Page 7 of Never Stay Gone
Would Big Bend look like it did in his memories? Sunlight and happiness and the glow of perfection? Would everything be the same, like a snapshot frozen in history? He used to think that life beyond those stadium lights and off that little Old West–style Main Street was nothing but a dream. How small his world had been then. How simple everything had seemed.
His vision blurred, and memories beat against the wall he’d built in his mind.Don’t think about it. Never think about it.It was all in the past. Those were days he never relived, memories he never dared venture near.
But as the miles wore on and the pavement hummed beneath his tires, all those days and nights came roaring back.
Two years. Such a short amount of time to hijack his heart, but every single one of those moments had been etched onto his soul.
Thirteen years later, he still hadn’t gotten it back. Not fully, at least. He still felt like he was scraping shards up in his bare hands, trying to tape all the broken pieces together again.
Would going back help? Maybe he could finally put it all behind him. Maybe he’d stand in the middle of that stadium and close his eyes and sayhisname again, one last time, and let it all go.
Maybe. Probably not.
It had been thirteen years, and he wasn’t free of the heartbreak yet. Why would anything change now?
He had been so damn young. Just sixteen when he first met Shane Carson, Big Bend High’s star quarterback. Nothing came out of Big Bend, or Rustler, except for dust and rattlesnakes, but Shane had been destined for greatness from the time he was in fifth grade, according to the busybodies that worked the sidelines during the games. He had an arm that wouldn’t quit, and he was throwing touchdown passes at the college level when he was in middle school. Small-town hyperbole, sure. But there was some truth in it. Shane was phenomenal on the football field.
Dakota had grown up on ten different ranches, raised by drifter parents who couldn’t settle down. His dad was a cowboy and his mom was the best damn camp cook west of the Mississippi, and they moved from ranch to ranch until Dakota’s junior year of high school, when they came to Rustler and promised him they’d stay put until the day he graduated.It killed them to not move on after eight months, but they kept their promise, and that meant everything to Dakota. It was the best show of love they’d ever given him.
Of course, if they had moved on, he probably never would have fallen head over heels, and everything would have turned out differently, saved him all that heartbreak.
But they’d raised him right, and done right by him too. They wanted him to graduate, and after a tapestry of home schooling and transfers in and out of a wild array of farm schools, his education was patchier than his dad’s rusted-out junk hauler. He needed consistency to graduate, they said. And a chance to make friends. Be a teenage boy for a little while.
By then, Dakota had played ball with a dozen different ranch foremen, and he knew how to run a straight line and catch a football in a perfect bread basket. What else was there for a sixteen-year-old kid at a new high school to do but try out for the team?
He was the only receiver Shane couldn’t outthrow. Dakota ran like the devil was chasing him, and maybe he didn’t know a single passing route, but he could sprint off the line and get down the field in a hurry, whip himself around and find the ball. At the end of tryouts, Shane had told him, “Good job, man. That was awesome.”
They were friends from that day forward. Shane was the quarterback and the coolest kid at school, but he befriended Dakota, who had nothing and knew no one, almost overnight. Shane had all the right clothes, and Dakota’s T-shirts had holes around the hemline. He wore work boots to school and sometimes had hay in his hair, but Shane never laughed at him. Shane’s dad was a banker, and Dakota’s was a drifter. Dakota wasn’t just from the other side of the tracks, he was from the other side of the sun. But it didn’t matter.
Every day junior year, they were on the field, practicing drills and passes. Shane taught him all those routes and patterns and plays he didn’t know, and Dakota caught every ball Shane flung his way. In their games, he scored two, then three, then five touchdowns, until the local papers were saying Shane Carson and Dakota Jennings were an unstoppable pair. Unbeatable.
Of course, Shane was the star. Dakota could run fast enough to keep up with his passes, that’s all. He wasn’t the special one. Most of the time, he hit the dirt as soon as he caught the ball. But he worked his ass off to make sure Shane looked good.
Dakota didn’t know when he fell in love with Shane. One day he was laughing with his friend like they always were, goofing off on the field. Stretching or shuffling the ball back and forth, or just hanging out, lingering in the sunshine before they had to go home to algebra homework and US history. Laughter one moment, and then—
It was like someone had taken his heart andsqueezed, trying to juice him dry. He’d seen the sun slant through Shane’s tousled hair, the curl of his smile as he shook his head. Seen the cling of his T-shirt against his shoulders, and thought,Fuck.
Months of quiet desperation followed.Never let Shane know. Keep it hidden. Keep it secret.Then,Oh God, please, let him see. Let him see how I feel, and maybe, just maybe, let him feel a tiny bit the same way.He’d wanted everything and nothing at the same time, wanted to bottle up his tender, blooming feelings and bury them far away, hide them out of sight. And he’d wanted to see Shane look at him the way he sometimes looked at Shane when no one—especially not Shane—was watching. He’d lain awake at night and spun fantasies against the trailer roof or, when he slept outside, the Milky Way. Sometimes he woke whispering Shane’s name, imagining him curled up inside the sleeping bag and nuzzling Dakota’s neck or the side of his face. He craved, and he wanted, and he yearned, and he fell so helplessly, hopelessly in love with his best friend.
And he never said a word.
So it was a goddamn surprise when, the day after junior year ended, when all of summer was unfurling before them, Shane had leaned in and kissed him on the cheek.
They were out in the middle of nowhere, way, way out, wandering along old trails they found on yellowed maps they’d checked out from the school library. All they’d wanted that summer, they’d said, was to explore. Get out, get away. Throw footballs where footballs had never been thrown before. Chase the sun from one horizon to the other, and then count stars as they filled up the sky. There was nothing better, Dakota had thought, than spending endless days of sunshine at Shane’s side.
Until Shane’s shy eyes met his and then slid away, and that little curl of a smile appeared. He was playing with a football, always playing with a football, just like he was always smiling that sunrise smile. His shaggy, sandy hair was falling into his eyes, and the freckles on his cheeks were high, brought out by spring and because he never put sunscreen on.
Dakota wanted to count each of Shane’s freckles, stare at him and memorize every angle of his face. Find the geometry between the corners of his eyes and the edge of his smile.
A smile, a look away, a squeeze of the football. A little laugh, too, like Shane was breathless, like he didn’t know what he was doing. And then he’d reached for Dakota, stopped him on that dusty, narrow trail going up the mesa. He’d leaned in until his lips brushed Dakota’s cheek. There and then gone, a dry whisper of breath, skin against skin.
Dakota had frozen. Stood stock still, staring at Shane, not sure what to do. Had he given himself away somehow? Was Shane pitying him? Placating him? What the hell was that?
“Sorry,” Shane had said. He wouldn’t meet Dakota’s gaze, and he kept spinning the football in his hands like he couldn’t control how they were moving. “I’m sorry. Forget I did that.”
“Don’t apologize,” he’d stammered. “I mean, it’s fine. I—I didn’t mind.”
Shane had eyed him. Studied him, his eyes as sharp as they ever were on the field.
