Page 62 of Saving the Rain

It’s too much. The blackness weaves a course through my veins,whispering at me to feed it, give in, let it sip from the bottle, and allow all of this to vanish, to be washed down with every hasty gulp.

I feel like I’m going to hurl.

The band wrapped around my lungs tightens, winding the devastation higher and higher until I feel like every bone is on the verge of shattering.

What am I supposed to fucking do now?

My fingers flex, and I thump down on the steering wheel with a heavy palm. Violent curses fly out of me, flecks of spit burst out. I have to ball my fists, stuffing them into my eye sockets.

This is a waking nightmare, a haunted theme park where every step is threatening to cut me to pieces. I’m already bruised and broken; this only wants to add to that and see me bleed.

Snarling in deep, agonized frustration, I start my truck and fly out of the parking lot, tires screeching. I don’t fucking care. Get me a million miles from that place, and those godforsaken scan results confirming the worst.

All the nagging fears I’d been attempting to keep at bay have lined up and taken over. A conquering army come in to lay waste to my life as I knew it. Everything I’d worked so hard to do, to turn my life around, to get my shit together... what was it all for? I might as well have just stayed in my loser, waster state. That’s clearly all I’m good for.

My head is a snake pit. All I can think about is what it would be like to take the edge off, to escape for a while, and I’m just blindly freewheeling. I could be driving to Crimson Ridge, or halfway across the country.

I don’t know how to do this—how to pull my life back together again after having to do it once already. This is just another glaring example of how fucking useless I really am.

A waste of space. A mistake.You should have never been born.

My mom’s favorite insults. She used to love hurling them my way when she was off her face and mad as hell with me for some unknown reason. They’re all carved into my psyche, like scratches grooved into wood. I’ve tried to erase them, tried to scrub at those invisible scars until the surface is returned to a smooth, unblemished, untarnishedcanvas. But the stained evidence is still there. There’s no obliterating the memories. The only time I truly have ever felt like I couldforgetwas when I was buzzed, veins brimming with liquor.

With my foot on the gas, I end up driving, driving, driving. The whole time I’m fighting against every strangling urge to say screw it all. To pull over in one of these shitty little service stations and drown in a bottle of something with the highest proof on the label. I don’t care. It only needs to do one job, and that’s to knock me on my ass, to wipe my brain from functioning.

My phone lights up on the passenger seat with a text coming through. It’s from Chaos, and while I can’t make out everything, he’s telling me to hurry up and join them at the Hog.

He knows I was due to have my follow-up scan today.

If there’s anyone I can’t handle being around right now, it’s the rodeo crowd. I can’t fucking deal with the pitying looks they’ll have in their eyes. The pats on the shoulder telling me howsorrythey are.

Just thinking about it turns my stomach sour.

Another ping comes through right on the heels of Chaos’ attempt to reach out, and it’s the final straw. I flip my phone into the backseat. I don’t want to see another fucking message. Not one from my mom meant to harass me. Not another pity text from a friend.

All I want to do is escape everything.

Chapter 26

Aheavy chill hangs around my shoulders as Mist and I make our way down from checking on the cattle in the hills. The mountains are blanketed by low-hanging clouds, sweeps of gray float about, curling along valleys and weaving through trees to create an eerie sight.

Darkness nips at our heels on the ride back to the barn. Much like the thick fog dampening everything it touches, there’s no evading it. Nightfall sneaks up faster and faster at this time of year, and a whispered foreshadowing hangs in the cool of the evening. Winter isn’t too far away, and she doesn’t halt her pending arrival for anyone.

A snow-laden reality that means I’ll be moving on. Not that I know where that destination will be just yet. But I’ve got plenty of other ranches I’ve worked on before, and all of them have told me that they’ll have me back in a heartbeat. It’s only my own damn restlessness that keeps me moving, the sense of knowing if I stay somewhere too long, I’m inviting trouble to follow behind. I feel like I owe it to the good, kind, generous people I’ve worked for over the years that I don’t bring any danger to their front door.

I tuck my chin into the collar of my jacket, feeling the chill starting to seep up from my fingertips. Mist is like a giant goddamn heater beneath me, but even so, riding at this late hour, the bite ofcold flowing off the mountains is enough to have me ready for a hot meal and a shower. To fall into bed and stave off thoughts that want to stray elsewhere.

I’ve always enjoyed being alone; it feels like peace to me. There’s a comfort in the quietness that comes with being a man alone on a horse. To be surrounded by the kind of landscape all these tourists pay good money to seek a temporary escape to. While I can’t comprehend their need to rush back to cities and crowds—days spent in front of computer screens and under harsh lighting—I do understand the reason they come to a place like this.

There’s no denying that mountains, with their thinner air and horizons that seem to stretch on forever into the distance, find a way to burrow into your soul. For me, I couldn’t fathom living any other way.

Yet, there’s a lingering notion, that maybe a part of me enjoyed having someone around. We didn’t talk, we hardly spent any time in each other’s company, and yet invisible cords continue to bind us together. Even more so now since we crossed far too many illicit fucking lines.

So, I’ve either got to suck it up and move on this winter, to do what I’ve always done... or maybe this season will be the one I entertain the idea that letting someone in, letting the right person get close, might be a challenge I could pause to consider?

While the horse beneath me sways with a gentle pace, the notion floats there in my mind’s eye. As soon as I let the idea breach the surface, my upper lip curls. The idea of trusting anyone is a goddamn joke.

Yeah, I can already predict how that would go. No thanks. I’ll stick to my one-night stands and hookups. The kind of brief connections that make it real easy to walk away. Chasing after a need. Satisfying the drive for a release. That’s all.