Page 65 of Never Stay Gone
“Yeah, we’re done. Thanks, Darryl.” Dakota waited for Darryl to leave the bathroom. He poked around Shane’s vanity, checking the drawers—mostly empty, except for a half-full spindle of floss and a few spare shirt buttons—and then stared at himself in Shane’s mirror. What did Shane see when he looked at himself? Or had he avoided his own image, turned away from his own eyes?
What did you see, Shane?
Chapter Sixteen
Shane clungto the arms of his desk chair, white-knuckling the grips. The ticking of the department’s old wall clock slammed into his skull.
Tick. Shelly’s dead.Tock. Shelly was murdered.Tick. Someone killed her.Tock. He’s out there right now.
He was here because he needed to work—but damn it, he couldn’t think right. His chest felt hollow, his lungs like punctured balloons. He was dizzy, like the oxygen he tried to hold inside wasn’t getting where it needed to go.
The best night of his life now lay differently his mind. He’d soared so high, opened himself up and turned his face toward the sun, desperate to shine light on all his buried secrets. He’d excavated his darkness, blown open his dusty soul. Had given himself, heart and body and mind, to Dakota. Oh, God, he’d given himself. He could still feel Dakota inside him. He still had Dakota’s touch on his skin, and when he shifted, he could smell Dakota: leather, sweat, and sunshine, along with some indescribable lightness that pulled at Shane’s heart.
He’d saidthe wordlast night too.I’m gay.And he’d told Dakota he loved him. He’d spoken the two truths of his life, the two things he’d buried beneath his broken heart.
Dakota had held him, caught his tears and cradled his soul. He’d said “I love you” back to Shane, and it was too perfect, too fucking perfect, to have been real. Dakota had said he’d dreamed of Shane telling him he loved him—but Shane, too, had had a thousand dreams where Dakota came back, came home, and looked at him with kind eyes and took him out to the desert and the stars and the ocotillo and fingered those red blooms as he said,Do you remember?
A dried ocotillo carefully taped to the back of a picture. Dakota saying “I love you.” Dakota’s hands and lips everywhere. Shane waking in Dakota’s arms and, for the first time in over a decade, not feeling that flash flood of dread sweep through his desiccated life as soon as he opened his eyes. Instead, he’d beenhappy. Hopeful. The world was brand-new only a few hours ago, and he could be reckless, wild. Kiss Dakota against his truck and imagine a lifetime of mornings with the two of them, just as light, just as joyous.
Tick. Shelly’s dead.Tock. Shelly was murdered.
Shane crumpled forward on his desktop, sinking his head into his folded arms. The department was as silent as a grave.
He’d met Shelly on the river, one of the days he’d needed to get away—away from Rustler, away from his father, away from all the whispers and expectations that surrounded him. Going out into the desert or the mountains, or on the river, was how he kept his sanity. His memories of Dakota were strongest in the desert, where he could imagine he was walking beside Dakota again, replay all the moments they’d shared during those two perfect years. They’d never rafted the Rio Grande together, but they’d talked about it. Shane hoped he could take Dakota with him in his heart during the rafting trip, and maybe it would feel like they were together.
The group was him, a river guide, a couple vacationing from Houston, and Shelly. Adventurous, confident Shelly, who thought nothing of going rafting alone. Her high spirits charmed everyone on the boat, and her laughter had bounced off the canyon walls all down the river. By lunch, Shelly had gravitated toward Shane and he to her. She was bright, sunny, and buoyant, and being around her was like escaping from himself. He’d thought,She has Dakota’s smile, and then,She has Dakota’s laugh too. Rafting turned into dinner and drinks in Terlingua, and then into her writing her number on a cocktail napkin and pressing it into Shane’s hand before she climbed into her rental Jeep.
He hadn’t known what to do with that napkin. Dakota was gone, all the way gone, despite how Shane clung to their memories. He’d never come back, not in all the time since graduation. He was a ghost. And Shane was ossifying inside his family’s old home, with his spider-like father clinging to his rotten life, still trying to spin his web around Shane and Rustler.
For their first date, they met in Pecos for dinner, and it was a disaster. Shane was too high-strung, too quiet. He’d thought,Well, that’s that, as the night ended early, but Shelly called him a week later and asked him to go mountain biking with her. That day went much better, almost like the first day on the river, and he’d started to think,Maybe.Maybe.
Shelly was fun, and kind, and gentle, and far smarter than he was. He wanted to be around her like he wanted to be in the sunshine. There was a tender kernel of warmth inside him when they were together, and he thought, with time, that would grow, become something kind of like what he’d felt for Dakota.
They waited a long, long time to sleep together. He’d wanted to do better with a woman than he had in college. Long nights watching porn and feeling uninspired left him despondent. Eventually, he gave up and made the run to Mexico, and their first time—every time—was supplemented by a little blue pill. He’d been so fucking terrified, but he just wanted her to be happy. He had only ever wanted her to be happy.
How deeply he’d failed her.
If she hadn’t met him—
No, he couldn’t do this. He couldn’t sit here thinking in circles, battered by the ticking clock and all the fucking what-ifs that had strangled him his whole life. If he’d never told Dakota to go, if he’d been strong enough to saythe word. If he’d stood up to his father. If he’d saidI love youto Dakota when he’d felt it thirteen years ago instead of for the first time last night.
None of that could change the fact that Shelly was dead. Murdered.
And none of this would help find her killer.
Dakota. Shane leaned on the memory of his lover like Dakota was right there beside him, giving him strength.Dakota will find who killed Shelly and the other women.
Dakota had a toughness Shane never had. There was something inside Dakota that never let go, once he made up his mind to hold on to something. Dakota had loved Shane with that tenacity, and it was probably that same drive that led him to be a Ranger. Dakota would find this killer. He’d run him down. Of that, Shane had no doubt. And Shane was going to help him. Shane wasn’t half the lawman Dakota was, but he could chase the leads they’d teased out of the desert.
He pushed himself off his desk, let the world spin and resettle, and then dragged the desert graves case file from the corner of his desk.Dakota.
There were two sticky notes on the front, Heath’s slanted scrawl going diagonally across each. The first, the phone number for a detective in Odessa. The second, a request to call Dr. Trevino back. Shane’s stomach clenched, and he took the note with the Odessa detective’s number.
The phone rang three times before a woman’s cello-deep voice, roughened by cigarette smoke and Odessa living, answered. “Detective Cruz.”
“Hi, Detective. Captain Shane Carson, Big Bend Sheriff’s Department.” His voice was ragged, like he’d shoved his heart and his throat through a cheese grater. He closed his eyes.
“Oh, yes, your sheriff said someone would be calling to follow up. Listen, no luck finding your suspect, Frank Lynn, yet.”
