Lost & Found

“Yes,” he said in a calm voice, “yes, I am. And so are you.”

Giving him another shove for good measure, I spun around and marched away.

“I hate you!” I yelled over my shoulder, heading into a night so dark, I wasn’t sure I could make my way back home.

Home . . .

Willow Springs wasn’t my home. It was a mirage of one. A carrot dangled in front of me. A dream I’d let myself dream and one that would never be realized.

When Garth’s next words came, I felt the first tear about to form in the corner of my eye. “You want a drink?”

I came to a stop. Sniffing, I turned slowly. “No,” I said, the volume long gone from my voice. “I need one.”

Garth inclined his head. “Me, too. And I hate to drink alone. Reminds me too much of my dad.” He waited for me to cross the distance between us before adding, “Let’s go drown our sorrows before we have to wake up and get back to our shitty lives.”

Drinking alone with a guy like Garth Black wasn’t the smartest thing to do. I knew that. Hell, I’d lived that. But right then, with the way I felt and the pain I wanted to forget, I just didn’t care. I’d gone through a long period of turning to guys to make me forget, to temporarily ease the pain and sell me the illusion of being wanted and loved. The past couple years, I leaned more toward drowning the pain out with a bottle. Or I had, pre-Willow Springs. I hadn’t had one drop of alcohol since arriving . . . but that was about to change.

I followed Garth for a few minutes. Long enough to wonder if he was leading me into the middle of nowhere. Until I remembered “middle of nowhere” was where I’d been since I’d stepped off of the bus. After another minute, Garth came to a halt. Sweeping his hand ceremoniously in front of him, he said, “Home sweet home.”

Oh. My. God.

The trailer that made a person itch just by looking at it? Yeah, that was what we were standing in front of.

“Um . . .”

“Don’t worry. I know what you’re thinking.” Garth moved around to the side where a couple of lounge chairs in the same ruin as the trailer were. “How can I live with myself living in the lap of luxury when there are little children dying of starvation.”

I glanced over at Garth curiously. Was that a joke that had just slipped out of his cryptic mouth? Was that a bit of snark where I’d been so certain none could reside?

I didn’t know how to respond to his unexpected slip of humor, so I stayed silent. After sweeping off the debris on one of the rundown chairs, he loped toward the trailer. “I’ll be right back with whatever I can find that’s the strongest.”

I almost replied, Don’t touch anything, but thought better of it. If that was Garth’s home . . . well, that was his home. I wouldn’t step a foot inside of it, ever, but that didn’t mean I had to knock it.

A couple of windows had a bit of flashing light streaming from them, like maybe a TV was playing inside. I was just settling—carefully—into the lounge chair when I heard a couple of raised voices. So Garth didn’t live alone and, judging from the deep voices, he lived with another man. A brother, maybe? A father?

Whoever else shared the dilapidated trailer with him, one thing was clear: they weren’t on good terms at the moment. I couldn’t make out individual words, just lots of shouting and curses thrown back and forth, but I was familiar with that “conversation.” My mom and I had it at least once a week since I’d been brave enough to stand up to her.

When I heard the familiar sound of glass shattering, I popped up in my chair. I was about to break a solemn vow and actually enter that rust bucket when Garth practically lunged out of the door. What looked like a bottle exploded into tiny pieces behind him when it crashed into the doorway instead of . . . his head?

Garth glared at the ground for a couple seconds as he continued toward me, a bottle clutched in his hand, but when he lifted his face, his expression was almost as unfazed as it had been when I’d been the one yelling at him.

“What the hell was that?” I asked. I knew, as someone who’d dealt with it, if a person was within hearing or seeing distance, we hoped to hell they’d just keep their mouth shut and pretend they hadn’t witnessed a thing. However, being on the other side of the equation, I understood why so many people couldn’t stay silent.

“Well, let’s see,” Garth said as he stopped in front of me. “It’s a weekday night, past ten o’clock, and all the liquor except for my secret stash”—he lifted the bottle—“ran out an hour ago. So that means he’s still drunk enough to be pissed but not quite drunk enough to be passed out yet.”

I jumped when I heard another breaking sound. “Who?” I asked, wondering if being within the same county line as that person, let alone their backyard, was safe.

Garth’s expression ironed out. “My dad.” His words were like ice again, and from that look on his face, I guessed he really did need that drink as badly as I did. “So? Bottoms up?” He shook the bottle in front of me, and even though I knew I shouldn’t, I couldn’t say no.

Not when relief from the pain was a few inches and drinks away.

“Bottoms up.” I took the bottle from him and unscrewed the lid. “Tequila?” Judging from the label, it was cheap tequila.

“To-kill-ya?” Garth said as he dropped into one of the chairs. “Yep.”

Since there weren’t any cups to be found, I lifted the bottle straight to my lips. “Why do I have a feeling I’m going to regret this in the morning?”

“Because you will,” he said as he slid his hat off and dropped it on the ground. Seeing those guys without their hats was always strange, at least when they weren’t sitting around the Walker dining room table. “Me, however? I won’t.”

“You strike me as the kind of guy who doesn’t regret much,” I said before tipping the bottle back. Cool liquid entered my mouth and ran hot down my throat. I hadn’t had a straight shot of alcohol in so long I almost made the pucker face and coughed, but I held it back. I passed the bottle to Garth.

“I don’t,” he replied, taking his own heavy swig. “And you shouldn’t either.” Garth kicked his legs up onto the lounge chair and stared at the stars. He took another drink before passing the bottle back.

“Regret’s one of the few things I’m good at,” I said, taking a shot-sized drink. “I’m not giving that up.”

Yikes. The tequila was already getting to me. That’s the only reason I’d let those vulnerable words slip through my mouth. I didn’t like being vulnerable, but I hated seeming vulnerable in front of guys like Garth Black.

Time to change the conversation.

“So what’s up with you and your dad? Always been this dysfunctional or did you recently decide to jump on that bandwagon?” I handed the bottle off to Garth. Too much, too fast, as my words proved.

Garth’s eyes narrowed at the sky. “I don’t want to talk about my past any more than you want to talk about yours,” he said before taking a drink. Actually, it was more of a chug. “Don’t ask me questions about my family unless you want me asking you the same ones about yours.”

That got my attention.

“Like I said before, Rowen, you and me are so alike, if I had tits and got my head stuck in the clouds every now and again, I’d be you. And if you had a dick and were a bit meaner, you’d be me.” Garth took another drink before passing me the bottle. It was halfway empty. That probably explained why the stars were swirling above my head.

“So.” Just the way he said it, I was already wincing before he said anything else. “I take it, since I found you curled up asleep and alone a good couple miles from Willow Springs, that you took my Jesse warning to heart.”

It wasn’t a question. He knew I had.

The tequila had dulled the blow of hearing his name, but it hadn’t made me immune. I knew it wouldn’t matter if ten years down the road, I heard that name as I passed a stranger on the street. I would never be able to hear the name Jesse again without thinking about him.

“You don’t want to talk about your dad, great. I don’t want to talk about Jesse.” When I took another drink, the tequila didn’t burn. In fact, it drank more like water than alcohol. I’d experienced that enough times to know I was a few more drinks away from passing out. So I took one more drink and handed it back to Garth. I was officially cutting myself off.

“We can’t talk about our families. We can’t talk about our pasts. And we can’t talk about Jesse, or I’m guessing any of the Walkers.” He looked at me and waited. Like he was waiting for me to agree.

So I lifted my eyebrows and gave him a Your point? look.

“Then what will we talk about?” He seemed amused with himself. Or with me. Or with the situation. I couldn’t tell, and the alcohol only made deciphering emotions more difficult.

“Why don’t we just not talk?” I suggested. Partly because I didn’t feel like talking, and partly because I was nearing the point where speech would be difficult. At least non-slurred speech. I burrowed down deeper in the chair and my blanket, closed my eyes, and let the alcohol do its job.

“That’s my favorite kind of conversation to have,” he replied, sounding like he was shifting in his seat.

So we agreed on something at last. “Mine, too,” I said right before the haze took me over, and either I fell asleep or I passed out.

Whichever it was, I was pulled back to the surface when a hand molded over my cheek. The hand was warm, and rough, and strong. Another hand wove through my hair before a pair of lips settled just below my ear, at the pinnacle of my neck. The hands holding my head in place curled deeper when that mouth started traveling down my neck. When it stopped at the base and gently sucked at the sensitive skin, I moaned. The touch was familiar, yet foreign. The urgency in the touch, the gentle strength in the hands were familiar. The stubble I felt scratching against my neck and the spicy scent were foreign.

When that mouth made its return journey back up my neck, I arched for it to come closer and practically trembled when his tongue tasted my skin.

“Jesse . . .” I whispered, trying to push through the haze. I wanted to touch him back with the same kind of precision. I wanted to feel him, but my hands were numb and could barely function.

What happened next, I didn’t expect. The hands and mouth pulled back as though I’d shocked them before I felt the whoosh of a body whisking away. Right before I fell back into my stupor, I heard what sounded like another bottle breaking against something.

Chapter Eleven

I fell asleep to the sound of breaking glass and woke up to the sound of raised voices. They weren’t really raised. They were more like exploding.

“Didn’t expect to see you around this place ever again, Walker. Were you in the mood for slumming it?”

“So help me God, Garth! If you touched her . . . If you did anything to her, I will finish what I should have months ago.”