Eight Second Angel: The Ballad of Lily Grace (Lonesome Point, Texas Book 7) (6 page)

He frowned harder. “Were you trying to hurt yourself again? Is that it?”

“No!” she said, with a ferocity that made him want to believe her. “I don’t want to die. I want to live.” She pressed her palms to her face, muffling her next words. “I do, God help me. I want to live.”

Canyon’s brow smoothed. He still didn’t understand how she could have forgotten that she didn’t know how to swim, but right now, he believed her. He believed that she wanted to live, which made it hard to reconcile the suicide attempt last night or the pain in her words, unless…

Shoving his sodden hair tiredly from his face, he sat down beside her. “Is there something you’re not telling me?” he asked softly. “Are you…sick?” A terminal illness certainly would explain a few things about Grace, though he hated to think there was a death sentence hanging over her head.

She sniffed and when she spoke again it sounded like she was crying. “I guess you could say that. I only have a short time left, and it’s not by choice.”

Heart twisting sadly, he put his arm around her shoulders and drew her in to his chest, holding her while she cried. He tried to think of something to say to ease her pain, but before he could find words that didn’t sound trite or dismissive, she lifted her tear-streaked face to his.

“But I don’t want you to feel sorry for me,” she said with a sniff, obviously making an effort to pull herself together. “I knew what I was signing up for when I got myself into this.”

He shook his head, torn between confusion and empathy. “I don’t see how that’s possible, Grace. Nobody signs up for a terminal diagnosis.”

“I did,” she insisted. “I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true. Maybe I’ll be able to explain it to you someday, but for now you have to believe that the last thing I need is your pity.”

“Then what do you need?” he asked, hoping he could give it to her.

“I need you to try,” she whispered, bringing a hand to his chest, letting it rest right over his heart, making him aware of how intimate it felt to have her bare skin pressed against his. “I know it won’t be easy and it’s not what you think you want. But if you try, I believe you can find a reason to keep going.”

He stiffened, sitting up straighter.

“And I can help you,” she pushed on, sliding her hand around to his ribs and holding him close when he tried to pull away. “Just in the time I was underwater, I thought of a hundred things worth staying alive for.”

He shook his head, too stunned to know what to say.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Canyon

How had she known? Was he
that
transparent?

And if so, why hadn’t anyone else noticed? He’d been planning this for months and no one, from his rodeo friends to his cousin Sheila, the lawyer who’d helped finalize his will, had said a word to him about getting help or holding on.

But maybe they didn’t care if he held on. They all knew the truth. They knew he’d practically murdered his own child and put his ex-wife through hell. They knew that there had been a time when getting high had been so important to him that he’d popped pills before going to pick his baby up at school.

It didn’t matter that he hadn’t had a drink or touched anything stronger than an ibuprofen in four years. Some sins were unforgivable.

“It’s not a matter of finding things worth living for,” he said, pulling Grace’s hand from his waist and setting it firmly back in her own lap. “It’s a matter of getting what I deserve.”

Slowly, in halting words that gradually became longer, smoother sentences, he told her about the day he’d lost everything that mattered. He kept his gaze on the water and his voice a droning monotone, refusing to show emotion or do anything to make her feel sorry for him. He was a monster unworthy of pity and he intended to make that damned clear.

He told the complete truth, every foul, pathetic detail, right down to the two days he’d lied to Reilly about what had happened because he’d been too much of a coward to admit that he was to blame for their son’s death.

And when he was finished and all the ugliness was out, souring the warm afternoon air, he sat with his arms crossed on top of his bent knees, bracing himself for Grace’s response.

He’d only told a few people what really happened—most of them women who refused to believe he wasn’t secretly longing to settle down—but each had reacted in the same way. They’d reached out to him, and when he’d refused to take the comfort they offered, they had done their best to convince him that he deserved forgiveness.

No woman wants to be with a child killer. Ericka and Stephanie and the rest of them had been happy to do the mental gymnastics necessary to make sure Aaron’s death wasn’t a deal breaker for a future relationship. But Canyon knew better, and he refused to be talked into believing he deserved happiness by a woman more concerned with her own self-interests than honoring the memory of his son.

But he and Grace weren’t in a relationship. She had no horse in the race and he wasn’t sure what she would say.

Maybe she would be the first woman to confirm that he deserved to die though he doubted it. He’d only known her a short time, but Grace clearly had a sweet heart. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t be wasting precious days of the little time she had left trying to convince a waste like him to hold on.

“I’m sorry for staying quiet,” she said finally, after several long moments with nothing but the soft burble of the river flowing over the stones on the other side of the swimming hole to break the silence. “I don’t want to say the wrong thing.”

“There is no wrong thing,” he said. “I don’t care what you say. I know what I did and I know how I’m going to pay for it.”

“Was Aaron as stubborn as you are?” she asked, surprising him.

“No,” he said softly. “He was a good kid. Never even went through that terrible two stage. I hardly ever saw him cry except on the days when I had to leave to get back on the road. He…”

Canyon swallowed, the lump in his throat making it painful. “He was a Daddy’s boy. It used to drive my ex-wife crazy. There she was every day, doing the work, taking care of Aaron twenty-four seven while I was out doing my own thing and forgetting to call to say goodnight half the time, and all Aaron could talk about was when Daddy was coming home.”

“Boys love their daddies,” Grace said in a wistful voice. “Especially good daddies.”

“I wasn’t good,” Canyon said flatly. “I loved him, but I didn’t show it as much as I should have. I didn’t even realize how much he meant to me until he was gone.”

“If I were in your place…” Grace trailed off with a shake of her head. “I don’t know if I would have been able to forgive myself, either. Especially with my partner confirming that I didn’t deserve to. I assume your relationship with your wife never recovered?”

He grimaced. “No. That was the end of me and Reilly. We divorced a couple of months after the funeral. We still email sometimes, but it’s not…”

He swiped a hand down his nearly dry face. “She’s remarried and has a baby girl. I think she would have cut me out of her life completely except that I’m the only one who remembers the way she does. Her dad died a couple years back and she doesn’t have a lot of other family. She doesn’t have anyone else to talk to about Aaron.”

“That makes sense,” Grace said, picking up a handful of the smallest stones and letting them spill slowly through her fingers. “My mom and dad died in a car accident when I was eleven. I didn’t have any brothers or sisters. I went to live with my grandmother after, and she had lots of stories to tell about my dad, but she hadn’t known my mom very well. I always wished I had someone to help me remember her.”

“What about your mother’s side of the family?”

“I never met them,” she said wiping her fingers on her bare thigh. “They didn’t approve of my dad for some reason. I never understood why, but my mom said they weren’t very nice people, so I didn’t feel like I was missing out only having one grandparent.”

“My family is like that.” Canyon squinted out at the water. “My dad’s a useless drunk and my mom blames everyone else for the shitty state of her life. Meanest victim you ever met.”

“I know the type,” she said. “I’m sorry your family is crappy.”

He shrugged. “It’s all right. They never beat me and I got out of their house when I was sixteen and never looked back. I don’t mess with either one of them except when I send my mother a check at Christmas.”

He smiled grimly as a hawk soared down the middle of the river, its eyes trained on the water, hunting for signs of life below the surface. “That’s the only time Mom tries to get in touch—if it’s January and for some reason my Christmas check hasn’t arrived.”

Grace chucked a larger stone into the water. “I think if you put our stories together they’re worse than
The Bell Jar
.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a book by Sylvia Plath about a woman who suffers from depression. It’s one of the saddest, scariest things I’ve ever read.” She sighed. “Kind of like that song by Peggy Lee,
Is That All There Is
.”

He pulled in a breath and softly sang. “Is that all there is to love? If that’s all there is, my friends, then let’s keep dancing.”

“Yeah, that one,” she said. “You’ve got a pretty voice.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” He glanced at her, finally feeling like he was ready to look her in the eyes. But her gaze was still fixed on the pool where she’d nearly drowned.

“That song is sad,” he added.

“And scary.” She bit her bottom lip, trapping it between her teeth and worrying it for a moment before she went on. “It would be so easy to believe it. To believe that jaded voice in your head that says every beautiful thing will eventually lose its magic.”

She frowned, her pale brow furrowing. “But that’s a lie. That voice lies and so does depression. And so does the voice telling you that you don’t deserve forgiveness.”

“Maybe you’re right.” He was too tired to be frustrated with her armchair psychoanalysis, especially when it was clear she was responding from a thoughtful place, not spouting platitudes the way everyone else had. “But I don’t think it matters. There comes a point when you’ve lived with a lie so long it becomes the truth.”

She turned to him, an intensity in her expression that hadn’t been there before. “What if you knew the world needed you? What if you knew that forces bigger than yourself didn’t want you to do it?”

He frowned. “You mean like God?”

“Or love or the forces behind creation,” she said carefully. “Whatever you want to call it.”

“I don’t want to call it anything,” he said, his jaw tightening. “If there is a heaven, I don’t belong there, and I’m not interested in a God who lets His creation turn into such a damned mess.”

“The world is a mess,” Grace agreed. “That’s why it needs good people to stick around and keep fighting to make things better. I would have died twice without you around, Canyon. You matter. You matter a lot.”

“You’re fighting a losing battle, darlin’,” Canyon drawled, hiding his mounting frustration behind a soft laugh. “I’ve heard it all before and I don’t care to hear it again.”

“But—”

“I honestly wouldn’t care if God came down from heaven right now and told me to change my path,” he said, cutting her off. “It wouldn’t make a difference. And from what you’ve told me, all I did for you was put off something that’s coming for you soon, no matter what I do. All I did was push back the inevitable and what’s so important about that?”

“So you wish you’d let me take a pavement dive last night?” she asked, eyes tightening around the edges. “Or drown today? Is that it? Because I’m going to die soon anyway, so who cares?”

“No,” he said, driving clawed fingers through his hair. “Or maybe. I don’t know, Grace. But I know this is a waste of the time you’ve got left and I don’t want to spend my last days beating a dead horse.”

Her breath rushed out, but instead of arguing with him, she stood up, brushing the rocks from the backs of her legs. “Fine. Then I won’t say another word. I’ll go read my book and enjoy the sun on my face and leave you alone.”

“All right then,” he said, not understanding why her giving him what he wanted made a fresh wave of frustration rise inside of him.

“But just so you know, there are lots of people in the world who would give anything to be alive. To be healthy and strong and able to make a difference.”

“Then I guess that God you put so much store in should have made me terminal instead of you, shouldn’t he?” Canyon snapped before he thought better of it.

Grace’s eyebrows lifted, but she didn’t snap back at him. Instead, she was quiet for a moment before she said in a gentle voice, “You’re right, comparing your wound to one that’s gushing blood even faster doesn’t make yours hurt any less. I apologize.”

“No, I should apologize,” he said, her words making him feel even shittier for losing his temper. “That was plain meanness. I had no right and I should know better than to let my mouth run when I’m angry.”

“Forgiven,” she said, surprising him again.

He looked up at her, struck again by how angelic she looked, with the sun behind her hair, making her swiftly drying curls glow like a halo. “Anyone ever tell you you’re pretty damned self-possessed for a twenty-two-year-old?”