Path of Destruction (Broken Heartland, #2)(41)
He tried to clear the twinkling spots of light from his vision as he stepped carefully down the ladder.
“You were riding like an idiot.”
The voice stopped him cold and his body seized up for an instant.
“Excuse me?” He glanced around the barn but if someone was there, the cows weren’t sharing any intel with him.
“Not gonna ride smart, you don’t deserve to ride.”
Cooper’s heart pounded wildly in his chest, recovering from the temporary seizing as if it had been still for way longer than a split second. “Who’s there?”
He leaned around the stall and saw him. Kyle Mason. Leaning against the barn. But he was younger than they were now. He’d just turned sixteen and had come by to show off the truck his dad had bought him.
Cooper froze at the sight of his fifteen-year old self getting out from under the bike and walking towards Kyle. God, he’d worshiped his friend back then. Lightning rippled in strands extending from his chest, crackling all over beneath his skin. He had no idea why he was seeing this, unless…maybe he was dead too, maybe his wreck had been a lot worse than he realized. But it felt like the slightest movement would send the vision before him fading into vapor. So he watched as a day he thought he’d forgotten played out in front of his eyes instead of behind them where it belonged. Kyle giving him shit about riding too dangerously. Him smirking and telling him he was going to beat his time. Both of them rode for shit back then, wide on turns, afraid to push it on jumps.
When Kyle fist-bumped him, Cooper felt it on his own knuckles. They tingled but he didn’t look. He just stared as two boys who didn’t know how very short their friendship would be, horsed around, walking off into the darkness until he couldn’t see them anymore.
Kyle had always had his back. And Cooper had let him down.
The second they were gone, his eyes unglazed and Cooper returned to reality.
“Fuck!” he screamed out, slamming his arm into the side of the stall, momentarily forgetting it was injured already. The molten flare of pain that shot through him was a quick reminder. “Motherf*cking f*cker!”
It felt good to scream. He wanted to scream some more. Cuss God and the universe and the weather and everything and anything that had contributed in any way to Kyle’s no longer being alive. But he couldn’t stand around screaming. There was work to be done. He needed to get his arm handled and get back home to help his mom get his brothers to bed. His dad was in Riverton, Colorado, visiting some distant relatives who owned a resort and might be able to lend him the money to get the farm back up and running before Hayden Prescott’s dad used his inheritance to run their lives. Salt in the wound, Cooper thought bitterly.
He cradled his arm on the walk to his truck. The urgent care center wasn’t far, and he was a regular, so they’d get him right in, but when he looked at the house and saw his mom through the kitchen window, guilt washed over him. She was in there holding the fort down, his dad was out basically cutting his own balls off and pandering for money, and what was Cooper doing? Messing around on his bike and wasting time.
No more, he promised himself. No more screwing up. Tomorrow, he’d contact the company that owned the trucks that unloaded at the docks. Kyle had worked for them part time and Cooper figured he could do the same. He couldn’t be Kyle Mason, and he couldn’t bring him back. But he could at least try to be more like him.
Cooper flexed his arm while massaging his left hand with his right. He was grateful to be right handed at the moment. The sixteen stitches crisscrossed up his forearm were going to make using his left one pretty uncomfortable for the next two weeks. The nurse gave him a few instructions about keeping them clean and coming back to have them removed. He smiled and said, “Yes, ma’am,” in all the appropriate places but knew good and well he’d be removing those stitches himself.
Exiting the office with his paperwork in his good hand, Cooper caught a glimpse of a familiar head of thick hair the shade how he liked his morning coffee.
“Cameron?”
The girl whose body he’d practically memorized with his hands kept moving. For a second, he thought maybe it wasn’t her, but when she picked up the pace, he knew it was.
“Cameron,” he called louder this time.
Stopping just as they reached the parking lot, she turned and forced a smile. Cooper took in her exhausted features, nervously guarded posture, rings under her eyes, and a sudden craving for fingernails he knew she or her parents paid to have manicured.
“Hey,” she greeted him on an exhale. “Um…” Glancing over her shoulder, she slumped noticeably with disappointment.
Questions raced through Cooper’s mind faster than he could catch them. What was she doing here? Was she okay? Did she have a ride home? Was she as pleasantly surprised to see him as he was to see her? How did her pants always manage to fit like they’d been custom made for her body? And why couldn’t he tear his eyes away from said body? Damn, her curves did something for him. Something that involved making it difficult to breathe normally or think straight.
“I was just…” After a large intake of oxygen, Cameron forced another smile.
Remembering how much he personally hated to be questioned and realizing how much he didn’t want to explain that being a jackass on his bike had led him here, he decided to go for an easy one.