Something shifted in Cody’s face. “You talk to her about this?”
“Yes. From the very beginning. I’ve been honest with her about how difficult this kind of stuff is for me. About what I think I can do and can’t do.”
“It’s complicated,” Cody said.
“It’s hella complicated. I don’t even know how to share with another person, much less make a relationship with them. I’m not trying to promise her anything, because I can’t. There’s no precedent for me being able to… I’ve never had a relationship.” He cleared his throat. “You’re the closest thing to family that I have. And I haven’t done a very good job of showing you that, or sharing with you.”
“It’s all right. Believe me, I know how hard it is to break out of old patterns and deal with the shit that life has thrown at you. I get it. This entire ranch is a testament to how mad Iam at my father, who is dead. My father that I can’t make a relationship with, my father that I hate and love at the same time, because if I didn’t love him at least a little bit it wouldn’t hurt this bad, would it? And it’s all to do with wanting to heal what was taken away from my mother. And I’m angry at her too, if I’m really honest. And I hate that. It makes me feel disloyal, because she went through enough. She damn well went through enough without me being angry at her, and I hate it. But it’s just life, and we’ve got to figure out how to get through it. We’ve gotta figure out how to keep on living.”
“I guess I’m kind of figuring out the living part, at thirty-four.” He took a deep breath. “She’s a lot more together than I am. And she’s been through her share of shit. She sure as hell doesn’t feel like she’s ten years younger than me, because she’s…”
“Sometimes you find something in somebody, and it just matches all those broken pieces inside of you, and it makes sense.”
“I don’t know that I’m ready to say that.”
Except something moved inside of his spirit, something that felt real and profound. Something that felt so valuable, and he wanted to figure out how to hang onto it. She meant so much to him. He wanted to give her something. To give her everything, and she had been saddled with heavy, with dark for a long damned time, and he didn’t want to be another thing that she was settled with. He had to figure out how to make it lighter. Make it better.
I don’t even know if I would’ve wanted to go to prom…
“You care about her,” Cody said.
“I do.”
“Then I trust you. I mean, maybe it’s going to blow up, but that’s life, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. It sure is.”
All he knew was the blowing-up part. He didn’t knowabout anything that felt good, not for a long time, not for any length of time.
“You know that I’m going to have to tell Marlowe.”
“Can you just tell her that… can you just tell her that Cara would like to talk to her? I mean, you can tell her that there is something… But can you give Cara a little bit of time to do it herself? I think she wanted to tell Marlowe from the beginning, and she didn’t because of me. Because I was afraid of losing you, Cody, because I was afraid that you wouldn’t respect me for this.”
“Well, goddamn, that’s just shitty. I’m sorry that you felt that way.”
“I told you that you could trust me. I told you that I wasn’t going to go anywhere near her, and I blew that up.”
“But I understand what it’s like. I know you didn’t do it on purpose. I understand about best-laid plans. Like I said, I told myself a hundred times that I wasn’t going to touch Marlowe. She’s my employee, she was going through the end of her marriage, it was a bad idea. But I couldn’t stay away from her. I get it.”
“Well, that’s…”
It was actually so goddamn decent that he felt his throat getting tight. Everything in his life had felt fragile, tentative, breakable, ever since he had walked into that house and found his family dead.
Nothing had ever felt permanent. Because nothing gold could stay.
His relationship with Cody, that was like gold.
And it felt like a fragile thing, because everything did. He didn’t trust in anything; how could you when you had been through what he had?
But here was Cody, listening to him, not being angry that he had gone back on his word, not even being angry that hehadn’t told him. Just sitting there, having a conversation with him. Accepting him as he was.
And that was a hell of a thing. It was a gift. It was more than he had ever thought that he could have.
And maybe… Maybe it was a testament to the fact that life had more things in store for him than he had believed for a long time.
Maybe it was a testament to the fact that just because he had seen the worst of life didn’t mean that the worst was all there was.
Maybe the best was yet to come.
