Chapter Ten

AROUND THREE O’CLOCK on Thanksgiving Day, Sam’s lying in his hospital bed watching the Charlie Brown holiday special that airs every year on cable. He used to watch it on TV when he was a kid, and it makes him smile with nostalgia now. He forgot all about the movie until his nurse, who’s visited him more often than necessary today, mentioned it offhand. She feels sorry for him, he can tell. When she told him her shift ends at five, she sounded apologetic, even though she’s got a husband and two kids at home.

Sam’s not unhappy, even if he should be. He spoke to his mother on the phone this morning, and to his sister Sadie and her eight-year-old son. Lauren stopped by and spent a few hours with him, complete with a bottle of whiskey she smuggled in and drank straight from after Sam declined to share it with her. Even now that he’s alone, it’s hard to feel blue when he has a bunch of bouquets to look at and a cluster of GET WELL SOON balloons and a teddy bear sitting on his bedside table. Every other deputy at his station, his lieutenant, his captain, and the sheriff himself have all visited over the last three days, some of them with their wives in tow bearing the flowers. Jethro Beauty showed up, too, along with the guy who sells him beer at the liquor store and a few others from around town he doesn’t know well. He didn’t expect people to care so much.

Sam looks away from the television when somebody knocks on his open door.

Montgomery.

Sam smiles.

“Hey,” the cowboy says, lingering in the doorway. He’s gripping a canvas bag by the straps in one hand.

“Hey,” says Sam. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

Montgomery comes into the room, pulls one of the chairs up close to the left side of the bed, and sits down with the bag in his lap. “Brought you food from the Barbee table. Apparently, it’s Thanksgiving.”

“You don’t say.”

“I know it ain’t dinnertime, so if you’re hungry again later, I can find you something else.”

Montgomery takes two big plastic containers out of the bag, sets one on the tray that folds out of Sam’s bed, passes Sam silverware and napkins, and puts the second container in his lap. He lays a bunch of biscuits folded up in a cloth napkin on the bed in front of him.

“How you feeling?” he asks.

“The same as yesterday.” Sam lies there without touching the container of food. “Which isn’t bad. Still up to my eyeballs in painkillers.”

“Enjoy it while it lasts. Once they send you home, you’ll have to get along with pills, and even the prescription kind ain’t as good as whatever’s in your drip.”

“I’m not complaining, but I think I’m about ready to get out of here.”

Montgomery gives Sam a skeptical look and reaches for a biscuit.

The damage to Sam’s left shoulder is serious, and while the surgery to repair the wound was successful, he’s in for a long recovery. He was fortunate enough to escape bone and nerve trauma, which would’ve made his condition significantly worse, but he’s looking at months of rehab with no guarantee of regaining perfect function and mobility in the shoulder. The doctor told him he’ll need prescription pain meds for at least part, if not all, of his recovery time. His left arm’s out of commission for the foreseeable future, which means he’ll need help with basic tasks during the next several weeks. He’s on paid medical leave from work until further notice, but even when he’s ready to go back, he’ll be office-bound until he meets the department’s standard of physical fitness—if he ever does. Being right-handed, he can still use his gun, which increases his chances of field reinstatement. But if he has a permanent disability, his law enforcement career is all but over unless he wants to take an administrative position.

It’s too much to think about now, and he’s been ignoring it most of the time, since waking up from surgery three days ago. He’s just glad he’s alive, Montgomery is unharmed, and as far as gunshot wounds go, his is not life-threatening. Sam’s always been good at looking on the bright side, and this is one of those situations where the skill comes in handy.

“What the hell are you watching?” Montgomery says, looking at the TV. “Charlie Brown?”

“It’s the Thanksgiving special,” says Sam, smiling.

“You not a football man?”

“Nah. Not really.”

“Me neither. Though I have been known to watch a Cowboys game on occasion.”

“Wait, that’s right. You’re from Texas. How are you not crazy about football?”

“Always been partial to the rodeo. And high school football’s a bigger deal statewide in Texas than the NFL anyway.”

Sam grins. “Were you on the team? In high school?”

“Hell no. Were you?”

Sam snorts. “Do I look like a football player to you?”

“No,” Montgomery says, looking at Sam with a sudden soft affection in his eyes and face.

Sam looks back at him, caught off guard by the other man’s expression.

Montgomery ducks his head and pops the lid off his container of food, places it on the bed.

Sam redirects his gaze to the TV, not knowing what to make of the moment. He still doesn’t touch his food on the foldout tray table. He doesn’t want to be rude, but he doesn’t have much of an appetite. He glances at Montgomery’s food and then back at the TV. “What did Mrs. Barbee send you away with?”

Montgomery clears his throat. “Turkey, mashed potatoes, little bit of cranberry sauce, stuffing, and some green beans.”

“She a good cook?”

“You tell me.”

Sam doesn’t reply. He doesn’t move to start eating either. He watches the television for half a minute, then looks at Montgomery again. “So Troutman’s dead.”

“Yes, sir. Died at the scene.”

“And you killed him.”

Montgomery gives him a small nod.

“They’re not pressing charges against you.”

“So I’ve been told.”

Sam takes a moment, then says, “You’re lucky. Killing two men on two different days inside of six months is something cops can get away with, but civilians…”

“I don’t think anybody wants to punish me for killing the guy who shot you, Deputy. Besides—it wouldn’t look good on the news if they did.”

He’s not wrong.

“I wish you hadn’t,” Sam tells Montgomery, a softness in his eyes.

“Why?”

“Because whatever you say, that’s a weight on you for the rest of your life.”

“He tried to kill you. He almost did.”

“I don’t hold it against him.”

Montgomery looks as if Sam slapped him in the face. “Why the hell not?”

Sam waits, then says, “Because I finally feel like I paid my debt. For Daniel.”

“That’s just about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard, Sam.”

Sam shuts his eyes, drowsy with drugs and the relaxation Montgomery’s presence always puts him in. He wants to know how the rest of the shootout went after Troutman got him, but the story will have to wait.

After a minute filled only with the sounds of Charlie Brown, Montgomery says, “I been doing a lot of thinking since you landed yourself in here.”

“Yeah? That makes one of us.” Sam’s voice is raw and raspy. He smiles a little, trying to make light of the situation. He’s spent most of the last three days unconscious.

Montgomery pauses. “When we were out there, waiting for help, I’m pretty sure I knew you were going to live. But there was a split second, right after Troutman shot you—I didn’t know where you’d been hit. I can’t really put into words how I felt. Then, once we got here and they took you into surgery, and I had hours to myself, I kept wishing it was me in your place.”

Sam’s looking right at him now, and Montgomery’s looking back, gray eyes and blue holding each other steady.

Sam swallows, his throat tight with emotion. He doesn’t even try to speak because he knows he’ll choke up if he does, and he can’t think of anything to say anyway.

“Maybe if I hadn’t gone out there with you, if I had done something different, none of this would’ve happened,” Montgomery continues. “If that’s true, you gettin’ hurt is part on me, and I’m sorry. I’ve been wanting to tell you the last few days.”

“What else?” Sam asks in a quiet voice.

Montgomery averts his eyes from Sam. He doesn’t answer at first, and Sam waits. He takes in the softness of Montgomery’s face, the lines creased into his weatherworn skin at the corners of his eyes. Another decade of ranch work will steal his youth and some of his beauty, but even if the sun ages him for the worse, he’ll end up one of those silver-haired men still handsome.

It was violence and death that brought Sam and Montgomery together in the first place. Montgomery was the most vivid part of the most traumatic experience of Sam’s life. But Sam doesn’t want to see him that way. When he closes his eyes and thinks of Montgomery, he doesn’t see a man with a gun in his hand. He doesn’t see blood or feel pain. He sees the cowboy on a horse in the desert. He sees him in a field with the mountains behind him, the sky dusty pink with sunset. The last good and pure thing in the world, just beyond him in the distance.

“I thought I was used to being alone,” Montgomery says. “But some time these last few months, I got to liking your company. Now, I don’t want to go without it.”

Sam stares at him, and Montgomery meets his eyes again.

“I want—” There’s a vulnerability in Montgomery’s face, in his eyes, that Sam hasn’t seen before. He doesn’t look away.

“What?” asks Sam before he can stop himself. “What do you want?”

Montgomery’s gray eyes are clear, but the rest of him seems wrung out. He doesn’t speak for a long minute, as if he’s gathering his thoughts and trying to figure out how to express them.

“You ever watch the old Westerns?” he says. “The classics? You remember in a lot of those stories, the hero was a man who didn’t have a family, no wife, nothing to tie him anyplace—but he had a partner, another man who rode with him? They’d go from town to town or stay in the wilderness, waiting for the next adventure and living simple in the meantime? Didn’t matter if they were outlaws or cowboys or deputies. They had each other to the end.”

Sam feels heavy on the bed and the pillow, lying there and studying Montgomery. Maybe it’s the opiates coursing through his body, but the weight of Montgomery’s loneliness suddenly hits him like a foul ball to the gut. He finally understands the other man, even if he can’t describe what he knows, and it breaks his heart some kind of way it hasn’t been broken since he was a boy.

Montgomery’s looking at him with more earnestness than Sam’s ever seen on anybody, waiting to hear whether or not Sam comprehends his meaning.

And Sam says, “Do I get to be Butch?”

Montgomery blinks, then breaks into a God-honest smile.

“Because I think you’re more of a Sundance.”

“Things didn’t end well for those two,” Montgomery says. “Maybe you should pick a different pair.”

The men are quiet for a little while, letting time and silence take the heat out of the conversation as their smiles fade away.

“I would like that.” Sam’s looking at Montgomery with warmth in his eyes, and Montgomery lifts his head to meet them. “Being your partner that way.” Sam’s voice is dreamy to his own ears. “We make a good team. I’m not any good at normal anyway.”

Montgomery stares at him, and Sam smiles deep and wide with the pleasure of making the decision out loud.

“I’m not asking you for anything,” Montgomery says.

“I know. But I’m offering.”

Montgomery pauses, looking not so brave or cool in the chair. “I can’t trust you won’t change your mind.”

“That’s all right. I have time to prove myself.”

He looks back at the TV, satisfied. Charlie Brown’s almost over.

Montgomery sucks in a breath and stands up like he’s been sitting too long and his joints are stiff. “Better find us a microwave.” He grabs the container of food off Sam’s tray table, holding his own in his other hand.

“Montgomery,” Sam says.

The cowboy stops in the doorway and looks over his shoulder.

“I promise I won’t hurt you.”

Montgomery gives a slight nod and walks out of the room.

Maybe he doesn’t trust that either, but for the first time since he proposed to his ex-wife, Sam knows what he wants and where he’s going. For the first time since his divorce, he has something to look forward to.