Ghostrider
Johnny
HE TOOK THE call even though he didn’t know who was behind the number that showed on his screen.
He shouldn’t have.
After answering, she spoke in his ear.
“Johnny?”
He closed his eyes.
Three years.
That voice was back after three years.
Christ, would this never be done?
“Johnny,” she said softly.
He opened his eyes.
“You have got to be kidding me,” he whispered.
“Johnny,” she whispered back.
“Don’t,” he ordered.
“I’m coming to town.”
“Don’t,” he repeated.
“I need to see you.”
“Three years,” he stated.
She had nothing to say to that.
“And you call and say you’re coming to town and you wanna see me?” he demanded.
“We need to talk.”
“You made your decision.”
“There are things I need to say to you.”
“I don’t give a fuck.”
“It was out of my control.”
“It wasn’t.”
“You didn’t understand.”
“I understood. I understood you walked out my fuckin’ door a week after my father died.”
“You know why. I had no choice.”
“I told you your choices, you just chose the wrong one.”
“You couldn’t ask me to do that.”
“You’re not remembering it right. I could. I did. And you gave me your answer by walking out my door.”
“He’s my brother. What was I supposed to do?”
“Not go on the lam with him.”
“You know how it was with us,” she said quietly.
“I knew. So . . . what? Now you’re calling and wanna talk, tell me he did the right thing, turned himself in, he’s serving his time and you’re free of his shit?”
“He . . . I don’t know where he is.”
Johnny closed his eyes again, muttering, “Right.”
“I’ve . . . it’s over.”
Johnny opened his eyes and repeated, “Right.”
“I’m done with him. He’s had his last chance.”
“You need money?” Johnny asked.
“No.” She sounded struck. “Of course not.”
“So why are you calling, Shandra?”
She was back to whispering. “Johnny.”
“You destroyed me.”
She didn’t whisper.
She said nothing at all.
“Dad died. Toby was being his usual Toby. Your asshole of a brother was pulling his usual felonious shit. He needed you. I needed you. And you chose him.”
“I asked you to come with us,” she reminded him.
“On the lam with an asshole who’d robbed a bank?” he asked incredulously.
“You could have talked some sense into him. He listened to you.”
“He didn’t listen to anyone, Shandra, except the voice in his head that drove him to do stupid, selfish acts of assholery.”
“He was all I had.”
Christ.
Christ.
Why did that still burn?
“Yeah, in the end he was, because you made it that way.”
She sounded wounded. “Johnny, you know what I mean.”
Oh, he knew what she meant.
“So you can’t forgive me,” she said, sounding sad now.
“I forgave you five weeks later, the day I had to put Lace down, which also happened to be the day I finished that fucking bathroom you designed that you loved so much and couldn’t wait to use so bad, you put that jar in it to start decorating it before I got the damned thing done. It was then it became clear to me your dad was a dick, your mom was a piece of shit, and growing up, all you had was your brother. Until you met me. But when it came down to it, your loyalty was to blood. I get that. I still put up with Toby’s shit, so I get that. That doesn’t negate the fact the choice you made communicated where I stood. And from your choice, where I stand hasn’t changed.”
“You had to put Lace down?” she asked, not masking this news was upsetting, as it would be. She’d loved that horse. They all had.
He saw her, her red hair streaming behind her, the smile she’d aim down at him from under her hat, astride Lace while he and his dad sat on his dad’s porch, grinning like idiots because Johnny had done what his father had failed to do.
Found a good woman who loved him more than anything on the earth.
One good thing about his father dying before she took off.
He never knew that wasn’t true.
“He went, she declined so fast, it was like she knew and didn’t wanna be in a world without him in it.”
“Oh God, Johnny,” she said gently.
“Can we be done with this?”
“I . . . still have Ranger. He’s good. Healthy and happy. But I think he still misses you.”
That was outside her norm. That was close to making her a bitch.
He’d told her to take his dog. He couldn’t be there to protect her from whatever her brother got her caught up in. But he could leave her with Ranger.
She’d cried, sobbed, told him she wanted him to go with them, and if he couldn’t then she couldn’t take a dog from his man. She couldn’t do that to Ranger. She couldn’t do that to him.
But he’d said if she had to go she had to go with Ranger, and she knew him well, to the bone, to his soul. She knew he’d set her free if that was what she needed, but he wasn’t letting her walk out his door without someone to look after her.
So she’d taken his dog.
“Uncool,” he muttered.
Again with the hurt. “I thought you’d want to know.”
“Now I know.”
She gave it a beat before she pressed, “I want to come and see you.”
“For what purpose?”
“You know.”
“I know so the question remains, for what purpose?”
And again with the wounded. “Can’t we just talk?”
He had an excuse not to “just talk.”
He was seeing Izzy.
“Seeing” was a loose term after the short time they’d had, but they had plans to make that short time longer and he was the one who set that up.
They’d fucked a lot and had one date but he still knew if there could ever be a one again, that woman gave every indication she’d be that one.
But one was one and there couldn’t be another one.
For Johnny, because she’d walked out his door three years earlier, there also couldn’t be the one.
When it came down to it and a decision had to be made, he wouldn’t decide on a woman like Izzy.
No, a woman like Izzy with her frilly pillows on an outside loveseat and her flowerpots and birds singing on her shoulder, and her guacamole and her honesty, and her stories about her dead mom needed a whole man who could give her his whole self, not half a man who’d given half of himself to the wrong woman.
Shandra didn’t get to have any part of Izzy.
Izzy knew about Shandra.
But Johnny would never pollute all that was Izzy with the mess that became of him and Shandra.
“No,” he answered.
“Dad’s sick,” she told him.
“Don’t know a man who deserves being that more than him.”
“I understand why you feel that way. It’s hard to wrap my head around my need to do my duty as his daughter when I understand why you feel that way better than you. I still have to come see him.”
“After the choice you made with your brother, if you think this surprises me, it doesn’t.”
“I might be moving home,” she shared.
Fuck.
“I wish you wouldn’t.”
“I might not have a choice.”
“Then avoid me.”
“Johnny—”
“Shandra, just don’t.”
She gave that a few beats.
Then Shandra was all Shandra was.
Gently, tenderly, she said, “Okay. I won’t. I have to come home, but I’ll avoid you, Johnny.”
“Obliged.”
“Tell me one thing. Are you happy?”
He was not happy.
His shot at happy walked out his door with his dog and went on the lam with her brother exactly one week after his father died.
You didn’t turn into a unicorn.
“Yes,” he answered.
“I . . . okay.” He could almost hear her swallow. “Good.”
She wouldn’t ask. Not about another woman. Not because she didn’t want to know. But because she was Shandra. She did the worst to him and it cut her up just a little less than it did him, that little less being all she needed to go through with it.
She wouldn’t put him in that spot.
She wouldn’t infect what he had with another woman.
She wouldn’t do that.
But she could guess.
And Johnny reckoned she was guessing.
“Take care of yourself,” he bid.
“You too,” she whispered.
“Goodbye, Shandra.”
“’Bye, Johnny.”
He didn’t hesitate to disconnect.
He also didn’t hesitate to do what he did next, something he knew he shouldn’t do after he got done talking to Shandra for the first time in three years.
He went to his texts, a specific number, and typed in, You remember how to get to the mill?
He moved to the car he was working on but didn’t get the chance to get stuck in because Izzy texted him back.
It’s driving yonder until you hit a dirt road and then you drive on that until you hit a stone building with a water wheel.
Yes, he shouldn’t have texted her after he spoke with Shandra for the first time in three years.
This was because the smile her text gave him felt wrong, twisted, corrupt.
He had to exit her life.
He had to do it tomorrow night over dinner.
Hell, he should ask her to meet him at Home and tell her there, not make her come all the way out to the mill for him to share what hadn’t really started and could never have been was over.
He didn’t change their plans.
You missed about three turns, he texted back.
Whoops, she replied.
Oh yeah.
He had to exit her life.
Save me from happening onto a lunatic with an underground bunker who’s going to hold me captive and force me to make babies so he can build a flock of crazies and send me directions, she went on.
Fuck yeah.
He had to get the hell out of Eliza’s life.
Johnny texted directions.
Then he texted, Be there whenever you get there. I’ll make something that works with that.
I have to stop and let out the dogs and deal with the horses.
Leave a key under your mat tomorrow and I’ll go do that after I’m done at the garage. His thumbs arrested, then they moved on without his permission, And I’ll get Swirl and Dempsey and bring them to the mill.
Jesus.
What was he doing?
Fabulous. I’ll be with you around 6 or 6:30, she returned.
Bring a toothbrush.
Jesus.
What the fuck was he doing?
Roger that, Ghostrider.
The smile that got didn’t seem corrupt.
It was still wrong.
Smartass, he replied.
She shot him a toothy-grinned emoji and I’ll bring wine.
I’ll get wine just bring you.
I’m kind of picky about wine.
I’ll get a lot of it so you’ll have your pick.
I can just bring what I like, Johnny.
Baby, so we’re not texting up until the time you’re gonna show at my house tomorrow night, just . . . bring . . . you. I’ll get the fucking wine.
Okeydokey.
Go back to work.
YOU go back to work.
I’m spanking you tomorrow night.
No text came in for long moments, and he knew she slid right into the shy she could forget when she was with him and they were both fully-clothed and sex wasn’t imminent or after he got his hands on her, before he got, This is my technologically clad vow to be good from this point forward.
The woman couldn’t be bad with a gun stuck to her head.
Unless she was naked.
Then she was anything he wanted her to be.
Jesus.
See you tomorrow, Iz.
You betcha, Johnny.
He shoved his phone in the back pocket of his coveralls and leaned over the car.
He did not see the engine.
He saw Izzy at her sink wearing a light-purple top that clung to her tits, purple, green and pink striped pajama bottoms, the most ridiculous boots he’d ever seen on her feet, her huge mass of tawny hair piled up in a mess at the top of her head, an orange bird on her shoulder.
He then saw her in those black pants that clung to her ass with that sharp shirt that made her look badass, wearing those pumps he wanted to fuck her in, ruining all that with her huge mass of tawny hair tumbling over her shoulders making her not look like a professional businesswoman but instead a sex kitten stripper in her fake professional businesswoman’s outfit before she tore it off.
Then he saw her on his deck in his tee, holding a coffee mug looking uncertain and shy, and sleepy and gratifyingly thoroughly fucked, and so cute he still wondered how he managed not to tackle her to the wood and bury his cock up to her throat.
That vision turned into her last night, holding on to the top curve of her iron headboard, her neck twisted, those clear blue eyes directed at him hazy with sex and turned on as fuck, her lips swollen from his mouth and moist from her tongue running along them as she took his cock from behind and begged him to give it to her harder.
His final vision was altogether different.
Years before, Shandra sitting at his father’s table, her beautiful face filled with laughter, the sound of it mixed with his dad’s, ringing in his old man’s dining room.
He’d wanted to hate her.
He’d never managed that.
He’d wanted to put her behind him.
He’d never managed that either.
He needed to exit Izzy’s life.
She knew about Shandra and he’d tell Izzy she was coming back to town.
And he’d make her dinner tomorrow night and take her camping on the weekend and share how it was.
She seemed to understand a lot of shit. She even seemed to understand about Shandra.
Maybe he wouldn’t lose her.
Maybe they could be friends.
Maybe she’d have him over when she had her other friends over, he could eat her guacamole and get her cute and shy and smartass and know he was taking it in a way that was healthy for her, which was something that would cut. But it was something he could live with better than what he could do to her if he didn’t exit being in her life that way or not having her at all.
And maybe he was a selfish dumbfuck.
But whatever way it went, he’d explain things while they were camping.
After that, it was her choice and that was the best he could do.
It always had been.