by Kendall Duke
“And you feel guilty about that,” she said matter-of-factly. I just stared at her. “My brother felt the same way. Exactly the same.”
“Well, I’m not trying to compare my experience with being in a war,” I said, thinking about it. “I’m not a hero—actually, I’m whatever the opposite is, because he—” I stopped short, but she nodded once before biting into the grilled cheese and frowning at me.
“Listen, I’m just on the outside of all of this,” she told me, “but I’ll tell you what I told Colin—it’s done. It will always be terrible. You will always think about what you couldn’t do, and what you wish happened. That’s healthy, and totally fine. But you have to balance it out with what the rest of the world thinks about it, which is: holy crap, that guy almost died trying to save someone else.”
“That’s a bit of an exaggeration,” I started to say, but she cut me off with a look.
“Yeah,” Sierra said, and pointed with her pinky towards my hairline as she held her sandwich between her hands. “That burn was caused by liquid—flaming liquid that should have melted you down to the bone. And it’s on your face. How are you not dead, exactly?”
“One of the other guys actually paid attention at intake and knew all about the burn protocol,” I said, finding it strange that the words were leaving my mouth so easily. “And a lot of it did burn down to the bone, the graft just turned out pretty well.”
“What source site did they use?”
And then we talked about my burn. Like it was a normal thing, like I’d had this conversation before with anyone besides the medical professionals that saved my life. We talked for almost twenty minutes about the grafting procedure and wound care and how my hospital stay was and whether I liked home health better and I just sat there and thought… What. The. Fuck.
“Okay,” Sierra said, staring at me. “You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“That look—you have the weirdest look on your face.”
I thought for a minute, trying to find the right words. When I spoke, her expression of surprise was priceless. “I’ve never talked about this before.”
“What, the hospital stay?” She tilted her head, a gesture so adorable I grinned at her. “I’m so confused.”
“No—the whole thing,” I explained. “I’ve never… I’ve never talked about it before.”
“Nobody knows how you got your scar?” I actually laughed out loud when her head tilted even further to the side, and her mouth perked up in a smile at the sight of that but her eyes stayed confused.
“No, no, I suppose everybody knows. It wasn’t a private thing—I mean… There was an obituary, and an investigation, it was a whole big thing.” I shook the ghosts out of my head, trying to stay in the moment. “I guess… Because it was so public, I assumed everybody knew. Anyone with a cell phone and an internet connection, anyway.”
“Then why does it bother you so much?” Her voice was gentler than the words, her eyes searching. “The scar, I mean. You really… You really hate it, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” I said bluntly.
“But… Like I said, anyone who sees it and grabs their phone is going to know in ten minutes that you’re a hero.” I physically recoiled from the word hero as if she’d slapped me. “Whoa! I’m sorry,” she said, instinctively reaching across the table and grabbing my hand. “I should’ve known you’d do that. Colin still does.” She squeezed my hand; her fingers were strong, but so tiny. Our hands looked almost absurd next to one another. She glanced down at them together and gently released me. “Yeah—I think straight shooter is the nice term for us, but I’ve heard some others.”
“You’re nice,” I told her. My voice sounded tired. I couldn’t stop staring at the place where she’d touched my hand, her gentle squeeze embedding itself in my memory. It’d been a long time since a woman had touched me… And honestly, hand-holding was never my thing. Not before, anyway. “Kind of.”
“Same to you, buddy,” she said, and I made myself meet her eyes. She looked worried. “I’m really sorry, Deputy,” she said, but I shook my head.
“Call me Bass. Everybody else does.”
“Did you just say Bass? Like the fish?”
I grinned at her. “Yep. Attractive, right? You want to go out to dinner now, maybe get a hotel room, am I right?”
She roared that laugh of hers and rocked back in her chair. “That has to be a nick-name. No mother would do that to her child.”
“Bass is a perfectly respectable name.”
“It’s a perfectly respectable instrument. Or maybe dinner. But it is not the name for a, a—” She waved her hand up and down, and this time, she was gesturing to my entire body. “A giant—”
“Sexy man-beast,” I sighed theatrically, leaning back in my chair again and crossing my ankles under the table. I angled them far away from her slender ones, her sneakers not offering a lot of protection against my boots or the elements. “I know. Such is my lot in life.”
“What is your real name?”
I grinned at her. “Sebastian Miguel Redhorse Walsh.” I cocked an eyebrow at her. “See? You’d go with Bass too.”
“I would absolutely not,” she said, giving me an incredulous look. “I’d go with Redhorse, duh.”
I laughed. “Well, that’s a last name, so no thanks. It’s pretty common, too, so if you yelled that back on the reservation there’d be way too many people turning around and wondering who you were.”
“What about Miguel?”
“Eh,” I said, shrugging, “that’s the Sheriff’s middle name. He’s my mother’s brother.”
“And?”
“And God help me if I’m going to give the man any more reasons to think he can boss me around. I’ve already signed up as his minion.”
Sierra smiled at me. “Sebastian then?” She crinkled her nose, her smile still in place. “I mean, Walsh has kind of the same problem as Redhorse, I’m guessing.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty common. And even worse, people might mix me up with my dad.”
“That’s worse?”
“Well yeah,” I said, “’cause he’s dead. Don’t want to scare anyone.”
Roaring laughter, abruptly cut off when she clapped her hand over her mouth. “You’re terrible. And you make me laugh at things that are terrible.”
“Um, that’s physically impossible,” I said, shaking my head at her. “Ma’am.”
“What happened to Al?”
“You only get to be Al when we’re in the complimentary phase of an exchange,” I said, and she howled and pretended to be horrified, still grinning at me. “This is litigation, lady. We’re hammering out some solid boundaries here.”
“This is nonsense,” she corrected me, and I honestly could not keep the smile from my face.
“Is it? Does that mean you want to give me a compliment?”
I almost regretted it. She flushed the purest pink I have ever seen, each delicate cheek the color of a rose’s soft inner petals, the ones tucked behind their big sisters, so soft they feel like velvet. I bet her skin felt like that too. I felt the blood rising in my body as well, because I knew from almost forgotten experience that other parts of her were flushing too—parts that, in spite of her baggy gear, were probably perfectly soft and round and as sweet as the scent of her hair when she whipped that ponytail through the air, laughing so hard her eyes closed. But right now they were wide open, her lips a startled oh, her skin pink and delicious and goddamn, what the hell was she doing to me?
I almost regretted it—the man I’d become, the one that held back and stayed distant and reserved, he tried to pull away again. But the man I’d once been wouldn’t have it. I leaned across the table and looked down at her, drawing my hands together and giving her a look I knew she would interpret as wise-guy-ish. “Well? Do you?”
And I didn’t regret it.
“Hmm,” she said, her voice suddenly raspy. She looked nervous; it was adorable. Her wide eyes locked on mi
ne, though, as she said, “you’re very funny.”
“Alright,” I said, and leaned back, making a satisfied sort of face. She chewed on her lip.
“And… Yes, you are also very handsome.”
“Don’t hurt yourself.”
“I just—it’s hard! It’s hard to compliment someone,” she said, her eyes narrowing, “especially when they stole your car.”
“No it’s not,” I said, tilting my head in imitation of her. She caught it and grinned back at me; I could tell I was about five seconds from having the last little bit of that sandwich hurled at my head. “I’ll show you,” I said, leaning forward again, and I couldn’t help the words that came out of my mouth. “You are an uncommonly beautiful woman, Sierra Davenport. And way too charming for someone who manages to say the wrong damn thing in the wrong damn way—it should be off-putting, frankly, but there you have it.”
She was blushing again.
I couldn’t help the matching rush of heat that burned in my body at the sight of it. I couldn’t keep my eyes from drifting down her throat, following the scarlet bloom all the way to her sternum, where her sweatshirt swallowed up the view—I couldn’t help but think of the way the skin on her breasts would flush just the same way, if she were touched just the right way. And I knew I wasn’t keeping these thoughts from showing. I met her eyes and felt the electricity of shared knowledge between us like a lightning bolt.
I took a deep breath, forcing my body to lean away from her and stretching out my legs under the table again, carefully avoiding hers once more. I tipped my hat back, not as self-conscious, this time, of the scar; I wasn’t handsome any more, but that didn’t appear to have impeded my ability to flirt. I felt good about it. It was nice to know that if the time came—if someone like Sierra, for example, came along, someone who wasn’t moving to Idaho for whatever mysterious reason—maybe I could do this without acting like a jackass for the first hour. Maybe I could just walk up to someone like Sierra Davenport, look her in the eye, and say, you’re gorgeous. I’m single. Do you happen to have a thing for a man that can ride?
I wondered what might have happened if I’d met her back home, up at 76’s, with the music loud and my family giving me a mix of stink-eye for hitting on a buckle bunny—a false assumption, but understandable, given my history—and indulgent grins—also for hitting on a buckle bunny.
Would she have taken my hand and come with me to slow dance to Hank Williams? Would she have rested her head on my chest, tucking in against me in the dark until our bodies figured out a way to finish the conversation?
Did she know how to ride?
“I think I’d better show you to your room,” I said, and I didn’t miss the husky undertone in my voice. Neither would she. But I didn’t want to say anything else tonight—I didn’t want to make her uncomfortable, any more so than the set-up already did. We might be friendly now, but the fact that she was here because my uncle was a dick definitely wouldn’t seem charitable in the morning light. “Come on, Sierra. Don’t worry about the dishes. I’ll get ‘em when I get up to feed the chickens.”
“When you what?”
“Don’t worry about it, Al,” I said, and she smiled down at the tabletop and stood up, then ignored me and made me wait while she handwashed the plate and cup. We went up the narrow stairway to the landing on the second floor and I found some fresh bedding, a clean towel, and an unopened toothbrush. “I’m sorry—I don’t have a hairbrush. I’ve got a comb, but that won’t do you much good. Shampoo’s in the bathroom; your bed is right through there.” I pointed at the doorway for her.
“How do you know a comb won’t do me much good?”
“Because your hair’s too long,” I said, and shrugged. “I mean, you can comb it when it’s wet, but why risk breaking the strands when you could just let it air-dry and brush it in the morning?”
She gawked at me. “Why in the world do you know this much about long hair?”
“I had long hair until the accident,” I explained, pulling my hat off and running my fingers through the shorter strands. “Grew up with it. Most of my friends have long hair—it’s a thing.”
“Like, a heavy metal thing?” She looked so puzzled; it was hilarious and endearing. “Or maybe… Where would you surf, in the Dakotas?”
“Those are the two kinds of people in the Ohio suburbs that have long hair?”
“Those are the two kinds of men in the Ohio suburbs that have long hair,” she said, leaning against the doorframe. I snorted with laughter, and she grinned up at me.
“Well, I happen to prefer country music. And there’s about as many places to surf in the Dakotas as there are in Ohio.”
“You don’t know anything about Ohio,” she told me, cocking her eyebrow at me. I leaned against the wall behind me, so she wouldn’t feel like I was towering over her; we were closer here in the hallway then we’d been at the kitchen table, and I was a big guy.
I didn’t want to lean away from her, though. I wanted to pick her up, throw her on that bed, and peel those goddamn sweats off of her curves before I made every inch of that delicious peach-colored flesh blush under a sheen of well-earned sweat.
Anyway. “You don’t know what I know about Ohio,” I said, mimicking her sassy little head-shake. “I might’ve lived in your neighborhood.”
Her eyes flicked over me, from head to toe; I re-crossed my legs, hoping my uniform was doing a decent job of hiding how much I enjoyed her attention. “I think I would’ve noticed,” she chided me, but I just shook my head again.
“Probably not,” I said. “You would’ve dismissed me as some metal-loving surf-bum, an unfortunate mistake.”
She giggled, her lovely, wide brown eyes blinking up at me. In the half-light of the hallway, they were painfully hypnotic. “You’ve never been to Ohio.”
“How do you know?”
“I just know,” she said, smiling. Sierra crossed her arms over her chest and gave me an assessing look. “You’re so young, for one thing, and I know you’re from even further west.”
“I am twenty four years old, ma’am,” I said, and she snorted. “And you’re right. I’ve never been further east than Montana.”
“Montana definitely doesn’t count as ‘east,’” she said, placing air quotes around the word.
“How dare you say that?” I angled my chin at her, suppressing another grin. “Just because you’re standing here doesn’t mean you’re the only point of reference on the map.”
“Did I hit another nerve?” In spite of her light tone, I realized her eyes were anxious. Sierra did have a habit of saying things that cut close to the bone.
“You’re fine,” I said, dropping any pretense of a joke and focusing on reassuring her. “People out here get tired of the coasts thinking they’re the only places that exist.”
“We have that problem in Ohio, too,” she told me, and I nodded, then bit my lip. “What? What does that mean?” Anxious all over again.
“I was just thinking of what my mom would say,” I told her, shrugging off the insanity of having such a personal conversation with a stranger who’d be leaving tomorrow, never to return. “She’s Lakota, and we have the additional sort of bitterness, I guess, of feeling like white people do that all the damn time. Like, I am here, so that is the only point of reference for anything—history, geography, butt-scratching, whatever. They have this ‘I am the center of the universe’ kind of thing going on.”
“She’s Lakota, but you’re not?” Sierra frowned up at me. “That’s confusing.”
“Well, I did say ‘we,’” I explained, “but yeah… I’m only half-Sioux. My dad was the whitest white guy of all time.”
“Mr. Walsh?” She gave me the teeniest smile, and I nodded down at her.
“Fun guy. Rodeo pro, pretty damn famous around here. Was on the circuit for decades, died of a heart attack five years ago—don’t be sad for me, he loved life and went out quick. I got to hold his hand and my mom’s at the same time, it was beautiful.
”
“Is that dismissive, or are you serious?”
“Totally serious,” I said, watching her. “All that magical Indian bullshit aside, there are some pretty nice things about being half-Sioux. One of them being that you don’t hate death like crazy white people do.”
She laughed out loud at me, then clapped her hand over her mouth. “So wait—aren’t you a crazy white person too?”
“You mean to say you couldn’t tell?”
We both laughed for a while after that, and then she asked me some more questions about what I meant, and where my mom was from, and how she met my dad, and before I knew it another forty-five minutes had gone by. I was dangerously close to bragging about my own time on the circuit, just like my Uncle would’ve wanted. “Listen,” I said, trying to shake myself out of the vivid day-dream that was threatening to take me over—Sierra Davenport, twenty-one years old and well on her way to Idaho, had a starring role although the plot wasn’t particularly demanding, as it all took place in bed—“aren’t you tired? Isn’t it past midnight for you?”
“Yeah,” she said, and scuffed her shoe on the floor. “I wish you were less fun to talk to.”
“Me too,” I said. “You wouldn’t believe how much chatting a person can get up to from inside a jail cell, especially when they’re convinced the whole world is wrong and they’re right.”
She reached out and gently pushed my arm, as if we were kids in middle school teasing one another while we leaned against our lockers. She actually kind of made me feel that way, now that I thought about it—as if I were young again. As if the things that made me feel tired and withdrawn hadn’t ever happened—or if they had, they didn’t have quite the same result. So I hadn’t saved Davey Keatton, and I wasn’t as good a rider as my dad, and I wasn’t particularly handsome any more. So what? I remembered the first rush of excitement I felt when she laughed at my jokes, and how it felt to flirt again. If there were solid gold belt buckles handed out at competitions for flirting, I would’ve been a top contender in my day. But maybe my day wasn’t over yet. And here was the very, very pretty woman that was helping me find that out.