Lone Star Lonely (20 page)

She didn’t know why the hell she was wasting
her time, taking this chance. She should just run for it, now,
before it was too late. But damn the still small voice inside her
head—the one that kept whispering that she had to make sure.

Sure of what?

Sure that there was no hope. Sure that it was
all over, that leaving was her only option.

And sure that Adam really meant what he’d
said—that he wanted nothing more to do with her. Because if she
hung around just a little while longer, gave him time to think it
through, he might just change his mind.

And letting herself believe that was probably
the most self-destructive thing she’d done yet, and that was saying
something.

She drew the horses to a stop in the back
yard of Madden Hawkins’ small house, took a wary look around and
saw no one. In fact, it was so quiet and still, it was eerie. The
curtains of the tiny house were drawn tight, and not a single light
shone from within. But the tin-can strains of a radio made their
way from somewhere inside the dim house.

She looped both mares’ reins around a
low-hanging limb and walked closer. The back door stood at the top
of a small set of steps. Beside them a bird feeder was mounted atop
a pole. But no birds were hanging out there today. She didn’t even
hear any singing.

She walked up the steps, pulled open the
screen door, tapped on the wooden one. While she waited for an
answer, she identified the song playing from inside. Not a radio. A
record album, from the sounds of it. An old Hank Williams tune,
skipping and playing the same broken, fragmented line over and over
again.

Something twisted in Kirsten’s belly, and she
knocked again. As she did, she sent a sideways glance toward the
driveway at the side of the house. She could see the front fender
of Madden’s car. So he was home, then. Maybe just not up yet.

Yeah. Maybe he’s sleeping through that
incessantly skipping record.

She pounded harder on the door. “Madden?” she
called. “Are you here?”

No answer. Swallowing what felt like a
coating of sand on her throat, she tried the knob, and it gave.
When she let it go, the door swung slowly open, and Kirsten stepped
inside. One step, a glance to the left, a glance to the right…

Big mistake.

Madden Hawkins was hanging limply from a
rope, just above the kitchen table. It was tied to the light
fixture up there. On the floor behind him, the chair he’d used to
help him kill himself lay toppled on its back. His face was
mottled, mouth agape, tongue….

She turned away as the scream ripped from her
chest and filled the entire house.

Running footsteps came from outside, up the
back steps, and then a man was gripping her shoulders, looking past
her, swearing softly.

Elliot Brand.

He tucked her head to his chest, anchoring
her there with a solid arm around her shoulders, and he took her
outside, away from the horror.

She didn’t know what the hell Adam’s brother
was doing there…she was glad he was.

“It’s okay,” he was saying. “It’s okay.”

She couldn’t stop shaking, couldn’t stop her
teeth from chattering.

Elliot hugged her against him as he walked
away from the house. He put her on one of the horses, climbed up
behind her, put his arms around her waist.

“We…we can’t just leave him like that,” she
whispered.

“I’ll call Garrett. But before I do that, I
need to stash you someplace safe. Where the hell is Adam? What is
he thinking letting you wander around town all alone, anyway?”

He looked down at her as he asked the
question, nudging the horse into motion, wrapping the other one’s
reins around the pommel.

“He…I…” She choked on her tears. “He’s gone.
He hates me now.”

“Bull.”

“It’s not bull. You will, too, soon
enough.”

“Now I
know
that’s bull. Where is he,
hon?”

She swallowed hard. “Last I saw him, he was
headed toward the Badlands, out where they almost meet the road off
the north edge of town. He was…he was pretty upset. I hurt him,
Elliot.”

“He’ll be all right.”

“I hope so.”

“He’s a Brand. He’ll be all right.” He kicked
the horse into a canter and maneuvered them away from the main
roads, cutting across back lawns and fields until they got to the
other side of town.

“Here we are.” Elliot stopped the horse and
helped her to the ground. They were looking back on Jessi Brand’s
Veterinary Clinic and the neat cottage beside it. “Jess isn’t back
yet,” Elliot explained. “You’ll be safe here until I take care of
this whole mess.” He dug in his pocket for a key, ushered her
inside his sister’s home and closed the door behind them. Then he
snatched up the phone and punched numbers.

Kirsten looked around. The place was cozy.
Earth tones and a lot of hardwood. A rocking chair with a ruffled
cushion, where Jessi Brand probably spent happy hours rocking her
little girl, while her loving husband looked on adoringly.

Envy twisted like a blade in her belly. She
would never know that kind of normality or comfort…or love. The
only things that surrounded her were ugly things. Death and fear
and lies. She couldn’t believe that was ever likely to change.

“Garrett,” Elliot was saying into the
receiver. “You’d better get out to Madden Hawkins’ place. He’s
dead. Looks like a suicide.”

There was a loud response from the other end
but Elliot interrupted. “No time now. Just get out there. I’ll talk
to you later.” And Elliot hung up.

He turned to Kirsten, gripped her shoulders
and eased her into a soft, overstuffed chair. “Now I have to go
check on Adam. But I’ll be back soon. Are you gonna be all
right?”

She nodded, but it was false. She didn’t feel
all right. She felt dazed and disoriented and pretty well
devastated to boot.

“Yeah, sure you are. You’re the furthest
thing from all right. You just stay put, lady. Okay? You just curl
up here….” He pushed her a little, gently, until she lay back in
the chair. Then he pulled a blanket from the back of it and tucked
it around her. “Just rest here until I get back, okay?”

She nodded.

Elliot stood there looking at her for a long
moment. “That brother of mine is some kind of fool to have left you
behind.”

“No,” she whispered. “No. Leaving me was the
smartest thing he ever did.”

Adam kept walking, heading away from the barn
where he’d taken her, where they’d spent the night. The place where
that barn sat—the old Recknor ranch—was one of the places he and
Kirsten had once thought of buying together. It was one of the
places they’d talked about refurbishing, turning into their dude
ranch. It was also the first place they had made love, that big,
shadowy old barn.

And it was the place where it had all fallen
apart, at long last. About two years overdue, that breakdown. But
it had happened in the same place where they had first begun to
learn from each other what love was.

Ironic.

He would never go back to that barn again.
Never. He would never even drive by the Recknor place again, if he
could help it. It ate at his pride to think he had been stupid
enough to let some of those old dreams slip back into his mind, his
heart. To think he had been gullible enough to hope, even for a
minute, that they could come true after all.

He headed out toward the desert, walking
faster with every step, then running. All-out, long, powerful
strides. The wind swept his hat off and sent it tumbling through
the dust behind him, but he didn’t give a damn. He ran until the
hot Texas sun sizzled on his skin and the sweat ran into his eyes
and stung and burned. The pain was good. He ran until his legs
screamed and his muscles ached and his head swam and his lungs
begged. And then he ran some more. He wanted the pain. He wanted
the exhaustion. Anything to drown out the sound of his heart
breaking. Anything to squelch the memories.

But nothing would end those memories, would
it? He could see it all again. That sunny day at the cemetery,
staring in grim silence at the two shiny hardwood boxes, all strewn
with flowers, suspended over empty, open graves. Oh, the pits were
hidden from view by the pretty cloths draped over them. But a kid
of fourteen knew well enough what was underneath. A kid of fourteen
knew what was inside. A kid knew that all the flowers and pretty
words were bull, and that death was the ugliest thing there
was.

And he knew he never wanted to hurt like that
again. And he wouldn’t. He was determined that he wouldn’t.

He’d stood, holding his little brother’s
hand. Elliot had been crying real soft. For days he’d been crying.
His nose and eyes were raw from the sting of bitter tears. And it
wasn’t fair, dammit. It wasn’t fair that his little brother had to
suffer that way…that any of them had to suffer that way.

Adam ran as the memories spun around in his
mind, and he felt the pain and the rage boiling up inside him in a
way they never had. He stopped running only when his strength gave
out. His body gave up. He fell facedown on the parched, splitting
ground and tasted baked dirt on his lips.

And then the storm hit him. A storm he’d
never felt, even in the height of his rage. His hands clenched,
fingers digging into the sunbaked earth. Teeth bared, eyes tight
and burning, he whispered, “Sweet heaven, why? Why the hell did it
have to be them? Why did they leave us all alone like that? What
right did they have to put a bunch of kids through that kind of
heartbreak?”

The tears came…years and years worth of them.
The tears of a child mourning the deaths of his mama and his daddy.
A child unable to express his grief or his sadness by any means
other than rage and anger. The grief, so long held captive, was
finally given release.

He sobbed. He had never cried this way in his
life. Hell, he hadn’t shed a tear since that horrible, black day
when his world had fallen apart. Not one tear had fallen. Not
one.

But he shed them now.

Why?

Why? The question kept coming back, over and
over. Why now? Eventually the storm subsided, but the question
remained. It begged his exploration. It demanded his attention. And
as he lay there, limp in the aftermath of that emotional onslaught,
his mind cleared a bit, and he realized the answer was simple.

He had never loved anyone the way he had
loved his parents…not until now. He’d thought he had, but he
hadn’t, not really. And he had never lost someone who meant as much
to him as they had. Not until now.

The storm might have abated, but the pain
remained. God, it hurt. He had sworn never to hurt this way again.
Yet here it was, swamping him, taking away coherent thought,
paralyzing in its power. He wanted to curl into a ball or crawl
into a black hole and never emerge. He wanted to drown in the pain
until it ended.

Galloping hooves thundered in the distance,
drawing nearer. The ground beneath him trembled. He didn’t give a
damn. The horse pounded up to him, then stopped and snorted and
blew and panted while saddle leather creaked and booted feet hit
the ground.

“Adam!” A hand fell onto his shoulder. “Adam,
are you okay?”

Elliot. His baby brother. The motherless
little boy who had cried for his mama every night for a month. The
pudgy-faced angel who had fallen asleep in big brother Garrett’s
arms only when he was too exhausted to cry anymore. And who had
slept half of every night interrupted by the spasming sobs that
continued long after his crying stopped. Like echoes…like
aftershocks. He didn’t even remember, did he? How could he forget
that kind of trauma?

His kid brother was a man now. Big, callused
hands closed on Adam’s shoulders, rolled him over as if he was a
featherweight. A man’s concerned, narrowed eyes peered down at him
from a tanned face.

“What the hell happened?”

Adam shook his head, averted his eyes.

“Talk to me, Adam,” Elliot said. Loud and
firm, that voice. And for the first time Adam saw a hint of anger
in his kid brother’s eyes. “I just saw Kirsten at her lawyer’s
house in broad daylight, bawling like a motherless calf, and I
think she was crying even before she found the shock of her life
waiting for her there. Now here you are facedown in the dirt
and—dammit, Adam, are you crying? What the hell is going on with
you two?”

Adam sat up slowly, knuckled his face dry,
embarrassed, but still shaking with emotion. Elliot hunkered down
low. His anger faded. His touch softened. “Adam?”

When Adam looked at Elliot he saw that little
kid crying for his mother. Asking innocently, trustingly, when
Daddy was coming home.

The next thing Adam knew, he’d slammed his
arms around his brother’s shoulders and was holding him hard,
speaking muffled words into Elliot’s denim shirt. “Dammit, I’m
sorry. I’m sorry, El. I didn’t know.”