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MERCY
I’ve never been so furious with any two people in my entire life. The worst part is, I don’t even know who I’m more furious with. Him, for showing up, out of the blue as if on instinct the second I needed him, or me, for actually having to fight my desires to run straight into his arms.
“Where’s Chase?” he asks, though I notice he makes no effort to look for him. “What happened?”
“That’s the big question, isn’t it,” I say, almost hissing the words through clenched teeth. “What happened?”
He frowns, his eyes getting dark as his mouth flattens out, unable to read the situation. “Did I do something to upset you?”
“You mean other than breaking my heart?” I snap, suddenly eager to unleash all that I’ve kept caged for the past decade.
“Mercy,” he sighs, and I can hear it in his voice. Pain. The ache I’ve carried with me all this time still lives inside him too.
“Why did you do it?” I whisper, anger suddenly dissipating into the ether.
“We’ve been over this,” he says, eyes turning away from me and moving for the ground at his boots. “What good will come from rehashing things?”
“The truth would be good.” I take a small step toward him, still out of his reach but close enough to feel his presence.
“Don’t you think we’ve had about as much truth as we can manage? Why spell it all out if it’s just going to cause more pain?” Slowly he lifts his eyes until they meet mine, looking down on me with a silent begging streaming from him to stop pressing the issue, stop picking at the scar we both carry, to just...stop.
“What if it didn’t?” I whisper. “What if it made all the pain stop?”
“Red.” His jaw clenches so tightly that I can see a flicker in his skin as he grinds his teeth down harder.
I nod, stepping back again. I clear my throat as if it will somehow clear away all the feelings trying to strangle me from the inside out. “Chase is leaving in the morning.”
A brief moment of surprise flashes in his eyes, but he recovers almost seamlessly. “I suspect you’ll be doing the same in a day or two.”
“See,” I tell him, a bitterness rising in my throat, “that’s always the problem with you. Making assumptions about my choices. Thinking you have it all figured out where my life is concerned.” I shift my weight to my right, preparing to march past him and back inside. “Chase is leaving. He’s going home. I’m already here.”
I’m nearly past him when his hand clasps my arm and brings me to an abrupt stop. “You’re staying?”
“I’m staying.”
“Why?”
“Because, Frank, I’m tired of trying to force things that won’t ever feel right.” I catch his gaze even as his eyes are darting everywhere, trying to make sense of the news. “Aren’t you?”
He doesn’t answer. He just releases my arm and allows me to walk away. The depth of his gesture is hardly lost on me.
Inside, the wedding is still going full swing. It’s stupid, but for a moment there I forgot it was happening at all. Talk about self-involved.
“You look like you could use a drink,” Esther calls out to me from across the long hall.
“I remember the last time I heard that sentence. Your boyfriend said it to me. The first and last time I believed someone when they said it.” I laugh. “Never have eight little words left such an impression.”
Esther giggles, clearly already a few drinks in, “Yeah, well. I was offering one beverage, not a weekend bender in the woods with just the two of us where we both wind up barfing and naked.”
“Who’s naked?” Wade calls out from the doorway.
“You,” I yell back. “All the damn time, it seems.”
Esther cocks her brow and looks back and forth between the two of us. “You two have something you need to share with me?”
Wade shrugs as he begins to stroll toward us. “Only that this one here doesn’t have enough common decency to offer a man some privacy while he’s urinating.”
I scowl. “Ew. Really? Urinating? All those fancy and formal words and that’s the one you choose to end it on it?”
“Urinating is formal,” he insists. He grins as he saunters over. “I could have said, ‘taking a leak’ or ‘having a piss’ or—”
Esther’s hand rushes up to smother his mouth before he can offer any other alternatives. “We get it. You’re fancy even while being gross and inappropriate.”
He wiggles his brows at her and I don’t even have to guess at what he’s insinuating given the words gross and inappropriate triggered the gesture.
“I think I really do need a drink.” I make a face at both of them but neither of them notice. They’re too busy making googly eyes at one another to bother looking in my direction. “Yeah, so...I’m gonna go before you guys start getting gross and inappropriate together.”
I hear Esther giggle as I walk away, and I don’t dare turn around to look and see if it’s at my expense or Wade’s.
“There you are!” Camden says the second I step through the door and reenter the wedding celebration. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
“You have?” I take a quick glance around the room. As far as I can tell, the reception is a smashing success, hence my presence was not needed nor missed. Well, by anyone other than Camden, apparently. “Why?”
“We’re running low on beverages,” she snips, starting her usual march, always on a mission to somewhere. “Come on. You need to help me restock.”
“I mean, who can say no when you ask so nicely?” But I pick up the pace to keep time with her feisty steps just the same.
“You’re missing the point,” she informs me. “I didn’t ask. That’s why you couldn’t say no.” Then she flashes me her signature superior smirk. I used to find those infuriating. Now I think they’re kind of funny. Actually, I’m finding Camden in general to be quite humorous. Which is weird.
“Are we going all the way to the LicketySplit for these drinks, or what?” I ask as we funnel our way past the partiers and out through the back door into another long hallway.
“Very funny.” The way her nose crinkles suggests otherwise. “I was told there’s a storage closet down here somewhere where they stock all the cans for the soda machines out front. I’m hoping no one has discovered the stash prior to us, but given we’ve had half of town living here for the last few days, the odds are likely against us.”
“I mean, that’s kind of the theme of this whole wedding, isn’t it?” I’m only half kidding. “The odds are against us. And yet, we still pulled it off somehow.” I bump her with my hip, completely throwing off her rhythmic stomping and making both of us giggle. “I’m pretty sure lack of beverages is not how we go down on this one.”
Camden finds her footing again and follows it up by smoothing back her slicked hair along the side of her head and checking the spikes on top, though not a one was out of place, before gliding both hands down the front of her dress, just in case the missteps caused some sort of wardrobe malfunction, which of course, it did not. Still, she’s fascinating to watch now that I’m not always worried of being under attack when I’m around her.
Of course, I get a little worried again when she catches me watching her.
“What?”
“What?”
“You were staring. Why?”
I shrug. “I’m just not used to seeing this side of you.”
“What side is that exactly?” she asks, pulling herself up even taller until she reaches a height beyond what her perfect posture already keeps her at.
“Oh, you know what? Never mind. It’s gone again.” I bug my eyes out at her and laugh. “Seriously, Cam. Can’t we just keep our guard down and play nice?”
Her shoulders relax slightly, and I can see her mouth struggle to pick a position before it settles on something close to a cautious smile. “What? Like, you want to be friends?”
“We’re friends with all the same people, Cam,” I reason, “It’s not that big of a stretch to think we might actually get along if we gave each other half a chance.”
Her lips flatten out a bit. She comes to a complete stop, right here, in the middle of the hallway, no storage closet in sight. “Is this because of what MaryBeth told you? Because I don’t need your pity.”
“MaryBeth is a good friend.” I’m glad Cam knows I know. At least there’s one less secret left to dance around. “And you hardly need anyone’s pity. Least of all mine. Look at you. You’re Camden Halliwell. A badass attorney who somehow still makes time to be Lacey’s token pixie princess. If anything, I’ve envied you.” I pause, collecting the last of my thoughts before I say them out loud. “But I don’t want to envy you anymore, Cam. I don’t want silly feuds about things we can’t control, and mostly, I don’t want any more time wasted on not speaking our minds and holding in our truth.” I take a deep breath in and sigh loudly in surrender. “So, yes. I want to be friends. But only if things stay the way they’ve been today. I need a friend who cuts through the bullshit, who says it like it is and doesn’t hold back to spare my feelings. Interested?”
The superior smirk returns. “In bossing you around and insulting you to my heart’s content? I could find that of interest.” She begins her mini-march again. “But only if it goes both ways. I don’t need any more people in my life too scared of me to call me out when I need it.”
“Deal.” I hustle to keep up, but it’s not easy to match her movements.
“Good.” She glares down at me out of the corner of her eye. “Now stop copying me. This is a one of a kind walk I spent years perfecting and you’re just making a mockery of it.”
“You know what they say about mockery.”
“It’ll get you slapped if you keep it up.”
I laugh quietly and widen my stride until I find my own comfortable rhythm again. Just a few more steps anyway. The storage door is just a few feet ahead to our left. Timing is a wonderful thing, especially on days when it seems all the odds are against you.
FRANK
“Thinking of going for a ride?”
I turn my head to peer out the end of my trailer and find my dad standing there with an all-knowing grin plastered onto his weatherworn face.
“Full moon,” I huff, tightening the girth on my saddle. “No clouds in sight. Sky’s lit up more tonight than it’s been for days.”
“Good thing I’ve got Hank all tacked up and ready to go.”
I pause, considering the scenario I find myself in and piecing together how it came to be he just happened to be standing here, with his horse, ready for a ride. “You’re heading home, I take it.”
He chuckles. “Yeah, suppose I better. Came by to wish the happy couple congratulations from me and your mama, but I don’t reckon I better stay for any more of the party when she’s stuck back at the house taking care of everything on her own. Not that she’s too bothered, being as she’s got a new baby to look after since Firefly had her foal this evening.”
I take Dash by the reins and begin to back him out. “I take it all went well?”
He nods. “Sure did. Little filly looks just like her mama.”
“Speaking of mamas, how’s mine doing? I haven’t had much of a chance to check in with her.” Between everything we’ve had going on here, and her helping Esther at the LicketySplit, our paths haven’t had much opportunity to cross.
“She’s good.” He moves a few feet over and out of our way to where Hank is tied to a hunter green truck’s hitch, I think it might be Davis’s, but I’m not sure. Whosever it is, they’re not around to mind much. “Glad you mentioned her though, she had a few things she wanted me to pass along to you. Few pearls of wisdom, if you will.”
“God almighty, does everyone in this town have an opinion about me and Mercy Rose?” I toss the reins over Dash’s head in exasperation and watch as they settle, draping over his neck as I’d hoped.
“I haven’t heard, but I can ask around tomorrow.” He laughs. “Your mama’s wisdom relates more to managing your laundry out here than your woefully neglected love life. Seems she’s worried you may be running out of clean underwear and socks.”
“Oh.” I swallow the bitter taste of humiliation and start winding my way out of the parking lot, Dash walking calmly at my side even with his reins hanging loosely over his neck. Years of partnership have brought us to a level of unspoken communication. It’s strange, when you think about how easily I find communicating with animals to be even when neither party speaks the same language, but then how impossible a task it sometimes seems for me to have even the most basic of conversations with another human being. Even when that human being is my father. “Sorry, it’s been a crazy few days and I jumped to conclusions,” I mumble when I hear his footsteps closing in on mine. “Also, you can tell Mama I packed plenty. No need to worry. I’m not six anymore and forgetting half my shit for the camping trip with Uncle Brett.”
I can see the rim of his hat tip down out of the corner of my eye and I know he’s nodding, but neither of us say anything else until we clear the parking lot and mount our horses.
“Nice night for a ride,” my father says casually as we start down the dirt road that will take us around town and out to the family ranch. “Heard you had a good ride this morning too.”
“Well, shit, Pop, you shoulda just said it was gonna be you givin’ me a Mercy talk.” I slap my thigh so loudly, it startles Dash, and he’s usually bulletproof.
My dad laughs, Hank snorting right along with him, and I can’t help but feel they’re both equally amused by me. “Come on, you knew it was comin’ the second I showed up to tag along for the ride.”
I blow my breath out through flared nostrils, a last defiant move before I accept defeat. “Go on, then. You’re one of many today. Let’s see if you got anything I haven’t already heard.”
He puffs up his chest dramatically, as if he’s physically demonstrating he’s up for the challenge. Then he deflates just as dramatically. “Actually, I was hoping to do the listening part first. Usually helps me prepare for the talking part better.”
“Any part in particular you want to hear about?” I ask, prepared to unload it all, right here, right now. Because he’s my dad, and I may be grown but he’s still the guy I depend on to fix things when they’re broke. And I have a feeling, I’m more broke than I realized.