Page 22 of Drifter’s Heart

Somewhere in the house, my phone buzzes insistently. I haul my ass up, which seems to weigh five times its usual amount, and clamber my way inside, dumping the helpline info straight into the trash on my way inside. The door closes softly behind me. I flick through the locks as I reach for my phone.

Eight missed calls from West register on the screen. Aren’t I popular today.

I ignore the voice messages and flick through the texts instead, reading from my teasing comment designed to test his limits hours ago. Before. That seems far longer back in time that simply today. I scroll down in logical sequence anyway, my thumb drifting through his messages that grow increasingly sharp, then concerned.

This booty ain’t for any call, Rand. But if you want to call…

Good to know you can dish it out so fast.

Do you need that check-in, Rand?

Rand?

Booty call or not, I’m here any time you need.

That last message disappears behind a veil of tears that blurs my vision. I grip my phone tight, lost between trying to delete his messages and the desire to save them for later.

In the end I crawl into Sally’s bed, still clutching the wilted capybara toy, and let the tears flow. Because West’s right. I hate being alone. And he’s the only one who seems to know.

SEVEN

WEST

Playing Catch with a Broken Toy

I will not interrupt their work. I will not intervene.

Gravel skitters beneath the construction worker’s boots as the base of the bridge that I designed months earlier is hauled into place. I close my eyes and try not to watch. This is why I prefer not to stay on-site, but for this particular project, being present is a requirement.

“Lift it. Lift,” one of the project managers calls. I don’t remember any of their names, but the stress in his voice heightens my own.

The instant-coffee sachets this morning had been more effective than I expected, perhaps driven by Haiti’s formidable humidity. The project I’d travelled to work on slides into crystal focus. Below, the bridge’s basic exoskeleton has been built in a literal day under direction, teamwork forced by environmental pressures and a swelling river. I fought for the project not to go ahead during the wrong season but was pushed back by Rand Corporate, who “know better.” As I study the reactive clay soil beneath my feet that shifts with every step, my post-project feedback will redefine that with the same volume.

I turn my back, crumpling the pages that I spent nights working on in my clean hands. Nights back at Coyote Falls when I should have been sleeping but didn’t after I presented the idea of a not-for-profit arm of Rand Enterprises to Cord.

Back when the asshole agreed.

Not that he was an asshole for agreeing to my idea of additional plumbing and services laid out in Haiti, just for agreeing to my plan and then letting me free-range. Three months later, I had an entire project planned out. A project he loved, and promptly handed off to someone else with all the free time in the world to implement the damn thing.

The dismissal crippled me inside, left me with itchier feet than ever. Ten years in one place is too long to stay still. I never said a thing and kept working for Rand day after day, jamming my boots into the dirt at Coyote until I choked on the particles that I’d laid the groundwork for years before. We’d always worked side by side, but more recently he had worked alone. When I found out Lanie was pregnant, I did the same thing she did months before.

I left without looking back.

Suddenly the ranch house seemed small, the land alien even though I knew every damn grain of dirt intimately. But none of it had ever been mine.

And now the dust I worked and bled my drifter’s heart into was changing.

The difference between my story and hers? No pretty billionaire would chase down my sorry denim-clad ass and haul me back to Coyote land or cook me breakfast and braid my beard.

A benefit was that because Rand had the brains to credit me on my own project, I could at least lead the architectural work and slide in at the tail end, fixing the errors I’d foreseen in the workflow before construction began.

And here we are.

The ground trembles beneath my feet. I curse loudly. One of the local men glances sideways at me, his eyes wide and telegraphing his unspoken response. I’m not sure if it’s from my choice of verbiage or the unsettled earth, but I’m moving before I’ve consciously thought the action through.

I grip the rope that burns my palms, hauling backward. A command rips from my throat in a second or less. “Get it up,” I shout, not caring if the men around me speak my language or not. The words don’t matter, but the tone does. “Come on,” I grate out, the skin on my hands tearing at the lack of gloves as the footing in the reactive clay soil does exactly what I expected after copious amounts of rain—which was why I recommended waiting to start construction for another few months until monsoon season was done. “Get into it!”

I’ve called out the same sorts of things to men seasons round back home in Montana. I’ve broken skin and sweated blood on dirt that moved just like this during torrential rain, and I’ve done it in just as bad conditions.