Page 28 of Last Chance Cowboy
It haunted him then, in a different way. Usually, in the middle of the night, which was why he usually slept with the lights on. Sure, he slept out in the wilderness in the pitch dark. But there was something about the wilderness that calmed him.
When he was in a bed, in a bedroom, half the time he left the light switched on because when he opened his eyes and tried to remember where he was after a particular vivid dream, he needed to be able to place himself immediately.
He had mainly come tonight because he had invited Cara. He wanted to see how she was doing. After all that. Thinking about her made his stomach just a little bit tighter, made his muscles twitch.
But he just stood there, waiting for Cody to put a steak on his plate.
That was when he saw that little car in the distance on the road.
“Cara is coming,” he said.
With the steak on the plate, he walked away from the group and set it on one of the tables outside, then moved around to the front of the house, just in case she needed help with anything, considering she was still on crutches.
He stood there, arms crossed, as she pulled up next to Marlowe’s car and reached over to the passenger seat for her crutches, which were taking up the space there.
He moved over to the car and opened the driver’s side door. “You good?”
“Yeah. I don’t… I can stand, actually, it’s just I’m using these out of an abundance of caution, so that doesn’t take me any longer to heal than it ought to.” She dragged the crutches out of the car, placed them out in front of her, and then hoisted herself up out of the vehicle.
She took a couple of steps away from the car, and he closed the door for her.
“Thank you,” she said.
“No problem. Can’t get the image of you buried in all that rubble out of my head.” He’d meant it to be flippant, but it was also true. He couldn’t get the image of her buried like that out of his head, vulnerable and in need of protection.
“Well, you don’t need to remind me of that.”
He grunted. “It was pretty pathetic.”
“I was there. Believe me. Nobody felt more pathetic about it than I did.”
“Fair enough,” he said.
Their eyes clashed and held, and he had the strangest sensation of not being able to catch his breath. He didn’t know what that was.
“Come on,” he said. “There’s steak. Ribeye and strip, what would you like?”
“Would you think that I was an absolute uncultured swine if I said I don’t totally know the difference?”
“You will pay a lot more for one of those cuts at a restaurant.”
“Oh. Well, I don’t mind.”
She should have the ribeye, though.
“Do you have anything that you need me to help carry?”
“Oh, I did bring… I almost forgot. I have some sweet rolls that need to be eaten.”
“Great.”
“In the backseat.”
“All right,” he said, moving around to the back of the car and grabbing the basket of sweets.
Then the two of them walked around the side of the house toward the back, where Cody was grilling.
He looked at the grill and saw that there were no more ribeyes to be had.
