Page 97 of Guitars and Cages

“And I could use about ten more hours of sleep,” I muttered, shivering. I wanted my blanket back; I wanted to close my eyes and slip back into the dream he’d jarred me out of. It had been more memory than dream, really, of the time me and Gage had tracked down the mountain lion who’d been killing cattle on both of our families’ ranches. There’d been four teams of us out looking—Michael and Chase, Cole and Alex, me and Gage, and Gage’s parents—but we’d been the ones to find it.

“You’d have gotten plenty of sleep if you hadn’t taken off for God knows where.”

My face was buried against my pillow, my words muffled by the cloth. “I went home.”

It shocked him; the heavy weight of him sitting on the edge of my bed bounced me a little, even as he fumbled for words. “Home? What the hell do you mean you went home. You don’t mean home, home, do you? You didn’t, did you? Why?”

I wanted to explain it all—the texts from Eve, the hours in the hospital room—but I didn’t have the energy to say anything more than, “Gage died.”

A sharp intake of breath followed my words, and then a heavy exhale. I felt his hand on my shoulder, giving it a squeeze. “Damn, Asher, I’m fuckin’ sorry, man.”

“I wanna sleep, can I have my blankets back?”

“Uhh, yeah, sure. Sorry, here,” he rambled as he spread the blankets back over me. I yanked them over my head, burrowing back into my makeshift cave. I could feel that he was still sitting there, but I wished like hell he’d go away.

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me? I’d have gone with you.”

“Didn’t think you would, figured you’d just talk me outta it.”

“Why the hell would you think that?”

“’Cause you hate it there.”

“No, I hated the way people treated us there. Didn’t matter what any of us tried to do, we were still gonna be trash to them.”

“Yeah.”

“I’d still have gone with you. I liked Gage, he was a good guy. What the hell happened?”

I wanted to shove him, to yell at him that he wouldn’t have thought Gage was such a good guy if he knew what we’d been doing together. I wanted to kick him off the bed, ’cause he wasn’t Alexia or Conner, and I couldn’t curl up to him the way I desperately needed to curl up to someone right now. If I couldn’t have that, then I wanted to sleep, so he needed to leave, before the memories started choking me again and I was reminded of how much time I’d wasted being scared to go home.

“A friend took me, I prolly couldn’t have kept the bike between the lines anyway.”

“We could have borrowed Morgan’s truck.”

“No, we couldn’t; Morgan don’t want nothing to do with me now that he knows I ain’t his kid.”

“What?”

“The stupid DNA test came back and said he wasn’t my dad; turns out I’m the old man’s after all. Alexia is his, though.”

“I wish you’d stop calling him that. His goddamn name is Alex. I tried to tell you he was the only one of us who’d turn out to be Morgan’s son; he’s the only one of us Morgan ever wanted anyway.”

“Why are you so angry with him?”

“How can I not be angry with him? He fuckin’ tossed me out, too; should I be fuckin’ happy? Don’t waste your time being upset about it. If he don’t want us around, then fine. We don’t need him; we’ll do fine on our own.”

“I wanna go to sleep.”

“Fine, fine, but when you get up later, we’re getting’ drunk. All this brooding isn’t gonna help nothing.”

“Go away.”

“Fine, I’m going.”

He finally got up off the edge of my bed, but then I didn’t hear footsteps for about a minute before he finally walked away. A short time later I heard the door to the apartment slam, and finally, there was silence. For all of about three minutes; then my phone went off. I debated not answering it, but I was reminded of the last time I’d ignored my phone and scurried from my bed to answer it. “Hello.”

It was Alexia, and from the sound of it, she was in a panic. “Rory’s gone. We can’t find him anywhere; you gotta come down and help.”