Now it was her throat that felt wrapped in bandages; she couldn’t say anything, couldn’t do anything but stare at him. And he gazed back at her, his eyes dark amber, and sadder than she’d ever seen them.
“The proudest moment of your childhood. Proving you could take care of yourself. You didn’t need anybody.”
How could she deny it? She swallowed…looked up at the sky. Swallowed again; it seemed like the only part of herself that was capable of movement.
“I can’t compete with that, Alex. I knew that five years ago. I thought maybe I could fight it, but I can’t. It’s who you are. Who you were taught to be, maybe, but still…it is who…you…are. You don’t need anybody. And for sure you don’t need me.”
She shook her head, then clamped a hand over her mouth. Tears sprang to her eyes. But he saw none of that. Because he had already turned and was slapping at the wheels of his chair with his gloved hands, wheeling himself slowly along the path, back toward the street, back to his motel. Back to his life.
He didn’t hurry. She could have stopped him…called out to him. Run after him. But she didn’t. Of course she didn’t. What would she say? She couldn’t deny the things he’d said, because they were true. Even if right now she felt like wild animals were gnawing on her insides, and at this moment somewhere inside her there was a little girl, the one Booker T called baby doll, sobbing and crying and longing to be held and comforted, she knew it wouldn’t last, not in the long run. She was Alex Penny, daughter of Carla, who’d taught her to be independent and self-reliant and to never depend on anyone but herself. And right now she was hurt and sad and bereft, but she was angry, too.
Okay, dammit, I missed you, Mattie. I did. Right now, I guess…I want you. Oh, I do. But…you want me to need you. You need to be needed, and I can’t do that. I can’t…let…myself need you. I’m sorry…damn you. Matthew!
Alex stood there by the river, alone, hugging herself and watching him roll away, with her hand clamped over her mouth to keep from calling out his name.
Booker T had dropped Sam and Cory off at the door to their motel room, and they were in the process of saying their thank-yous and goodbyes when Sam happened to look across the hood of the pickup and see Matt coming along the river path alone. And Alex standing by herself farther back, watching him go.
“Oh hell,” she said under her breath, “that can’t be good.”
“What?” her husband said, and she tilted her head to draw his attention to the silent drama evidently unfolding across the street. “Oh…damn.”
Linda looked out the passenger-side window and Booker T ducked his head and peered across her to see what they were all looking at, then turned back to them with a half smile showing under his swooping mustache. “So, looks like you had some plans for those two.”
“We did,” Sam said with a sigh. “Hopes, anyway.”
“Yeah,” Booker T said after a glance at his wife, “we did, too. Tell you what, though—I’m not ready to give up on ’em just yet.” He winked as he put his pickup truck in gear and drove out of the parking lot.
“You know what?” Sam said as she watched them go. “Neither am I.”
“Samantha…dearest,” her husband said gently, “what do you think you’re going to do? You can’t make two people fall in love.”
“Oh, horsefeathers, Pearse, they’re already in love—anybody can see that. They’re just bein’…bullheaded.” She said the last word with emphasis, and a meaningful glare for Matt, who was just joining them.
“Referring to me, I suppose,” he said as he rolled past them and inserted his room key card in its slot. He opened the door and gave it a shove, then looked up at Cory and Sam and added evenly, “But you’re talking to the wrong person. Trust me.” He pushed his way into the room, closing the door on Sam, who would have followed him in if her husband hadn’t grabbed her in time to prevent her.
“Pearse, you’re not going to let—”
“Shh…not now. Can’t you see he’s hurting? Give him some time.”
“Time? How much time? What are we supposed to do now?”
At that moment Matt’s door opened up again, framing him and his chair in an attitude Sam thought wouldn’t have been out of place on a Murderball court.
“How soon can you guys be ready to leave?” he inquired without preamble. “Because I’m thinkin’ it’s time to go home.”
“Ah…” Cory glanced at Sam. “Give us twenty minutes?”
“Right—twenty minutes.” The door closed.
Cory’s lopsided smile told her he was blaming himself for the pain his brother was in. She wanted to tell him something to make him feel better, at least let him know she understood how he felt, probably wishing he hadn’t tried to meddle in his brother’s love affairs. But what could she say? In the end she simply snuggled against his side when he hooked his good arm around her and kissed the top of her head.
“Right now,” he said with a sigh, “I guess we’ll do what we have to do—take him home.”
Alex pulled up in front of her house to find Booker T’s truck parked there and him sitting on her front steps, waiting for her.
She got out of the SUV and slammed the door, and held up her hand as she stormed up the walk. “Don’t you start with me.”
“I’m not doin’ a thing.” He slowly and creakily got to his feet. “Looks to me like you’ve about done enough already, all by yourself.”
“I mean it, Booker T.” She halted in front of him, hauling in quick deep breaths, which was way more air than she really needed and had the effect of making her feel all swelled up, like a toad.
Booker T paused, gave her a long, hard look, then took her by the arms and turned her around and sat her down on the step. He eased himself carefully down beside her and planted a hand on each knee, then let out breath in a gust. “Baby girl, what’m I gonna do with you?”
Alex stared down at his hands, all gnarled and beat-up from his days roping calves and breaking horses. Then all of a sudden the hands were swimming, and her nose was running a stream, and dammit all, she couldn’t help it, she had to sniff.
Booker T reached in his back pocket and took out a blue bandanna handkerchief and handed it to her. “You know Linda and I love you like you was our own, but—and I know this sort of thing ain’t done much anymore, but right now what I feel like I oughta do is turn you over my knee.”
Alex blew her nose and stared at him over the handkerchief. “What’d I do? I didn’t do a damn thing. I was getting along just fine. And he has to come along, and…and…Why’d he have to come back, dammit?”
“You know why he came back,” Booker T said, giving her a look, as if she’d said something incomprehensible. “He came back for you.”
“Yeah, well, he can just go on back to L.A., then,” Alex said angrily, “because I sure as hell don’t want him.”
“Now that is just a big old lie.” His face was as stern as she’d ever seen it.
Chastened, she blew her nose again, then leaned her head on his shoulder and sighed. “What am I gonna do, Booker T?”
He didn’t say anything for a minute or two, just sort of rocked her. Then she felt him nudge her head with his chin. “Tell me something, baby girl. Do you love him?”
She straightened up as if he’d stuck her with a pin and clapped a hand to her forehead. “I don’t know,” she wailed. “How the hell would I know?”
Booker T chuckled. “Oh, I think you know.”
“Okay, if I do, then how come it’s so complicated and hard? How come I’m not all gooey and dopey and nothing else in the whole world matters?”
“Because,” Booker T said, “that’s not you.”
“Yeah…” Suddenly she felt wrapped in misery, weighed down by it. Every part of her seemed to hurt. “Okay,” she said in a low, uneven voice, “even if…say I do love him. It doesn’t really matter—”
“Oh, it matters.”
“No—because what he wants is for me to need him. Think ab
out it, Booker T. He’s not the kind of man who’s gonna be happy with a woman who’s bossy, and opinionated, and independent and used to running the whole show.” She glared at him, waiting for him to deny it. But all he did was smile. She hitched in a breath and looked at her feet, watched one of them scrape at the stones in the walk. “He wasn’t before—that’s probably why we used to fight all the time—and he sure as hell isn’t now. Even more now that he’s…” She couldn’t bring herself to say it. Caught another breath, shook her head and went on. “Anyway, he needs to feel he’s carrying his own weight, and probably half of mine besides.”
Booker T cleared his throat noisily. “Well, you do seem to understand the man pretty well.” He paused, evidently intent on studying the two cars parked out at the road. “Too bad you don’t understand yourself as well.”
“Okay, what’s that supposed to mean?”
He glanced at her, smoothed his mustache with a thumb and forefinger, then shook his head. “Not just you, honey, don’t get mad. It’s just the way people are made. Human beings are not meant to be alone. They’re hardwired to need each other.” He held up a hand when she started to interrupt. “No, now, hear me out. Of course you don’t need a man to defend your cave and go out and whomp a yak and bring it home to feed you and the kiddies. These days, women are pretty much capable of defending their own caves and whomping their own yaks. But see, the thing is, human beings with their great big brains have got to be born small and helpless or they can’t be born at all, and that means they’ve got to be protected and cared for and taught for years and years, and like it or not, sweet pea, that’s a job best done with two people.”
Alex snorted, ignoring a new little spike of pain, one she didn’t even know the cause of. “Yeah, well, that’s assuming you mean to have kids.”
Booker T kind of reared back and looked at her, and she remembered, again too late, about the child he and Linda had lost. Then he shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. We’re all still hardwired the same way. Tell me this. Do you want him? Do you want this man?” And then he held up a hand to stop her before she could answer. “No. Don’t think on it—don’t try and parse this, like it was a problem in logic to work out with your brain. This is a gut thing. What does your gut tell you? You want him, or don’t you?”
Do I want him? Memories swamped her. Memories of the way his hands felt, sliding up along her ribs, under her T-shirt. Memories of the way his mouth tasted, the way his laugh sounded, and the happy shiver that ran through her whenever he smiled.
“Yeah,” she said gruffly, then cleared her throat and said it again. “Yeah, I do.”
Booker T threw up his hands, the way a rodeo cowboy does when he’s finished throwing and tying a calf. “There you are, then. If you love him, and you want him, you need him. It’s as simple as that.”
A bubble of laughter fought its way up through the pain inside her and she caught it in the handkerchief. She sniffled, sighed, then muttered, “How’d you get so wise?”
He laughed out loud. “Me? I’m nothin’ but an old cowboy that had the good sense to get down off a horse and marry a smart and beautiful woman. Everything I know about love and relationships I learned from Linda, I’m not ashamed to say it.”
Alex sat still, suddenly feeling empty…tired. Bewildered. Lost. “So,” she said carefully, “what should I do, Booker T? Do you really think Matt and I could…” She hitched one shoulder and let it trail off.
“I think,” said Booker T, evidently addressing the stones in the walk, “you can if you want to bad enough.” Then he angled a look at her. “From what Samantha and Cory were telling me about what happened up there on the Forks, seems like the two of you can work together just fine when you need to.”
“Yeah…” She tried to smile. Tried to feel better about things. But she was remembering the way Matt had looked at her, with his eyes full of such terrible sadness, and his words: You didn’t need anybody.
Booker T gave her a nudge. “Hey—what’s wrong now?”
“I think—” she tried to laugh, though she’d never felt less like laughing in her life “—it might be too late.”
“Nah,” said Booker T, “it’s never too late. ’Course, you might have to swallow some of that pride of yours first.”
She began in automatic defense. “Me? What about—”
“For Pete’s sake, girl, love, want, need—the words don’t matter. Get your butt in gear and get over there to that motel and say whatever it takes to keep one of the best men I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing from driving out of your life for good. Tell him you need him, if that’s what he needs to hear. You think you can do that?”
Alex drew a breath, nodded and was finally able to laugh, although it felt a little weak and shaky, like some thing newly born. She wiped her cheeks, leaned over and kissed Booker T’s cheek, then got up and started down the walk to her car. Halfway there she began to run.
Her sense of purposeful euphoria lasted until she pulled into the motel parking lot and saw that Matt’s van was gone. Something—panic—clutched at her stomach. She sat with her hands gripping the steering wheel while her heart raced and her thoughts raced faster, going nowhere. Now what? What do I do? Where did he go? Did they leave? Oh God, what now?
Shaking, she parked, got out of the car and went into the office. The girl behind the counter—someone Alex didn’t know, roughly college age—looked up at her and smiled.
“Hi, can I help you?”
“Uh…yeah, the couple with the guy in the wheelchair—I’m not sure of the room numbers—”
“Oh yeah, you just missed them. They checked out about…um…ten minutes ago.”
“Checked out?” She could hear it, it was her voice, but it seemed to come from far, far away.
“Yeah…sorry.” The desk clerk was relentlessly cheery. “They had the rooms reserved until tomorrow, but I guess they decided to leave early. They said something about…um…wanting to avoid the weekend homecoming traffic into L.A. on I-5?”
“Yeah…okay…thanks.” In a daze, Alex walked out of the motel office.
Her heart sank as she saw Eve’s Jeep pull up beside her SUV. Not now, she silently pleaded. I really do not need this right now.
She fought for calm, searched deep inside herself for some shreds of patience. Remembered the sunglasses she’d pushed up onto the top of her head and flipped them down to cover her eyes. Fixed a smile on her face and angled across to the driver’s side of the Jeep as Eve rolled the window down.
“Hey, what are you doing here?”
Eve planted her arm on the windowsill and shrugged that same shoulder in a way that seemed almost defensive. “Thought maybe if you were done with your meeting with Matt…” She nodded toward the row of empty parking spaces beyond their two cars. “Anyway, I see his van’s gone. So…did they leave? Want to go get a beer, maybe a bite to eat?”
Alex felt waves of guilt, tempered with annoyance. She really did like Eve, and also felt sorry for her, since although she got along okay with the other guides, and the customers seemed to like her fine, she didn’t appear to have any close friends. Which was her own fault, Alex thought, for being so damned high maintenance.
“Oh, darn, Eve—I wish I could, but right now I’ve got to…” And she was opening the door of her SUV, clearly in a hurry to be off.
Which was lost on Eve. She got out of her Jeep and came over to Alex’s car, shading her eyes with one hand. “Where are you going? Do you need any help? I can—”
“No, it’s just…I’ve got to catch Matt. They just left.” As she spoke she was climbing behind the wheel, starting the car. And looked up to find Eve’s hands pressed against her window. Her eyes were wide and her lips were moving. Inwardly chafing, Alex rolled the window down. “Eve, what is it? I really need to go.”
“Why? Alex, what are you doing?” Eve was obviously upset, even more so than usual. Her fingers were gripping the windowsill so hard her knuckles were white, as if, Alex thoug
ht, she was trying to physically prevent the SUV from moving. What was wrong with the woman? I can’t deal with this now.
“What I should have done a long time ago,” Alex said impatiently, turning to back out of the parking place. “I’m going to tell him I don’t want him to leave. Now—”
Eve’s fingers caught her arm and dug in hard. “You’re not going to take him back! You said—”
“I know what I said, Eve, and I was stupid. Now, please—I’ll explain later. But I really have to go. If I leave right now I might be able to catch up with them before they hit the canyon.” She put the SUV in reverse and began to back up, and Eve’s hand slid away from her arm. Alex put her arm out the window and waved as she called back, “I’ll call you later, Eve—promise!”
As she accelerated out of the parking lot, she glanced in her rearview mirror and saw that Eve was standing where she’d left her, hands down at her sides, curled into fists. Well, hell. Eve was pissed—what else was new? Couldn’t be helped. Right now she had only one thought in mind, and that was to catch Matt before he vanished into the Los Angeles–bound Sunday afternoon traffic.
Matt had one thought in mind as he drove his van west on the divided freeway-type highway that was the first leg of the route down the Kern River Canyon to the San Joaquin Valley: Put as much distance between himself and the Kern River Valley and Alex Penny as he could, and hopefully get home to Los Angeles ahead of the Sunday incoming traffic. He was finding it a little hard to concentrate on his driving, however, due to the fact that his sister-in-law had been giving him an earful since they’d pulled out of the motel parking lot.
“Matthew, do not try and argue this logically,” Sam said for the second or third time. “If you do, you’re an idiot. And why are you smiling? This is not funny.”
A glance in his rearview mirror told Matt he could expect no help from his brother, who’d evidently succumbed to the painkillers the doctors at the hospital had given him, and was asleep in the backseat. Either that or he was playing possum just to keep clear of the fray.
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