Can't Hurry Love (21 page)

Forcing himself to feel nothing, to close down and block off whatever reaction was happening in his brain, he turned on his heel and walked out the way he’d come in. Dimly, through the wild open roar in his head, he heard Tori follow him and behind that, he heard the heavier footsteps of his mother.

His mother. What the hell?

He stepped onto the porch, the sun so bright the world went white, and for a moment he stumbled, lost in the landscape. And Victoria’s hand held him, braced him against the sensation of falling.

“Eli—”

He shook her off, pushed her away, and took the steps down toward his truck two at a time.

“Stop, please, Eli.” Tori’s voice clung to him, pulled at his clothes, his pride, what remained of his control.

Eli kept walking, the chrome of the truck’s door handle hot in his hand.

“Eli. I’m sorry.” Another voice, his mother’s voice, cut through the distance, through his skull, and the scream escaped. The anger ignited and blazed out of control.

The cruelty of her being here spun him around and he ran back up the steps, right toward her, unsure for a
wild moment of what he was going to do. He knew what he wanted to do, how he wanted to shake her. Scream at her.

But he stopped inches from her, confronted by the familiarity of her face, aged but the same. Those eyes, the freckles, the sad set to her mouth. It was her. His mother.

“I don’t know why you’re here—”

“Because of you,” she said quickly, definitively, as if she’d only been waiting for the chance to say those words. “I’m here for you.”

His skin crawled at the thought. “I don’t want anything to do with you.”

When she started to shake her head, he pointed his finger at her, barely controlling the wild impulse to poke her as hard as he could. He wanted to hurt her. This woman who once used to kiss him good night, who taught him how to whistle and ride a bike and lay tile.

Who broke his heart into so many pieces he still couldn’t find half of them.

“Stay away from me. I mean it. You are nothing to me.” Her lips went white, but those eyes of hers, like looking in the mirror, stayed dry. Defiant. All but telling him she would do what she wanted.

He turned to Victoria. Nothing dry about her. Tears flowed from her eyes. “You knew who she was?” he asked through numb lips. Slowly, tears making fresh tracks down the snow of her cheeks, she nodded.

Bile soured his stomach, flooded him with disgust. And he wished it was all directed at her, the liar, but mostly he was disgusted with himself. He had thought, like an idiot, that Tori was safe. That this
thing
between them was without risk. That there was no way she could hurt him.

But holy shit, how much more sparse did his life need to get so he wouldn’t be betrayed by the few people left in it?

Because he’d liked Tori. He’d liked her. Liked who he was with her.

And she hadn’t just lied to him. She’d lied to him about his
mother
.

He drove away from the ranch, directionless. Unable to go to his home, the one he’d shared with his mother for eight years, unable to see all the changes he’d made in an effort to chase her ghost from the walls.

The memories he’d tried to forget, that he’d torn down and sanded and repainted, that he’d fixed up and cleaned, were there, unbidden. Unwanted. And he was just a boy, suddenly, lost and grieving. Wondering what he’d done that was so wrong that his mother had left him behind. Wondering why he was so unloveable that she hadn’t chosen to take him with her.

By rote, unconscious of the decision, he found himself on the road leading to The Elms, his father’s nursing home. The shell of his father—the familiarity of his face, his voice—pulled him here like a magnet, even though he knew the father he needed wasn’t in that building. Wasn’t in the body in that bed.

And really, never had been.

But with his aloneness making him feel foreign in his own skin, making him itch and ache with everything he wanted to forget, he got out of his truck and went inside to sit beside the father who didn’t even know who he was.

Victoria watched Eli’s truck kick up dust as he sped away from the ranch, the air still smoking from his pain, acrid and terrible.

“Well,” Amy sighed, blowing out a big breath. She put a hand to her stomach, her throat, and then, as if forcing herself to be okay, as if swallowing whatever emotion had surfaced at the sight of her son, she turned to Victoria,
her face placid. Her eyes clear. “That could have been worse.”

“How?” Victoria gasped.

“I …” Amy stopped, shook her head. Her composure gone, she looked like those pictures of people standing in the wreckage of their homes after a tornado. “I don’t know.”

That Victoria had been a part of this made her sick, made her wish she could go back in time and scream a warning to him:
Don’t trust me. I’ll hurt you so badly and you’ll never see it coming
.

“What do you want from him?” she asked.

“You have a son. What do you think I want?”

As if all the sand were running out of her, all the courage and determination, Amy crumpled, her hand finding the edge of the rocking chair where she collapsed.

“I wouldn’t leave my son,” Victoria said. Honestly, now she wanted to take the high road? After the damage had been done? Where had her righteousness been last week?

“It’s easy to judge me,” Amy said, a willing bull’s-eye. “I deserve it. Trust me …” She blinked up at the sun, as if sending Morse code. “I know what I deserve.”

“Why didn’t you just tell him last week! You said you would!” The wind kicked up, making the plastic sheeting flap around them—it sounded like a protest, and her voice got lost in the wind.

“I know. I just … I just fail him, every time.”

Amy shook her head, bowing it over her clenched hands. Victoria, always unsure around these Turnbulls, didn’t reach out. She kept her hands to herself and stared at the edge of the woman’s muddy and frayed canvas pants.

“I should have told him myself,” Victoria said, shaking her head.

“Why didn’t you?”

“Same reason as you. I was scared.”

And she sat there, the sun beating down against her skin, the wind blowing into her eyes, waiting for the next thing, the right decision to present itself. But there was nothing except the decision she’d already made, the work that she’d committed to at the ranch. That she believed in.

Was she supposed to fire Amy? Would that make this better? Because that wasn’t something she was ready to do.

Amy swore, breaking the silence, and pushed herself up out of the chair and down the steps.

“What are you doing?” Victoria asked.

“Something,” Amy said, shrugging. “Anything. I can’t just sit here and feel like shit. I’ve done that my whole life. My
whole
life. And even if he doesn’t talk to me—even if he hates me—I gotta try to do the right thing for once.”

An hour later, battered but calmer after watching his father sleep quietly—enviably unaware that the past had come back to haunt them—Eli left The Elms, walking past Caitlyn at the front desk.

“You all right?” she asked, that little wrinkle of concern popping up on her forehead. Her fingernails were covered in rhinestones; they were gaudy and wild, the furthest thing from what he knew of Caitlyn.

Everyone has secrets
, he thought, numb all over.

When she caught him looking at her hands, she tucked her fingers away as if she didn’t want him to see that side of her, the rhinestone side. As if he’d blown the password.

“I’m fine,” he lied and even managed to smile. He gave her a two-finger wave and headed out into the last of the day, the sunshine pouring over his truck and the parking lot like honey.

He wished he could scoop some up in his hands, a little sweetness to chase away the sour. He wished, actually, that he could head on over to Uncle John’s and get stupid drunk. Totally shit-faced.

But he didn’t know what he’d say to his uncle. And if he even wanted to talk about it at all. Things were different lately with Uncle John, who acted as if Eli getting fired from Crooked Creek had been some sort of betrayal.

What he really wanted was to pretend he’d never seen that woman. That Victoria hadn’t lied.

Drinking seemed like the best way to accomplish that, but the horses had to be fed.

Work, as always, needed to be done.

And he had enough booze at home to put him into a coma, if that’s what he wanted.

He took the back way to his house; it was longer, but there wasn’t a chance in hell he was driving past the Crooked Creek. Not for a long time.

But when he spun his truck around to the front of his property, there was a black pickup sitting where he usually parked. Boxes were loaded in the bed, along with two horse-shaped phantoms.

Standing beside the truck was his mother.

He thought about his father, a stranger in that hospital bed. The man who had raised him was, for all intents and purposes, gone from this earth. He could handle that shit. It had taken years to distance himself from the skeleton that raged at him every time he went to visit, the ghost who didn’t remember him.

But he’d done it.

He’d swallowed every offense, every rock and stone of grief and regret and anger, until he felt nothing.

And he just had to do the same with the woman standing there, staring at him with his eyes.

With a craftsman’s precision he sanded all of himself
away when he looked at her, every memory. He stared at her until she was a stranger, a collection of features that meant nothing to him, until finally, he could breathe again.

Carefully, aware of his temper, he turned off his truck motor and stepped out onto the gravel. He didn’t say anything, just watched her. Hated her.

“Where do you want this stuff?” She uncrossed her legs and jerked her thumb back at the load in her truck.

He chewed his lips, wishing he could tell her to go to hell, but that was his equipment in there. Equipment he needed.

“I’ll get it,” he said through his teeth.

He opened the back of the truck, grabbing the first two boxes and taking them into that messy office of his in the barn. He came back out only to find her carrying two boxes toward him.

He grabbed them, hissing.

“Don’t touch anything.”

“I’m just trying—”

“Don’t. Just …” He took a breath and walked the stuff into the barn. “Don’t.”

Refusing to look at her, but painfully aware of her eyes on him, he unloaded all of the boxes, dragged the phantoms out of the truck, and wobbled them over to the barn.

She followed him a few steps, lingering outside the door while he arranged what he could.

“This place looks good. You’ve done a lot of work here,” she said, her voice unsure, which wasn’t how he remembered her. Sad, yes. Never unsure. And he didn’t want to remember her at all.

He grabbed his white bucket and walked right past her. Like she was dirt. Like she was nothing.

“Get the hell off my land.”

God’s mighty fist was punching Eli’s brain. It felt like God had a grudge, the sunlight had knives.

Soda, his dog, whined, and the sound scraped the inside of his skull. Soda’s cold nose bumped Eli’s hand, then dug under the blanket for Eli’s face, which he licked, breathing the stomach-turning scent of dog mouth all over him.

“Okay, okay.” Eli sat up and waited for the world to stop spinning before attempting to stand.

Looking down at himself, he realized he’d passed out last night cradling a bottle of bourbon like a lover, with one sock, no shirt, and his pants still on.

He dumped food in Soda’s bowl, getting half of it on the floor, but he didn’t bother to pick it up. Soda would take care of that.

Appalled, he pulled four condoms out of his back pocket. He remembered a half-formed plan to head into town to find Caitlyn or another woman who would make him forget his life for a few minutes.

Luckily, he’d been too drunk to remember where his keys were.

After getting dressed, he braced one hand against the door so he could fish his sunglasses from the bucket of crap by the front window without falling on his face. He burped up a mouthful of fumes, grossing himself out.

This was why he didn’t drink. He couldn’t stand himself hungover. The smell reminded him of his dad nursing a hangover every other morning. Sitting at the breakfast table, his head cradled in his hands, while Eli finished the toast he’d made himself. Eli used to drive himself to school those mornings, his father slouched in the passenger seat, his hat pulled low over his eyes as he dozed on the twenty-minute drive into town.

Like father, like son
. The bitter thought was an angry bull and he gave it free rein as he jerked open the door.

As the sunlight attacked, his skin cringed in terror and his eyes screamed in surrender.

He wanted more than anything to crawl back into the house and hide until his head stopped hating him. But the sun was up and the animals were hungry and he’d already had a stomachful of self-pity.

Halfway down the steps he smelled something different on the breeze. Something delicious and life-saving. Coffee.