Hard Beat(103)

And then the ache comes roaring back with a vengeance. The pain still radiates in my chest, the grief still weighs down my soul, the loss still runs my life.

This is my good morning. Has been every day since she’s been gone.



I walk down Main Street through the two-bit town I’m playing recluse in. The plane touched down in Billings, Montana, and I drove until I couldn’t see from exhaustion and found myself in this tiny little town of Freeman, population one thousand.

The bartender at Ginger’s greets me by name as I walk in, and my beer is pulled from the tap and slid alongside the shot of whiskey that she’s had waiting here every day since I’ve been in town. It’s easier to numb yourself with alcohol. While the drunken haze makes the memories that much sweeter, it also makes your heart that much more hardened.

“Hey, handsome,” Ginger says.

“Hi.” I nod my head and then lower it, keep to myself, like I have since day one. My mind’s still a mess, and I need this solitude and the noise in my head simultaneously to come to grips with everything.

“So let me guess, you’re nursing a heartbreak?” I cringe when she starts to pry, because I keep coming here because no one has asked me shit besides the general curiosity questions. And now she just went and ruined it.

“Something like that,” I murmur into my beer, my eyes looking up to catch the baseball game on the television on the opposite wall. My lack of interest in any conversation should be more than apparent.

“I have a few ideas how we can cure that for you,” she says, and I can hear the smile on her face even though I’m not looking at her.

“Whatever you’re looking for, I assure you I’m not him,” I tell her, and immediately startle as my mind shifts back to the first time I met Beaux and said something similar. I lift the beer, my eyes focusing on the bottom of the glass as I drain it before sliding some cash across the bar top, scooting my chair out, and walking from the bar.



“You okay?”

“Yes, Rylee. I’m getting there.”

“I just wish there was something I could do or say to —”

“There’s nothing to say, Bubs,” I tell her as I sit on the steps of the back porch of the little cabin I’ve rented on the edge of the woods and lift a beer to my lips. It’s amazing how cash can get you anything, including anonymity and seclusion. “I just need some time to sort my shit out, you know?”

“No, I don’t know. I’m worried about you. I’ve been through this before,” she says, referring to her fiancé who died years ago, “so I understand this more than most people do, but I didn’t take off to the edge of nowhere and disappear. I needed people, Tanner. Needed to be around people to cope.”

“And I don’t. I need to reevaluate my life. The things that I thought were priorities just might not be anymore, and that’s a tough thing for a man to come to terms with,” I say, not trying to be a martyr but at the same time finding it hard to focus on the outside world when the one around me has crashed down. “Who knows, maybe I’ll write that book I always wanted to write. You never know what might happen.”

“Knowing you, you’ll write it and win the Pulitzer,” she says with a laugh, having no idea what that term does to my insides. It’s the first time I’ve heard it in forever, and it stuns me momentarily, silence filling the line as sweet memories collide with sadness. “Well, I love you, and I hope you come home soon.”

“I love you too.” The words come out barely audible as I hang up and close my eyes. It’s always much easier to sleep than to be awake.

Sleep means I can hide from the grief for just a little bit longer.

Sleep means Beaux.





Chapter 32





Two weeks later


S

he’s so beautiful it hurts sometimes to look at her.

I glance up from the bed to see Beaux standing at the edge of it, hair down, eyes on me, a soft smile on her face.

“Tanner,” she whispers as she sits down beside me. The mattress springs squeak, and we both laugh at the memory. She leans over, her hair tickles my face as it falls down to my chest, but I forget all about it the minute her lips brush mine. Her kiss tastes like her, like everything I’ve ever wanted, like forever.

I startle awake from the dream. Same dream. Same heartache when I wake to find her gone and my reality colder than the mountain air coming in through the French doors and slapping me in the face.

I lie there, contemplate the possibility that I’m making my feelings for her out to be more than they were. That the loss means I’ve put her up on the pedestal where people put those they’ve lost; where all of their wrongdoings are erased and good deeds are considered saintly.

But I know that’s not the reason. I know it’s because deep down this is how I really feel. It just took me too long to realize it, too long to tell her, too long to not be so damn scared of real love and fight for what we both deserved, a chance at a future together.

I prop my hands behind my head and mentally go over the beginning of the story that I started on my laptop last night. I looked at the blank page for well over an hour, unsure what to write until I clicked over and got lost in Beaux’s images I had downloaded to my hard drive.