Page 35 of Never Stay Gone
Didn’t you notice the song?He hadn’t wanted Dakota to hear it, but since hehad—
Shane grimaced as his knee twanged. Trying to flex his leg, he accidentally hit the underside of the table, making the silverware jump and Dakota’s coffee slosh. Dakota eyeballed him. Shane’s cheeks burned.
“Your knee?” Dakota asked.
Shane nodded. He rubbed his thigh, squeezed his kneecap. Damn it, he was so fucking sore all the time.
But wait, how did Dakota—
“You know, I hitched out of here too,” Dakota said. He pointed to the outer lot, near where Amber had walked away and disappeared. “Right there.”
Jesus. Shane went red-hot, then ice-cold. His stomach dropped. Hurt more, suddenly, than his knee ever had. “Don’t,” he snapped. “Jesus, Dakota.”
Dakota’s jaw clenched. His eyes narrowed as he glared at the lot. He breathed in, held it. Said nothing.
Dakota, please. Shane ached for Dakota to say something, but notthat. Not to talk about that day. He wanted the Dakota he’d known—the Dakota he dreamed about, even though he knew he shouldn’t, couldn’t. “Dakota…”
Dakota kept right on not looking at him. Staring at nothing, his shoulders hard and tight, one hand wrapped around his coffee cup so tightly his fingernails were white.
“Why are you like this?” Shane breathed.
Finally, Dakota turned to him. “Are you serious?”
“I could be a stranger to you, the way you’ve acted toward me.” Shane was desperate, his mouth moving faster than his mind. “When I saw you out at that grave, it was like the earth had stopped turning, but it doesn’t seem like you even care that you’re back. Or that—”Or that we’re here, together.“I’ve wondered about you. I’ve thought about you. Did you ever think about me?”
Dakota’s coffee cup slammed down on the table. Black coffee splashed over the side, over Dakota’s hand. “I’m not the one who—” Dakota hissed. He leaned across the table, then jerked back as if he’d been slapped. He shook his head, looked down. Closed his eyes.
“Please,” Shane breathed. “Talk to me.”
“Nowyou wanna talk?” Dakota’s voice shook. His head stayed bowed, and he laid his coffee-soaked hand flat on the tabletop. “Shane…” He finally looked up.
Shane stopped breathing.
There was the Dakota he’d known.
There was the Dakota whose heart he’d broken.
It was like no time had passed, and they were back in Shane’s truck, parked beneath the desert willows on Main Street.
“I loved you with everythin’ I was, Shane. Every beat of my heart belonged to you. All I wanted was to be by your side. I didn’t want anythin’ else out of this life ’cept to love you for all of it.”
“Dakota—”
“No, you wanted to talk, so now I’m gonna talk. You’re gonna listen. You think I don’t care about bein’ back? You think I don’t care about seein’ you again?”
“You don’t—”
“I walked out of Rustler that day and got into a stranger’s truck, and I got off at an El Paso army recruiter’s office. I begged them to take me away that same day, and the recruiter saw I was so fuckin’ heartbroken that he pulled strings and got me out of there as fast as he could. When you was walking onto that big college football field and listenin’ to your name bein’ said on ESPN, I was carrying a rifle in Afghanistan. I got ten minutes of internet time a day out at that shithole firebase I was stationed at, and you know what I did with that time? I looked you up. Every single fuckin’ day. Shane Carson, the freshman quarterback phenom. Shane Carson, future NFL quarterback. Shane Carson, the man who broke my damn heart.”
He couldn’t see Dakota anymore. The world was awash in salt water, and he felt the burn of tears against his eyelashes.
“I watched your games on satellite in the middle of the night. Listened to them on my iPod when I was on the graveyard patrol. I heard you go down on that tackle, live. A whole world away, and I listened to the announcers talk about how you was sacked and your knee went sideways and how you wasn’t gettin’ up. They had to carry you off the field, and I was stuck in a fuckin’ hole in Afghanistan listenin’ to it all. I would have crawled my way around the world and carried you off that damn field myself, but no. You didn’t want anythin’ to do with me. You didn’t even want to remember me.”
“That’s not true—”
“No? ’Cause that’s what you did. Made sure you’d never remember a single thing about me.Us.”
Shane’s eyes closed.
