Page 74 of Roads Behind Us
How did he do that? No one ever had before.
But there was something missing. It felt like Bax had tried many times to say something to me, to tell me something important, confide in me. But it never came.
We’d talked about everything under the sun: his wife, his loss, our dreams, and even the future. He knew that I was a marathon belcher and that I had an excessive new-tool problem—if DeWalt made one, I had to have it. I’d told him about the day my dad overdosed, and he told me about his youngest brother, Dixon, and how he’d been bullied by their dad, and how that had helped lead Dixon to alcohol and drugs too.
Maybe it was me. Maybe thinking Bax was hiding something from me was just my tendency to see the cup half-empty. Or maybe it was my own self-preservation trying to give me a reason to leave when my job was done, so I wouldn’t get hurt. So I couldn’t hurt Athena or Bax.
The job would be done soon. Maybe I needed to figure out how I felt about Bax sooner rather than later.
Clay waved and flashed me a bushy lipped smile when I parked in front of the cabin Monday morning and climbed out of my truck. I was dragging ass because Bax and I had stayed up way too late playing strip checkers, and I was a sore loser, so I’d made him play again and again until I’d won. But I knew he was the real champion, so I’d rewarded him with the longest and sexiest blow job in the history of ever, and it had gotten so heated that my jaw was still sore, and he was nursing some deep fingernail divots in his ass cheeks this morning.
“Mornin’, Clay. How you doin’? You know, you’ve never said and I’ve never asked, but are you married?”
“Naw. I was married once upon a time, but you know how that goes. Didn’t last.” He shrugged.
Oh yeah, I’m quite aware of “how that goes.”
“Oh, before I forget,” he said, “I have to take off Friday.”
“Sure, everything alright?”
“Yeah, damn doctor wants me to have an angiogram or an EKG or some bullshit. He says my old ticker’s not doin’ its job the way it should. I can come Friday mornin’ but I’ll have to leave around ten.”
“No, don’t worry about work. Take the day. Sleep in and rest up before your tests.”
He tipped his hard hat like it was a cowboy hat. “Thanks. And I’ve got some good news for you. Final checks will be done for houses two and three today.”
“That’s great. Thank you. That makes me feel so much better about our deadline.”
My eyes rose to the flurry-free sky, hoping hard that winter would keep her distance for one more week. Two if I was lucky, but I wouldn’t hold my breath because the tip-tops of the mountains got snowier every day.
“Looks like things are movin’ along nicely here too,” Clay said.
“Yeah.” I looked around at the cabins, noticing things I hadn’t really thought about in the last two weeks. All the cabins’ siding and roofs were done. I was surprised I’d missed that really important detail, but I’d been so preoccupied with Bax that I’d been slacking.
That wouldn’t do. Brand hadn’t sent me here to screw up my job just so I could sleep with his brother. Shit. Just what the hell did I think I was doing? Had I put my job in jeopardy because I’d fallen in love with?—
“Ohh no.”
Yep. You are totally and completely in love with your boss’s brother.
“What?” Clay asked, his eyebrows lowering in concern. Thank God I hadn’t said that last thing out loud.
“I-I, uh…” I looked around the build site, trying to figure out what to do. Suddenly, I had no answers. All my la-di-da musings about relaxing trail rides, soul-deep love connections, and naked games of checkers seemed silly when I compared them to the pride and love I had for the job Brand had given me. “I forgot somethin’ inside,” I told Clay. “I’ll be right back.”
Jogging to my cabin, fear finally kicked in and my heart felt like it might beat right out of my body. My job was important. It was all I had, and I’d clung to it the last two years like it was the last little pocket of air in a car sinking under a lake. I excelled at my job. It was what made me feel special and necessary, but five minutes ago, I’d been all lovey-dovey about Bax and ready to give it up, and now I couldn’t get inside the cabin fast enough so I could scream into a pillow or something. I felt like I had whiplash.
And now that I’d admitted to myself that I was, indeed, very much in love with Bax, Athena’s wellbeing smacked me upside my head. I had no clue how to be her mom. Or mom adjacent. Athena had been playing matchmaker, but if Bax and I did get together officially, she probably wouldn’t really even want that. No one could ever replace her mama. How foolish was I that I’d even considered trying to fit into Athena’s life like that? She and Candy had years of history together, years of laughter and skinned knees with smiley-face Band-Aids and kisses and melting popsicles on the front porch.
All I had was one trip to a dress shop.
Shaking my head at the audacity, I slipped my key into the cabin’s lock but then realized it was already unlocked. I could barely remember the last time I’d been inside. Had I forgotten to engage the deadbolt before I left? But the knob lock was open too. The crews were arriving, truck after truck, so if danger lurked, I wasn’t worried. Clay was a holler away, and it couldn’t be the bear, could it? Not with all the people and noise going on around the build site.
Opening the door, I did a quick scan of the living room and kitchen and shivered. Had I turned off the heat? I thought I’d left it at sixty-eight. That was the temperature I kept my apartment at, but as I rubbed my hands up and down my arms to eke out a little warmth from the friction, it felt more like thirty-eight.
Nothing seemed out of place though. No hungry grizzlies waiting to pounce on me, so I stepped inside and shut the door behind me, listening for movement, but I heard none and walked to the bedroom. The bathroom and closet were both empty, doors open, lights off.
When I got back out to the living room, I noticed a basket on the floor under the south window, tucked just behind the arm of the loveseat.
