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chapter twenty-four

Emily

I was still attempting to come to terms with what we’d just experienced as we’d careened through a small town on runaway horses. And now Charlie and I were collapsed in the narrow compartment that featured one bench seat while Tuck assumed the reins.

Only a few days before, heck, maybe the day before, I’d have preferred it. Now I felt annoyed and antsy sitting in the buggy with Charlie when what I really wanted to do was climb onto the seat next to Tuck and talk about what had happened. Charlie seemed intent on telling the tale from his perspective again and again, droning on about how he thought he was going to die, his life flashing in front of him, all the good he’d done for the world, and the knowledge that if he died, he’d leave behind dozens of films and television cameos that would bring joy to the world for generations to come.

He wasn’t necessarily wrong. Art did bring joy, movies and television shows provided necessary distraction and comfort too. Families gathered to watch them, and positive messages were relayed through stories. I got all that, and maybe I’d have said something similar a few weeks before about what I hoped my legacy would be. But now? Now I was confused and off-kilter, all my priorities shifted and rearranged so that I didn’t remember exactly the order they’d been in and why. And Charlie… Charlie still seemed unfazed by the things he’d seen around him. If he loved stories so much, why was his the only one that seemed to move him?

There was something else floating around the corners of my mind, but I was too exhausted to delve into my vague thoughts and foggy feelings. And who even knew if all the stress hormones and surges of adrenaline that had released earlier had fried a few synapses.

But when Charlie fell asleep midsentence a few minutes later, I got up quietly and opened the small door with a nervous glance backward. When I saw that Charlie hadn’t moved, a snore rattling from his open mouth, I climbed around the slow-moving buggy and then plopped in the seat next to Tuck.

He looked over at me, his expression mildly surprised for a moment before he raised a brow. “I thought you’d prefer to be chauffeured.”

“I am being chauffeured. I’m just sitting in the front seat. Unless you want to hand me the wheel?” I nodded to the reins in his hand.

“Nah, I got it. Couldn’t nap?”

“I didn’t even try. I’m wired.”

“I’m not surprised.” He gave me another side-glance. “You really should be proud, Emily. You were brave. Amazing, actually.”

“If I knew all I had to do was chase down a speeding buggy and then hang off a horse for a few death-defying moments to win your approval, I’d have done that at the start and saved us a lot of bickering.” I elbowed him gently.

“Ha. I prefer the bickering over the death-defying stunts, but…we worked together when we needed to.”

Warmth traveled along my skin. Why did Tuck’s approval make me feel so damn glow-y inside? All the applause, all the accolades, and at the moment, I wasn’t sure if any of that had felt much better. Which was concerning, honestly, but…another of those vague thoughts I simply wasn’t going to deal with now.

“Do you think Lavina is going to be okay?” I asked after a moment.

He was quiet for a few beats. “I don’t know her, but I hope she’s strong enough to put whatever happened behind her. And I hope she has a mother or a mother figure who can help her through it.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “That’s going to be important.”

“How are you doing regarding the man you…”

“Stabbed in the neck?” I sighed. “I feel oddly…okay. I mean, maybe other emotions will come. But after seeing how they victimized those two people. After seeing the helpless anger on Abram’s face and looking into Lavina’s haunted eyes… And knowing that what I did, what we did, stopped it from continuing… I’m not going to feel guilty about that, because if given the chance, I’d do it again.”

He looked over at me, pride clear on his face, along with a bit of surprise, and that same inner glow infused me. His thigh rubbed against mine and inspired a different kind of heat, and I cleared my throat and looked away. Your boyfriend is sleeping behind you, Em. Stop getting turned on by Tuck.

And maybe this was a byproduct of the adrenaline surge too, but I suspected it was not because I’d responded to him this way before, though until this moment, I hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it.

“Speaking of good deeds, I didn’t get a chance to tell you that what you did for Brent in Silver Creek, that was good work too. The Goodfellows were obviously so grateful and…you were generous without knowing it could benefit you as much as it did.” He’d taken the lead with us, ensured we had food and water and were safe, and he’d taken the opportunity to help others along the way too, whenever he had the skills.

“Thanks, Em.” We were on a quiet stretch of road where we hadn’t seen travelers on foot in a while and we swayed along, the surroundings made dreamy by the pink-hued sky. We were both quiet for a moment, our thighs touching as the horse moved steadily in front of us. “You want to hear something kinda funny?”

I glanced at his profile and nodded.

“The reason I knew how to set that bone in particular was because I performed the same maneuver in prison.”

I gave him a confused smile. “What? Why?”

“A buddy of mine, this dude who’d had my back a few times, had gotten injured in a fight out in the yard and dislocated his elbow. Going to the infirmary would have raised questions and he only had a few months of his sentence left. So, I got this medical book out of the library and learned how to pop the bone back into place.”

“Oh my gosh, of course you did.”

He chuckled. “I didn’t tell Sheriff Goodfellow that. I thought the felon thing might concern him more than letting someone with a small amount of veterinary experience touch his son.”

The felon thing. That phrase echoed. But I could see why the coincidence of the dislocation pleased Tuck. I liked it too, the idea that even if the knowledge one acquired was due to a negative or painful circumstance, it was still knowledge and it might come in handy when you least expected it. Even the hardest parts of our lives provided positives from which to draw.

I wondered what this whole experience would leave me with.

And beyond that, I wondered what Tuck had done to end up in prison, wondered if he’d tell me. But knew that if he did, it would be because he’d decided to trust me for more than just a fleeting moment. I was surprised he’d brought up his time behind bars at all and sensed it might be some small surrender that perhaps he didn’t even realize.

But in any case, for the first time, it felt like I was talking to Tuck. Not the man I was hiring to be my bodyguard, or the stranger I’d once known but didn’t any longer. Tuck. My friend.

There you are. You’re still in there. Something about that made me want to smile. And cry. Because it made me realize just how much I’d missed him.

“Anyway,” I said quickly, attempting to move my complicated, disconcerting thoughts aside, “we’re lucky we have you on our side.” I hadn’t seen it because I’d been tied inside the compartment, but I’d heard his running footsteps coming and could still picture him as he must have looked storming toward the buggy at a dead sprint and practically flying onto it in order to rescue us. “You’d be an asset in any situation right about now,” I said. He was strong and smart, and he had an obvious comfort level in this new precarious situation that not many others likely did. “People everywhere could use your help,” I said. “So…thank you for being…here for us. Charlie and I are really grateful.”

I smiled over at him, but his face seemed to harden minutely before he said softly, “It’s nothing.” And then he looked away.

That evening, we came upon an old, dilapidated barn that had clearly been abandoned long ago. If there had once been a house nearby, it’d long since been torn down. We unhooked the horse and Tuck tied her near the side of the structure that provided her some patchy grass to munch and a few puddles of water from what must have been a recent rain. Then we slipped through the gap in the double doors and entered the space, pearly light filtering through the multitude of gaps in the wood. I watched Tuck move through, his head tilted back as though he was assessing whether or not the ceiling was likely to fall in. And though it had obviously gone unused for what must be decades, it seemed sound enough to sleep in for one night.

I dropped my backpack on the cleanest-looking portion of flooring and began clearing some refuse to make a big enough space to lay out our sleeping bags, when Tuck said, “Stay put. I’ll be right back.”

I watched as he ducked through an opening between some missing boards in the rear wall and then headed off into the trees still wearing his gear.

“Why does he need his backpack to take a piss?” Charlie asked as he dropped his stuff and started bending his neck from side to side.

“What?” I had a moment of intense fear, like he’d leave us and never return, and for a flash, I felt as helpless as a child, but I also experienced a wave of something I could only call grief overcome me. I reached out for the wooden post next to me, the rough grain of the wood bringing me back to the moment, a splinter stabbing my skin but also serving to pierce the odd fugue state that I’d slipped into momentarily.

“Hey, you all right?” Charlie asked. “Earth to Emily.”

I looked over at Charlie, the sight of him standing there almost confusing me for a second. He seemed all out of place, like he’d breached some time barrier, and I was standing in the middle of two different universes. “Yeah. I’m just… I think all the events from earlier today are catching up to me. And I’m hungry. And exhausted.”

His eyes did a sweep of my body, and then he walked over to where I stood, bringing his hands to my waist and squeezing. “We have a few minutes while he’s gone,” he said, giving me a suggestive smile.

Seriously?

For a moment I considered punching him in the face. Instead, I mustered a smile, but then shrugged him off and turned to ward the area where I’d been preparing to bed down. I wasn’t even vaguely in the mood for him to touch me, and it wasn’t only because he hadn’t even asked me if I was okay after stabbing a man in the neck. “I’m too starved and exhausted to think about anything other than food or sleep,” I said. “I can’t believe you have the energy for anything else either. This day feels like it’s lasted for a hundred hours.”

Charlie sighed. “I could’ve mustered some energy,” he muttered, but then he unhooked his sleeping bag and started laying it out.

It was probably a good idea just to go to sleep even though the sun hadn’t fully set. We’d eaten a can of tuna the Goodfellows had so generously given us earlier and would have to forgo dinner tonight and search for something tomorrow. The last couple of days had been warmer than when we’d started out, and so at least there was plenty of melting snow to fill our water bottles.

I startled when I heard the muted crack of gunfire. “What was that?”

Charlie stood straight and walked over to the break in the back wall, peering out at the woods. “Tuck has the gun with him. Maybe he came up on some trouble.”

My heart dipped then rose, giving me a momentary head rush. “Trouble? What kind of trouble?”

We both stood at that gap in the boards, looking out into the dwindling light like two children peeking out from under the bed, waiting for a monster to arrive. And so, when the foliage rustled and it was Tuck who stepped through the trees, the relief that overcame me was sudden and fierce. I released an exhale, my gaze going to his hand where he was carrying a dead rabbit by its ears, his other arm filled with branches. “He shot a rabbit,” I said.

“Gross,” Charlie muttered.

Tuck stopped outside the barn where he began setting up a campfire well enough away from the structure that I imagined would go up like kindling with so much as a spark.

I stepped through the boards and Tuck looked up when I approached. I bent and picked up one of the rocks he’d gathered and set it next to the others he’d already placed. We worked in silence to build the makeshift firepit, and then Tuck situated the branches in the center and went through the process of building the fire using the box of matches the Goodfellows had given us.

“I never thought I’d be sitting around another bonfire with you in this lifetime,” I said to Tuck.

He looked up and smiled at me and again, for just a moment, he looked like the Tuck I knew, and it felt like a sharp poke to a tender spot. “Make that two of us,” he said.

There were some old wooden crates off to the side that Tuck brought next to the fire and then he took a seat on one, removed the switchblade he’d stuck in his backpack, and began slicing into the rabbit. I looked away. “Ugh, how are you even doing that?”

“It’s this or eat dirt tonight. Rabbit sounded more appealing. A gun and this switchblade made it possible. I’m going to give this back to you after I clean it though. It’s yours.”

I thought of Katelyn who’d given the knife to me and knew she’d be happy that her gift had come in handy at just the right moment. I thought of Mrs. Goodfellow too and the fear in Katelyn’s eyes when she spoke of her mother and I hoped to God they’d be reunited.

I watched Tuck’s face as he focused. “Thanks for doing the dirty work. Literally.”

His gaze remained on his hands, but he gave a nod. I felt a new peace between us. We’d seemed to have made an unspoken agreement to cease the bickering after working together so well earlier that day. Even so, he didn’t have to split a small rabbit with us. He could have killed the thing, gutted it, cooked it, and then eaten it himself and Charlie and I wouldn’t be able to say a damn word. Because neither of us was willing to hunt down small animals and prepare the meat and we all knew it. But I wasn’t going to feel too guilty about it, because despite whether our relationship was good or bad or in-between, when we got back home, I’d make sure Tuck had enough to get on his feet some way or another. Happily. And he’d have something with which to start fresh.

I felt a weird emptiness in my stomach that I wrote off as hunger, even if for whatever reason, it didn’t feel like food would fill it.

“Anyway,” I said, as if he’d been following my disjointed inner dialogue, “are we planning on stopping at a house tomorrow to ask if they can spare some food?”

“Maybe. We’ll play it by ear. We’ll be heading into more populated areas over the next few days, so I’m hoping there’ll be an opportunity to purchase some necessities. I have a little bit of cash in my wallet.”

Charlie still had his wallet, but probably didn’t have a lot of cash as he always used credit. The thought of cash made me picture the baggies of drugs that had rained down on the plane when I’d discovered Tuck’s illegal activity. I supposed because cash had been the point of it.

At the memory of that moment, emptiness gaped, but so did a niggling feeling that something was off. Or maybe it was just that today, more than ever, it hadn’t only felt like we were a team, but it’d felt like he was my old friend. And though I couldn’t deny the passion that had sparked to life between us, it was probably a momentary reaction born entirely from the wild circumstances. It would be wise for me to remember that to Tuck, this was a job. I should stop thinking of him as my old friend, or even a savior who would have done what he was doing now for any reasons other than at least some amount of decency, and loyalty to my parents. That was what I found so confusing, and why I kept stumbling emotionally when it came to him. There were parts of him I still recognized, even if, otherwise, he was completely different. “Right,” I said. “Yes.”

He did look up at me then, his gaze assessing. “If you want to make yourself useful, you could sharpen some sticks.”

We roasted the rabbit on sticks over the fire and ate it sitting under the low light of the lavender sunset. And though the meat wasn’t nearly plentiful enough, it remedied the ache of hunger that had burned since we’d eaten hours and hours earlier that day.

I looked over at Charlie sitting next to me, dragging his teeth along the stick in an attempt to get every last piece of meat on the skewer. In the glow of the fire, and with the addition of the stubble on his jaw, he looked like he was playing the part of a sexy mountain man. And I had the feeling I was watching him on a screen, some act that was in no way part of who he really was. Maybe I’d look down and see a bucket of popcorn in my lap, and when I left the theater, I’d think about how incredible it would be if I ever met Charlie Cannon and how I’d die if he even spared me a glance.

And I knew in that moment, I didn’t want to be with him anymore.

Because Charlie Cannon was in no way the dream I’d imagined him to be, and if I’d ever really been attracted to him, it’d been a version of him that he could only maintain under certain conditions.

Ironically enough, the lights went out, and I finally saw Charlie Cannon clearly. He was an actor through and through, and he relied on a specific set to be the person he’d decided to play.

When the set went away, so too did his role, and Charlie no longer knew who to be.

Maybe every man I’d ever cared for was destined to show their true colors eventually.

But that thought was interrupted when the form of a man staggered from the trees.