crackers he’d been managing to force down lately, he didn’t know what a friend was. Let alone how to be one.
“That’s a good point,” Madigan said, his attention settling on the fire. “An important part of any healthy relationship is being there for each other through the good times and the bad times. Standing by each other’s sides when we’re happy, but also when we’re emotional or quiet or angry. I think men can have a difficult time with this. With the emotional side of relationships. I know I used to.”
“I don’t speak for the entire transmasc community,” one of the new guys named Noah said. He was a stocky white trans man around Kev’s age with jet black hair, a trimmed black beard, and demeanor so quiet he’d quickly become Kev’s favorite person to work the trails with. “And I’m not sure I’ve ever been a highly emotional person. But I feel it. Since I transitioned, I feel a pressure to be more…stoic, I guess. More locked down. I don’t know if I put that pressure on myself or if it comes from society.” He huffed a laugh. “Probably both. But it’s definitely there. I definitely see it in my relationships with other men.”
To a chorus of thoughtful hums, Madigan said, “Thank you for that perspective, Noah.” Then he asked, “So why, as men, do we feel like we need to be stoic? How is it helping us? Why do we feel like we need to hold our emotions back, especially with each other?”
“Because emotions are scary,” Stanley said, his hands resting on his round belly. “I mean, that’s why I drank. I’d get overwhelmed at work or at home, and all I wanted to do was get to that place where I felt nothing.”
“This is true,” Madigan agreed. “Emotions can be scary, and a lot of us drank or used to avoid having to feel them. But maybe we wouldn’t have tried so hard to blank out if we hadn’t been led to believe that feeling something, that being emotional, was somehow wrong or bad, or”—he nodded at Noah—“not how men were supposed to behave.”
Noah nodded back.
“Maybe,” Madigan continued, bringing the point home, “emotions would be less scary if we didn’t believe that being emotional would lead to being laughed at or called out or even punished. If we didn’t believe that being emotional would lead to being alone.”
Ace whistled. “That’s heavy, Boss.”
Kev would have agreed if he wasn’t so busy trying to stop his heart from pounding. He knew, even though it felt like it, that Madigan wasn’t talking about him, using his life, his childhood, as fodder for group. He knew it because Madigan would never do something like that. But he also knew it because he wasn’t the only man around the firepit who looked rocked. Most of them did. Eyes wide. Mouths open. Hands rubbing over faces. Even so, it still hit so close to home, to Kev’s home, that panic twisted inside him.
After a moment, Madigan asked, “How would it feel if you had friends who would come to your side and sit with you without judgment no matter how emotional you were? And how would you feel about sitting with your friends when they were going through hard times? Not judging, not trying to fix everything, just being there. Even if they were emotional. Even if they were angry or sad. Even if they were crying.”
While all the men stared at Madigan, joined in silence, a deep black hole spiraled out from Kev’s belly, threatening to swallow him whole. Because he’d had that once. He’d had her.
Davis had been there for him. She’d sat with him. Even when he’d pulled away from her, from everyone. She’d stayed. And he’d let her. He knew he was hurting her. He knew he wasn’t good enough for her. But he couldn’t let her go.
Maybe it was good she wasn’t talking to him anymore, as awful as it felt. Because he didn’t want to hurt her again, and he clearly didn’t know how to be a friend.
“I used to feel scared,” Tex said, cutting through the quiet tension in the air. “I used to be afraid of my feelings. Afraid of what it might mean if I felt genuine love and affection for another man. Settling for the bare minimum of what a friendship should be because anything was better than being alone.”
“You don’t feel that way anymore?” Madigan asked.
Tex shook his head, then settled his hat back into place on top of it. “Nah. It’s just like you said, deeply ingrained beliefs holding us back. I’ll prove it too.” He glanced around, his gaze landing on each of the men, one at a time. “Guys,” he said with complete sincerity, “I care about you. I care about all of you—even you, Brayden.” This earned him some much-needed laughs. “And I will always be here for you, through the good times and the bad times. And I hope like hell you’ll be there for me too.”
“Always,” Ace said, giving Tex’s outstretched fist a bump.
Kev wanted to do the same, nod and smile and bump Tex’s fist. But his arm wouldn’t move. The truth was, he didn’t actually know if he could be there for Tex or the other men. He didn’t know if he could be there for anyone, not in the ways that mattered. How could he expect other people to trust him or rely on him when he couldn’t even trust himself?
When Stanley gave Tex’s fist a bump from his other side and said, “You can count on me,” Madigan grinned at the men like a proud parent. Which made Kev feel even worse. He’d done nothing to earn anyone’s pride.
“Lots of love around this fire tonight,” Madigan said, “Let’s keep that love going, keep questioning our preconceived notions of what male friendships should look like, dig deep when emotions make us uncomfortable, and make our own rules about how we want to be there for each other.”
After a minute of thoughtful silence, the fire popped, and Madigan asked, “Does anyone else have anything they want to talk about before we wrap up?”
It was subtle, hips shifting on logs, heads turning, eyes flickering in the firelight. But Kev knew they were all looking at him now. He was supposed to say something, talk about what it was like coming back, how he was settling in. That was the deal. That was what was expected of him here. He was supposed to be honest, open up, lay all his worries out there so these men could carry some of their weight for him. Because holding it all in, carrying it all by himself, was bad and led to bad things.
There was just one problem: he’d never been able to open up. Even when he was here before, he hadn’t opened up. He’d just lied. Lied that he was happy. Lied that he was fine. Lied because he couldn’t find the words to say how he really felt. Lied because he’d spent most of his life believing that being seen but not heard meant being safe. That being quiet and fine and happy and not emotional was how to not wake up with bruises on his skin.
He’d been lying since he’d gotten back too, brushing off concerns, pretending he was making the transition easily. Pretending another bit of his heart didn’t break every time Davis walked or rode by without talking to him, without even looking at him. Pretending he wasn’t sinking deeper and deeper into the bleak emptiness of not having the first fucking clue how to make things better.
What he was doing, how he was living, was obviously not working. So what if he just stopped? What if he stopped pretending everything was fine for five fucking minutes? Because he was so exhausted by all of it.
What was he really risking here in this place with these men by telling them the truth? He knew what he was risking by continuing to lie. He was risking everything staying exactly as it was, exactly the same.
Well, fuck that.
“I’m…struggling.” His voice was shaky, his hands cold and trembling. He kept going anyway. “I’m struggling, being back. But I’m not ready to talk about it.”
Of all the things he’d already disclosed, the things he’d done and the things that had been done to him that he’d admitted to in groups like this, these simple words might have been the hardest he’d ever pushed out of his mouth. He was expecting blowback. One of the guys would call him out for hiding. Another would put pressure on him to say something real. Maybe they’d tell him to stop being afraid of his emotions. But that didn’t happen.
It surprised him, but nowhere near as much as the smile breaking out beneath Madigan’s beard, the understanding expression on his face when he said, “That’s fair, Kev. And when you are ready, we’ll all be here to listen.”
While he helped the men stamp out the fire, Kev wondered what the hell had just happened. He’d never seen Madigan so accepting of someone after they chose not to participate in the discussion. But maybe, just by being honest, just by telling the truth even though all he’d wanted to do was gloss everything over with more easygoing lies, he’d actually done something right for once.