By the time they finished dinner that night, Carma was desperate for space. Quiet. Solitude. The day had sucked her dry.
She had removed herself as far as she could from the center of attention—a.k.a. Gil. He was kicked back in one of the loungers with his right butt cheek packed in ice, rolling his eyes at the volley of sore-ass jokes. On the other side of the fairgrounds, the midway and the beer garden were going strong in the rapidly lengthening shadows, but with the rodeo wrapped up the Jacobs rigs were the only ones left in the contestant parking area.
Through all the questions and ribbing, Gil hadn’t mentioned the doctor’s last offhand comment, but Carma felt the knowledge simmering inside him. The tangle of shimmering possibilities and cold realities. Too much to share while he was still trying to sort it out.
Beni dumped his empty plate and silverware in a tub, then snagged a couple of cookies before offering the tin to Gil. “I guess I don’t have to be so careful about throwing body blocks when we’re playing basketball.”
“Neither do I,” Gil shot back. “The two of you better prepare to be schooled.”
“In your dreams,” Quint scoffed, back to his normal zen self.
Beni handed off the cookie tin and flopped into a chair. “You might be sound, but you’re still old.”
“Hey, Peyton Manning had a couple of years on me when he won his last championship ring,” Gil retorted, but it was clear behind the jokes he was considering his new limits. How much could his body take? How well could it perform?
What if the MRI and his Boston doctors confirmed that he could ride again?
Tori’s phone chimed and she checked the message. “It’s Delon. I assume WTF? means he heard about Gil’s wreck.”
She was dialing as she let herself into Shawnee’s trailer. Would she tell him what the doctor had said? Gil was her patient, but technically she hadn’t been on duty today, so she wasn’t bound by confidentiality.
Carma guessed that Tori wouldn’t hide behind a technicality. If Gil wanted Delon to know, it would be up to him to break the news.
As if on signal, the men rose and began gathering the remains of supper and dishes, hauling them into the crew trailer in what appeared to be a routine division of labor.
Beni and Quint moved to help, but Shawnee shooed them away. “Go out on the midway and waste all your money winning cheesy stuffed toys. You know how that impresses the girls.”
The boys exchanged an eye roll, then looked to Gil for a nod of approval before sauntering off toward the twirling lights.
“I’ll tell Tori you’ll be back by ten to head to the motel,” Gil called after them. Then he levered his chair into an upright position and tossed the half-melted ice packs toward a nearby cooler. “I’m going for a walk to loosen up.”
His steps were slow, his body held in careful alignment as he moved off down the road that circled the rear of the arena. No doubt his back, neck, and shoulder were also feeling the effects of the fall. Carma started to say she’d go with him, then realized he had very specifically not invited her. Heat stung her face as she wondered if anyone else had taken note. Maybe they would chalk it up to Gil being Gil. Maybe he just wanted to be alone with his thoughts and was all too aware that Carma couldn’t help intruding.
Or, like Carma, he was a little freaked out by how easily she could tap into his energy and direct it where she wanted. When it worked—and it often didn’t—the sensation was always unnerving, like sticking her fingers into a human light socket. Or in Gil’s case, a nuclear reactor. But she’d expected him to make her fight through layers of resistance, not meet her more than halfway.
And this energy had nothing to do with the sexual arousal on constant simmer between them. It ran far deeper, at a level that required implicit, almost unconscious trust from an extremely guarded man.
What did that say about him? And them? Her head reeled with the implications.
She massaged her aching temples. God, it had been a day. Days, actually. From the moment her purse had disappeared, she’d been on a nonstop roller coaster of drama and emotion. She could feel it all roiling inside her, pushing her system toward overload. She had to get away from these perfectly lovely people.
She excused herself on the pretense of heading over to the exhibitor showers in the livestock pavilion, which wasn’t a complete lie. She’d end up there eventually. Grabbing her bag and a towel from the black Freightliner—her assigned quarters for the night—she set out in the opposite direction from Gil.
Given her druthers, Carma would’ve escaped to a patch of grass out on the edge of the rodeo grounds, far from the noise and lights. Unfortunately, the memory of that snake was all too fresh. When she was out of sight of the others, she cut through the bleachers, climbed the fence, and made her way to the darkest, quietest corner of the empty arena, where she changed into her already grubby tank top, kicked off her sandals, and stretched out on her back with her bag for a pillow.
Ah. That was better. The sandy dirt was cool against her bare legs and arms, in contrast to the still-sultry air. She dug her fingers into the earth and tipped her head back to gaze up at what stars shone bright enough to penetrate the haze of light from the midway.
Breathe in, the scent of earth and rodeo stock and the nearby trees. Breathe out, tension floating into the endless void above.
Slowly her system leveled, her mind cleared, and the man-made noises faded to the background in favor of the whirring cicadas. There were dozens of nuances, from chirrups to something like the sound of a squealing fan belt. She began to hum along, the rising, falling, repetitive notes flowing through and out of her, along with the day’s accumulated stress.
Ten, twenty, maybe thirty minutes—she couldn’t have guessed how long she’d been there when she became aware of someone watching her. She lifted her head and blinked her focus to the near distance, where Cole Jacobs leaned on the arena gate.
“Don’t let me interrupt,” he said, voice almost reverent. “When I saw you lyin’ there, I figured someone had had too much beer. Then I heard…” He shook his head, as if he had no words. “I shouldn’t have eavesdropped, but it made me feel good.”
“Me too.”
His curiosity was palpable, so she lifted a hand to beckon him inside. He hesitated. “I don’t want to interrupt your private time. We consider that precious around here.”
“I’ll bet.” Bing had told her Cole was autistic, and no doubt he’d heard about her unique mental capacity. She sat up. “If I stay much longer I will pass out.”
He pushed through the gate and joined her, lowering himself to sit with hands on bent knees, not beside her, but not facing her directly, so eye contact wasn’t necessary. “I use music to control my anxiety,” he said, “but I’ve never heard anything quite like that. As if you were singing along with the cicadas.”
“Pretty much.” Now that her concentration had widened, she could hear a whole chorus of night insects and birds. “For me it works better when the sounds come from nature.”
“I thought it might be a prayer. Something, um, Native.”
“No.” At least not in the usual way. Uncle Tony said it was a connection she’d made before anyone had told her it wasn’t that simple to talk to the spirits—if that’s what she was doing. “It’s just a thing I’ve done for as long as I can remember. When I was a little girl, I’d go lie out in the tall grass and sing along with the sounds it made in the breeze. Or sit in the door of the barn during thunderstorms and make up rain songs. If you know how to listen, everything has a rhythm.”
She didn’t add that on very special nights, she also heard music in the stars.
Cole went silent. After a few minutes he nodded. “I can hear it, but don’t expect me to sing it.”
“Hearing is enough. Touching.” She scooped up a handful of dirt and let it trickle through her fingers. “It’s easy to lose contact with nature when you’re surrounded by concrete and metal.”
“And humans.” He heaved a powerful sigh. “Funny. I have to work at reading people and you’re the exact opposite, but we both ended up out here tonight.”
Alone. But Cole had Shawnee. “How do you do it? You and Shawnee, I mean. The two of you are so different.”
“Only on the surface. And we fill each other’s gaps. Shawnee runs interference so I don’t get overwhelmed by the people stuff, and I… Well, she’d been on her own for a long time and she needed someone solid.”
He was definitely that. Carma wondered, with more than a touch of envy, what it would be like to be the one who flew free, instead of always being the anchor.
She considered her next words carefully. “Was your brother Gil’s rock?”
Cole ducked his head, but couldn’t hide a low pulse of grief.
“Gil mentioned him on the drive down,” she added. “I got the sense that losing Xander was a big turning point in his life.”
Cole thought for a moment, then nodded. “Gil was closer to him than he was to anyone, even Delon. Or maybe just in a different way. Gil didn’t have to be the big brother with Xander.”
And with Delon he’d had to act as both parent and brother, which would’ve also affected their relationship.
“He listened to Xander.” Cole scuffed a divot into the dirt with his heel. “If Delon or Violet or anyone else tried to tell him to ease off, he’d get pissed. But Xander had a way of talking him down. Joking. Teasing. He was good at that. When he was gone…”
Cole left her to imagine the hole he’d left behind, in so many lives. And Gil had fallen into the abyss. They sat for a few more minutes, then Cole angled a bashful smile at her.
“I see what Analise meant. For whatever reason, a person wants to tell you things.” He pushed to his feet, graceful for such a big man, and offered her a hand. When she was standing, he said, “Gil’s more shook up than he’s letting on. You can always tell when he goes off by himself.”
“Maybe he needs private time, too.”
Cole shook his head. “He’s not like us. Leave him alone, and he’ll just wind himself tighter and tighter.”
The part of her that lived to be needed strained at the leash. You could save him. Soothe him. Fix him.
Send him running in the opposite direction, bruised ass and all.
Carma lifted her brows. “Are you suggesting I should loosen him up?”
“Ah…that wasn’t exactly what I meant.” Cole’s wince was nearly audible.
She laughed. “I’m messing with you. He’s not in any shape for extracurricular activities tonight.”
“Don’t be so sure.” Cole’s grin flashed in the darkness. “If he has the will, he’ll find a way.”
So she’d seen, but Cole didn’t realize it wasn’t today’s fall that had knocked Gil sideways. It was the possibility of how far he could rise.
Carma knew, though, and after his response this afternoon, she was sure she could offer him relief, both mentally and physically. But it would require a demonstration of more of her special skill set, and she wasn’t ready to have that also become general knowledge.
Gil had cut Tori off when she’d started pushing for explanations, though. And he had trusted Carma with his inner self.
The least she could do was return the favor, right?