Finders Keepers (24 page)

“You were my first. And you were my last.”

I’d had some heavy bombs dropped on me in my lifetime. Being
parentless, penniless, and living out of a truck confirmed that. But Josie
admitting I’d been the one to take her virginity in a night of drunken haze and
recklessness . . . Not only that, but it had been the first and last time she’d
had sex . . . Well, that was the fucking atom bomb of mind-fucks right there.

“Please, Joze, please, please, please, don’t tell me that’s
true. I can’t even . . . I don’t even know . . .” That was the truth—I didn’t
even know. How I felt, what that meant, how to proceed, and what to do next.
I
don’t even know
became my newest marching beat, and I felt certain it was
there to stay.

“There’s one more thing, Black. Since you seem to be taking
this so well.” Josie peered up at me with confusion before continuing, “I don’t
just want you to be my last right now. I want you to be my last forever. I want
to live my last day with you being the last man I’ve been with.”

I muttered one more curse before shoving off the bed hard. I
was able to break free of her legs and put the distance between us I needed to
think somewhat straight again. After buttoning my jeans back up, I turned to
the side in an attempt to stop staring at her naked body still spread out on
the bed. “I can’t do this. I can’t fucking do this.”

“Can’t or won’t?” she asked, sitting up. “And are you
referring to having sex with me or having a relationship with me?”

“Those two things are one and the same for me.”

She huffed. “Says no one you’ve ever fucked, and since
you’ve never had a relationship with anyone but yourself, no one’s able to
offer their opinions on that.”

“Excuse me for not clarifying. What I meant was that having
sex and having a relationship are one and the same when it comes to you, Josie.
You
.”

“Says the guy with his bag packed and tugging on his boots
like he can’t get out of here fast enough.”

I pulled on the other boot before grabbing my shirt. I’d
been clouded by Josie’s words and her body, but I’d remembered what I needed to
do and why I needed to do it. I couldn’t get away from there quickly enough. I
couldn’t linger with her for long enough either. One. Giant. Mind. Fuck. “I
need to leave. You know it, and I know it. It’s going to happen one day, and a
day sooner is better for both of us than a day later.”

“I know that? I
know
that?” she huffed again, then
tossed a pillow at me. “Stop telling me what I know and don’t know and give me
a straight answer. Why are you leaving, Black?”

Minutes ago, she’d been kissing me and making me feel things
I didn’t know could be felt. Then we were throwing pillows and words and
breaking each other’s hearts. I hated myself, somehow, even more than I ever
had. “There are a million reasons I’m leaving. All of them a reason for why we
can’t or shouldn’t be together and why it never could or would work out if we
tried.”

She swung her legs over the side of the bed and was either
issuing the glare to end all glares or was trying her damnedest to keep from
crying. “You know what you need to do? Stop focusing on all of the reasons we
shouldn’t be together and start accepting the reasons we should be.” Josie slid
her hands through her hair, shaking her head. “You could take the most perfect
couple God ever had the audacity of creating, and if they only focused on the
small handful of reasons they shouldn’t be together, I guarantee you they
wouldn’t make it. And we’re a long, long shot away from being a perfect couple,
so why don’t you cut the glass-half-empty routine and give us a fucking chance.
Give us the chance we’ve both been waiting for.”

A chance. That was all I could ask for with Josie. But to
give someone a chance, there had to be a probability—small as it might have
been—of things turning out okay. We didn’t have even a minuscule probability of
turning out all right if we gave us a try. I couldn’t give her a chance because
I didn’t have one to give. “It’s too late.”

“You’re a fucking liar.” Another pillow flew at me. “You’re
taking the coward’s way out, and if you do this, if you walk away because
you’re afraid of hurting me, or messing things up, or whatever it is you’re so
terrified of, I’ll never forgive you. You leave me again, and I’ll hate you for
the rest of my life.”

I grimaced as pain flooded me. I wanted nothing more than to
gather her up in my arms and fall asleep together like we had the past few
weeks together. That was all I wanted. “That’s okay, Joze. I understand. Hate’s
a good thing. It will help you heal quicker. It’ll keep the wound from going
too deep and the scar from being too obvious. If hating me’ll make this easier
for you, you’ve got my permission to hate me for all of eternity.” Damn, I
needed some whiskey. Bottle after bottle after bottle until I’d had enough I
forgot her name, and the red cowgirl boots she’d been wearing the first day I
met her, and the way hair lightened every summer, and every one of the billion
fucking memories I had of Josie Gibson. She wanted to hate me, but I wanted to
forget her. Forgetting her was the only way I could survive without her. It
wouldn’t be much of a life, nothing more than survival, but I wouldn’t even be
able to manage that if I couldn’t find some way to erase her from my mind.

“I’m not asking for your permission,” she snapped. A moment
later, her face fell as she slid off the edge of the bed. Josie looked as
broken as I felt, and the worst part was not being able to comfort her. “I
don’t want to hate you. But there’s no other place to put this love I have for
you. It doesn’t just go away, you know? I can’t just flick a switch, and Poof!
it’s gone. I can’t just build it one day and dump it the next. It’s always
going to be a part of me. If I can’t love you, those intense feelings will
morph into something just as intense, but the total opposite. My love for you
will have nowhere to go but hate. I’m going to hate you . . . and that breaks
my heart.” She started crying, and if I wasn’t so resolved, that would have
been my tipping point.

I took one last look at her—curled into herself and crying
on the floor. That would be my last memory of my Josie. The girl I’d made a
silent vow to always protect, always take care of . . . and she was destroyed
thanks to me. The ball in my throat was close to suffocating me. I grabbed my
bag and opened that door realizing one thing—Josie would move on to live a
happy and full life. Maybe not tomorrow, and maybe not next month, but
eventually. She’d find love and protection and consistency in the arms of
another man.

“But at least you’ve still got a heart left to break, Joze,”
I whispered before leaving the room, the house, and the girl all behind.

DAYS TURNED INTO weeks, and weeks
turned into months. I could finally look in a mirror without wanting to slam my
fist through it. That first month after leaving Josie, I couldn’t count how
many shattered mirrors I left in my wake. Looking in a mirror and hating the
person staring back at me wasn’t new, but what had changed was that the eyes
staring back were the same ones Josie had looked into as she admitted her love
for me. She’d looked into those eyes and said it again and again and again
before they had turned away and betrayed her.

I’d hated myself for so long it didn’t feel like hate
anymore, but that . . . ? I didn’t have a word extreme or intense enough for
how I felt about myself. Utter self-loathing was the closest I could get, but
that seemed way too cute for how I really felt.

After leaving the Gibsons’ that night, I’d headed east. I
didn’t have any plans. I just went until my gas tank was empty and I felt as
physically exhausted as my mind did. I was in Billings. Even though it was my
first time there and I didn’t know a thing about it, I moved into a motel room
I could rent by the month or the hour and made it home. I didn’t know a single
person in or around Billings. It was perfect. I didn’t want to know anybody,
and I didn’t want anybody to know me. I found work at an old man’s ranch just
outside of town, a place to practice bull riding, and tried to purge my mind of
all things Josie. I watched the sunrise that morning after I left her, knowing
she would wake up hating me. She was right—that kind of love didn’t just
shrivel up and die. It ran too deep and had weaved too far inside of us to just
fade away. It was imprinted on our very cores. That kind of love couldn’t be
weeded out, so it changed and darkened and morphed into what Josie said—hate. I
felt it, too. In my case, it was extreme hate for myself, not for her. So the
good thing we had—the best thing I’d ever experienced—I’d managed to twist and
break and transform until it turned into thick and heavy hate. I really was a
virus.

A month had passed when I recognized one of Willow Springs’s
seasonal ranch hands walking into the feed store in downtown Billings. I headed
straight back to the motel, packed my duffle, got in my truck, and didn’t stop
driving until it was empty again. I wound up in Baker, about as far east as a
person could go and still be in Montana. I wasn’t sure I even wanted to stay in
the same state I’d grown up in. The same one my mom had fled from, my dad’s
charred ashes were blowing through, and where the girl I’d loved and destroyed
was. Nothing was behind me but a mountain of bad memories, so if I hadn’t been
about empty on gas and money, I would have kept going until I’d crossed into
North Dakota.

I worked at another ranch, I rode bulls at another arena,
and another month passed. I knew, in theory, my life was going on, but it felt
like it had stagnated. Most of it I’d left hundreds of miles west. I’d even
left behind two of my favorite pastimes: whiskey and women. I hadn’t had a
single sip or felt a single woman beneath me since I left the only home I’d
ever known. I knew part of the reason for my newfound abstinence was because I
just felt numb. I didn’t need a drink or a woman to help me get there because
that was my steady state anymore. The other part, the main part, was doing it
for her. She’d never know, but I couldn’t let the love she’d given me and all
that she’d sacrificed to be with me be for nothing. I wanted to stay changed,
even if we couldn’t be together. I wanted her sacrifice to be matched by one of
mine. I wanted her love to leave me changed forever so, somehow, I’d always
carry it with me. Saying no to the Jack and the girls was the only way I could
honor the love she’d given me. It was all that was left of it because her love
had turned to hate.

So I cut off all ties with my old life. Since I didn’t have
a cell phone, no one from my old life could reach me. It would only be a matter
of time before I ran into someone or someone tracked me down, but I was too
busy living in the moment to think about the future. Even five minutes into it.

It was a Friday night, and I was competing in a small-time
rodeo just outside of Baker. I didn’t know why I bothered to enter. I still
hadn’t managed a single eight-second ride in practice, so I had no reason to
think riding in an actual competition would be any different. I suppose, as
time had proven again and again, I was a glutton for punishment.

I was up next, and when the guy before me flew out of the
gates, I crouched down to scoop up a handful of dirt. Cupping it, I shook my
hand and let the dirt sift between my fingers. It was the first time I’d done
it, but I’d seen it done plenty of times. When Clay made it to my rodeos, he
could always be found staggering around, sifting a handful of dirt between his
fingers. I guess it was something he’d picked up from his dad and used to do as
a bull rider himself. I asked him once why he did it, and he’d answered—well,
he’d
slurred
—how could a man expect to stay on top when he didn’t know
what was below him? It hadn’t made sense to me then, and it still didn’t make
sense to me. But back in his day, Clay Black had been a bull riding legend, so
I figured if shaking some arena dirt through his fingers had worked for Clay, I
wasn’t above trying it. I’d tried everything else—might as well.

The guy ahead of me managed to stay on a full eight and
earned a decent score. Lucky bastard. When my name was called, I dusted off my
hands, climbed the chute, and got into position. I didn’t know anything about
the bull I’d drawn. I didn’t know anything about the rodeo, or the people
competing, or the people in attendance. The only thing I knew was that I had to
stay on the back of that damn thing because that was all I had left in life.
Bull riding and eight seconds. Those were the last things I had to look forward
to, the only things left to aspire to. Sad and pathetic, but the truth. So I
weaved my hand through the rope, lifted my other, and emptied my head.

I should have known better. As soon as it was empty, she
leapt into it. Josie always had a way of doing that—sneaking up on me when I
least expected it. The image of her below me, holding my face and telling me
she loved me, rushed into my head. It wasn’t in a hurry to rush out. It stayed
until I didn’t see or hear the arena. All I heard and saw was her and those
three words. The image was so painful, I winced . . . and the chute flew open.
I remembered where I was a moment too late. That bull bucked before hurling
into a spin, and I caught so much air I might have been suspended for eight
seconds.

But I’d barely made it one on that back of that bull. When I
hit the ground, I landed on my chest. My face hit next. I knew what the dirt
felt like, and I knew what it tasted like: cow shit and failure. Shoving to a
stand, I spit out a mouthful of dirt and chucked my hat across the arena. I
didn’t notice the crowd, and I didn’t turn around to make sure the clowns were
doing their jobs. I stomped out of that arena swearing if I never saw another
one or another bull, I’d be just fine.

Once I’d leapt over the fence, I wandered until I had some
space and could curse at the bloody moon without offending anyone too much.
Life was shit, and that was what I had to look forward to for the rest of my
life. Lonely nights, hard-worked days, and humiliating rides where I personally
insulted the sport of bull riding.

Fuck my life.

“I don’t know who looked more pissed off out there. You or the
bull,” a familiar voice said behind me as my hat landed at my feet. “Actually,
I take that back. You were definitely the most pissed one. By a long shot.”

I was already smirking when I twisted around. “Why if it
isn’t the girl who isn’t afraid to let her freak flag fly.”

“Nope. I’m not afraid to be who I am. Or love who I love.”
She smirked right back, lifting an eyebrow.

“Rowen Sterling.” I looked around. No sign of Jesse . . . or
anyone else.

“Garth Black. Minus the enthusiasm,” she threw back.

“What? Really? No enthusiasm? I thought that, if nothing
else, one misfit could drudge up some enthusiasm for another.” I grabbed my hat
and beat it against my chaps to get the dirt off.

“It’s hard to drudge up any enthusiasm when the best man’s
been missing for two months and the wedding is in two days.”

Along with the life I’d left behind, I’d lost track of time
as well. Could it be
June
already? “Yeah . . . about that . . .”

“Save it. I don’t care what you have to say about that right
now. All I care about is you getting your ass in that truck of yours and
getting to the wedding on Sunday. I’m tired from tracking you down, and I’m
tired from putting centerpieces together, and I’m tired from being kept up all
night, so shut your mouth already.”

Taking a closer look, Rowen did look beat. Her clothes were
rumpled, most of her hair had fallen from her braid, and her eyes were
bloodshot. I sat on one the bottom of one of the empty bleacher sections. “Tell
Jesse to stop keeping you up all night with his sex marathons so you can get
some sleep then.” I waited for Rowen to fire something back. The only time
she’d let me get the last word in was never, and I was expecting more of the
same.

“Unfortunately it isn’t Jesse who’s been keeping me up all
night.”

I arched an eyebrow as she plopped down on the bench beside
me. “Not even married and already checking to see if that grass really is
greener on the other side?”

I scooted out of reach just before her elbow came at me.
“The person who’s been keeping me up is the same person whose heart you broke
before pulling your vanishing act.”

“Josie?” It was painful thinking about her and twice as much
so saying her name.

Rowen nodded. “Josie.”

“How’s she doing?” I asked, staring at the ground.

“I’d tell you if I thought you had a right to know. Which
you don’t. You giant. Ass. Hole.”

“I’m not going to argue with you on that. Not even for fun.”
I dropped my head into my hands and squeezed my eyes shut, trying to brace
myself against the pain shredding through me like tiny pieces of glass.

Rowen didn’t say anything for a while. Silence, when the two
of us were together, was a rare thing. “Whoa. You really are miserable, aren’t
you?” Rowen scooted closer and awkwardly wrapped her arm around my shoulders.
“So you’re miserable. And Josie’s miserable. Why the hell did you up and
disappear again?”

God, for so many damn reasons that didn’t seem important
anymore. “You, Rowen, of all people should understand why I had to leave.”

“I might understand why you thought about doing it, but not
why you actually did it.” She gave me a few pats on the back before removing
her arm. Thankfully. Rowen might be able to express her affection for Jesse
like a champ, but she was an awkward mess around everyone else still. Figuring
out how to give affection took a while since she’d been denied it most of her
life—I understood that well. “You know I worried about the same things you’re
worried about: hurting the person you love, destroying their chance for a happy
life. But I finally realized something,”—Rowen nudged me—“I’ve got some pretty
great stuff to give, too. The Jesses and the Josies of the world aren’t the
only ones with something to give. We—the misunderstood misfits of the world—do
too.”

I huffed and shook my head. I might have had something to
give, but I couldn’t figure out how to give it without destroying the person I
wanted to give it to.

She said, “People like you and me, kids who grew up fighting
for every single ounce of love that came our way . . . When we find that person
we want to love, we give them a pure and boundless form of it because we know
what it’s like to be denied it. We know the opposite of love so well, we go a
full one-eighty when we find that special someone.”

I gave Rowen a half-smile. “And how does your ‘special
someone’ feel about that pure and boundless love of yours?”

“Pretty fucking fantastic. Something your special someone
never got the chance to feel because you acted like a giant. Ass. Hole.”

“You know what the nice thing is about being at a zero in
the self-esteem department?” I asked with some sarcasm. “Not being able to go
any lower when you fire insults off at me.”

“I’m not trying to insult you. I’m trying to knock, beat,
shake, or bitch slap some sense into you.”

“So yeah, you’ve got a point. I behaved like a giant asshole,
but I had to. It was the only way she’d let me go. Now that she has, she can
find someone else to experience that boundless love shit with. She’ll find it
with someone else,” I said, ending in almost a whisper.

“With someone else? Who the hell do you think Josie’s ever
going to find that she’s going to be happy with if it’s not you?” Rowen looked
like she was considering thumping me on the back of the head, so I scooted
farther down the bench. “Colt Mason? Some other sweet country boy who bores her
to tears?” I shrugged. “Puh-lease. The only boy Josie’s going to be happy with
is you, and if she chooses to settle down with someone else, she’s just going
to be pretending.”