Waiting for Wyatt (Red Dirt #1)

by S. D. Hendrickson

  I’d worried about him every day that I’d been gone, and I’d thought about him every night as I drifted off to sleep. His face always hovered just beyond my closed eyes. He had consumed me. I knew it wasn’t good to let Wyatt have that type of hold on my thoughts. But I didn’t know how to shut it off or how to shut him out. Something pulled me to him. My heart said he needed me. And I might have developed a bit of a need for him too.

  As I reached the kennel, my eyes darted around, looking for his familiar face. We had left things on a strange and heated note after washing the dogs. Getting out of my car, I looked around, not seeing Wyatt. I hoped his absence wasn’t some form of a setback with him.

  I went inside the kennel, but I didn’t find him with the dogs either. Walking the dusty trail to his trailer, I went up the little steps. I knocked on the aluminum door and waited, hearing nothing from the other side. He might get upset, but I turned the knob, opening the door. The living room was empty. Gus came trotting out of the bedroom, stretching across the carpet.

  “Wyatt?” I yelled. Hearing no response, I shut the door and went back around the kennel to where the old porcelain tub sat next to the shed. Wyatt wasn’t anywhere. I breathed in the heavy scent of summer rain. The sky was full of clouds today.

  I spun around a few times, looking in every direction, and then I noticed the contents of the shed. Tucked in the back corner, I saw something covered with a blue tarp. I crawled around a lawnmower, snagging my shorts against the side of a pile of wire. The metal ends ripped a hunk out of the fabric. I breathed a sigh of relief that it didn’t grab my skin.

  Tugging at the edge of the plastic, I exposed a motorcycle. It appeared to be a fairly nice antique one, with a large amount of shiny chrome. My fingers trailed over the cool metal. Wyatt had a motorcycle. I smiled faintly, imagining him riding down the highway. I bet it felt amazing on the back of it. I bet he looked amazing.

  “What are you doing?” His voice came from behind, and I jumped, letting out a small squeal.

  “Stop doing that.” My nerves sparked under my skin from Wyatt scaring me once again. “I was looking for you. You have a bike?”

  “I do.” His agitation matched the darkness of the cloudy sky. I knew better than to touch his things, but my curiosity had gotten the best of me. The motorcycle was now a piece of the larger puzzle.

  “It looks nice. Why do you have it stuck in the back of your shed?”

  “I don’t do much riding anymore.” He took a deep breath. “Could you please cover it back up?”

  I noticed the shovel he gripped tight in his hand. His knuckles turned white against the wood. I wanted to ask more about the bike, but he didn’t seem to want to talk about it. “I’m sorry. I-I didn’t mean to get into your stuff.”

  “Don’t apologize, Emma.” My name came with a gravely sweetness from his lips. Every time he said it, I craved for him to mutter it again.

  I tucked the blue tarp back over the shiny motorcycle, feeling more confused toward Wyatt. He had his secrets. Lots of them. He didn’t move until I had the bike situated back to the way I found it. Crawling over the lawnmower, I tried to avoid the wire.

  “Be careful,” he muttered.

  “Too late. It got me on the way in here.” I got around unscathed and stood in front of him. “What are you doing with the shovel?”

  His jaw twitched. “I’m not sure you want to know, but I’ll show you anyway.”

  Wyatt went inside the shed to hang the shovel on the wall with the other equipment. Crusty red dirt covered his jeans. They fit tight over his thighs, showing off the muscles in his legs. I think he had runner legs. They bulged in all the places of someone who ran miles and miles. Wyatt turned around and caught me looking at him. He frowned for a moment. “Come on.”

  I followed beside him into the pasture, navigating through the tall grass and weeds. We walked for a few minutes in silence. This visit was very different than the last one. Something was bothering Wyatt. It twisted him up more than usual, if that was even possible.

  As we continued through the grass, a fenced-in area came into view. The image filled my heart with dread. Everything slipped into place. The ground inside was covered with little white crosses. Fear slowly creeped under my skin. “It’s a pet cemetery?”

  “Yes.” He opened the gate, and I followed behind, seeing the little names etched on each piece of wood. Wyatt stopped in front of a fresh mound of dirt.

  “Which one?” I was afraid. I was afraid to find out which of the sad dogs didn’t survive. I didn’t live out here like Wyatt, but my attachment to those poor souls grew stronger every day. They each came from such a miserable existence, only to land here in the end. They deserved better than to die behind bars without finding a family to love them.

  “Daisy. She didn’t wake up this morning.” His words came out clipped. “I’ll have to make her a marker.”

  The sad fingers of time crawled up my skin. It wasn’t choking me over Daisy, but reminding me of her companion. “What’s going to happen to Gatsby?”

  “I don’t know,” he muttered. “When everyone in your world is gone, sometimes your will to live just disappears too.”

  I turned so I was standing in front of Wyatt. He looked down at me, his eyes cloaked in pain. I wondered how many times he’d done this. How many of these little white crosses were placed by Wyatt? He rescued them, cared for them, and then buried them.

  I wanted to touch him, throw my arms around his slumped shoulders, but I was afraid of his reaction. “Are you okay?” I whispered.

  He let out a deep breath. “Let’s get her a marker up and figure out what to do with Gatsby.”

  “Okay.”

  He held the gate open as I walked through. We returned to the shed without speaking. He opened a container in the corner and pulled out a white cross identical to those in the pet cemetery. I watched in a trance as he whittled her name into the wood. His arms tightened. His body moved and flexed as he used the tools.

  I felt that electric pull to Wyatt. As my throat tightened with emotion, I felt that overwhelming need to comfort him as he carved her name into the wood with meticulous detail. He looked up, catching my gaze. The powerful sadness echoed in the depths of his green eyes. It called to me. It beckoned my heart.

  Wyatt didn’t say anything and went back to work. He seemed worse today than in my other visits. Maybe he blamed himself, but this was out of his control. “This isn’t your fault, you know.”

  He looked up again, his lips thinning as he listened to my words. He swallowed hard. “She wouldn’t eat last night. I should have checked on her again, but I didn’t.”

  “She was old and sad.”

  “And I should’ve checked on her. It’s my job. The only one I got.” His voice cracked on the words. He paused for a moment and then went back to the wood, making sure it was perfect.

  Wyatt handed his creation over to me. I held the cross, tracing the letters with my fingers. He had made something so simple seem so very beautiful.

  “Can you put it out there?” he muttered, not looking me in the eye. “I’ll meet you in the kennel.”

  “Okay.” I left the shed and went toward the pet cemetery. The weeds scratched against my legs. Placing the white cross by the fresh dirt, I looked at her spot. I knew pets were not the same as humans, but it was still sad to think of her final days.

  Daisy had lost her owner and was left to die in a house. Because of that, she’d ended up here. Maybe Wyatt was right. This place may not be a home, but it still was better than where they had come from out in the terrible world.

  I left the cemetery and went back to the kennel. I found Wyatt inside the pen with Gatsby. His jaw was clenched tight as the held the old dog in his arms. “Wyatt?”

  “Oh, hey.” His eyes drifted up to where I stood next to the kennel gate. The sadness broke my heart into tiny slivers. Something was eating away at his insides, something deeper than just Daisy.

  I sat down next to him on t
he floor, careful not to touch his body. Staying just a few inches away, I was close but not enough to cause some unwanted reaction from him. “I’m sorry. It must be a hard job dealing with this side of it.”

  He didn’t say anything. Wyatt’s hand continued to pet Gatsby as he stared at the cracks in the wall. I reached over, touching the old dog behind the ears. Wyatt accidentally bumped my hand. He jerked a little and looked over at me. Our eyes locked on each other. His hand stopped moving as he stared at my face.

  I felt that pull into his overwhelming sadness. It was aching. It was seductive. Slowly, I inched my fingers across Gatsby until they touched his skin. I saw his breath suck in a bit. He was unsure. He was fighting this obvious connection between us.

  “It’s ok,” I whispered as my hand clasped around his. And then sparks flew under my skin as he squeezed my hand back. Wyatt slipped his fingers between mine. It wasn’t much of anything, just holding hands. But I knew in my gut, Wyatt Caulfield didn’t hold hands.

  “You can talk to me, you know,” I whispered, begging him to let me inside his thoughts.

  “Maybe I don’t want a girl like you to know those things about me. Some things shouldn’t be talked about.”

  I wanted to push. I wanted to push it right out of him. His pain was a cancer, eating up the inside of his soul. The longer it remained, the more his body disappeared into the all-consuming rot.

  I ran my thumb over the side of his palm. They were about twice the size of my hands and a little rough from calluses. He tensed a bit, but I kept touching him, rubbing my fingers across his skin. I needed to find some way to distract him from this pain since he wasn’t willing to discuss it.

  “Tell me about the books in your trailer. You’ve got a whole wall of them.” It was a simple, open-ended question that allowed Wyatt to control the answer. He could say something important or simple. I wasn’t sure if he would take the bait.

  He watched me for a second before letting out a deep breath. “I like to read.”

  I stopped moving my thumb over his hand. My lips curved up at the corners. “I think that’s pretty obvious. Any book in particular?”

  “No.”

  “Favorite author?”

  “I guess Stephen King. But I’ll read anything. I think there’s a few hundred books in the trailer now.” As Wyatt talked, the tight muscles in his shoulders seemed to relax just a bit. His sad eyes lifted to mine. “Sometimes I come out here and, um . . . I read to them.”

  “To the dogs?”

  “Yes,” he whispered. “I bet you didn’t expect that one.”

  My heart beat faster as I saw the slight change in him as he revealed one of his secrets. “You read to them, like, out loud?”

  “Yes.” A faint grin touched his lips. “I come out here at night. I think it calms them down, hearing someone’s voice. Some of the dogs come from homes. They are used to being around people. And the rest. Well, they never got that kind of life so I give it to them.”

  “You read Stephen King to them?”

  “Not usually. I change it up some. Horror, classics, and some of the popular stuff.”

  “Like what?”

  He chuckled. “You really want to hear what books a grown man reads to dogs?”

  “Yes.”

  He let out a deep breath. “Lola really liked it when I read Tom Sawyer. Maybe it’s the way it sounds, coming from me. I don’t know. I’ve read them Moby Dick, Lord of the Flies, The Hobbit, Treasure Island, and um, Werewolf in Paris. Now that was a little weird, reading it in here. Then I got a few other ones. Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Gone Girl, and Interview with a Vampire, which just made me want to read Dracula, but I haven’t yet. I had a Steinbeck phase. I can’t remember them all. I’ve lost track now.”

  “Is that why you named them Daisy and Gatsby?”

  He clenched my fingers, consuming my whole hand inside his larger one. “Yes. I had just finished that book a few days before they got here. Something about it just felt so familiar when I got these two. The family had left them to rot in that house. The neighbors didn’t even know their names. They were so defeated and sad. But this guy here. He wouldn’t leave the girl. She moved. He moved. Very Gatsby. And now he lost his Daisy. He’s all alone. His beacon of light is gone.”

  “Is that what happened to you, Wyatt?” The words slipped out before I could stop the sentence. Anxiety flashed through my heart as I waited for his reaction.

  “No.” His jaw gritted tight. I had touched a big nerve in his weakness. His breathing got more intense and a wild look flickered beneath his green eyes. “You keep trying, over and over again. Have you ever considered that I might be a lost cause?”

  My fingers tightened against his hand. “I don’t believe anyone is a lost cause.”

  “I know you like to help people and you keep coming back here, trying to help me,” he muttered. “But you should just give up. I’m the worst possible guy you could find.”

  The air from his spoken words brushed across my skin. He was so close, but so far away in his mental anguish. “I don’t think that’s true. When I look at you? I don’t see a bad person.”

  “I know.”

  “You can trust me. I hope you realize that by now.”

  “I do trust you, Emma.” His breath touched my skin as he talked. “It’s myself that I don’t trust.”

  “But I trust you,” I whispered.

  “I know,” he whispered back in that gravelly voice. “I see the trust in your eyes. And it scares me.”

  Hearing his painful admission, I wanted to touch more than just his hand. This thing between us grew stronger with each breath, pulling me closer. His eyes grazed over my lips and then jerked back up. It was there again, the guilty look of desire. He was ashamed of having those thoughts.

  I wanted him to know it wasn’t wrong. I wanted to kiss him. I wanted to feel his soft lips against mine. Maybe I should just lean forward and make it happen. Make that connection between us real. Make him feel something other than the pain. I closed the few inches between us. Wyatt turned his head right before we touched.

  “Don’t,” he growled.

  “I-I don’t understand. I thought—” I stopped as his face twisted up again and he let go of my hand.

  “If a guy wants to kiss you, he will. So don’t force it.”

  “So you don’t want to kiss me,” I whispered.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Wyatt looked at me as the internal struggle danced around in his troubled soul. “I shouldn’t want to kiss you.”

  “So you do want to kiss me?” I asked, seeing the pain etched in permanent lines around his eyes. A burning pain that was now burning me. It burned inside my chest, drawing me closer to his body. His breathing got a little stronger. I didn’t need to see his chest going up and down to know how much this was affecting him.

  “You think you want to know all about me. You don’t, Emma.” His emotions grated on the words. “And if I told you the truth? You wouldn’t like the fact that I wanted to kiss you.”

  “I doubt that.” I reached up, touching the side of his face. Wyatt’s eyes closed for a moment as my fingers trailed over his cheeks, tracing those lines of pain.

  He was haunting. He was beautiful, pulling me down into the pit of his broken heart. I felt something strong and powerful, holding onto my soul.

  My fingers traced his jaw. I stopped on the spot where his hidden dimples stayed just beneath the surface. I was drawn to him like a Band-Aid to a cut. I wanted to touch him, fix him, and make him better.

  As if my thoughts were spoken out loud, Wyatt’s green eyes flipped open. He grabbed my hand, removing it from his skin. His complicated thoughts swirled around on his face as he clutched my fingers tight in his palm. Wyatt was fighting some internal battle. He was fighting, and the demons were winning.

  “Let’s get out of here for a while.” I felt the rush as I asked him to run away with me. “Go somewhere
. Anywhere. Come with me?”

  His fingers stilled on my hand. Wyatt refused to look in my direction as he muttered the words. “I . . . um. That’s not a good idea right now.”

  “Okay. Then I’ll stay with you.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “When you leave here”—his eyes grew a little sad as the words slipped from his lips—“where do you go?”

  “It depends. Today is Thursday. So I’m picking my sister up and we are having dinner at my parents’ house over in Beckett.”

  He let out a deep breath. “Do you have a nice family?”

  “They’re not perfect. My sister is . . . um . . . odd. But yes. I have a nice family.”

  “Do you have dinner with them every Thursday? Like a family thing?”

  “Yes,” I answered. “And you can come if you want.”

  He flinched at the suggestion and continued with his questions. “Your twin sister. Does she worry about you coming here?”

  “She does,” I muttered.

  “Then you need to go back home to them. It might not be a perfect family, but I’m sure they love you. You need to go have dinner with them and leave me alone.”

  “But I don’t think I should leave you alone right now.”

  “You’re going to skip a family thing for some strange guy who lives in the woods with fifty dogs. This place is not normal. I’m not normal. Don’t you understand that by now?” He pleaded in desperation. “Please just leave, Emma. Go home to your family.”

  “No. Don’t say that, Wyatt. I don’t—”

  “You’re in over your head and you’re too naïve to know it.”

  “I’m twenty-one, Wyatt. A grownup. I work two jobs. I pay my own rent. I buy my own clothes. You act like I’m some innocent girl who can’t make decisions.”

  “I think we have different definitions of innocent. You should leave. Forget about this. Forget about me.”

  “How can I forget about you? I-I’ve never felt something like this before. And I know you feel it too.”