When she was finally able to focus on her mother’s face, she knew immediately that something was very wrong.
She sat up, her gaze darting between her mother and father, who stood silent but slump shouldered as he watched her with grief-stricken eyes.
“Mom? What’s happened?” Her voice sounded strange to her own ears—thready and high.
Grace gently pushed back a strand of T.J.’s hair, her eyes filling with tears. “It’s the Jenkinses, honey…”
T.J.’s mind went blank, a sort of static taking over as her heart raced so fast she thought it might fly out of her chest. “Oh God,” she gasped, the sound completely foreign and desperate.
“Vaughn’s okay, hon,” her mother quickly interjected.
Her poor chest contracted, and she nodded as emotion welled up inside her.
“But his parents were in an accident. Rex and Sophia are dead.”
T.J.’s world went dark.
She’d walked by and hadn’t even acknowledged his presence. Hours later, Vaughn was still sidelined by it. Yeah, they’d avoided each other after they broke up senior year, but they’d always been polite if they saw one another. She’d say “Hi,” he’d ask how she was, then they’d go on their way. It hurt, yeah, but it was nothing like this, nothing like her looking right through him as she strode by on another man’s arm.
“You going to finish that?” Cade asked as Vaughn sat alone at the kitchen counter, staring at a plate of apple pie. It was ten o’clock, Ty, Lynn, and Katie were in bed, and the kitchen was dark except for the small light over the stove.
Vaughn’s gaze snapped up. “What? Oh, uh, you can have it. I sort of lost my appetite.”
Cade nodded as he took the stool next to Vaughn and slid the plate over.
“Want to talk about it?” Cade asked around a forkful of the syrupy treat.
Vaughn shook his head slowly. “Not really, because you’ll tell me what an idiot I am, and you’re probably right.”
“T.J.,” Cade replied with a knowing look. “I promise not to say you’re an idiot. Go ahead and get it off your chest. It’ll fester if you don’t.”
Vaughn rested his elbows on the kitchen counter and buried his head in his hands, digging through his thick wavy hair before turning to look at his brother.
“I saw her at the Big Sur market today.”
“Yeah? I take it that didn’t go well.”
“She was with that guy from the bar.”
“Oh.” Cade looked at Vaughn with sympathetic eyes. “Sorry, dude, I know that’s not easy.”
“She walked by and didn’t acknowledge me. Looked right through me like I was a piece of glass.”
Cade cringed. “Wow.”
“Yeah. Wow.”
They sat in silence for a moment, the only sound Cade’s fork on the plate as he scraped up the last of the pie. When he finished, he slid the plate away and turned to face Vaughn.
“I know it doesn’t always feel like it, but I do realize you’re a grown man. It doesn’t change the fact that you’ll always be my baby brother, though. I remember the day you were born, I remember when you took your first steps and said your first words, and I remember the day you brought that little girl with long black hair home from kindergarten with you and called her your best friend.”
Vaughn’s heart stuttered briefly, and he inhaled long and slow, trying to ease the sharp pain that lodged beneath his ribs.
“You’ve always been hard on yourself, ever since you were a tiny kid. Maybe it comes from trying to keep up with two older brothers, maybe it’s just part of that whole artist’s temperament you got from Mom, but whatever the cause, the result is you expect things from yourself that you’d never expect from those around you.
“When I told you in the hospital that I was going to pull my act together and be a better brother to you, I meant it. And while it may feel like I’m being controlling or meddling, what I’m really doing is making sure you have everything you need for a great life—one that doesn’t depend on me to provide it for you. You have to be able to take care of yourself and this business even if Ty and I aren’t here.”
Cade blinked back an anguished look that passed over his face, and Vaughn felt that pain in his chest tighten more, images of Cade coming home after their parents died flying through his mind. Cade spending half the night locked up working in the ranch office across the driveway, Cade meeting for hours with lawyers and accountants, Cade in his bedroom late at night on the phone with his sponsors and agent from the pro surf circuit—No, I won’t be coming back. My brothers need me.
“But let me tell you something I’ve learned about taking care of yourself,” Cade continued. “It’s not just the basics. Having food and shelter isn’t what I mean. I’m talking about doing what’s necessary to make sure you live the life you were meant to, the one you would have if Mom and Dad had lived, the one you would have wanted if there’d been no accident—”
“But those things did happen,” Vaughn snapped. “We can’t pretend they didn’t. And they did something…” His voice grew raspy as he pressed a fist to his chest, right over his heart. “Something to me—here. I can’t have that life, because I’m not that man anymore.”
“No,” his brother continued. “You’re better. You’re stronger and more resilient. You’re not broken. You’re a survivor, and survivors understand that this life we live is tenuous at best. It’s a fragile web of spider silk that we cling to for as long as we can. And we can hang there, waiting for a big gust of wind to come along and blow us away, or we can climb, and we can fight, and we can get every damn mile out of it that we’re able to. We can chase every dream, experience every moment, take every risk.”
Vaughn didn’t answer, just letting it soak in, or trying to anyway, over and around the noise in his head that said, You’re a mess. You should stick to what’s safe so you don’t mess up more.
Cade stood from the stool. “I spent six years where you are now—surviving. Hanging on to that fragile web and waiting for the next big storm to blow me clean away. It’s not living, man. You are far stronger than you think. You’re able to do anything you want—run a marathon, run this ranch—” His voice dropped a pitch. “Go after the woman you love. I promise you can do it, and I promise Ty and I are here to help in whatever way we can. If you’ll just decide to take the chance.”
Then his big brother locked his arm around Vaughn’s shoulders and kissed the top of his head, the way their father had always done. And as Cade’s footsteps faded away to the far end of the house, Vaughn felt something inside him loosen, like a rope that was coming undone around a post. Slowly slipping and sliding until one day it would be free, and he’d finally be untethered completely, to either fall into the abyss or fly to the heavens. Only time would tell.
It had been over a week since T.J. had seen Drew, but he was texting her as she stood in line at Lynn’s coffee shop before work.
D: Back in Big Sur on Thursday. Can I see you?
T.J. knew the right answer—Yes, I’d love that. But the fact was she was struggling with Drew just as she had with every other man she’d dated since she was seventeen. In spite of what some women thought, there were a lot of nice guys in the world. Guys who wanted to take her out to dinner and movies and shows in San Francisco. Guys who were nice-looking and had great jobs.
But none of them did that thing to her, that thing inside. None of them set off the fireworks that Vaughn did every time he looked at her, hell, every time she even heard his name. None of their kisses stayed in her mind for days afterward—years, actually, if the truth be told.
And none of them knew her. It went far beyond how long they’d known her and into something else, something that was more than words or time or opportunity. Because Vaughn had known her from the moment they’d laid eyes on each other, just as she’d known him. They knew each other’s souls, and try hard as she might, there was no replacement for that.
“T.J.?”
She looked
up to see Cade’s girlfriend, Nina, watching her.
“Hi!” T.J. chirped a little too brightly.
Nina’s smile was warm. While T.J. didn’t know her well, they’d crossed paths plenty of times at the Jenkinses’.
“How are you?” Nina asked.
“Good, thank you. Just grabbing some caffeine before work.”
Nina nodded, gazing at T.J. thoughtfully. “Can you spare just a few minutes before you head to the office?” she asked.
T.J.’s throat felt thick, because there was only one reason Nina would want to talk to her, and T.J. wasn’t sure what more she could say about him.
Nina grabbed a table while T.J. had their order filled, then she took both cups of coffee to sit with the blonde at a table next to the front window of the café.
“So, I realize this is a little awkward, and that we don’t know each other all that well…”
T.J. looked at Nina and nodded. She wasn’t trying to be difficult about it, but she didn’t have the energy to brace herself for a talk about Vaughn and also assuage Nina’s discomfort. Nina had been the one who wanted the talk, after all. She needed to figure out how to follow through if it was so important.
Nina took a deep breath. “I’ve been living at the ranch for a while now, and I see Vaughn every day. I’ve watched him struggle to learn how to walk again, and I’ve seen how devastated he was when the accident first happened.”
“I’ve seen all those things too,” T.J. added gently. “What are you trying to get at?”
“I know he’s been a jerk to you. We all know it. But I also know he’s trying to get better. You can see it every day. It’s tiny steps, but they’re happening. The way he deals with Katie, the way he takes on new jobs at the ranch. He’s making progress.” She paused, looking down at her latte. “But I’m worried that losing you will bring all that to a screeching halt.”
T.J.’s pulse sped, and she felt her face turn hot. Oh no. No, no, no. She cleared her throat and tried to count to ten, but it just wasn’t going to happen.
“Well, excuse me if my efforts to help his recovery haven’t been adequate,” she hissed. “Do you want to know how many times I came to the house trying to be there for him after his parents died? Every day for weeks. Every. Single. Day. And how many times do you think he refused to see me when he was in the hospital after the accident? No fewer than twenty-four. I came twice a day every single day. I spent fifteen hours there that first night, and still never got to see him, not even for a few minutes.”
She took a deep, shuddering breath and continued as Nina looked back at her with wide, shocked eyes. “I came to the house thirty-two times to do PT with him, and would you like to know how many times he said, ‘thank you’? Zero. But ask me how many times he told me to go away, or how many phone calls and texts he ignored over the years. Ask me about all the times he had someone else drive me home when we were out at a bar or a party so he could go screw some girl he’d just picked up.”
T.J. was on a roll now, and it felt freeing, liberating, good. It felt damn good.
“You’re worried about his recovery? I’m worried about mine. Because let me tell you, with everything he’s put me through the last six years, I have a whole hell of a lot of recovering to do.”
Nina placed her hand over T.J.’s as T.J. shot icicles at her with her eyes.
“You’re right, I’m sorry,” Nina said softly. “I didn’t phrase that well, and I didn’t mean to ignore everything you’ve suffered in all this either. I know you’ve been through hell with him. I wasn’t trying to suggest you owe him anything.”
T.J. nodded, and Nina released her hand.
“I also know you still love him…”
T.J. looked at the table as the anger turned to grief in a split second. She felt the sting of impending tears and struggled to hold them at bay.
“When I met Cade, he was still grieving his parents. Six years later. We all think that it’s something you suffer intensely, and then it gradually gets better and life goes on. But there’s this other level to grief. And that layer doesn’t just melt away. It’s less intense but more invasive. It eats at you day after day, year after year. It can mold you and control you, and it can impact everything from the relationships you have—or don’t have—to the jobs you choose and the house you live in.”
T.J. looked at Nina now, and she felt understanding and familiarity dawning with each new word.
“That’s what Cade was suffering under when I met him. That layer of grief that he couldn’t break through. And I think you see it in Vaughn too, am I right?”
T.J. nodded, struck speechless at the realization that Cade had been as bad off as Vaughn in his own way.
“And on top of that, he lost his leg,” Nina continued. “I’ve watched Cade break through that layer of grief. I know Vaughn can do it too, but he needs help. And he needs inspiration. You give that to him. And maybe it seems like it hasn’t been enough, but it is—you are. Even if it’s just as friends, I hope you’ll think about being there for him—not to the point that you hurt yourself. We all want you to be happy. You deserve that. But if you can find any way to be part of his life, even just a tiny part, I know it will help him.”
T.J. whispered, “Okay, I’ll think about it,” before Nina stood and looked down at her with that sunny smile.
“And I’m always here for you, T.J. If you ever need someone to talk to. It’s not easy loving Jenkins men, but it’s worth it.”
Then she was gone, and T.J. was left staring at the empty seat across the table, wondering if following her head was any better than following her heart had been.
10
T.J. ran up the stairs of the Jenkinses’ house Lynn grimly waving her through even though T.J. knew Vaughn hadn’t agreed to it.. It had been over two weeks since his parents died, and he hadn’t come to school or spoken to her since that first night.
She reached his room and knocked on the door. No one answered, so she carefully opened it, breathing in the scent of dirty tennis shoes and muddy boots. He lay on the bed on his back, in worn jeans and his favorite vintage Rolling Stones T-shirt. He had headphones on and was simply staring at the ceiling, knees up, hands behind his head, foot tapping ever so slightly to whatever beat he was listening to.
But as if he had a sixth sense that tracked T.J.’s every move, he turned slowly until he was looking at her standing in his doorway. His gaze nearly took her breath away, because it was dark and empty and unlike anything she’d ever seen on him before.
In spite of that, she walked into his room, finally coming to a stop next to his bed. She pointed at his headphones, silently asking him to take them off. He sighed and picked up his iPod, clicking the music off, then removing the headphones.
“I’m not in the mood for company,” he said, his voice as dead and cold as his gaze.
“You’ve been saying that for over two weeks. I’ve been worried about you,” she answered softly. She sat on the edge of the bed, not missing the fact that he shifted subtly away from her. Her hand rested on the comforter, mere millimeters away from his, but she didn’t dare touch him. He gave off the vibe of a horse that had been spooked, and T.J. knew enough about scared animals to be patient.
“Everyone at school is asking how you are. They miss you. And Mr. Brown’s given me all your history makeup work, so I can help you with it whenever you’re ready.”
Vaughn just stared at the ceiling.
She tried to chatter about other innocuous things, school gossip, the chores her parents made her do, but nothing seemed to have any effect, and finally she had to ask, “Vaughn? Are you ever going to talk to me again?”
His head swiveled toward her, and for a brief moment, she saw a flash of something that looked a whole lot like devastation, but then it was gone, and his empty eyes were back.
“You need to go,” he said, his voice rough.
“Okay, I’ll come back tomorrow and maybe you’ll be feeling—”
“No. Don�
��t come back tomorrow. Don’t come back ever. You need to stop this. Coming over, trying to act like everything’s okay when it’s not. And it never will be again.”
She swallowed, panic rising in her gut like a helium balloon.
“I know you’re in pain.” Her voice was so soft, it was barely a whisper. “But you and I are okay. We’re going to be fine, and you don’t have to pretend for me. You can be as sad as you need to be for as long as it takes. I’ll be right here with you, and we’ll be fine.”
Vaughn snorted out a breath before his gaze returned to the ceiling. “Don’t you get it? There is no us. We’re through. Done. Over. You need to go live your life, finish school, whatever it is you’re going to do, but count me out of it—all of it. We’re through.”
“What?” T.J.’s voice was shaky, and when she looked down, her hands were too.
“You heard me,” he answered. “Now please leave.”
Tears welled up, and T.J. stood as if on autopilot. “You don’t mean it. You’re just sad right now.”
He emanated disdain. “I don’t say things I don’t mean.”
“But I love you,” she said, incredulous.
“But I don’t love you anymore,” he answered. “I don’t love anyone.”
The tears burst free, coming out in one agonizing, pitiful sob. She saw Vaughn flinch, but she was already in motion, her feet on the landing, then the stairs, down to the front door, where she exploded out into the bright sunlight, Lynn’s voice calling after her.
Vaughn stood on the boardwalk that ran along the seaside of town, watching his brothers gliding over the gray waters, their surfboards coasting beneath the curled tops of the big waves. Cade powered through the top edge of a wave rolling over his head. It wiped Ty out, but not Cade.
His oldest brother was the best damn surfer he’d ever seen, and it made his heart ache a bit when he watched him, remembering how their dad used to take them all on Sunday mornings. “We’re going to commune with the Lord,” he’d tell their mother. She’d smile and shake her head, knowing she’d never convince her wayward husband to come to church, and it was probably in the town’s best interests she not inflict her wild boys on the parishioners either.
Vaughn's Pride: California Cowboys Page 7