Page 97 of Texas Hold Em'
“You should have killed him.”
“You should have killed him.”
“You should have killed him.”
I sat up drenched in sweat and rubbed at my eyes. The darkness of the dream fell away and I peered around at Tex’s bedroom. It was half past six in the morning. The sun was just beginning to rise, and deep orange light shone through the warehouse windows overhead. I tilted my head back and gazed out at the sky as it slowly faded from dark blue, to purple, to blue. Somewhere outside a bird sang his morning song.
It was just a dream.I brought my knees up to my chest, rested my forehead on them, and closed my eyes.Just a dream.
The battle at the landfill had been two nights ago. Like all surreal things, it felt like it had never happened except for when we were around Jackson, who was still having a hard time with the giant hole in his side. He’d been shot by Moss with a large caliber bullet from some sort of rifle, and the damage had been damn near impossible for Brody to repair in what little time he had to work with. His fix had been messy, rushed, but effective, and he was able to stop the bleeding and patch Jackson up before things got too dicey.
Bates was in the wind.
Nobody had heard a peep about him, his daughter, or Moss. The three of them were gone, like smoke.
I hadn’t decided yet if that made me more nervous than knowing where they were. Bates wasn’t the sort of man to run from a fight, so I knew his absence meant his health was bad. Tex had either killed him or nearly killed him.
In time, we’d find out which was true, but I doubted the man was dead. Something told me we’d have to work harder to achieve that task. I sighed and tried to think about anything other than Bates’s eye and his voice in my dream.
Ifor when Bates returned, he’d be out for my blood. I’d be safer in Austin.
Chewing on the inside of my cheek, I looked over at Tex sleeping soundly beside me. He slept on his back, his face turned slightly away from me, his right hand resting on his bare chest. The blankets weredown around his hips, showing off his cut stomach, muscular chest, and the cut of his hips.
He still had to wear a thin bandage over the gash in his hip where Caroline had grazed him with a bullet, but Brody told us the stiches would dissolve in a week or two, and he’d be good to go. His ribs hadn’t bothered him as much this weekend because we’d taken it easy, but he was far from healed. Every now and then if he twisted the wrong way or stood up too fast, he’d hiss in pain, and I’d be reminded of that terrible night when he’d died and I almost lost him.
Neither he nor Brody had yet to say a word about what really happened in this room that night.
I brought it up to Brody last night. We’d all been at Grant’s, as per usual. Suzie and Mason were out in the shop tinkering away on William’s bike, trying to get the repairs underway and fix the damage I’d done. Jackson and Sam weren’t there. They were home resting.
But the rest of us sat sipping beers, shooting the shit, pretending just for the night that we were safe and all was right with the world.
At one point I caught Brody alone in the kitchen, and I’d asked him what happened. How had they pulled it off when the defibrillator didn’t work?
Brody had gone quiet and refused to look at me. A good ten seconds passed before he finally looked me in the eye and told me not to ask him about it anymore. With that, he’d left me in the kitchen staring after him.
Whatever they’d done, it scarred them both.
Tex avoided the subject all together. One of these days I’d get it out of him, but it didn’t have to be today. Today, all I wanted to be was grateful.
So I curled back under the blankets and watched him sleep. Twenty or so minutes slipped through my fingers as I lay there, watching his eyelids flicker in dreams. I hoped they were more pleasant than mine. When he started to stir, I reached out and caressed his cheek, liking how the stubble on his jaw tickled my palm. He hadn’t gotten around to shaving. Things had been too crazy.
I thought the facial hair suited him.
He opened his eyes as he rolled toward me. “Were you watching me again?”
“Watching you?” I scoffed. “Why would I? That sounds terribly boring.”
“I could feel your eyes on me, woman. They’re like lasers.”
“I was thinking.”
“About?”
“About what I’m going to do next.”
His brow furrowed. “Austin or Reno, you mean?”
I propped my head up with my chin in my hand. “I made up my mind.”
