Page 56 of Down in Flames

“Maybe not.” Michael sighed, and for the first time since he’d moved to Sweetwater, he finally looked a full decade older than West. He looked tired, like he'd been the one stuck in a hospital bed. “But I don’t know what else to do. You might not care what happens to your heart, but I care about mine. I can’t break it on someone who’s already got one foot in the grave next to Mary. You can’t keep on riding.”

West sucked in a breath, but he forgot to let it loose again. He hunched his shoulders, curling one arm around his cramping stomach to staunch the pain. It felt like he was bleeding out somewhere, but he couldn’t find the wound.

“Michael…” he pleaded, but he had no more words. Only begging. But Michael had already made up his mind, and the longer West took to agree, the more something in the air hardened between them.

“I thought so,” Michael said softly. He reached out to brush a knuckle down West’s cheek, and his expression twisted. “So be it. But you can’t ask me to watch.”

Then he turned around…and he walked away.

Derek was the one who found West, what felt like an eternity later. He was slumped on the floor with his back against the wall, knees drawn up and head cradled on his folded arms. His shoulders shook, but the only sounds coming out of him were choking, muffled grunts. Like he was in pain. Like he was wounded somewhere, but he couldn't let the full sound out or he might die.

His brother didn't ask what happened, but then, that huge brain of his was good at figuring things out on its own. He let out a long-suffering sigh, and then, astonishingly, he settled himself down beside West and wrapped an arm around his shoulders.

“I won’t say that it’s going to be okay,” he said shortly. “It won’t be. But I’m here. I’m not going anywhere, little brother.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Derek had been right. Three weeks later, West still wasn’t okay. He was beginning to think he would never be okay again. His heart was beating steady as a metronome now, but it felt like his soul was slowly leaking out of a gaping hole in his chest. Trying to fly back to the Triple M, where it belonged.

He went through the daily motions on autopilot, haunted by a vague sense of misery and humiliation. Cycling through his brain on repeat was a never-ending list of things he could have said and done differently. He should have told the truth, but maybe he would have only lost Michael quicker. He could have been a better liar, or at least less reckless. Maybe he was selfish. Maybe he should have quit bronc-busting as soon as he saw how much it upset him. But what would West be without it? A husk of a man with no pride of his own? Who would want to spend his life with someone like that?

Michael was already a far better man than West would ever be, and he proved it by not ghosting him the way West had done to him. He texted that night to make sure West had made it home safely, and a few days later to remind him about his follow-up appointment with the cardiologist. His texts were brusque, like a message from a stranger and not a man who had tasted every inch of his skin. But they were better than nothing.

Even though he knew it was foolish, those texts kept a weak spark of hope alive, dragging him through the days in a tangle of nerves. He obsessively ran through every imaginary conversation, but they usually came down to only one option: I’m sorry. I’ll quit.

He’d typed that message out a dozen times or more, thumb hovering over the send key…but he could never go through with it.

Rodeo had given him life. It had given him the pride to throw his shoulders back and walk tall even when he was standing beside men like Michael or Derek or Eli. On the back of a bucking horse, for eight glorious seconds, he was free. He couldn’t give that up, or all he’d be bringing to their relationship was a broken spirit and a list of health concerns as long as his arm. He refused to saddle a man like Michael with someone like that.

So, West just had to learn to live without him. He only had half a heart to begin with, so it shouldn’t matter so much if the rest of it was utterly shattered. He knew how to live with pain.

“Look out, here comes Mopey,” August French announced when West emerged from the stock room, red-eyed after checking his phone for the hundredth time that day. The old man was seated on his usual perch, sipping from a stained coffee cup and playing solitaire while Gus repaired a saddle. “C’mon, son. It ain’t the end of the world.”

“What?” West croaked, digging the heel of his hand into one of his eyeballs and trying to make it look like he just had a headache.

“I’m talking about your celebrity status as our newest rodeo man. We needed a new one now that Calvin Craig retired. Lord knows who snitched on you, but the staff up at the hospital gossip more than one of them tabloid papers down at the Stop N’ Shop.”

“Oh. Right.” West’s shoulders slumped.

He wasn’t used to being the center of attention, and it made him itch. People were flagging him down all over town, stopping by his table at the diner and interrupting him during fill-ups at the gas station. They encouraged him to ride in the county rodeo next summer so they could watch, and the older folks wondered how his mother was taking the news.

West didn’t know how to answer that question. The truth was, she’d handled it better than he ever expected, but it was obvious how much it cost her. He figured the scare she’d gotten had her afraid of upsetting him, and the protestations would eventually come. But right now she just held onto him whenever he walked into a room, refusing to let go until someone pulled them apart. He hadn’t seen her cry, but her mouth always trembled whenever she looked at him for too long.

“You’re just like your father,” she’d said, her tone a strange mix of pride and something that sounded awfully close to heartbreak. “I should have known.”

Gus was watching him with shrewd eyes. “Don’t let it get to you,” he said, as if reading his mind. “You know how small towns work. People will be jawing about the next thing before long.”

“It doesn’t matter,” West said with a lethargic shrug. His bad shoulder was nearly healed, so it only tugged a little. “I’m finished busting broncs, anyway.”

“Huh.” Gus cracked open a bottle of neatsfoot oil, took a whiff, and then dabbed it onto an old rag. As he began rubbing down the saddle, he said philosophically, “Seems to me that maybe there’s some middle ground between reckless foolishness and quitting altogether. Shame to see you give it up. You’ve always been a fighter.”

“Me?” West laughed bitterly.

“Sure. Folks have mostly forgotten how hard it was for you when you were just a mite, but I never did. The way I figure, most men would let hardships like that break ‘em. I’ve seen it happen. They become soft and lazy, or they let it turn them angry and bitter. Like your brother and your daddy. But not you. You just rolled up your sleeves and got to work, helping out where you could. You’ve worked here for years, and I ain’t never heard even a single complaint out of you. What would you call that?”

“Just trying to keep my head down,” West said uncomfortably, picking at a scratch on the counter to avoid looking at him.

“Hogwash,” Gus scoffed, giving the saddle some extra elbow grease. “You know, I see a lot of myself in you. I decided to hand the shop over to you because you’re a man who loves his hometown just as much as I do. But I was always afraid to take a chance, and I watched life pass me by. I missed my opportunity to marry my sweet Mable when we were kids, and I might’ve missed it again last year if she hadn’t had the balls to ask me.”