Like when she closed up when he asked her postmilitary plans.
Then it all spun around in his head and he worried Olivia would knock on her door one morning and they’d find Bailey gone.
What sucked about the thoughts bouncing around in his head was he didn’t have anyone to talk to. Wasn’t his place to tell anyone about her health and career struggles in the hope it would shine clarity on his life. He’d just have to figure this shit out on his own.
Like that’s anything new.
Bailey hadn’t had a flare-up for two weeks—as far as he could tell. Even when she’d been working more hours in Wild West Clothiers, helping her sister run the big “Going Out of Business Sale” that had brought in more customers than the shop had had in months.
Since Meghan still had two hours left for Olivia’s daycare, Streeter parked at the ranch side of the Split Rock and entered the office.
Renner and Ted were arguing. Shouting at each other as their arms flapped.
“I never would’ve hired you if I’d known that,” Renner snapped.
“You know I’m from Colorado. How could you expect anything different?” Ted retorted.
Damn.
Was this about weed? Streeter had smelled pot smoke late one night when he’d taken the trash out to the Dumpster. There hadn’t been anyone lurking around, so he’d forgotten about it. Since the Split Rock didn’t have a drug-testing policy, hopefully he’d let Ted off with a warning.
“You are not allowed to bring any of that shit in here.” Renner leaned forward, slapping his hands on the desk. “Am I clear?”
“What in the devil is goin’ on?” Streeter asked as he entered the office.
Renner and Ted glared at each other.
Not good. “Well?”
“Did you have any idea that Ted”—he inhaled and exhaled—“is a goddamned Broncos fan?”
“What?”
Renner threw his hands up in the air. “That’s exactly what I said!”
“Like you’re proud to be a Chiefs fan?” Ted scoffed. Then he gestured to the office. “Where’s your team pride? Oh, that’s right, Kansas City ain’t got nothin’ to be proud of with their football team, so no wonder you don’t show it. When was the last time they won—”
“Whoa. Time-out,” Streeter said, moving to the edge of the desk. “That’s what this is about? Football?”
They both stared at him as if he’d said something stupid.
“What did you think it was about?” Renner asked.
Yeah, not mentioning his initial thought. “No clue. I heard you say he can’t bring any of that ‘shit’ in here—”
“Ted thinks he can decorate his half of the office with Denver Donkeys stuff, which ain’t happening.”
Ted cocked his head. “Yeah, I can understand that seein’ my ‘Three-Time Super Bowl Champions’ banner every day might make you jealous.”
Renner actually growled.
Streeter’s gaze winged between these two grown-ass men fighting over . . . football teams? Appeared it’d be up to him to ensure a cooler head prevailed. “As long as I’ve been here no one has filled their space with sports team knickknacks. Tobin didn’t have nothin’ like that around here either.” Maybe out of self-preservation since his brother was a Broncos fan. “So I suggest you leave the personal stuff at home.”
“Fine,” Ted said.
“Fine,” Renner said.
“But he can’t stop me from wearin’ my Von Miller jersey on game day,” Ted said.
“Of course you pick a defensive player ’cause your offense sucks,” Renner shot back. “You’ll be seein’ me in my Kelce jersey on game day.”
“Glad that’s settled. Now hug it out. I mean it.”
A beat passed and then Ted and Renner both laughed.
“What?”
“You know that ain’t happening.”
“Fine. At least shake hands to agree to disagree or some damn thing.”
They bumped fists.
“See? That wasn’t so hard.” He addressed Renner. “Need anything to go up to the office? I’m headin’ up there.”
“Yeah.” He snagged a manila envelope from an outbox. “Could you take this to Janie?”
“No problem.” Streeter crossed the office space, stopping in the open doorway to turn around. “And you’re both wrong. The best team in the NFL is the Patriots.”
A loud thunk hit the door next to Streeter’s head.
Seriously? One of these assholes had thrown a stapler at him?
At least they’d be hatin’ on him and not each other.
The sun beat down as he hoofed it up to the lodge. Late summer’s brutal heat meant he spent more time checking cattle. Plus, there hadn’t been a drop of moisture since the downpour weeks ago. The ground had returned to dry conditions, the constant wind creating red dust devils that ensured dirt coated him by the end of his first hour outside.
He brushed himself off the best he could before he entered the lodge. He walked past a family of five sitting in the main foyer, all of them engrossed in their phones, not talking to one another. He tried not to judge, but if he ever took Olivia on vacation, they sure wouldn’t be holed up inside responding to notifications on their phones.
Janie’s office door was open but he knocked twice anyway, seeing she was on a call.
“No, that’s fine,” she said. “I’ll discuss it with their father and get back to you tomorrow.” She left her earpiece in but moved the microphone in front of her mouth off to the side. “Hey, Street. What’s up?”
He passed her the envelope. “This is from Renner.”
“Thanks.” She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest. “What have you decided about bus service?”
“Excuse me?”
“For Olivia. To and from school. Are you driving her to the bus stop in Muddy Gap? The bus will stop at the end of our road and that’s better for drop-off for us. I have to be here anyway, so I’m considering having the boys picked up in Muddy Gap.”
Streeter had wondered when this would come up. “I planned on takin’ Olivia in the mornin’ and pickin’ her up in the afternoon.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s goin’ to school in Casper, not Rawlins.”
“Which school are you sending her to?”
“Private Montessori school. They are kindergarten through third grade. Then I’ll reassess our options.”
“Good thing no one around here was counting on you to contribute to the car pool,” Janie said with a huff. Then she added on, “Why is this the first I’ve heard that Olivia isn’t going to local public school with the rest of the kids?”
Hard not to bristle at her tone or to explain that his daughter had different needs. Not special needs, just different. “Well, there’s one of the biggest reasons. Location. Once our house is done and I’m workin’ on our ranch full-time, we’re twenty miles from here. That puts us closer to Casper than Rawlins. Plus this school has fewer students and smaller class size. That’ll be better for her. The reason you hadn’t known this before now is because no one asked.”
“Okay, fine, I didn’t ask. But I know that Gage has palled around with Olivia this summer. Does he know that he and Olivia won’t be going to school together?”
“I don’t know. Maybe if Bailey said something to Harper, he’d know. But I doubt Olivia mentioned it to him. She’s in her own little world.”
Janie rested her arms on her desk. “I’ll miss seeing you at school events. Especially after your time at the Split Rock is done.”
“That’s kind of you to say, Janie.”
She nodded, touching the tiny button on her chest that connected to her earbuds before returning the mike to her mouth. “Thank you for calling the Split Rock Resort. How may I help you?”
St
reeter waved good-bye and walked down the hallway until he reached Wild West Clothiers.
The door was open so he meandered in. No one was at the front counter, but the stack of boxes blocked the view to the back room. He cut around a rack of jewelry, about to announce himself, when he heard arguing.
Harper raised her voice. “Really, Bailey? That’s how you’re gonna play this? You’re mad? We’ve been working together all day, heck, all summer, and when you finally muster the guts to tell me something this important, you’re shocked that—”
“Our blabbermouth sister Liberty already told you?” Bailey demanded.
Shit. Streeter froze. This was not good.
“For exactly this reason,” Harper shot back. “She knew you’d drag your feet telling me about your lupus diagnosis.”
“Because it’s my business. My health, my life, my personal issue to bare to you, not hers! This is also why I don’t think I can work for her. She’ll treat me like her stupid kid sister who is confused about career options and physically depleted because of her disease, so obviously she needs to explain me.”
“Meaning what?”
“I can’t trust that she won’t tell everyone everything about me, at any time she chooses, not waiting until I’m ready to share some of the most traumatic events of my life! Jesus, Harper, can’t you see how I’d be way past upset about this?”
“Can’t you see that I’d be even more unhappy with you if I hadn’t known the extenuating circumstances around your absences? If Liberty hadn’t told me about your condition, I’d be mad and think you were blowing off your responsibilities because the store was closing anyway.”
“You were mad at me when I pointed out you needed to make a hard decision.”
“It’s not the same, Bailey, and you know it.”
A pause. “You’re right. Liberty broke my trust twice by revealing both of the things I’d told her in confidence. I can’t ever trust her again.”
“Are you really mad at her or mad at yourself, Bails? Liberty has been exactly where you are in her military career, so she knows what you’re feeling—”
“That’s where she’s wrong. She doesn’t have a fucking clue what I’ve dealt with in the past year. She was injured in the line of duty and received an honorable medical discharge. My medical discharge isn’t duty related, so to be blunt, she’s a hero and I’m a zero. I don’t have a choice about whether to continue my military career. It’s over. Period. And maybe she had to go through months of PT to get back to normal, but at least they knew what was wrong with her. I wasn’t diagnosed for six months. And things didn’t get better after the diagnosis. It actually got worse for me. Much, much worse, so bad that even know-it-all goddamned Liberty doesn’t know the half of what I went through and what I’m still struggling with.”
Turn and walk away.
But he couldn’t.
“Then tell me,” Harper pleaded. “I want to hear from you—not her—why you are so embarrassed about this disease.”
“I’m embarrassed because I’ve not handled having lupus very well.” She barked a harsh laugh. “That’s putting it mildly.”
“Tell me all of it. Walk me through it.”
“I can’t stomach the idea of you looking at me differently, sis, because you will.”
“I won’t. And whatever you tell me? Will always and forevermore be between us.”
Bailey sniffled. “Promise?”
“I promise.”
“Okay.”
Leave right goddamned now, man.
“Before the diagnosis I thought I was going crazy. Even the camp shrinks thought it might be a psychological disorder. I was dating Logan at the time and he was as supportive as he knew how to be, which wasn’t much. But I never blamed him for his lack of understanding when I understood so little myself. I mean, I was in love with him and thought we could get through anything.”
The pause nearly had Streeter shouting for her to get on with it, but he bit the inside of his cheek to stay quiet.
“I’d already gotten pulled from my regular duty station, pending medical results. I suspected my CO thought they wouldn’t find anything conclusive, meaning it was all in my head. It should’ve been a relief to have a diagnosis. But that just forced everything to a head. I believed Logan and I would eventually get married, and he came to a doctor’s appointment with me. The doc didn’t pull any punches, warning me that my military career was over. Then he addressed the physical issues, the severe depression, the potential for chronic pain, which could cause a dependency on pain meds. He also suggested if we wanted children to look into adoption, because chances were fifty-fifty I’d pass the disease on to a child.
“When I got back home, I holed up and cried about the loss of everything I’d ever wanted, which kicked off my first serious lupus flare-up. Logan saw firsthand what he’d be dealing with if he stayed with me, so he didn’t.”
“He didn’t?” Harper repeated. “Did he break up with you?”
Streeter held his breath.
“Yeah. He said a bunch of stuff, including wanting kids of his own someday, which wouldn’t happen if he stayed with me. What sucked was we worked together and I still had to see him every day. While I suffered through the flare-up, he moved on. Maybe if I hadn’t had to watch him fall for someone else I would’ve been okay, instead . . .”
Please don’t let it be true. Please don’t say what I fear you’re about to.
Bailey cleared her throat. Her voice was fairly soft but crystal clear when she said, “Instead I thought I might as well end it.”
“End him?” Harper asked.
“No. End myself.”
No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Streeter’s vision went black and he faced the wall, pressing his forehead into it to keep himself upright since his knees were buckling.
“But you didn’t, Bailey,” Harper said gently. “You didn’t follow through.”
“Because my roommate came in and saw me with the gun I wasn’t supposed to have in private quarters.”
No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
“Sweetheart. What happened after that?”
“She turned me in, as she was supposed to. They put me under suicide watch for forty-eight hours and sent me back to Fort Jackson.”
“Oh, baby girl, I’m so sorry,” Harper said. “How long ago did this happen?”
“A year. Due to the rash of military suicides, they didn’t just cut me loose. Might add to their statistics, so I ended up working in a clerical position where my absences due to lupus weren’t as big of an issue. I lost my FFD designation and they basically told me once my term of enlistment ended, they’d provide me with medical separation from the military paperwork.”
Finally the racing of his blood sent a roar of white noise to his ears and he couldn’t hear anything else.
But he’d heard what he needed to.
God, he felt absolutely sick.
He spun around to leave and lost his balance. When he attempted to catch himself on the counter, he knocked a box into the rack of jewelry, which came crashing down.
Harper was the first to see him and she shouted his name but he didn’t stop.
Streeter couldn’t stop moving—running—until he’d burst out the exit doors and reached the edge of the woods.
That was when Bailey caught him.
He flinched away from her hand on his arm, but he found the guts to face her.
He’d never seen a more haunted look on anyone’s face.
Except for the two years following Danica’s suicide. He saw that same goddamned look every day in the mirror.
Which was probably how he mustered the guts to say, “How could you keep this from me?”
Tears streamed down her face. “How could I tell you what I’d almost done after what you’d already been through?
”
“So you think it was better that I found out from accidentally overhearing a conversation about it with your sister!”
“How much did you hear?”
“From the part where Harper told you she knew about the lupus from Liberty and everything after that.”
Bailey shrank back. “So all of it, then.”
“No, not even fuckin’ close to all of it. This mornin’ I told you that I loved you and now as I stand here lookin’ at you it seems like I don’t even fucking know you.”
They stared at each other, breathing hard.
Finally Bailey wiped her face. He watched with a churning in his gut and a tightness in his chest as she regained her composure—military style.
“You’re right. You don’t know me and I certainly never wanted you to know this about me. I never wanted anyone to know, which is why no one does. Or did, anyway.”
“I trusted you. Do you think that was easy for me?”
“No.”
“So what do I do with this knowledge now?”
“Nothing. You’ve known all along I planned to leave at summer’s end. That hasn’t changed. I hope our time together showed that you deserve more happiness than the little you allowed yourself.” She stepped back. “I never meant to hurt you, Streeter.”
She walked away from him.
“That’s it?” he shouted. “You drop that bombshell and leave the damn thing here for me to defuse? Or is it supposed to level me?”
She stiffened and stopped.
“Who am I supposed to talk to about this when the only person who can give me answers to my questions is you?”
But she didn’t turn around and give him a second look.
Still reeling, he managed to get back to the barn, but he didn’t remember a single step he took to get there. He climbed into his truck and burned rubber getting back to the employee compound, but when he arrived, Bailey’s SUV was already gone.
Fuck.
He closed his eyes, but the phrase Bailey tried to kill herself echoed like a death chorus in his brain.
Along with a million questions.
Would she have gone through with it if her roommate hadn’t stopped her?
Had she tried again?
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