Page 6 of Coming Home Country
Forearms dropping to the bar top, Mac turned to face me, his brown eyes unfocused. “Been better.”
“I can see that. What are we doing at the bar at four in the afternoon when you should be at work?”
He nodded in a daze. “Chief told me to go home.”
“Okay . . . How about you tell me why.”
Dragging a hand down his face, he confessed, “I delivered a baby today.”
Yup, that’d do it. That first one was always a shock to the system.
“When the call came in through dispatch, I thought the dad was just panicking. Figured we’d get to where they were pulled over and maybe offer an escort to the hospital. Nope. The mom was laid out on the backseat with her legs spread wide open, and that kid wascoming.”
His full-body shudder had me chuckling. “Yeah, that happens a lot more than you think when the hospital’s an hour away. Sometimes, it’s a case of folks waiting too long, but other times, that baby wants out in a hurry, and nothing’s gonna stop it.”
“Definitely not as traumatizing when they teach you how on the dummy during EMT training.”
“No. No, it’s not,” I agreed. “Everyone come out on the other side healthy?”
Mac nodded. “Little boy. They named him Owen.”
“Solid name for a country boy,” I mused. “You gonna recover?”
His chest expanded as he sucked in a lungful of air before letting it out slowly. “Gonna need a minute. Might crash in the back office of the showroom tonight. Not sure I can come face-to-face with that”—he made a circular motion with his hand—“area for a solid twenty-four hours. And if I go home, odds are I won’t be able to avoid it.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Did you just make me an accessory in keeping secrets from Aspen?”
His fiancée wasn’t my biggest fan. Not that I could blame her. I was the guy who’d broken her best friend’s heart. Even though she now knew the truth of what happened back then, her loyalty would always be to Bex. As it should be.
Nose wrinkling, Mac thought over the implications of what he was asking. “Probably not the best idea. We don’t need a repeat of the tree-lighting incident in the middle of our wedding.”
The first Christmas Aspen brought Mac home to Rust Canyon, I’d made the mistake of approaching them and asking about Bex. Right in the middle of Main Street, with the whole town watching, Aspen let me have it. She’d been near feral—screaming in my face, shoving at my chest—so when she reared back to slap me, Mac was forced to haul her away to calm down.
The following morning at the coffee shop, I ran into Mac and offered him my apologies for ruining their evening. I could tell he was uncomfortable, not wanting to be seen talking to me for fear of word getting back to Aspen and him incurring a similar type of wrath from his girlfriend. Eventually, he’d let me buy him breakfast, and we had a brief chat.
By the end of the week, he was seeking me out as the town’s family physician to secure a physical so he could begin training to become a firefighter. Not wanting to create a rift in his relationship, I felt the need to lay all my cards on the table and told him the whole sordid tale of what had happened between me and Bex all those years ago, so he could decide if perhaps it was better to obtain that physical elsewhere. Or, at the very least, secure it with my junior partner, Felicity.
Only a handful of people on this earth knew what went down back then, and Mac was now one of them. Hell, to this day, my own parents still didn’t, and I doubted I would ever tell them. My older sister, Evie, was firmly in my corner, but she was family. Mac didn’t owe me any kind of loyalty or compassion, having just met me, so it came as a shock when he absorbed my story and said he wasn’t sure he would’ve done much differently if placed in my shoes.
That day had been the start of our friendship. Now, here we were, a little over two years later, and I was set to be his best man.
But there was only one problem with accepting that honor.
Almost as if he could read my mind, Mac said, “Bex gets in today.”
That was the problem. Bex was Aspen’s maid of honor.
This had disaster written all over it. Bex hadn’t set foot in Rust Canyon since the day I was forced to end our relationship. She’d gone to great lengths to never set eyes on me again. And to this day, not a soul in town would tell me anything about her. Except Mac. He wasn’t bound by the same rules, being an adopted member of this community.
Taking a pull from my beer, I swallowed before heaving a heavy sigh. “Yeah, I know.”
The change in subject seemed to perk him up a bit, and he turned on his barstool to face me. “So, what’s the plan?”
“What do you mean, what’s the plan? Aren’t you the one who told me she’s with someone else now?” Under my breath, I huffed out, “Not that it matters. She wouldn’t give me the time of day, even if she were single.”
“Oh, come on. You’re seriously going to give up? After all this time spent pining after her?”
Years of frustration rose to the surface, and I threw my arms up. “What other choice do I have?”
