Page 86 of Guitars and Cages

Conner put his hand on my shoulder. “Come on, just go with her.”

We followed Eve down the hall to a room, and Conner gave my shoulder a squeeze as she opened the door. As soon as she did I wanted to run, ’cause Gage was lying there with tape and bandages and gauze covering his face, chest, and arms. There was a tube in his nose, a collar around his neck, an IV in his arm, and several monitors were hooked up to him as well. It didn’t even look like him.

“Damn.” I held on to the doorframe, looking for anything familiar, but I couldn’t see past the wrappings. Half of his long hair had been shaved off, and the rest was matted and snarled. I didn’t notice his father, Earl, move until he was looming over me, still able to make me feel like a child even after all this time. I took a step back, and then another, getting ready to pull a rabbit act, but his hand on my arm, and Conner’s hand at my back, effectively pinned me in.

“Don’t you go runnin’ off nowhere, boy,” he told me, and I gulped and let him haul me the rest of the way into the room.

“I’ll be right outside,” Conner told me, and I turned grateful eyes on him and gave him a nod. He backed out of the doorway and let it close, leaving me alone with them.

“Sit down,” Earl said, propelling me toward a chair.

I sat, looking at the ground. “Yes, sir.”

“It took you long enough.”

“Yes, sir, I... I didn’t wanna come.”

He huffed, sounding like he was disgusted with me. “You didn’t want to come. Well, I guess that’s what all those years of friendship amounted to. I suppose you would have been happier not having been told, either; then your conscience could rest easy, the way it’s done all these years.”

I picked at my jeans, wishing there was a hole I could crawl into. “I know what I did was wrong. That’s the only reason I came: to tell him that I was sorry.”

Another snort, almost like he didn’t believe me. “He asked for you.”

Nowthatshocked the hell outta me. My head jerked up to look into his tired eyes. “What?”

“He woke up twice, briefly; he asked for you the first time. That’s when I told Eve to call.”

I shook my head; it made no sense. “But...why?”

“Maybe because he never stopped hoping you’d come back home, you selfish bastard,” Eve hissed.

I looked from her to Earl and back again.

“Why are you even here, Eve? I mean, it’s not like you and Gage ever got along that great.”

“A lot changed since you’ve been gone, son,” Gage’s old man said. “A lot of truths came out, too.”

I froze and swallowed hard. “I never lied to Gage.”

“No, you lied tome,” Eve cut in. “Did you forget how small of a town this is? How could you think I wouldn’t find out the truth?”

“I guess I didn’t think,” I said, looking over at Gage. “What...what happened to him?”

“Hayrack broke on that damned old tractor and the weight of it shoved the tractor over into the gully. Took ‘em two hours to cut him out of there.”

“Damn,” I muttered, reaching out. I wanted to touch his hand, but everything was so bandaged I was afraid of hurting him, so I let my hand fall to my side.

“No, go on,” his dad encouraged. “Let him know you’re here.”

Biting my lip, I reached out again, covering his hand with mine. “Hey, Gage, it’s, uhh, it’s me, it’s Asher. Guess you decided it was gonna take something drastic to get me to come back home.”

I knew better than to expect an answer, or any flicker from the machines. Mom had been silent like this, too, in the last days we’d visited her.

“Why the hell did it have to take something like this for you to come back home?” Eve asked, her voice soft and full of pain.

I turned to look at her, saw how tired and angry she was, and was reminded of Kimber. I seemed to have a way with pissing women off. I had to admit one thing, though: I did owe her an explanation.

“Was one of those truths that came out the truth about what happened between me, Gage, and my old man?”