Page 21 of Unstable

“IT’S FINE, HENLEY. YOU’RE gonna spook him. He can sense your nerves, chill out.”

See, I’d checked everything, apparently too much. But I’d checked it!

“Just let me-”

“No,” she laughs, patting Whiskey’s neck. “My boy and I are a perfect team. He’s never let me down, and I know him, better than you. Don’t get him rattled. Now go on, get a good seat.”

One more check! Just one damn more!

“Henley, wake up, Darlin’. Come on, wake up and yell at me instead.”

I slowly lift my heavy lids, sitting up. “I checked, I swear. But she wouldn’t let me, just one more time,” I mumble, almost incoherently, and to myself. The last ramblings spilling over from my too realistic, harrowing dream.

When my mind finally joins me in a state of wakefulness and my eyes focus, I realize Keaton’s squatted down beside me, hand on my shoulder. I’m too haunted by things that can’t touch me to cower from his touch, which is haunting in and of itself.

“I know, Hen. I was there, I saw how hard you tried. Always worrying, taking care of her. It wasn’t your fault.”

I glance around, still somewhat disoriented, and put the pieces together. I’d fallen asleep, descended into a nightmare, right here on the hard, aptly unforgiving ground.

It’s funny how the mind is able to remember and point out every disturbing detail when you’re asleep, but conveniently blocks out common sense warnings when you’re awake. It’d never even dawned on me, until they’d taken down the tent and moved all the flowers, shrouding all but the plot dug out for my mother, that I’d seen it…exactly where they’d buried her.

Which had to be my subconscious, an internal safeguard refusing to let me even think about the obvious…because where else would they lay one of them to rest but beside the other?

But the full realization, seeing the words etched into the daunting, gray granite, staring me back in the face—it’d been too much for me to handle, both of them gone and me still here: selfish, weak and undeserving—I’d obviously passed out from the onslaught.

I don’t know how long it’s been, but surely enough so that Gatlin must be wondering where I am. And yet…it’s Keaton who’s found me.

“You want to talk about it?” he asks, casually taking a seat beside me, bending his knees and resting his arms across them.

I face him and scowl, wondering if he’s lost his mind. “Why would I possibly want to talk about it? And what would I say? You already know what happened. Like you said, you were there then, and you’re here now. They’re gone.”

“Because, talking things out can help. And like I also said, it wasn’t your fault, any of this. I know what I saw happen back then, but I don’t know what you think happened, or how you feel about it. But the things you were sobbing in your sleep, Hen, you need to talk about it. I came over, that next day, to check on you, but they wouldn’t let me see you. Tried to catch you at the funeral, but they were guarding you close. So then I came back to your house about a week later, hopin’ for different results, but,” he exhales a deep sigh, “you were already gone by then. Whole thing was sealed up tighter than a drum since you were both minors, so I couldn’t track ya. And again, they wouldn’t tell me a damn thing.”

“Who is they?”

“Your mom, and Merrick,” he hisses the latter as if it caused a bad taste in his mouth. “Tried to beat it out of that fucker twice, and he still wouldn’t talk.”

Forgetting for just a moment that I’m sitting in a graveyard, next to the resting spots of the two most important people I’ve ever loved, the tiniest smirk tugs at the corner of my mouth. “You beat up Merrick?”

“Twice,” he humbly boasts.

“I was in California, near the beach. But I didn’t get a single glimpse of the ocean. Until I checked out that is, then it’s the first place I went. And stayed. You ever seen the ocean?”

“My parents retired to Florida.” He arches a brow and grins. “Yeah, I’ve seen it.”

“It tells me there’s a God. Water, vastness with no end as far as the human eye can see. Only something bigger than this world could’ve made something so endless. After I was free, to go there when I wanted, it wasn’t so bad. Sometimes, in the early mornings when it was just me and the wonderment of something bigger, I could forget the pain for a little while.”

If there was any doubt before this is all taking its toll on my sanity, it’s obliterated…because I’m talking calmly, openly, to Keaton. I’ve officially lost it.

He next speaks in an angered, yet gentle tone…that most people couldn’t pull off, but there’s not much, that I know of, Keaton Cash can’t do.

“That’s good and all, but the whole thing was still bullshit. I’m sorry they did that to you, Hen, real fucking sorry. Never agreed with it and made it known, in no uncertain terms, to your mom. Guess that’s why we didn’t do much talking ever again. But my mom tried to make me see things from your mom’s side, probably so I wouldn’t hate her. Didn’t like her, but didn’t hate her either. And tried like hell to save her.” He looks away on his last words, apology heavy in his voice.

“Yeah, you mentioned that before. Wanna tell me what you mean this time?”

He returns his focus on me, his eyes assessing and contemplative, yet compassionate. “You sure you want to hear about that right now? It’s been a helluva day, Hen. It can, probably should, wait.”

I bark out a facetious laugh. “I already know the worst part, the ending. How bad could the beginning possibly be?”

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