Page 126 of The Outsider

“No kidding. That could be why we fight so much.”

“We don’t fight that much,” said Daughtry.

“Why don’t you just work at the ranch?”

“Because,” he said. “Because everything to do with the ranch is tied up in all the old stuff, and anything that is tied up in the old stuff is just... It’s too hard. All of it. I can’t stand it. Okay? Is that what you want to hear? I don’t know what I’m doing. I just know that I don’t want to feel. I don’t want to feel the way that I did. Because back then, I could feel all these things, and it was just... It would explode. And Dad used that. He used me. And the thing that I felt deepest, the thing that I felt most proud of, was our family. Was being Dad’s son. How can you be that wrong and not know it? Don’t you ever wonder that? How you can be that wrong, and have no idea?”

“I don’t worry about it,” Denver said. “Because I can’t. I have shit to do. Right or wrong, good or bad, I do what needs doing. As long as taking care of you, taking care of the people in the community Dad messed with, takes up my time I won’t get off the path. I would’ve thought that you would have a similar feeling. You joined law enforcement. Doesn’t that tell you everything you need to know?”

“No. Because suddenly, there’s Bix. And all of my feelings are too big to handle again. And I don’t know how I’ll know when I’m doing the right thing, and when I’m doing the wrong thing. When I’m angry because it’s justified, and when I’m just on a power trip.”

“You know, I don’t believe you. I bet she didn’t either. I think you believe that. I think you’re the only one that does. I think you were the only one that believes that you might actually go off half-cocked one day. It’s a prettyneat story that you’re telling yourself. And I get it. I do. Bottom line, though, I was older, and I saw more of Dad than you or Justice or Landry. I think he did a particular kind of hit job on you three. Because you all loved him. Very much. And you got involved in his world, and I did too. But it was different. I... I was trying to protect you. I wasn’t very good at it. And I’m still not. Because if I was, then you and I wouldn’t be at odds all the time, and you wouldn’t have rejected the one woman who was dumb enough to fall in love with you.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” said Daughtry.

“No. I don’t. I get that. I’ve actually done a lot. I still don’t feel redeemed, or whatever it is you’re waiting to feel. Just so you know. It’s complicated. I get that. I tried. I’ll never get over what happen. I’ll always wish that I had done more. Done better. Done different. But I didn’t. So I guess my question is... are you really afraid of yourself, or are you just afraid of loving somebody again? And being blindsided. Because from my point of view, that’s the cruelest thing that ever happened to you. The way you loved Dad, only to have to realize, to fully realize, that the version of love you’d been sold all your life was a total lie. You might lose it again, right?”

“Denver...”

He didn’t like his brother’s words, because they scraped against something inside of him. Because they felt too damned true.

Because yeah. It didn’t feel real that Bix loved him. And it didn’t feel like she should.

They were wrong, though. He did feel bad. Afraidof the feelings inside of him. Because they were just so big. They were so big, and if he loved her and then she didn’t really love him, it...

Well, hell.

It was all that. All of it. And he wanted to reject her before she could reject him. Because he had loved a narcissist, and his dad had played him. And that was how he had recognized love for all these years, and it made him afraid of it now.

Afraid of himself. And the capacity he had to love the wrong person in the wrong way.

But Bix wasn’t a narcissist. She wasn’t wrong. Bix was the best person he knew. She was principled. And she was good. She was feisty. Kind of a liar, but kind of in an obvious way, which was cute.

She was cute.

And she cared about him. Cared for him. And he had... he had tried to hurt her. Tried to hurt her so that she would leave him when he was expecting it. And not when he wasn’t. So that he could be in control.

And what hit him then was that it was closer to being his father than he would’ve ever wanted to be. By trying to not be like him, by trying to avoid pain and attachment, he was somehow bringing himself closer to the old man than he would have ever believed.

“It isn’t that I don’t care about the ranch,” he said. “I care too much. And anything that I care too much about, I try only to do about half of.”

“I hope you didn’t only do half with Bix. She deserves better than that.”

He shot his brother a flat glare. “I wanted to figureout a way to fix the way the town saw our family. Because that was actually still more distant than digging in and fixing the family itself. The distance is my fault. I’d... I’m just so... Listen, I’m not afraid of having a gun pointed at me. I’m not afraid of a high-speed chase. I’m not afraid to get into a fistfight. But I am really afraid of some of the things that I feel.”

“I get that,” Denver said, his face shrouded in shadow. “Believe me. I get that. And I know all about bids for atonement. But you have an opportunity here that’s pretty amazing. And I would hate for you to miss out on it because of Dad. Mostly because I just don’t think he should have any more of us than he already does. And if you can’t love her out of spite, which is frankly what I would do, then just love her for you. Because wouldn’t it be better than just being sad?”

“I don’t know,” Daughtry said. “Living with her, day in and day out and always feeling all these things.”

“I think they call it being happy. Having not experienced it firsthand, I wouldn’t know. But you’ve been happy, Daughtry. The happiest I’ve seen you. Anything that makes you feel like that is something worth hanging on to.”

He sat there, in the dark, looking around the cabin. This cabin that felt so emblematic of Bix’s bravery. Of how far she had been willing to go.

He had taken care of her physically. But emotionally... she had given him everything.

It was more than a brick.

It was more than a handful of stardust.

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