Page 92 of Never Stay Gone
“That ain’t how he saw it.”
“Everyone loves Shane,” she repeated. “He belongs to this place. Rightly or wrongly, everyone feels like they had a little part of raising him. Think of it like a hundred aunts and uncles all wanting the best for their relation.”
Dakota groaned. “That don’t sound good at all.”
“Shane’s happy, which is all anyone really wants to see. That boy has had a hard life.”
“Well, he ain’t gonna anymore.”
Betty smiled again. “No, I imagine he won’t.”
“So, uh. Did it come in?”
“Yes!” She bustled back behind the counter and pulled out a ring box from a locked cupboard beneath the register. “You did an amazing job.” She popped the box open.
The ring he’d designed for Shane rested in the center of a velvet-lined box. Polished madrone wood lay over a white gold base, and a line of baguette-cut rubies shone red all the way around.
The madrone grew on the mesas right there in Big Bend, and they’d kissed beneath its branches more times than Dakota could count. Red for the ocotillo blooms, the flower Shane had given him that he’d kept all these years. That flower was still in his wallet, still on the back of his favorite picture. Maybe he should frame it, but he liked the idea of keeping Shane and their love with him all the time.
“I hope he likes it,” Dakota breathed. No sense pretending the ring wasn’t for anyone other than Shane now, he supposed. It was sized for a man, anyway. Betty had probably known since he’d first asked for her help a month ago.
“He will love it.” Betty snapped the box closed and put it in a small bag, then slid it across to Dakota. “I can’t wait to see it on his hand.”
“Thank you, Betty.”
“You both take me dancing sometime.”
He grinned. “Yes, ma’am. We will.”
On the way home, he stopped by the truck stop and picked up Shane’s shit cappuccino and a real coffee for himself. Jared gave him a weak smile and pointed to the wall of high-tech security monitors he’d set up right behind the registers. Everything was watched, now, and everyone knew it.
He stood in the spot Amber had sat drinking her Dr Pepper before she died. Looked at where Libby had filled up before Wayne eyeballed her. Picked her. Amber, Libby, Sophie. Three women he’d picked because they were in the right place at the wrong time.
The county had paid for Libby’s burial. Jackson, his whole crew from the ranch, Heath, Shane, and Dakota were there. Jackson cried, and Shane and Heath took him for a long walk around the cemetery. It was a place right on the edge of the wild spaces, beautiful and raw and majestic. It could have been a park, someplace people had to pay to go see, but the county had decided it would be the final resting place for anyone who had struggled in life. Death, and the peace that followed, shouldn’t be cold and empty.
Ramón drove up to Rustler to collect Amber’s remains after they were shipped back from El Paso. Dakota and Heath met him at the courthouse, and they transferred her wooden coffin into Ramón’s big SUV. In the passenger seat was a morose man who never got out. Darkness clung to him, a simmering anger, boiling even through his red-rimmed eyes. He fingered a medallion to Santa Muerte that hung around his neck, and before Ramón drove away, he nodded to Dakota. Dakota took his hat off and nodded back. No funny business when a brother came to collect his sister’s body.
Sophie’s remains had been cremated, and her rock-climbing friends scattered the ashes across her favorite mountain.
Wilbur Hurst buried Carly on his ranch, without fanfare. He still wasn’t seen in public much and had resigned from much of his public activities.
Drew Riggs paid for Jessica Klein’s—and his baby’s—burials in Odessa. He hadn’t been at the funeral. Joey Carroll had laid a spray of white lilies on Jessica’s grave, along with a pair of baby booties, then packed his truck and driven west to California. He said he wanted waves, and the ocean, and an honest day’s hard work, far away from all of this. He’d spent his life hustling for a woman who turned her back on him, and he needed to wash that hurt out of his soul. Maybe, hopefully, fall in love again and start on that house full of children he’d always wanted.
Drew had disappeared from public life. He’d agreed to testify against his wife, and the drips and drops of the investigation that Bennet shared with Dakota pointed to a marriage rife with domestic abuse, Amanda ruthlessly controlling Drew, subjecting him to what amounted to a surveillance state. She spied on everything he did, tried to dictate his every move, his every choice, his every word. Drew had managed to hide his affair with Jessica, using fake email addresses and setting up meetings in person. The motel rooms were always paid for in cash under fake names. No receipts. No records.
It was the first pregnancy scan that doomed Drew and Jessica. He’d kept the little photo in his wallet, hidden behind his credit cards, thinking it was safe. Amanda found it.
Drew had indeed called Wayne in a panic about Carly spotting him and Jessica in Big Bend, he said. Drew thought Wayne was his friend, that he could confide in the man, when really, Wayne was funneling everything Drew said right to Amanda.
Drew had planned to make a life with Jessica. Amanda had been viciously ambitious, Wayne even more so. Both wanted the power that came with the top office—the presidency—and they were willing to do anything to get there. Steal money to build their war chests. Twist Drew until he was the perfect image of a supportive husband, no matter that he was dying inside. Murder his lovers when he was desperate and aching for affection, and cut off all dreams of escape and a new life away from their predatory evil. His fling with Amanda overseas had turned into a life sentence, and when he’d tried to go back to Holly ten years ago, Holly had paid the price. Jessica was a surprise, he said, but he’d fallen in love with her during those Austin summers. Their plan had been to wait until Amanda made it to the Oval Office before Drew left. When Amanda was president, she wouldn’t need him anymore, Drew said. He’d thought she’d let him go. Jessica would leave Joey then, and everything would have been smooth sailing.
Dakota didn’t think so.
Once a week, he and Shane walked out to Shelly’s grave. Shane’s pain ebbed and the happier memories rose, and he started telling Dakota about his and Shelly’s friendship, which had been the part of them that was really good, before everything got tangled and sour with disappointment.
After so many stories, Dakota wished he’d known her. He had the photo of Shane and Shelly rock climbing reframed and hung it on the wall in their house, along with the photos he’d pulled from Shane’s nightstand of their high school years. Football, tailgating, hanging out. Boys growing up. Boys falling in love.
His mind was swirling as the truck bounced down the track, but everything cleared when he saw their house. Their home. His and Shane’s. All his tender dreams that he’d thought had been torn to shreds, coming true. Every moment was real, a hard, solid real he could touch, but there were still times it felt like he didn’t dare exhale or he’d pop this wonderland he’d found himself in.
