Chapter 11 – Kev
CHAPTER ELEVEN
KEV
She’d been there. She’d seen him. In one of the worst, weakest, most reprehensible moments of his life, Davis had seen him. And Madigan had let it happen.
Kev didn’t think it was possible to feel worse about his relapse. About what he’d done. He didn’t think the self-hatred could cut any deeper. But just like he’d been about everything else in his life, he’d been so indescribably wrong.
Blazing down the trail with a fury that threatened to engulf him until he was nothing but walking flames, he reached the clearing at the base of the mountain and turned toward the cabins. The men were all there, hanging out around the firepit, talking about nothing the way they always did at the end of the workday. And there was the man himself, Matthew Madigan, standing with his legs wide, his hands on his hips, like some instinctual part of him knew what was coming for him and was already braced for it.
“Hey, Kev,” Brayden called out, oblivious to the rage radiating from Kev’s core, the impending meltdown about to level the entire state. “How’d it go up there? ”
Slowly, Madigan turned Kev’s way, his smile falling by degrees with every inch that vanished between them. “Kev?” he said cautiously, squaring off. “You cool?”
Gathering all the air left in his lungs, harnessing the nuclear rage bubbling through his veins, he whipped his finger out in Madigan’s direction and roared, “Fuck you, Boss !”
And then everything slowed while his words echoed through eternity, the loudness of his own voice feeling wrong in his ears, the full understanding of what he’d just done falling to the ground like radioactive ash. His brain screamed at him to run, to hide, that fists and belts were coming for him. And even though he knew they weren’t, he charged past the sea of wide eyes and open mouths and raced up the steps to the safety of his cabin.
The last thing he heard before he slammed his door was Brayden muttering, “He’s gonna have bathroom duty until the end of time.” And Madigan ordering the men to “Get back to your cabins. Now.”
It only took twenty seconds before Madigan’s boots hit his stairs, climbing slowly, deliberately, each step like a thunderclap, like a hole punched into a wall, plaster exploding into the air.
“Kev,” Madigan said, not bothering to knock. “I’m coming in.”
“No. Leave me alone.” Kev felt exactly like he sounded. Like a terrified kid who just wanted to scream into his pillow, kick his feet on his bed, throw his toys at the wall. A kid who’d never been able to do any of those things.
“Not happening,” Madigan said. The door swung open, and he appeared, somehow even more massive than usual, filling the entire frame. “Mind telling me what that was all about?”
Meeting Madigan’s stare, Kev fought not to cower, not to let his fear overwhelm him. “You let her come,” he ground out. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Kev,” Madigan warned, his brows snapping together. “You need to calm down right now. And let who come?”
“Davis.” Interlacing his fingers in his lap, Kev squeezed so hard something cracked. “You brought Davis with you that day. Why the fuck would you do that? Why the fuck would you put her through that?” Put me through that. “Why would you let her see me like that?”
“Ah.” He didn’t just see Madigan’s chest move through a deep, understanding sigh, he felt it, the energy in the room shifting, cooling from red to blue. Somehow, Madigan could do that, cool off an entire room with a single deep breath, staving off a nuclear explosion by his refusal to react. “I understand that you’re angry with me right now.” He motioned to the couch. “But can I sit?”
Reluctantly, but not knowing what else to do in the face of Madigan’s levelheaded composure, Kev nodded.
Lowering himself slowly to the couch, Madigan said, “To answer your question, I didn’t bring Davis.”
Kev scoffed.
“I’m telling the truth, Kev. Never in a million years would I betray your or any of the men’s trust like that. Never in a million years would I have put Davis in a situation that could have been potentially dangerous for her. Believe me, I never wanted her to see you like that. I never wanted to see you like that.”
Ignoring the second part, Kev asked, “If you didn’t bring her, how’d she get there?”
“She snuck out. Followed us down the mountain with her headlights off. I didn’t even know she was in the house until it was too late. I tried to get her to leave. Cole and I begged her. But”—Madigan’s shoulders hinted at a shrug—“you know Davis.”
“She’s stubborn,” Kev said, not adding it’s one of the things I love about her even though it was right there on the tip of his tongue.
“She wouldn’t budge. I would have carried her out over my shoulder if I hadn’t had more important things to deal with at the time.”
Like saving my life.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Kev hated the tremble in his voice, the desperation, the outright surrender, because he knew he’d lost. He knew she’d been right. He couldn’t fix what he’d broken. He couldn’t fix them. “I’ve been trying to make things right with her. But after that, after what she saw, things will never be right between us again.” He slumped, curling in on himself. “I just wish I’d known. I wish I’d known that I never stood a chance.”
Leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees, Madigan said, “I wanted to. I’ve struggled with it until this moment. In fact, I almost did tell you after I picked you up from rehab.”
“Oh my god,” Kev said, realization dawning, stabbing him in his chest. “I finally get it.” He would have laughed at his own stupidity if he wasn’t so mortified. “That’s why you asked me about Trisha that day. That’s why you said you thought we were close. Because you’d found us in bed together. You and Davis and Cole had found us in bed together.” His head fell into his hands. How could things keep getting worse? “Jesus, Madigan. You thought I was being unfaithful to Davis too.”
“I didn’t think that,” Madigan said severely. “I didn’t make that leap. I’ve passed out with people after using too.”
“I would never have done that to her,” Kev insisted into his palms. Then he raised his head. “Never. I love her.”
“I know you do, Kev. But I love Davis too. And I didn’t feel like it was my place to tell you that she’d followed us. I figured if she wanted you to know, she’d tell you herself. But maybe I was wrong.” He ran his FEAR hand roughly through his hair. “Maybe I should have told you. Maybe I messed up too.”
Kev could never keep anger up for very long. It always faded as quickly as it arrived, pouring out of him like water from a hose, leaving him empty and cold. “No, you’re right,” he said, acknowledging the impossible position he’d put Madigan in. “It was up to her to tell me.” And now that she had, it really was over.
“I’m sorry, Kev. Either way, I’m sorry.”
He only nodded, a weak little tuck of his chin, adrenaline siphoning out of him until his muscles felt like rubber and his bones like twigs.
“Were you two able to talk about it?” Madigan asked. “Or was it a dropped bomb kind of situation? ”
While his knee started bouncing, Kev said, “There’s probably still a crater up there where it exploded.”
Air rushed out of Madigan’s nose. “Shit.”
“Yeah.”
“What do you need? How can I help?”
What had been a tolerable, dull pressure behind his eyes transformed into an unholy sting. “There’s nothing anyone can do. It’s too late. It’s done.”
“Are you sure? Maybe you both just need more time. It’s amazing what time can do.”
Kev looked at him, incredulous, wondering how he could be so cruel. “But we don’t have time. That’s the point.”
Madigan frowned. “Why not?”
“Because she’s leaving.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, his scowl deepening into something more like confusion.
“Well, she’s probably leaving,” Kev said, keeping the tiniest vestige of hope alive, even though he knew it was worthless. Why wouldn’t she go? He’d made it impossible for her to be here. “Next month. You know, going back to school.”
Madigan rose to his feet like a six-foot-tall tsunami. “Seriously?”
Wondering how many secrets existed on this mountain, Kev realized—“You didn’t know.”
Sitting down again, crashing hard, Madigan rested his head on the back of Kev’s couch, looking up helplessly at the vaulted ceiling. “No, I did not. And I’m pretty sure Ashley doesn’t know either.”
Kev sighed. “I figured everyone knew but me.” Just like everything else.
“Not this time.”
“Sorry, Boss.”
Leaning forward again, the worried lines in his forehead smoothing out, Madigan said, “Don’t worry about us, Kev. Don’t even worry about Davis. How are you? How are you doing? ”
Without warning—and scaring him a little—laughter burst out of him.
“Kev?”
Shoving the bizarre emotional outburst down, Kev said, “I’m not about to run off and start using again, if that’s what you mean.”
Madigan’s patient, waiting expression didn’t falter.
“But I’m not good. I’m pretty fucking far from good.”
“I’ll ask it again, then. What do you need? How can I help?”
Pushing on his thigh, trying and failing to still his jumping knee, Kev considered the question. “I think I need some space,” he said, fully aware of the irony of the words coming out of his mouth. “I need to be alone. At least for tonight.”
Madigan studied him for a moment. Then, as if coming to some agreement with himself, he said, “Okay. I’ll tell everyone to wait until tomorrow to come talk to you.” He arched a brow. “Because after that scene out there, you know they’re going to want to.”
“Yeah.” Kev nodded. “I know.”
Before he left, Madigan leaned over, squeezed Kev’s knee—which immediately stopped bouncing—and said, “You’re still getting bathroom duty. For a week.”
Even though Kev had known it was coming, he groaned.
“Don’t be too hard on yourself tonight, though. Today was heavy.” Giving him a strange, unreadable look, Madigan said, “But tomorrow? Who knows. Things might feel lighter.”
After Madigan left his cabin, Kev opened his nightstand drawer and pulled out the stack of letters he’d written to Davis while he’d been in rehab. Letters he’d never sent. Letters she’d never read. His thoughts. His fears. His regret. His love. All of it so completely worthless now.
Putting the letters back, he slid the drawer closed, rolled onto his side, and stared at his wall while the light grew dim, watching it fade until it was so dark he couldn’t see anything anymore.
Bang, bang, bang.
Kev’s eyes sprung open, his heart rocketing into his throat. At first he thought it was thunder rattling his walls. But his cabin was bright, sunlight pouring in through his windows.
Bang, bang, bang.
It was the door. Someone was here. He checked his clock. Ten thirty a.m. Madigan must have let him sleep in.
“Kev!” The voice shouting at him was deep and booming and so wonderfully familiar Kev’s puffy, swollen eyes misted. “You in there? I didn’t drive all the way out here from Billings just to wait on your porch for you to decide to wake up.”
Sitting up in his bed, Kev said, “Clay?”
“The one and only.”
“W-what are you doing here?” he asked, pinching his nose, squeezing his eyes shut until his emotions settled.
“Open the door, and I’ll tell you.”
Kev wanted to open the door. He wanted to see Clay’s gap-toothed smile, his shiny bald head, get wrapped up in his big bear arms. As far as adopted father figures went, they didn’t get much better than his old cabinmate. But he was a raw nerve, a man walking around without his skin on, the hottest mess west of the Mississippi.
“Kev!”
“Okay,” he said. “I’m coming.”
Climbing off the bed, Kev glanced down at himself. He’d fallen asleep in yesterday’s clothes and his shorts were wrinkled, his T-shirt creased. Reaching up, he tried to smooth out his bedhead, his curls sticking out at wild angles that refused to be tamed.
Walking to the door, because he knew Clay wouldn’t care what he looked like, he grasped the knob, held his breath, and turned.
“Jeez.” Clay winced, sucking air in through his teeth. “You look like shit.”
Okay, maybe he would care .
“That’s actually better than I feel,” Kev said, trying to smile, trying to set Clay at ease even now, even after one of the worst days of his life. And then he grunted. Because Clay had him wrapped up tight in those big bear arms, squeezing so hard he lifted him clear off the ground. So hard that if he had broken down in tears, it would only have been because he was in actual physical pain. Which was…kind of nice.
“Boss called me last night. Told me what happened,” Clay said, letting Kev go. “I came as soon as I could.”
“You drove all the way over here? Just for me?” Kev’s mind went blank, short-circuiting in a puff of white smoke.
Stepping past him into his cabin, straightening his shirt over a belly Kev thought looked a bit less round than the last time he’d seen him, Clay said, “Of course. You’re my friend. That’s what friends do.”
It didn’t hit him until that very moment just how much he’d missed Clay. It was a physical presence in the room, solid and substantial. Just like the man himself.
“I would have come to see you in rehab too. If you hadn’t told me not to.”
“Oh, yeah.” Kev ruffled his hair. “Sorry.” He hadn’t wanted to see anyone during his first couple of weeks in rehab. Too embarrassed. Too depressed. After that, he’d just wanted to get out. Get back here. Get back to her. So she could leave.
Clay sat on Kev’s couch. Then he patted the cushion next to him and said, “Sit down, son.”
Son. The word had a direct line to Kev’s tear ducts. But he wouldn’t cry. Not this early in the morning. Not every time anyone said anything even slightly emotional.
When he joined Clay on the couch, they sat in silence for a moment, listening to the birds chatter outside the windows, the wind whisper through the pines. Turning to look at him, Clay said quietly, but with a punishing gravity, “I’m sorry about Davis.”
Davis. Another tear duct-hotline word .
“I’m sorry about your relapse,” he continued. Kev couldn’t meet Clay’s gaze, but it bored into him anyway, seeing everything he should probably stop wasting so much energy trying to hide. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you. I’m sorry you went through rehab, and now you’re going through this, feeling like you’re better off going through it alone. I’m sorry about all of it.”
Letting the words sink in, letting the apology mean everything Clay wanted it to mean, Kev listened, absorbed, and then he nodded. If he couldn’t let himself be open and accepting with Clay, a man who’d just driven four hours to sit with him, he knew he’d never feel safe opening up to anyone. He also knew where that had gotten him, being scared and closed off. He’d known where that path led for most of his twenty-eight years. Nowhere good.
“I thought I could get her back,” he admitted. “I thought if I just worked hard enough and gave it my all and did whatever she needed me to do, I might get another chance. And now, after what she saw, it’s just…over.”
Clay sighed deeply, then said, “I am going to tell you something that might be hard for you to hear.”
Kev raised his head, meeting Clay’s deep, brown-eyed stare, wondering what could possibly be worse than what Davis had already told him. Nothing. Nothing would ever be worse than that. “Okay.”
“I care about you,” Clay said. “And I care about Davis. But I think you might have forgotten something important.”
Kev waited, sensing it coming, a heaping, bitter spoonful of brutal perspective.
“Kev,” Clay said. “You are not here for Davis. You”—he pointed a finger at Kev’s chest, echoing the sentiment Kev had heard enough times now that he knew it must be true—“are here for you. You are here for your health. For your life. You can’t just skip over that part because you think someone else is more important. I don’t know why you decided to use again.” His expression fell, determined lines creasing his eyes, bracketing his mouth. “But I can’t help but think it had something to do with her.”
“No,” Kev insisted, his blood heating, because if he knew one thing, it was this. “It was not her fault.”
Leaning back, giving Kev space, Clay said, “I know. I never said it was. I don’t think Davis would hurt a fly if it was buzzing on her nose.”
“She wouldn’t.” Kev could tolerate a lot of things, but anyone believing his fuck-up was somehow Davis’s fault was not one of them.
“But sometimes when we’re thinking about someone else, worrying about someone else, wishing we could be different for someone else.” Clay’s brows rose a suggestive inch. “We can lose track of ourselves. We can lose focus. We can fall down.”
Tears pricked at Kev’s eyes again, and he fought like hell to hold them back. “I love her, Clay. I love her so much. She’s all I want.”
“And that’s the problem,” Clay said kindly. “You need to want other things. She can’t be everything for you right now. You have to decide that you are the most important person in your world. I know that’s something you’re not good at. It’s probably something you’ve never done a single day in your life. But that’s why you’re here. That is the work. If a future exists for you and Davis, it can’t exist without this commitment from you. At least for now, you have to choose you. You have to focus on you. You owe this to yourself, Kev. Maybe you owe it to Davis too.”
Clay’s words stung, salt in each of his thousands of wounds. But the sting was necessary. It was real. Because Clay was right. And deep down, Kev had known it for a while. “But what if by choosing me,” he said, giving voice to his deepest insecurities, his oldest fears, the feeling always churning inside him that he wasn’t worth anything, “I end up losing her?”
Clay only stared at him meaningfully, that meaning being: then she wasn’t the right person for you in the first place. And Kev was glad he didn’t say it. Because even if it was true, he couldn’t hear it .
Kev blew out a shaky breath. “I don’t think I know how to choose myself.”
“I know,” Clay said. “But just like everything else, we commit to the process. We dedicate ourselves to learning. We figure it out, one day at a?—”
“No,” Kev blurted out, half tempted to cover Clay’s mouth with his hand. “Don’t say it.”
“Okay, okay.” Clay chuckled, his belly jiggling. “But it’s true. Trust the process. Trust the men. Trust Madigan. Hell, you might even learn to trust yourself.”
Kev turned Clay’s words over in his mind as the cabin grew quiet, as Clay’s expression sobered. As he said, “I’m proud of you, Kev. I’m proud of you for going to rehab, for coming back here. I’m proud of you for loving Davis as much as you do. I’m proud of you for just being you. Because you are a good, kind, caring young man. And I will be so unbelievably proud of you the day you decide to believe it too.”
Kev’s vision blurred, his chin wobbling, his nose stinging. Fuck , he was going to cry again. And this time it was going to be bad, torrential, an emotional flood he couldn’t possibly hold back.
“Oh, come here,” Clay said, pulling him into a side hug so snug and warm Kev had no choice but to fold himself into it. “At some point, you have to let go and let yourself feel it all. You’re safe here. You’re safe now.”
And there on his couch, while Clay repeated his grandmother’s words to him, rocking him just like she used to when he was a kid, Kev let go, let himself feel it all, and wept until his throat was raw and his eyes were swollen.
“You don’t need to be happy all the time,” Clay said, still rocking him. “It’s not a fatal flaw if people see you fall apart. Nobody will yell at you anymore if you need to have a moment.”
Clay knew a bit about his past, about his dad, about how dangerous it had been for Kev to be in the way or be noticeable at all when he was young. And while Kev appreciated the sentiment, believing it was much harder. Because Clay didn’t know how bad it had really been for him. He didn’t know about the fear, the hunger, the loneliness. The canned peaches sitting on otherwise empty pantry shelves. The story of a kid left to fend for himself.
“I’m serious, Kev,” Clay said. “Nobody will punish you for this.”
Kev sniffed, then mumbled, “Madigan gave me bathroom duty for a week.”
With a deep chuckle, Clay said, “Okay, fine. But to be fair, I think you deserved that one.” Then he gave him one more squeeze and said, “Feels good to cry sometimes, doesn’t it?”
Even though his eyes burned and his sinuses ached, Kev nodded.
Pulling back, Clay said, “I probably can’t drive out here every time you need to have a good old-fashioned breakdown. But I’m just a phone call away. Always.”
Kev remembered the group they’d had around the firepit weeks ago. The conversation they’d had about the ways men showed up for each other. About what a healthy male friendship looked like. He hadn’t really known before. He thought he might know now. “Thank you, Clay. It means a lot to me that you came here. I really miss you.”
Without hesitation, Clay said, “I miss you too, son. But now”—his right eyebrow jumped—“I’ve gotta go. I have a brunch date with Maude Alice.”
While some of the weight pressing on his shoulders lifted like fog burning off the mountains in the morning, Kev asked, “Did you just say ‘date’?”
His brown cheeks went cherry-red. “Yes, sir.”
Kev wiped his eyes dry, smiled, and said, “Well, shit.”
“Careful, there.” Clay laughed. “You want bathroom duty for two weeks?”
Pushing up from the couch while Clay did the same, Kev considered holding out his hand for a shake, then realized it wasn’t what he wanted. Pulling Clay into a hug instead, he said, “Thanks for coming.”
Hugging him back, Clay asked, “Are you gonna be okay? ”
When the answer came to him, he was surprised by the certainty that arrived with it, the path unfolding clearly in front of him when it had been so impossible to see anything clearly only the night before.
Was it the path he wanted? Maybe not. But it was the path he needed to take. And he was going to do whatever it took to stay on it, even if it meant taking things one day at a time, even if it meant letting Davis go for a while, even if it meant that she might never come back.
“Yeah,” he said. “I think I will.”