Written in the Scars(4)

“You didn’t think to call? To answer any of our thousands of f*cking calls?”

My head drops, my gaze landing on a discarded pop tab in the dirt floor. “I smashed my phone and didn’t replace it. I was going to . . .” My chin lifts. “I’ll be honest with ya, Jiggs. The quiet was nice. No fighting. No reminder of how f*cked up I am or how f*cked up everything is.”

“So you just f*cked it up worse?” he laughs angrily.

“I figured it might do Elin and I both some good to take a break. To, you know, have some time to think about things.”

Dust covers my boot as I kick the ground, waiting on him to reply. I’m at his mercy. Whatever he doles out, I deserve.

“Why did you come back? Why now?” he asks finally.

“Because it’s time.”

Our eyes meet over the hood of the truck. He searches mine, looking for the meaning of my words. Together, our heads begin to nod in understanding.

“You can’t expect things to go back to the way they were,” he says, picking up a wrench.

“I don’t.”

“Then what do you expect?”

It’s a simple question. One I can’t answer. I don’t even know what I have to come home to. My wife hates me. My best friend is skeptical of me. I even resigned from coaching the high school basketball team before I left, the one true passion of my life. What’s left?

“Why didn’t you come talk to me? Or to Cord, if you didn’t want to talk to me about things with my sister? Why let it get like this, Ty?”

“I wish I knew,” I mutter.

Jiggs sighs, resting his forearms on the truck’s frame. “We worried about you. No one could get ahold of you. Elin was a f*cking disaster, Ty, and I honestly thought she was going to have a breakdown. The only person to see you was Pettis—”

“Woah, wait. Pettis?”

“Yeah. Said he saw you in Rockville a couple weeks ago.”

Racking my brain for where Pettis would’ve seen me, I come up blank. I didn’t see him. I wasn’t anywhere to see him to begin with. Before I can think it through, Jiggs speaks.

“Part of me wants to kill you and toss you in the lake back there,” he says, jutting his thumb over his shoulder.

“Might be easier.”

“Oh, it would. Which is exactly why I won’t do it.”

“*,” I tease.

Jiggs laughs, shoving away from the truck. “Why did you leave?” Before I can answer, his gaze narrows. “The real reason, Ty. Cut the shit. Give it to me straight.”

“You know what it was?” I ask, a burn igniting in my chest. “It was like getting smashed by the timber at work destroyed my entire life.”

The pain in my core smolders, taking the loneliness of not having Elin, the loss of my team, the fury of losing everything I’ve ever wanted and worked for, and stokes the flames until it’s scalding.

“You can’t go through all that, Ty, and not come out affected. Your leg was snapped in half a couple of hundred yards below the surface of the earth. We carried you out on a stretcher.” His tone is somber. “We thought you were going to f*cking die. That’ll mess with you.”

I nod. “Yeah, but I could’ve stayed sane. I could’ve managed everything better, but I didn’t. I let my marriage go to shit. I walked away from the team.”

They should’ve started practice this week. I looked at my watch at exactly five-o’clock on Monday and imagined them lined up at half-court, wondering why Reynolds was in front of them and not me.

I wonder what they thought, what they were told. How many voice messages were left in my inbox by them—Dustin, in particular. He’d have taken my leaving the hardest of them all and I should’ve reached out. But I didn’t. I failed them all too.

“It was the right choice,” I say aloud, maybe more for myself than for Jiggs.

“Maybe. But you aren’t just their coach. You’re their friend, their go-to. You can’t just say f*ck it.”

“I already did.”

He looks at me and waits.

“I don’t know why I’m here,” I admit. “Elin hates me.”

“Yeah. Probably.”

“I wish I could hate her.”

Throwing me another cautionary glance, he strolls across the barn and gathers his gloves. “What are you gonna do? What’s the plan, Sir Fuck Up? I know you went to Blown. Lindsay called, said Elin left right after you.”

“I’ll put it to you like this—my first move didn’t go as expected.”

“You couldn’t have expected her to run to you. Cord calls her Pit Bull for a reason.”

I can’t fight the grin that spreads across my lips. Her fire and her fight are my favorite things about her. “I didn’t,” I admit. “But I didn’t expect such a coldness from her. Like she despises me.”

“Can you blame her?”

“No,” I gulp. “But she told me to leave—”

“I don’t give a f*ck what Lindsay tells me,” Jiggs barks, his eyes lighting up, “I’m not leaving her. I don’t give a damn if she throws my shit in the yard and kicks my ass out the door, I’ll sit on the stoop until she lets me back in. Get my drift?”