“Macy?” Eliza called after her. “We’re about to start.”
“Sorry, Eliza,” Macy said coolly. “Suddenly I don’t feel very well.” She walked out, letting the door slam shut behind her.
Wide-eyed, Eliza looked to Samantha, but Samantha shrugged and pretended to focus on her frame. But she was seething, her heart beating so rapidly she felt short of breath.
In the parking lot, Macy turned the ignition of her Jeep. Then she sat, sickened and shocked by her harsh words with Sam, trying to catch her breath, her forehead pressed to the steering wheel. This situation was impossible, it was absolutely impossible, and there was no one in the world who could understand how difficult this was, not even, as Macy had wrongly believed, her friend Samantha.
She lifted her head and put the car into gear, pulling out onto Congress Avenue. She was headed for Cedar Springs.
She made one quick stop at a convenience store. While she was inside her cell phone rang. Macy looked at the caller ID—it was Emma.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Emma asked when Macy answered.
Macy put her things down on the counter and pulled out her wallet. “Actually, nothing,” she said.
“Great! Come over to Mom’s. She’s in Austin all day. I had a great interview this morning and now Chloe and the boys are here. And hey, Ruthie’s Bar finally reopened. I’m free, Chloe’s got a babysitter, and we want to check it out tonight. Can you go?”
“On a Monday night?” Macy asked uncertainly.
“Yes! On a Monday! What better day? And besides, the place is packed every night.”
The guy behind the counter bagged her items and took her twenty-dollar bill.
“Yes,” Macy said. “Yes. I am so there,” she said.
Emma laughed. “You sound like a woman who could use a couple of stiff ones. We’ll be out back when you get here.”
Macy hung up. She’d put the world on hold for a couple of weeks. What was one more day?
Emboldened by Macy’s promise that the land was still his, Finn drove out to Two Wishes.
He thought he’d get a boost from it, but it only depressed him more. For a man who had seen some very black days, that was saying a lot.
It was nothing like the way he’d left it. The old ranch house, built in the late nineteenth century out of hand-struck limestone, sat in empty disrepair. Judging by the broken windows, the graffiti painted on the living room walls, and the butts of different types of smokes lying around, kids had been hanging out there, smoking pot and drinking beer. The toilets were a disaster, as was the kitchen. Someone had ripped out and stolen all the copper tubing, a common problem on new construction sites because of the high price copper would bring. Apparently, that extended to old houses now.
The barn, which Finn and Brodie had built over a mild winter, was untouched, but it was perhaps even more devastating to see it standing empty. It was the most vivid reminder that his prize cutting horses were gone, as were his cattle, his dogs, and even the pair of ducks who’d made the old stock pond home—all gone. The place he’d built with his blood and sweat and sheer determination had been abandoned to thugs and thieves, and a huge, commercial FOR SALE sign sat at his front gate.
To add insult to injury, when Finn drove around the acreage on the old two-track roads, he discovered that someone had started to clear the mesquite and cedar on the south end of his property which backed up to a strip of land abutting Cedar Creek Road. Finn had always suspected it would become prime commercial real estate one day, but he thought it might take twenty or thirty years. Apparently, he’d been wrong about that; the growth in and around Austin since he’d left to join the army was incredible. Yet he didn’t understand the clearing of his land. If the ranch hadn’t been sold, who was clearing the mesquite and cedar?
As Finn circled back around to the entrance, he grew even more dispirited. It would take a lot of time and money to bring his ranch back to where it had been—hell, a good cutting horse cost at least ten thousand dollars; a great one, fifteen thousand and up. That didn’t include the equipment and the cattle he’d need in order to train new horses. The house needed repair, and while he could do a lot of the work himself, it would take time and money.
The thought of starting from scratch was overwhelming to Finn.
He’d ended up at Ruthie’s Bar. How, he didn’t really know, as he recalled nothing of the drive into Cedar Springs. He remembered Ruthie’s as being a hole in the wall, but now it seemed trendy. The old wooden bar, marked by time and cowboys that worked the Triple Z Ranch west of town, had been replaced with glass and chrome. The pine dance floor had been replaced with a big circular dance track with a bar in the middle.
Finn sat at another bar near the entrance nursing a few beers, his thoughts scattered between his ranch and Afghanistan. He felt like he didn’t really belong in this town anymore. He wasn’t sure where he belonged. His life had been at a standstill for three years while the rest of the world had moved ahead. He’d been left behind. The more he drank, the more he felt like he didn’t even belong in his scarred body. Finn Lockhart, as he remembered himself,
thought
of himself, had ceased to exist, and now he was the guy everyone kept calling a hero.
He wasn’t a hero. He was the farthest thing from a hero.
But someone calling him a hero bought him a whiskey. Maybe two. Finn was beginning to lose track. He nodded and answered as politely as he could when someone would ask after him, but he kept it short, avoiding eye contact. He didn’t want any friends right now, save the one that was in the glass before him.
He must have had a few, because he didn’t notice when Erin—or Kristen—whoever, slid onto the barstool next to him. When he became aware of her, he pushed his hair out of his eyes and smiled. He was feeling no pain.
“I was going to ride on your float,” she said.
Finn wondered if the float she was going to ride was the same thing he had in mind, but then she ruined it by saying, “You know, in the Fourth of July parade.”
Ah, the parade, the damn parade, the hero’s welcome. Finn smiled. “Is that right?” he said, and instead of thinking about that damn parade that had gone on without him, he imagined her breasts in his hands and ordered a drink for her and one for himself.
He became so preoccupied with the idea of asking Kristen if there was some place they might go and have mindless—and for him, increasingly necessary—sex, that he failed to see Macy come into the bar.
When Kristen left him to go to the ladies’ room, Finn was hanging on to the bar so he wouldn’t slide off his little pinhead of a barstool. It was then that he spotted Macy and it threw him even more off balance. He’d managed to put her and Afghanistan out of his thoughts for a while, but in his current inebriated state he felt foolish for not realizing she was there, and a moment or two of boyish uncertainty passed.
Not that it mattered. Macy hadn’t seen him, either, apparently. She’d cleaned up since he’d last seen her. Her hair was brushed and pulled back in a silky, golden tail. She had on a sleeveless blouse that fit tightly across her breasts and something dangling at her ears that gave off little sparks of fractured light.
Macy was sitting in a booth next to her sister Emma and across from her cousin Chloe, laughing at something one of them had said. That laugh swept over Finn like the Texas heat, making him testy and uncomfortable. How the hell could she sit there laughing? Was her life so carefree that she could
laugh
?
Finn pivoted around on his stool so that he was facing her. It was only a moment or two before Macy looked up and noticed him. He could see the surprise flicker across her face, could see her smile falter.
“Do you want another drink?” Kristen had returned but Finn hardly spared her a glance from the corner of his eye. “Why not?” he said dispassionately. Kristen settled on the barstool. Finn put his arm around her waist and pulled her to his side.
“Hey, I think I like this,” she purred, and picked up what was left of her drink, sipping daintily. “Hey, Rory, could we have another round?” She settled against Finn.
Finn’s eyes never left his wife’s. Macy, however, averted her gaze and looked down when Kristen leaned in to whisper something Finn didn’t really hear and didn’t really care to hear. When he didn’t respond, she put her hand high on his thigh. “What are you thinking about?”
Finn nodded in Macy’s direction. “See that woman over there? The one with the honey-colored hair?”
Kristen looked around. Her smile suddenly faded.
“That’s my wife. Wait—
was
my wife,” he said with a derisive chuckle, and thought of yesterday, of kissing Macy on Laru’s lawn, of the way she made him feel almost whole again. “See,” he said, turning a bit toward Kristin and pulling her even closer, “she used to be Mrs. Lockhart. But she thought I was killed in combat, just like everyone else in this town. Macy didn’t let that get her down, no sir. She got married just as soon as she could and she’s
still
married, even though I’m not dead! Now does that make any sense to you, Christie?”
“Kristen,” she said, and tried to push away from him. “I didn’t know she was here,” she added, and pushed again, this time managing to dislodge Finn’s hold.
“Ah, don’t run off,” Finn said loudly as she picked up her purse. “You’re not bothering Macy. Hell,
I’m
not bothering Macy.” He laughed loudly. Several people turned to look at him.
“Look, I don’t want to get in the middle—”
“Girl, you aren’t in the middle!” he scoffed, and caught her arm. “There’s not a damn thing to be in the middle
of
,” he insisted, and in the process lost his balance and half-slid off his stool. He caught himself with his elbow and righted himself.
“Hey, pal,” the bartender said sternly as more people turned to look. “Keep your voice down and be nice to the lady.”
“You talking to me?” Finn asked, squinting at the bartender. “Aren’t I your hero anymore?”
“Look, I’m all for giving a soldier a break,” the bartender said, and picked up the two whiskey neats he’d put down on the bar. “But I’m gonna have to cut you off. You’ve had too much.”
“Says who?” Finn demanded, suddenly very angry, the force of it surprising him. “I don’t give a damn what you think. I want that whiskey.”
“You’re not getting it,” the bartender said evenly. “You need to go on now.”
“You think you’re man enough to make me?” Finn snarled.
The bartender sighed. “Come on, Sergeant Lockhart. Don’t embarrass yourself. Why don’t you get up and go home, huh? Is there someone you want me to call?”
Finn laughed and turned his head to say something to Kristen, but she was gone. Macy was watching him, as were half the people in the bar. Finn turned back to the bartender. “What are you waiting on?” he demanded. “Give me the damn drink!”
The bartender shook his head and started to turn away, but Finn was drunk and angry enough to be stupid. He lunged across the bar and caught the bartender’s shirt with his fingers, startling the man. “I’m not kidding around here,
dude
. Give a hero a damn
drink
.”
The bartender threw him off and from somewhere—Finn never saw them or sensed them—a couple of guys grabbed him. Finn snapped. The rage that had been simmering just beneath the surface seemed to break, and he swung wildly with it. He connected with a chin, he thought, and swung again, and people started shouting.
Whoever Finn hit swung back, and the force of the punch sent Finn and the other guy who’d attacked him tumbling over a table.
Finn kicked and swung his arms, but he was too drunk to fight well and was quickly thrown up against the door of the bar. He saw his attackers then—a couple of bouncers—and wanted to throw himself on them and let them beat the piss out of him. That would make him feel better than he’d felt the last several days.
But he was stopped by Macy’s sudden appearance. “Finn!” she cried, grabbing his head and forcing his gaze down so he would look at her. “What are you doing? Are you insane?”
He was. He was insane with crazy anger and despair. He couldn’t even find the words to answer her. He sucked in air, felt a jolt of pain through his jaw. He had no idea what he was doing; he just wanted to feel human again, to feel something other than disappointment.
“If you don’t get him out of here, I’m calling the cops,” the bartender threatened from somewhere behind Macy. “I don’t want to do that because he’s obviously been through a lot, but I’m not going to have him coming in here wrecking my place.”
“We’re leaving,” Macy said, her eyes never leaving Finn’s. “Right now.”
“Macy, you can’t go with him! He’s acting crazy!”
Finn recognized Emma’s voice. She sounded afraid of him. “Emmie,” he said thickly.
Emmie, Emmie, it’s me, it’s Finn!
“He’s fine,” Macy said resolutely. “He just needs to regroup.”
“He needs to sober up,” someone said. “He probably learned to drink like that over there.”
Oh yeah, right, as if alcohol was easy to find in a Muslim country and the Taliban were kind enough to let him drink even if it was.
“He knows he needs to sober up,” Macy said coolly. She draped Finn’s listless arm over her shoulders. She dabbed at his nose with a cocktail napkin, which was surprisingly painful. He glanced down and noticed blood all over his shirt.
“Macy, please don’t leave with him,” Emma said again. “He could go off.”
Finn saw the flash of anger in Macy’s eyes. She turned away from him. “For God’s sake, Emma! This is
Finn
! He’s not going to go off, and even if he does, he would never lift a finger to me. You
know
that. Stop making him sound like a monster,” she said heatedly as she dug through her purse. “Here are my keys,” she said, shoving them at Emma.
“Wait!” Emma cried. “What are you going to do? How will you get back to Laru’s?”
“I am going to take
his
truck,” she said. “And he is going to sleep this off!”
The door abruptly opened at his back and Finn stumbled through, Macy at his side. Her strength was surprising—she kept him from falling flat on his ass and somehow managed to move him down the street, away from the bar.
The night was warm and the air heavy, weighing down on him and the various parts of his body that were beginning to ache from the fight. The fog in his brain was beginning to lift a little, thanks to the dose of adrenaline that had pumped through his veins.
“Of all the dumbass things you’ve done, this has to take the cake,” Macy snapped as she marched him down the sidewalk. “Are you insane?”
“Is that a rhetorical question?”
“You could be in
jail
right now,” she chided him as she looked back toward the bar.
“How could you laugh?” he asked thickly.
“What? I’m not laughing! Do you see me laughing?”
“In the bar,” he tried to clarify. “You were laughing,” he said, and in a lame attempt to demonstrate, he leaned back, did his best
ha ha ha
, and almost fell over.
“Do you mean with Emma and Chloe? God, Finn, I wasn’t laughing. I was being polite! I can’t even tell you what they were saying. Jesus, how did you get so damn drunk?”
Finn couldn’t help but grin at that. “Kind of surprised me, too, to be honest.”
Macy sighed irritably and looked around. “Where is your truck? There it is,” she said, and grabbed his arm, pulling him along.
“Wait—where are we going?”
“To your mom’s.”
“God, no, Macy,
no
,” Finn said, shaking his head enough to make himself dizzy. “Have a heart. Anywhere but there.”
She sighed and peered at him curiously. Her gaze softened; she pushed the hair from his eyes. “I should kick your ass, you know that?”
“Someone beat you to it,” he said with a wince.