Page 25 of Austin (The K9 Files #29)

R ox got up super early the next morning after a bad night, then wandered the house in the early morning half-shadow, half-light conditions, holding a cup of coffee in her hand as she contemplated the changes in her own life circumstances.

Leaving the ranch had never been an option for her.

It had always been about continuity, keeping the family line in ownership, keeping everything that the generations before her had worked so hard to maintain.

Yet, for the first time, she wondered about the sacrifices every generation had made in order to keep together the dream of other people, people who were long gone.

She knew it would be a horrible shame to have this beautiful ranch broken up or sold as is to some commercial entity, and yet that’s what was happening all around them.

It was also partly why her father was so adamant to ensure that they kept their land, and she understood that.

She really did. But, at some point in time, she wasn’t sure that she could keep up with what she thought needed to be kept up.

They had money issues. They had equipment failures.

They had staffing issues, and, more than anything else, it was a lonely life.

She’d already cornered the market on loneliness as far she was concerned, and maybe it was time to knock it free.

Hearing a noise behind her, she turned, expecting to see her mom, but instead it was Austin, standing there, his crossed arms, looking at her. She frowned at him.

He smiled. “I love how some mannerisms never change.”

“Such as?” she asked in a clipped tone.

“The minute you see me, when you weren’t expecting to see me, you frown as if it’s the worst thing in the world.”

“It certainly isn’t the worst thing in my world,” she corrected, staring at him. “It’s just an instinctive reaction.”

“Sure, it is, and it’s also one that gives me the weirdest feeling. That, oh it’s you , instead of oh, it’s you ,” he clarified, with the smallest tentative grin.

She flushed, feeling the heat rise up and down her cheeks at his comment. “I think the time for that is long past, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” he replied, taking the last step toward her. “I guess we have to decide whether anything is left between us.”

She looked at him in astonishment. “You didn’t come home for five years, Austin,” she pointed out. “So, I’m pretty sure nothing is between us.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t ask me to come home either. So I took it as a sign that you didn’t want me to. What if we were both wrong?”

She shook her head, not even sure what to do with this version of the man she thought she’d known so well. Yet obviously she didn’t. After he had walked away, she hadn’t been able to forget about him. “I was young and stupid,… but I’m not anymore.”

“Good,” he noted. “There was room for growing up, and there was also room for me to change. I think that’s what life is all about. You make a choice, a decision. You live with it, and you move on and hope that you make a better one the next time.”

She stared at him, her jaw working, and finally the question that she desperately needed answered burst out. “Do you regret leaving?”

He looked at her and smiled. “I guess that’s one of the questions we should address, isn’t it?”

“And that was an evasive maneuver,” she declared, with a wave of her hand.

“You got the question out before I did,” he said, with a smile.

“Did you regret my leaving?” When she didn’t answer right away, he dove in.

“I don’t know that you did, but maybe it was necessary for both of us to experience that.

Maybe we were both young and stupid. I don’t know,” he said.

“I look back on it and wonder if I would have done something differently. I couldn’t not go since I was already committed to the military, but should I have come back and talked to you about it?

Maybe. Did you piss me off by putting me in that position?

Yeah, you sure did. But did I need to be that pissed off?

Probably not,” he admitted. “At some point in time it was too much, so coming back didn’t seem to be much of an option. ”

“So, you just kept running,” she whispered.

“Maybe. I took on one mission after another that kept me away. So the longer I was gone, the harder it was to change course,” he shared.

She nodded, and she felt something inside her sighing ever-so-slightly. “I can get behind that,” she murmured, “because I felt the same way.”

“That’s the thing. We both backed ourselves into a corner, didn’t we?

” he asked, with a wry smile. “Then there was no moving forward. It was what it was, and we were just stuck there. You probably would have changed it, if you had the time, but you didn’t have time.

You didn’t have the opportunity, and you didn’t create it because you thought it was already water under the bridge.

Thus, you found a way to adapt and to move on. ”

“Until you show up out of the blue and realize that adapting and moving on didn’t let you move on at all.”

He laughed. “That’s the trick, isn’t it? Adapting and moving on is one thing, but moving on without having dealt with everything else is a completely different thing.”

She nodded. “So, what I need to know,” she began, “is anything still between us, or did you literally just come here for Cowboy?”

“Cowboy was certainly one of the reasons, and Kat pushing me to come and deal with my history was another,” he replied, with a wry smile. “She’s a very smart woman.”

“Your prosthetic designer, right?”

He nodded. “Badger and I served in the military together years ago. We’ve always kept in touch, and he’s kind of a hub for a lot of lost dogs,” he quipped, with half a sigh. “A lot of lost soldiers too.”

“Is that what you are right now?”

“No,” he declared, a smile on his face. “Was I ever? I don’t know.

Probably. It’s hard, after a life-changing injury, to know what you’re supposed to do with your life anymore—or how you’re supposed to do it—because you don’t have the same abilities anymore.

That’s probably why I would never contemplate coming back here because…

I’m just not the man I used to be. I’m not physically the man I used to be, and I can’t do the work I used to do.

And I know that one of the things most wanted here, most needed here, and most valued here is physical strength and capability,” he conceded.

“At this point in my life, I don’t have the same strength, ability, and fitness level I did before.

I probably can’t even keep up with Jake. ”

“Yet I don’t think he would agree with that.”

“No, he probably wouldn’t, but I’ve never asked him, and I won’t.”

“Pride?” she asked.

“I don’t know if it’s pride,” he replied, “but it’s very humbling to have an injury that requires you to stop and reassess your world.

If nothing else during rehab, I took a close look at the decisions I made and wondered if they were the right ones, but I have to believe they were the right ones at the time.

We can tear ourselves apart with what if s,” he noted, as he shook his head and looked out to the yard, “but the real trick is sorting out what to do now, as you sit here and contemplate something different.”

She stepped back, so he could have better access to the counter, and muttered, “There’s coffee.”

“I assumed there was, since you’re hanging on to that cup with a death grip,” he teased, as his lips twitched. “That is something else you used to do a lot of.”

She stared at him. “What are you talking about?”

“When you were upset or didn’t like something, the cup was almost a prop for you, and you hung on to it just as you are now, as if you’ll try to get through this the best you can, and then you’ll break down afterward.

I’m not here to make you break down. I’m just here to find peace, so I can go on somehow. ”

“Peace so you can go on without me, right?”

He stopped, studied her, and from the look on his face she figured he’d seen the regret on her face. But maybe not…

She nodded, turned on her heel, and headed out onto the deck.

It was all she could do to hold back the tears, to hold back everything, and to make it through this next little bit.

She hoped he would just get some coffee and would leave her alone, leave her alone with the world she had created for herself.

As she stared out at the big, wide world around her, she realized it really was time.

It was time to stop hanging on to hope, time to stop hanging on to anything connected to Austin, thinking he would come back one day and would be the person she thought he was and had always hoped he would come back to being.

As she stood there and bowed her head, strong arms reached around her shoulders, and she was tugged gently against a chest. She knew it was him, but she hadn’t expected this compassion or even this gentleness. She didn’t know what the hell she had expected, but it wasn’t this.

He held her close and whispered, “I don’t know that what we had is something that we want to continue…

because what we had was young, painful, immature, and not very comfortable for either one of us.

If either of us had thought otherwise, I would have returned, and you would have called me.

Yet what we could have now could be better. ”

She slowly turned in his arms and looked at him in astonishment.

He shrugged. “Obviously you haven’t moved on, and neither have I.

… I don’t even know if you’re interested in trying again, but, when I first got here, it was an absolute hell no .

” His lips twitched. “But an apparently absolute hell, no doesn’t really apply once we start to really see each other again. ”

“I never wanted to hurt you, you know?” she murmured.