Page 43 of Never Stay Gone
“If we’re done, we’re done, Shane. Let’s not drag this out any more than it already has been. We’ve hurt each other enough, don’t you think?”
“Yeah,” he choked out. “Yeah. Um, are you— Are you going to be okay?”
“Yes. I will be,” she said. She wiped her nose, closed her eyes. Gathered herself. “You’re not the end of my world. You’re a bump in my road.”
That’s all he was to anyone, a bump in their damn road. “Will you stay in Rustler?”
“Probably not,” Shelly said. “I love Big Bend, but I don’t think I can stay where I thought you and I would spend forever. Maybe I’ll move in with Danielle for a while. I don’t know. Give me a few days to think through my options, and then we can decide what to do about the house.”
“Stay here as long as you want. I can get my stuff—” He was mumbling, rambling. His stuff was already in boxes on the driveway.
“I don’t want to be in this house anymore,” Shelly said. She gnawed on her lower lip. “I was going out so much because I didn’t want to be here, surrounded by all our memories and what we used to be.”
Shane stared at the ground again. It should have been harder to end his engagement, leave the woman he thought he’d marry. But all he felt was a vague numbness, a hollow echo inside him that was as familiar as his ever-present failure.
“Look, Shell, just be careful, okay? We’re working on that graves case, and… That guy you’re texting—he’s safe, right? You’re safe with him?”
Shelly crossed the kitchen and opened the front door. “It’s time for you to leave.”
“I do love you,” he breathed. “Just not—”
“Not enough,” she said. “I guess I don’t love you enough either. I need to wrap my head around this too. I’ve got to think back, and I need to figure out when we stopped loving each other.”
He trudged to the door ahead of her as she showed him out. Shane’s neighbors—former neighbors—were still out in their yards, peering across the street and down the block, eager for the next juicy bit of Shane Carson failure. His bags of clothes were in the back of his truck, his boxes were still in the driveway, and here he was, coming out of the house he and Shelly had shared. The sun was setting, the long summer twilight painting the sky periwinkle and persimmon and turning the street to a lavender dusk.
“Bye, Shell,” he tried to say, but she had already shut the door behind him.
Shane left the boxes where they were and climbed into his truck. He turned on the radio and pushed the CD eject button. Out slid a homemade CD, the permanent marker on the label faded with age.Shane and Dakota’s Summer.
He traced the hand-drawn prickly pear, the shooting star. Ocotillo rose along the right side of the CD, the tips flowering with delicate blooms like the little red flower Shane had plucked for Dakota the afternoon he’d worked up his courage to brush his lips across Dakota’s cheek. He hadn’t known what he was doing, only thought that if he didn’t dosomething, all those feelings he had building inside him for his best friend were going to explode. Dakota was in cowboy boots and shorts that day, and a T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, and Shane had eyed the lines of his muscles for hours as he followed him on that trail.You like him. Admit it. No, don’t say anything. Don’t do anything. You’re not—
Don’t even think the word.
But he had kissed Dakota, and Dakota had kissed him back, and everything had spiraled from there. For those two years, life had been perfect, and it didn’t matter that his mom had died or that he and his dad were strangers to each other or that he lived like a prisoner in his family’s old, rotten house. He’d lie in his bedroom with the door open, and he’d imagine Dakota climbing up the window and sneaking inside, slipping into his bed after his dad went to sleep. He held Dakota’s ring every night, trying to send all his confused, mixed-up feelings to Dakota, as if some of the peace he felt when they were together could come back to him that way.
Once, his dad had seen the ring when it came untucked from his T-shirt, and he’d asked what the hell it was. Shane had lied to his dad for the first and only time in his life, saying it was a good luck charm a friend had given him for the football games. His dad asked which friend, and Shane had hesitated for three seconds—he couldn’t lie again—before saying Dakota’s name.
The look his father had given him was undecipherable, unknowable, even to this day. He couldn’t parse all the different emotions he’d seen in his dad’s eyes: wariness and disgust and fear and sadness and desperation, all jumbling together until his dad got up, leaving Shane to finish his math homework at the table.
He’d thought, for a moment, his dad was going to get a knife and slit his throat. Grab the meat tenderizer and bash him over the back of the head.
Shane and Dakota’s Summer. He’d dug through his closet that morning until he’d found the one duffel he always kept in the back, as far out of sight as it could be. Shelly had been shouting at him from the other room, so goddamn mad at him, so unhappy with how her life was turning out, and all Shane was thinking was that he’d hidden a ziplock bag in that duffel thirteen years ago, and he had to find it, get it out, hold those pieces of Dakota’s heart again, right that moment. Dakota hated him, he’d thought, but he had some memories left, and if he just brushed up against those memories, maybe he’d find some strength, somewhere, to hold on a little longer in this fucking life.
Shane slipped the CD back into the player and turned the volume up. Rolled down the windows and skipped to the last track. “Cowboy Take Me Away.” Let the neighbors hear.
Let them see too. Shane gritted his teeth as the chorus swelled, and he shouted the words along with Natalie Maines as he grasped the wheel. His eyes burned, then overflowed, and he felt tears run hot down his cheeks.Dakota, I should have taken your hand and run away with you. They should have gone south, to Mexico, or east, to San Angelo, or north, to Amarillo. Should have run away together, right into the sunrise, into the beginning of everything.
Every beat of my heart belonged to you.
I’m still a goddamn dumbass, because here it is, thirteen years since you broke my heart, and I’m still so fucking in love with you.
Shane yanked his truck into drive and slammed his foot on the gas pedal.
It only took four minutes to cross Rustler, especially when he ignored all the stop signs. He hit the motel parking lot hard, harder than he had the bodega in Presidio, and squealed to a stop behind Dakota’s truck. His radio was still screaming, that one song on repeat, and he knew it was loud enough that Dakota could hear it inside his room. He killed the engine. Slid out of his truck. For once, his knee wasn’t about to buckle, and he strode to Dakota’s door with his heart spinning like a tornado inside him, as if it could suck up all his broken pieces and jam him back together.
He cop knocked on Dakota’s door. Cringed and tried again, softer. “Dakota? It’s me—”
The door whipped open, right as Shane was about to knock again.
