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“So you did all this at the behest of a five-year-old?” I asked.
Dallas shrugged. “And some very interesting promises from my fiancé.”
“You’re so whipped,” I said with a laugh as I returned to my own seat and grabbed a fresh beer from the cooler since I’d thrown mine into the pile of rubble when I’d grabbed Dallas.
“You will be too once you stop fighting it.”
I shook my head. “I barely know Jett, and what happened in that room was just…” I shook my head again because I didn’t know what to call it. It had been a mistake, but my brain refused to utter the word a second time.
“I wasn’t talking about Jett. I was talking about you. You’ll never get what you want until you let go of whatever it is that keeps you on the outskirts… the outskirts of your life, our family—”
“I don’t—”
“You do, buddy,” Dallas interrupted. “Take it from someone who spent a lifetime on the sidelines; someone who had no problem letting the past define his future until the day someone amazing came into his life and changed everything.” Dallas climbed to his feet, but my feet might as well have been blocks of cement.
“You play a good game, Sawyer,” Dallas said as he dropped a hand to my shoulder. “But the thing is, you don’t have to play it with us. We’re your family. You can always be who you are with us. This journey you’re on, you don’t have to walk it alone.”
I should have been able to respond. I was always good at coming up with some kind of snappy response that the people around me wanted to hear. But like so many other things in recent days, my brain felt tired and empty. I’d shoved too much crazy into that balloon and it had finally popped.
I was watching as Dallas began walking back toward his truck when something he’d said earlier struck me.
“Dallas, you said two,” I began as he paused and turned. “You said you’d have to dig holes for you two.”
“Yeah, that man of yours,” Dallas responded. He put up his hands before I could even correct him. “Five minutes after you left, Jett parked his ass outside that dog’s kennel and he hasn’t moved since.”
“Why—?”
“Don’t ask me, I’m just the messenger who drew the second to last short straw and won you. My big brother wasn’t as lucky,” Dallas said with a smirk.
I sighed as I pictured Jett’s response to anything Maddox had to say to him. Considering how cold Jett was toward Maddox overall, I couldn’t even imagine the ugly words he’d hear coming from the still-resentful Jett’s mouth.
“Stop acting like you’ve just been banned for life from Newt’s Nails,” Dallas said with a laugh. “Turns out our little evil genius didn’t have too much faith in Maddox’s gentle touch, so he announced that he’d be the one to talk to Jett.”
I laughed at the thought of the six-foot-something ex-marine being told by a five-year-old to stand down from a mission.
“Is he having any success?” I asked. Not because I cared how Jett was doing but because I was worried about Newt’s feelings.
Liar.
“Not sure. The little shit went AWOL last night. Scared the hell out of all of us. We were about ready to call Cam to get a search party going when we found him. He and Jett were sacked out in sleeping bags outside Apollo’s kennel. How the kid got out of the house with all that stuff plus enough junk food to feed Jerry is beyond me. I guess my brother really is losing his skills if he missed his five-year-old going on the lam and taking most of the kitchen with him.”
Dallas laughed and headed toward his truck.
“Dallas,” I called.
He stopped and turned slightly.
A lump formed in my throat and tears pricked the backs of my eyes but I somehow managed to say, “Thank you.”
I didn’t really think the two little words were enough to convey how grateful I was to have so many someones who cared about me that they’d drawn straws to figure out which one was going to tell me to get my head out of my ass, which was exactly where it had been the past two days. But those two little words were the best I could do for now.
Dallas merely lifted his arm in acknowledgement before calling out, “Dinner’s at six!”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
JETT
“Newt, buddy, you’re going to get me in so much trouble with Mad if you miss another dinner,” I called when I heard a few leaves rustling behind me. Even as I spoke the words, the soldier in me was picking up on several things.
The footsteps were way too heavy to be Newt’s.
And Newt could always be heard coming from a mile away because the kid had a pretty loud outdoor voice that he wasn’t afraid to use.
