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“We don’t need much.”
Silas wanted to fire back that the money wouldn’t be going toward a medical bill then. He’d seen those for his mother, and they weren’t five or ten dollars. He held his tongue and said nothing, because he’d learned over the years that silence was the best way to handle Colt.
He heard Colt inhale, and Silas decided he didn’t have patience for this. “I’ll call Mama in the morning,” he said. “I have to get back to work.” He didn’t wait for Colt to confirm before he ended the call.
He disliked how unsettled he felt. His hand holding the phone actually shook, and he shoved his device in his back pocket. He hadn’t lied; he did have to get back to work. He didn’t have much to spare; he was driving that hideous green sedan to prove it.
He hadn’t told his mama and Colt where he was, and he wasn’t going to if he didn’t have to. Ethan, his brother, knew where he was, and Silas figured that was okay for now. If something happened to him here, he had Ethan as an emergency contact. That was all Silas was willing to do right now.
Oh, and text Holly once he got in off the ranch tonight. Wait. He had to drive the golf carts tonight.After the concert, he told himself. After he finished driving people back and forth between the stage and their cabins. She worked late, and surely they could get something on the calendar for their first date.
ChapterTwenty-Eight
Kyle stopped in the shade of a giant Texas ash tree and reached to retrieve the water bottle from the pocket on the side of his backpack. He wasn’t like Jesse or Adam, who went hiking a lot. Gina and Blake did too, and they all had specialized backpacks that carried water, kept it cold, and could be used as emergency signals and blankets too.
He’d rooted around in the back of his closet to find this pack, and he’d filled it with snacks from the breakfast buffet yesterday morning. He’d frozen a couple of plastic water bottles and put them in the outside pockets of the pack, and now that the sun had risen, they’d thawed and melted almost all the way.
Since Maddy had broken up with him, the outdoors soothed him in a way nothing else had been able to. Before that, Kyle had retreated to his guitar or his brothers, but both were unsafe for him right now.
He nodded to another couple as they went past him. He chugged from the water bottle, probably a dead giveaway to anyone more experienced than him about how little he experienced the great outdoors.
August would arrive in another two days, and Kyle had given himself a deadline to make a decision. Was he going to continue down the path that led him toward country music? Or not?
He’d kept working on his song, but he’d been more reasonable about how much time he spent doing it. He still felt like he disappeared into his bedroom, but he and Todd had had a good long talk about Kyle’s personality.
He did tend to be obsessive in the things he was passionate about. That was why his parents had never let him play video games growing up. He’d play for hours and hours and hours, neglecting everything else around him.
He really wished he’d had a better checks and balancing system for this summer, but he had no one to blame but himself. He’d pushed everyone else away while he’d pretended he’d brought them closer.
He crossed the trail and picked his way through a few stick on the other side of it. A log lay there, and it was obvious plenty of people had sat on it before him. He sank onto the rough bark, which scraped the back of his calf. He brushed away the debris and slight tang of pain and looked out over the Hill Country.
The goodness of the earth filled him. He wanted this view every day.
“Will they forgive me?” he murmured to the sky. He wanted them to—everyone he’d hurt. His parents. His siblings. His co-workers. Maddy. Himself.
He thought about forgiving himself, and Todd had told him to start there. Todd had been extremely forgiving, as had Blake and Holly, the only two people Kyle had gone to talk to since the night he’d woken up and realized he’d buried himself in the wrong thing.
“The wrong thing.” He’d started saying the important parts of his thoughts out loud, because then he could hear if they were true or not. He didn’t trust himself right now, which was why he hadn’t dared to text or call Maddy.
He’d stopped by her cabin a few times, but she was never there. Her roommate seemed sympathetic toward him, and Hadley had promised to tell Maddy he kept coming by. Whether she did or not, Kyle didn’t know. Maddy hadn’t called or texted him either.
He wasn’t sure why he went by her house. Maybe just to see her. Maybe to tell her he was working on himself, and he’d be the man she wanted and deserved soon enough.
When she’d first broken up with him, he’d wanted to call her and beg her to forgive him. He’d wanted to make all kinds of promises about how he’d changed, and that all the things he’d done to upset her would never happen again.
He’d refrained, and when he’d talked to Blake the next day, his older, wiser brother had said, “Don’t tell her, Kyle. Show her.”
Showing someone change actually required change, and for Kyle, change was hard. It took time, even if it was in a direction he wanted to move in.
He’d taken to the hikes around the ranch, digging into his work and finalizing the bands coming to the lodge for the rest of the year, and managing his relationships with Todd, Laura, Blake, and Holly.
He’d have to branch out soon enough, and talking to Jesse and Adam—as well as his mama—wasn’t going to be easy. He glanced down at his phone, which didn’t have much service but still showed the clock.
“Time to go,” he said. He groaned as he got to his feet. His bones felt old, and he hadn’t decided if they really were aging, or if the mental load he carried added to the constant exhaustion.
His phone chimed several times as he left behind the wilderness, but he didn’t check it until he got behind the wheel of his truck and started the ignition. That way, the air conditioning would keep him from frying as he read texts.
Mama had said, Breakfast is ready whenever you are. Daddy said you were going hiking, so no rush.
