Page 52 of Roads Behind Us
“It’s one of the things I wish now I could go back and tell him. I want him to know that, while I miss him and wish I could have him back in my life, I don’t need him.”
“He knows.”
I snorted. “What, are you about to tell me you believe in ghosts?”
“Naw. Not ghosts. But I think the people we lose stay with us, you know? In the background. In our dreams. They see us.”
I pushed up off his chest, spearing him with a doubtful look. “I never would’ve guessed you’d be into woo-woo nonsense.”
He shrugged, and his eyes drifted from mine. Was he embarrassed? “Maybe it’s what I need to believe.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, instantly feeling like the biggest ass. “I shouldn’t judge.”
“It’s okay.” He shrugged and his eyes found mine again. “It does sound kinda nonsensical when I say it out loud. Now come back down here. I like snugglin’ you.”
He pulled on my arm gently, and I cuddled against his chest again, tucking myself into the crook of his arm and laying my head right where I’d wanted to since I’d first seen him without a shirt, like his chest was my very own nest. I kissed below his clavicle, and he sighed.
“How did she die? I started workin’ for your brother after she’d already passed, and Brand rarely mentions her.”
Bax stiffened beneath me. “Aneurysm.”
Suddenly, I felt like that young, unsure teenager again who wanted my daddy to talk about my mama. Oh, how I’d missed her, but I saw in my dad’s eyes that just the mention of my mama’s name made him ache. It had made my dad angry because he couldn’t have her.
Sometimes I wondered if it was my fault, if me wanting to keep my mama’s memory alive had been the reason I lost my dad to hydrocodone. After he broke his back, he’d needed the pills at first, but very quickly it became easy to see that he felt more than physical relief when he took them. They allowed him to be numb. To forget all he’d lost.
“I’m sorry. Forgive me. I shouldn’t have asked.”
“It’s okay, really. It’s good practice for me. Athena tries to talk to me about her mama, but it’s…”
“Painful,” I said, finishing his sentence.
He was quiet and still for a minute, but then he went on. “It’s easier now to talk about her. After it happened, I couldn’t say her name without imaginin’ what she went through that day, you know? If it hurt. If she was scared. If she thought about the b?—”
He cut himself off, and that rigid feeling was back in his muscles.
“Thought about what?”
“… Athena. If she thought about Athena in her last moment.”
“I’m sure she did,” I said, yawning. I covered my mouth, and Bax kissed my hair again. “He couldn’t talk about her, but my dad told me once that after my mama’s car accident, before she died in the hospital, I was the only person she talked about. Honestly, he loved her so much that I wondered if it made him jealous.
“But Candy knew Athena was in good hands. She knew you’d be the best dad, even if you had to do it without her.”
The silence between us after that was a little uncomfortable. Bax’s body never really relaxed. I wanted to talk more, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open much longer.
“Go to sleep now, sweetheart,” he whispered, kissing my head once more and caressing my hair. “You’re tired, and you got mountains to conquer tomorrow.”
With my Yeti full of hot coffee, I managed to sneak out of the house before Athena woke.
Rye had already showered and left before I came tiptoeing down the stairs, and Bax still lay in peaceful dreams upstairs. When I left him, his arm lay spread across the bed where I’d slept all night. Maybe in his dreams, he was still holding me.
Steamy breath punched out in front of me when I snorted at myself as I stepped onto Bax’s porch into the cold air. What a sappy fuckin’ thing to think, Bea.
Darkness lingered outside, but morning light clawed at its edges on the eastern horizon, so I wasn’t super freaked out about bears anymore. And besides, the closer I drove to my cabin, the more I could hear other trucks and the crews arriving for work, so I wouldn’t be caught alone. And if a bear wanted to hang out with a bunch of construction dudes, more power to him. At least they were all bigger than me, so the bear would probably eat them first and I’d have time to grab my nail gun.
“Mornin’,” Clay said when I parked and got out of my truck.
Lo and behold, Jensen hadn’t quit, and he hadn’t complained after our first little run-in, but he wasn’t super chatty with me either. I didn’t expect we’d skip hand in hand to go get manicures together, but he could see that cabins nine and ten were much closer to the HVAC stage than they were yesterday morning, so he knew I was right. His silence was as close to hearing him say “I was wrong” as I was going to get. And I was fine with that. I’d never been under the false impression that I could change men’s ideas about women with words. It was action that made people like Jensen believers.
