Chapter 7 – Kev
CHAPTER SEVEN
KEV
Mounting his steps, Kev threw his door open, slammed it so hard behind him a picture fell off the wall, and ground out a miserable and frustrated and probably way too loud “fuck!”
He didn’t know what would happen when he came back to Bluebird, and he obviously hadn’t thought it through. Because hurting Davis all over again had not been part of the plan. Yet here he was, causing her more pain, making her cry. Making her feel uncomfortable in her own home. When would he ever figure this life shit out? Twenty-eight years, and he still didn’t have a single fucking clue.
Footsteps thundered up his stairs. The fuck had definitely been too loud.
Kev sat on his bed, pinching the bridge of his nose while Tex and Ace and Stanley burst into his cabin like the Kool-Aid Man and his two skinny cousins.
“What’s going on?” Tex asked, ripping off his hat so fast his wispy reddish-blond hair fell into his eyes.
“We heard banging and”—Stanley lowered his voice, looking around like Madigan might magically sprout up from the area rug—“ swearing . ”
“You good?” Ace asked, sitting beside Kev on the bed.
No, he was definitely not good. “I’m fine,” he said. And while Tex scoffed, Kev’s jaw clenched, his obvious not-fineness exploding out of him. “I’m just so fucking tired of fucking up all the time!”
“Shh.” Stanley winced. “You don’t want to get bathroom?—”
“Why not?” Kev asked, staring plaintively at him. “Maybe I need bathroom duty. Maybe I need bathroom duty until my back breaks and my hands fall off.”
“Oh boy.” Holding his hat in his lap, Tex took a seat on Kev’s couch. “What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“There’s a whole lot of something in that nothing,” Ace said, a brow arched.
“If you need to get it out”—Stanley groaned as he bent his knobby, arthritic knees and sat down beside Tex—“now’s the time. This is a circle of trust. You’re safe with us.”
Safe? What a joke. He wasn’t safe anywhere, not from the idiot who’d always be there with him, fucking everything up.
Burying his hands in his hair and pulling hard, he backed himself away from the edge. As impossible as it was, as destroyed as he felt, he couldn’t fall into this well. The same fucking well he’d fallen into over and over again when anything went wrong. It was too easy. Blaming himself for everything was too easy. Hating himself was too easy. He wasn’t here for things to be easy. He was here to get better. Learn. Grow. Be healthier. And healthy people talked about their problems. Healthy people asked their friends for help. Healthy people stayed out of the well. “I just ran into Davis.”
Only silence surrounded him. Until Tex said, “Go on.”
“She”—he tried to clear the thorns lodged in his throat—“it’s hurting her. Me being here. She said I couldn’t fix it. That I couldn’t fix us.”
Ace blew out a long, careful breath. “She told you that?”
“Yeah.”
“Well,” Tex said plainly. “That’s good. ”
Kev whipped his head up, bringing a scowl along for the ride. “What do you mean, that’s good? How is that good? How is me hurting the”— woman I love —“hurting Davis good?”
“It’s good because she’s being honest,” Tex said, his tone making it clear that this was something Kev should already know. “She’s telling you how she feels. You two will never get past this point, whatever that looks like, without being honest with each other.”
“And at least she’s talking to you,” Stanley added with an apologetic smile stretching out under his bulb of a nose. “That’s gotta be a step in the right direction, don’t you think?”
They were right. Didn’t make it any easier to hear.
Kev flopped back onto his bed. “Why did I do it?” He closed his eyes, refusing to cry in front of these guys because, no matter what Madigan had said, emotions were fucking scary. “I had everything. I had her. Why?”
“Have you talked about this stuff with Boss?” Tex asked. “Because you should.”
Kev shook his head. “No. This is literally the most I’ve talked about her with anyone.”
“Hmm,” Stanley murmured. “Why don’t you want to talk about her?”
“I don’t know,” Kev said. “It’s hard. I’m embarrassed or something.” He swiped angrily at the tears that wouldn’t stop falling, showing the men his fingers. “And whenever I think about her, this keeps happening.”
“What?” Tex was unimpressed. “Your fingers keep getting wet?”
Reaching back, Kev grabbed a pillow and threw it at Tex’s face.
“Nothing wrong with crying,” Ace said, plucking Kev’s romance book from his nightstand and squinting at the back cover. “I cried yesterday while I was on the phone with my mom.”
Resting his hands on his belly, looking a little like a bear about to settle in for a long nap, Stanley said, “I cried at a commercial about laundry detergent just this morning.”
“And I cried after stubbing my toe on my dresser last night because it hurt and I was tired,” Tex said. And while Kev wondered if he’d ever find his way back to where these men were, how healthy they all seemed, Tex leaned in. “But since you’re talking about Davis now,” he said, “you might as well keep going.”
Kev rolled his right shoulder. Be like these men, he thought. Be willing to cry over commercials and stubbed toes and broken hearts . “She wants more time,” he admitted. “She wants space. She said she can feel me wanting to talk to her, and it’s too hard.”
“That’s reasonable,” Ace said. “You do kind of look like a kettle about to blow whenever she’s around.”
“No, you look more like an eager little puppy.” Stanley twirled his finger in the air. “Spinning in circles and wagging your tail just trying to get her to look at you.”
“I do not,” Kev insisted, even though he knew they were right.
“What is it you young people say?” Tex asked, his solemn tone shifting the mood in the cabin, demanding Kev’s attention. “I’m gonna hold your hand when I tell you this. But I think giving Davis some space will be good for both of you. I know you care about her. But you’re here to focus on you, Kev. To get well and healthy and stay that way. And I think she knows that. If I were to put myself in Davis’s shoes, after everything she’s been through, the last thing I’d want to be right now is a distraction for you.”
Kev was a kid being yanked back by the shirt collar before accidentally running into traffic. That’s how abrupt and disorienting the sensation was, the realization that Davis might be wanting to keep so much distance between them not only to protect herself, but to protect him too.
While Kev continued to spin out, Stanley asked, “So what are you going to do?”
He opened his mouth, tried to form a thought, but nothing came to him.
“I’ve got an idea,” Ace said. “You read romance books, right? They’ve gotta have some helpful pointers.” Raising Kev’s current read in his hand, pointing at the bare-chested cowboy on the cover, Ace asked, “What would this dude do in this situation?”
Kev gave the book a dubious once-over. What would handsome loner and rebel Smithson Kane do if the determined and exacting Daphne Beckham told him she wanted space?
“Well,” Kev said, “he wouldn’t want her to kick him off the ranch. But he wouldn’t just let her get away either. So he’d probably honor her wishes. He’d give her space. But.” He made a half-hearted smirk. “He’d also do every extra chore he could find. Save random children from runaway horse accidents. Find a reason to lift heavy things whenever she was around. And he’d probably stop wearing shirts.”
Tex snorted. “Well, there you go.”
“You barely wear shirts now,” Stanley said.
“This is true.” Ace got to his feet. “You’re tits-out as soon as the sun comes up.”
“What?” Kev said, feigning innocence. “It’s hot. And I don’t want to get my shirts all sweaty. I hate doing laundry.”
“So if I did all your laundry,” Stanley suggested, already looking incredulous, “you’d keep them on?”
With a sheepish grin, Kev admitted, “Probably not.”
Stanley rolled his eyes. “That’s what I thought.”
Everything still hurt, but at least Kev was laughing.
“You settled, then?” Ace asked, bringing the mood back down to the ground as he set Kev’s book back on his nightstand. “No more slamming doors?”
Kev shook his head. He wasn’t settled, not by a mile. But he did feel better. And now that they’d fished him out of the pool of self-loathing he’d been wallowing in, he could see that something good had come out of his chance meeting with Davis. He’d been so worried, so convinced. But even though she wanted space, he didn’t think she hated him. Davis wasn’t like him. She hadn’t grown up having to hide her emotions. She wore hers like jewelry, gave them out like gifts. Especially when she was keyed up.
He’d noticed the way her breath had caught, her pupils expanding in the moonlight when he’d pulled her close, keeping her from falling. He’d felt the shudder running through her, the electric spark tensing her muscles, her coiled fingers gripping his shoulders. She’d even touched him. He wasn’t sure she’d ever touch him again, and now the shape of her hand was imprinted on his cheek, his lips still tingling from the softness of her palm.
“I’m good,” he said, because he could hold out. He could make that one touch last him weeks. Maybe months. And in those months, he’d give her all the space she wanted. While also finding every reason to lift heavy things whenever she was around and never wearing a shirt. “Thanks, guys.”
“No problem.” Standing up with another, and even longer, grunt, Stanley said, “Just do the same for us when it’s our turn.”
After Stanley and Ace headed out through the door, Tex set Kev’s pillow back on his bed, widened his stance, and said, “I’m sorry things are so hard with Davis right now. But I’m glad you talked to us about it tonight.” Then he pursed his lips, and Kev finally understood why they called it a sinking sensation. “I think,” Tex said while the floor beneath Kev’s feet dropped out, “that you’re still holding yourself back here. I think you’re still hiding.”
He considered pushing back on this, but he was suddenly, profoundly exhausted. Besides, Tex was right.
“I wonder if it’s the guilt,” Tex said, making Kev’s skin pull tight. “I wonder if it’s because, deep down, you still don’t believe that you deserve to get better. I get that feeling all the time. Like I’m a bad person who’s done bad things, so I don’t deserve anything good anymore.” Sliding his hat back onto his head, he said, “But you do deserve it, Kev. We all do. And I do think you need to talk to Boss. Not about her, but about what’s going on in here.” Tex pointed at Kev’s chest, right over his heart. “And here.” He tapped once on Kev’s forehead. “He’s better at that sort of thing than any of us are. And I’m pretty sure he’s been waiting for you.”
After a surprisingly deep sleep and an even more surprisingly decent day working the trails, Kev stared at the door to the office Ashley and Madigan shared, wondering if his decent day was about to course correct. Blowing a stream of air through his lips, he raised his fist and knocked.
“Come in,” Ashley called out.
Turning the knob with a hand he was determined to keep steady, Kev popped his head inside and said, “Hey.”
“Kev?” Madigan shot up from his desk like Kev had just run in screaming that the cabins were infested with termites. “Is everything okay?”
“Oh, yeah.” He ruffled his hair, already failing in his attempts to not fidget. “I just wanted to talk to you. Do you have a minute?”
Madigan and Ashley shared a look, then Ashley closed her laptop and walked to the door, letting Kev in.
“I’ll just go check on dinner,” she said with a smile and a small pat on his arm he wouldn’t have called unmotherly. Then she stared at him for a moment, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that she wanted to give him a hug. Thankfully, because he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to handle a hug from Ashley without getting his fingers all wet again, she only said, “It’s good to see you. Looking so healthy.” She squeezed his arm gently, kindly. “You’re in the right place, Kev. You belong here.”
Yeah , he wasn’t going to survive this. Not if she said another word to him. She should be mad at him after what he did, after the way he’d hurt her daughter. But she wasn’t. It didn’t make sense. Emotion wedged itself sharply between his ribs, the kind of emotion that might overwhelm him if he said thank you or that’s kind of you or I’m sorry or any of the things he wanted to say to her. And since he stood no chance of surviving a meeting with Madigan after having a complete and total breakdown in his office, all he could do was give Ashley a thin smile .
But then, in a low whisper, she asked, “Did you see the new books I left for you?”
His smile spread. He had noticed the books: a shelf of new historical and western and paranormal romances. “I did,” he whispered back while Madigan narrowed his eyes at them. “Thank you.”
Squeezing his arm again, she said, “Read the wolf series first. It’s so good.” Then she straightened, gathered her hair over a shoulder, and glanced back at Madigan. “See you later?”
Brimming with suspicion, Madigan gave her a smile that didn’t make it past his lips and said, “You bet.”
Once she left, closing the door behind her, Madigan asked, “What’s up?”
Kev’s feet stapled themselves to the floor, his courage vanishing in a silent but resounding poof .
“You know…” He gave a nervy laugh, hooking his thumb over his shoulder toward the door. “It’s actually nothing. Never mind. Maybe I’ll just come back later.”
“Kev. Sit down.” The way Madigan said it, it wasn’t an order, but it was close enough that Kev knew a smart man would obey. So he did, taking the chair across from Madigan’s desk.
“I’m actually glad you came by,” Madigan said, then muttered, “Even if I’m not sure that I want to know what you and Ashley were just talking about. But I’ve been meaning to come see you, check in. I just wasn’t sure if you were ready.” His head tilted, gaze steady and assessing. “Are you ready?”
Staring down at his hands in his lap, Kev auditioned at least ten different responses. Most were thin attempts at humor to ease the concerned look on Madigan’s face. Some were complete deflection. None were honest. Because that was him. That was his life. That was how he got by. He wasn’t a liar, but he wasn’t honest either. Not with himself, and not with anyone else.
He might not have graduated from high school or made a single good choice in his life, but he could recognize that he was getting a second chance here. A second chance from Madigan. From Ashley. From the guys. Maybe not from Davis. But if there was even a remote possibility of that, he couldn’t keep doing the same things over and over and expect anything to change. He couldn’t keep pretending he was fine because he was scared of upsetting everyone around him if he told them the truth. He couldn’t keep believing that if he showed when he was feeling angry or sad or worried or just…human, that the people he loved would leave him. Or hurt him. The guys hadn’t left him last night. They hadn’t hurt him. They’d helped him.
He wasn’t a kid anymore. He wasn’t that kid anymore. He had to try. What was it Rick had told him in rehab? It’s okay to worry more about yourself than everyone else right now. It’s okay to not be okay.
The truth weighing him down wasn’t a joke. It wasn’t a deflection. It wasn’t nice or easy-going or happy. But it was honest. Tell the truth, Kev. Just tell the truth .
With his gaze pinned to his hands, he said, “I think I need some help.”
It was probably only a moment of hesitation, but it stretched out like a shadow until Madigan asked, “Okay. What kind of help? What can I do?”
Looking up from his hands, not stopping until he met Madigan’s stare, Kev said, “Tell me why. Tell me why I relapsed.”
“So, you don’t know.” It was a statement. Not a question. Either way, Kev shook his head.
“I can’t stop thinking about it,” he said. “Why did I decide that drugs were more important than”—he barely kept himself from saying her name—“than everything.” That wasn’t a lie. Because she was everything. “I remember my life being good. I was feeling good. Then I remember feeling dull, off. Then I remember feeling…nothing. Just, nothing.” He opened his hands up to the ceiling, like the answer might fall right into them. “What’s wrong with me? Why don’t I know?”
Taking a deep breath, Madigan sat back in his chair. “First of all, you had undiagnosed depression and anxiety. When I picked you up from rehab, that was one of the first things Rick told me. Kev has clinical depression and generalized anxiety . I don’t think we can blame your relapse entirely on your untreated mental illness, but I think it contributed in ways we weren’t keeping an eye out for. You feel better after talking with Rick and your other counselors, right? You feel better now that you’re on meds?”
Kev nodded emphatically. “Night and day. I’m still nervous a lot of the time, but it’s manageable. And the depression cloud is…” He closed his eyes, feeling for that heavy gray mist, that smothering dullness, that nothingness. Not finding it. “It’s lifted.”
“If it starts to settle back down,” Madigan said in a tone that managed to be severe yet caring at the same time, “you need to let me know. Can you do that?”
“Yeah,” Kev said, hoping he was telling the truth now too. “I’ll tell you.”
Ducking his chin, Madigan said, “Good.” Then he added, “But if we take the depression and anxiety out of the picture, why did you relapse? Believe me when I tell you, Kev. I wish I knew. I wish I could tell you why relapses happen. All I can say is that they do.”
Kev’s hope sank, pulling his shoulders down with it.
“But I can also tell you that having one doesn’t mean you’ll have another. It doesn’t mean anything except for in that moment—for reasons you may figure out or you may not—the addiction was stronger than you were. I should know.” The rasp was so familiar that Kev wasn’t surprised when he looked up to see Madigan running his knuckles through his beard. “I’ve had four relapses in my life,” Madigan said. “And I only saw two of those coming. The other two… I eventually figured out where I’d fallen down, but it took a while. It took reflection and focus and work. And through that reflection and work, each relapse taught me something about my addiction. Each one made me understand myself better. Each one was a part of my recovery. Just like this one will be a part of yours.”
Four relapses… He couldn’t imagine going through this three more times. In that moment, he felt for Madigan, for everyone who loved him. His parents and brothers, Cole, anyone who stayed by his side, constantly worried he’d use again each time he kicked.
Would Kev have another relapse? Was he just running on a hamster wheel, stuck in a loop of doing well, building a life, and then losing everything? If, somehow, he ever did win Davis back, would he just be forcing her to get stuck in that loop with him?
No. No fucking way.
He needed to stop running, figure his shit out, break the cycle. He needed to ask more questions, get more answers. Whatever it took.
“But how do you explain that to the people around you?” he asked. “How do you tell the people you’ve hurt”— tell her —“that you didn’t mean to do it? That you didn’t even want to do it? I mean, I know it was my choice. Nobody forced me to get in that car. Nobody forced me to go back into that house. I take full responsibility for my actions. But how do you explain that you don’t know why you did it?”
Madigan’s shoulders rose and fell. “Sometimes you can’t. Sometimes all you can do is show them that you’re trying to learn from your mistakes and get back on the right path.” Clasping his hands on his desk, he raised a brow in a stern, knowing expression. “And I don’t mean show them by pretending to be perfect.”
Kev had to work not to glower, every instinct inside him wanting to shoot back with I don’t pretend to be perfect . But that would have been a lie. And he was trying to be honest. So he only asked, “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” Madigan said, “we don’t show them by insisting we’re fine all the time. Which is a thing addicts do, you know. The I’m fine thing. I think I missed it with you because you’re really good at it. I should have caught it, dug deeper. But”—he sighed—“I guess I’m not perfect either. This was a good reminder.”
While Kev tried not to let the guilt swallow him whole, Madigan hit his stride. “So instead of going through our lives pretending nothing’s wrong, pretending we’re fine—which only distances us from everyone else anyway—we show the people we love and trust that we’re trying by letting them in. We show them our struggle. We let them know when we’re feeling the pull. We ask them to help us. We let them help us. Just like you’re doing right now. Because if I’ve learned anything after four relapses, it’s that we can’t do this alone.”
Despite how much he wanted to believe him, questions and doubts ping-ponged wildly through Kev’s mind. Won’t that just make them leave? Won’t that annoy them? Won’t showing her my struggle make her realize I’m too messed up to be with? Won’t she think I’m broken beyond fixing?
Since he couldn’t bring himself to ask any of these, he only said, “That’s, like, really hard.”
“Don’t I fucking know it.”
“Boss?” Kev’s eyes bulged. “Did you just say a swear word?”
“Yes, I did. I’ll take bathroom duty for it too.”
When Kev’s lips twitched, Madigan smiled and said, “Look, you did a thing you regret. But you are not a bad person, Kev. Nobody here thinks that.” The emphasis on the word, the way Madigan stared directly into his eyes when he said it, the meaning behind those three simple syllables, knocked the wind out of Kev like a kick to the ribs. “You did everything we need to do after we relapse. You went to rehab. You cleaned yourself up. And now you’re here, searching for answers, learning more about yourself, trying to make amends, recommitting to your recovery.” His gaze shifted to the side, settling somewhere in the middle distance. And with a slow, deliberate nod, he said, “This is the way.”
“Is that…” Kev blinked. “Did you just quote The Mandalorian ?”
His attention snapping back to the here and now, Madigan scoffed, waving a hand through the air. “Don’t overthink it.”
“No, you did,” Kev insisted while a laugh tried to bubble up in his chest. “You even sounded like him.”
“Fine. Whatever,” Madigan said, giving in. “It’s a great show with a good message about the importance of having a moral code. And Baby Yoda is cute.”
Kev snorted. “The cutest. ”
Silence found them again, then Madigan asked, “I’ve wanted to let you settle in a little first. But I’ve been meaning to ask you, do you want to go to therapy? I know someone. A therapist.”
“Your old girlfriend?”
Coughing on his next inhale, Madigan blurted out, “How the hell did you know that?”
Kev shrugged. “Everyone knows that. It’s, like, Little Timber lore.”
Tugging on the collar of the snug black t-shirt he filled out in a way Kev only wished he could, Madigan said, “Well, she wasn’t my girlfriend. We were just… We had—we were friends. That’s all. And she’s good at her job, if you want to see her.”
Kev considered it. He said he’d do whatever it took, and if Madigan insisted on it, he’d do this too. But after a full month of nearly daily talk therapy, both individually and in groups at rehab, he was a little psychoanalyzed out. “Maybe later?” he suggested. “After rehab, I could use a break.”
“That’s fair.” Madigan nodded. “The offer isn’t going anywhere.” Then he asked out of the absolute blue, “You used to live on a ranch, though, right? With horses?”
“Yeah,” Kev said warily, expecting the question about as much as if Madigan had asked him if he’d ever wanted to be a circus clown. “With my grandparents when I was a kid.”
“Did you like it?”
Embarrassed to go overboard, Kev said an almost criminally low-key “sure” about some of the best years of his life, some of the only good years of his childhood.
Glancing down at his desk, Madigan said, “There’s something here. Something I’ve been thinking you might…” The rest of the sentence got lost in the fray while he shuffled through some papers. “Ah. Here it is.” He held up a pamphlet. On the cover, a silhouette of a horse stood proudly beneath the words Equine Therapy at Strawberry Farms .
“What’s this?” Kev asked while Madigan passed him the pamphlet.
“There’s a woman in town, Jen Shaw. She’s Mira’s friend. Mira from Glazed and Confused. Cole’s Mira. Do you know her?”
“I know Mira,” Kev said, the words weaving around a sharp lump in his throat. A lump reminding him of all the ways he’d hurt Cole—and Mira too, he was sure—by running off while Cole had been watching Little Timber. “But I’ve never met Jen.”
“She’s a speech therapist at the nursing home in town, but she also does this horse therapy stuff at her barn. She reached out to me a while ago about partnering with Little Timber.” He winced. “I’d kind of forgotten about it, if I’m being honest. But when she sent me this the other day, I immediately thought of you.”
Kev opened the pamphlet, scanned the pictures of horses grazing in a field at sunset, someone grooming a chestnut coat, a red-haired woman touching her forehead to a big bay’s muzzle. That thing ratcheting tight in his chest unwound a click at the sense memory of the velvety warmth of that part of a horse. “How does she use horses for therapy?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” Madigan admitted. “Look, I don’t know the first thing about horses. So I’ve been reluctant to move forward with this because it’s so out of my wheelhouse. But it’s not out of yours. Jen is passionate about this treatment, and the bit of research I looked at seemed pretty solid. I think it could be a helpful option for the men who come to stay here. If you’re interested. If you’re willing. I’d like you to try it out for me, like a pilot program.”
The immediate record scratch was deafening. Must have been because there was no way in hell Madigan had actually just said that to him. “You want me to try it out?”
“Yes.”
“Me?” Kev asked again, pointing a thumb at his chest. “This guy?” He needed to be extra sure because nobody ever asked him to do anything like this. Nobody ever asked Kevin Lowes to do important things. They asked Kevin Lowes to stay out of the way so he didn’t mess up all the important things other people did.
“Yes, Kev.” Madigan didn’t bother hiding his amusement. “That guy.”
“Are you sure?”
With a half smile, he said, “Aside from marrying Ashley, I don’t think I’ve ever been so sure about anything.”
There was a sudden, solid weight in the room. And even though he didn’t know what it was, even though it pressed down on his shoulders, it wasn’t heavy. It wasn’t a burden. It was…nice, centering.
“Okay,” he said, despite having no firm concept of what he was agreeing to, only knowing that his blood felt charged, sparking through his veins. “When can I start?”