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“Wow.” My chest tightened. Thatcher did have people in his life who loved him, who saw him, and it helped to know that. “Did you ever tell him this?”
“Sure. Sorta. Got real emotional right after my graduation and tried to thank him for helping me. You know what he told me?”
Thoughts of Thatcher’s guilt and regrets over his own son tumbled through my whiskey-soaked brain. I shook my head.
“He said sometimes the thing people think is your weakness can be your greatest strength. That maybe I needed to fight and I was just picking the wrong fights.”
There was a good point in there somewhere, but I was too tired and drunk to sort it out. “God, he’s such a good man. And you’re lucky to have him, but he’s lucky to have you, too, you know? He deserves to have people who care about him and are loyal to him. Who love him—” I swallowed hard.
“Hooo, boy.” McGee shook his head. “I knew you were drunk, but you are drunk.” He smiled, maybe a bit too sympathetically. “Or else you’ve got some powerful emotions going on. Anything you’d like to share?”
“God, no.”
“You sure? You wouldn’t be the first young man in the throes of capital-F Feelings I’ve counseled,” he said solemnly, though his eyes twinkled. “Not even the first this week. I’ve never suffered from that particular affliction myself, but I’m an understanding listener.”
I rolled my eyes. “Right. So I’m sure you’ll understand when I say that I hope a case of capital-F Feelings smacks you in the face someday.”
McGee laughed out loud, but my face heated with embarrassment. I stood up to escape to my bunk. “I think you’re right. I’m even drunker than I thought,” I muttered. “Sincerely, thanks for the talk, but, um… good night.”
McGee stretched out his legs before standing and looked at me for a long, long moment. Finally, he said, “Why don’t you use the bedroom in the back? I’ll have Thatcher take a bunk when he comes in, or he can take a room in the Martinezes’ house. He said they’d offered you guys one.”
I snorted. “Take my boss’s bed? Has that moisturizing serum I gave you gone to your brain?” I demanded. “Hell no.”
“Hell yes. You’re wobbly as fuck, and that bunk is narrow. If you fall out of it, it’ll be a whole liability thing. Take the bed,” he repeated. “Thatcher will sleep in the house.”
“What about you? You could take it.”
He shook his head. “I’m heading out in a little while. An old friend’s picking me up, and we’re gonna hang out at his place in Eagle. It’s all yours.”
There was a flaw in this plan somewhere, but I couldn’t quite reason it out. There really wasn’t any point in wasting the large bed if Thatcher was going to sleep in the house. And by the time I made my way to Thatcher’s room, stripped down to my undershirt and boxer briefs, and really stretched out in a bed for the first time in a week, I decided I was too tired to worry about it. I grinned dopily at the neatly stacked books and the reading glasses on the side table as I turned out the light, and then I rolled up in the blanket, shoved Thatcher’s pillow over my head, and fell asleep wrapped in woodsmoke and sage.
Chapter Ten
Thatcher
After Reagan left the house, I couldn’t focus.
The game was in full swing on the enormous television, and the remaining few guests were talking and laughing, but I didn’t care. Whatever I was drinking tasted flat on my tongue, and the entire room seemed less bright than before.
When there was a break in the action on screen, I pushed myself off the sofa. “I’m going to head out,” I told Don and Maya, who were curled up in an easy chair. “Thanks again for a great day.”
Maya grinned without getting up. “Thanks for coming. I was intrigued by the idea of working with PennCo before, but I’m even more eager now. You and Reagan made quite an impression.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“Still have that extra bedroom upstairs,” Don reminded me. “You’re welcome to it.”
I shook my head. “Thanks anyway, but we have to get on the road early. I’ve got a vendor in Omaha I’m meeting up with next. If I’m asleep on the bus, McGee can simply start driving.”
After thanking our hosts again profusely, I slipped out the front door and made my way across the snow-dusted driveway to the welcoming warmth of the bus. McGee was just shrugging on a coat.
“Gotta go, boss. My friend’s waiting for me down the driveway. I’ll be back around six, and we’ll get on the road,” he said softly.
I’d forgotten his plans to watch a pay-per-view fight with a friend nearby, but I was glad he was getting out to have some fun. After watching him jog off the bus, I closed the door behind him and made my way to the back, pointedly ignoring Reagan’s bunk on my way past it.
The man had been tempting me for days, and I’d managed to stand firm. But after our time on the mountain yesterday pretending I wasn’t his boss, after I’d told him things I’d never spoken aloud to anyone else and he’d given me kindness and compassion in return, I’d felt the barriers I’d tried to erect between us crumbling, one after another. Tonight, buzzed and tired and riding the high of an excellent day, I had no defenses left at all.
My room was still and quiet. Only the low hum of the bus’s electrical system filled the small space around me. The scent of Reagan’s aftershave was faint, but it reached me, even in here. Or maybe it was simply imprinted in my nose after so much time spent together. Like I carried him with me everywhere now.
