Texas Tangle Read online

  Had she done something—said something—that made him back off?

  “I couldn’t. I owed it to Dillon to give him his chance with you.”

  “You owed it to Dillon?” What type of debt meant he had to stand back from someone he was interested in? She chewed on her lip as she wondered if perhaps Dillon had done something to warn Brett off. Called in some boyhood pledge or…no, Dillon had invited him to come stay with them. He wouldn’t have threatened Brett. She squeezed his hand. “What do you owe him for?”

  Brett lifted his head, allowing her to spy the bleak expression on his face. His eyes searched hers, the blue piercing deep into her soul. “My life.”

  “I don’t understand.” A movement on the porch had her looking past Brett. Dillon had returned and was standing on the other side of the screen door, listening. When he saw she’d noticed him, he shook his head and put a finger to his lips, signaling for her not to give him away. What the hell was going on? She forced her eyes back on Brett. “What are you talking about? How do you owe Dillon your life?’

  “I used to live a couple farms down from his parents’ place. My mom took off when I was three, so it was just me and my father. He…” He swallowed and pulled away from her, lifting one hand to run his fingers through his hair. “He was okay some days, but other days he drank. He was a mean drunk.”

  She waited as he took a deep breath, not wanting to interrupt him, afraid he’d stop talking, knowing that he was probably telling her something he hadn’t spoken of for years. “The night before Dillon’s tenth birthday party, Pop got to whaling on me for something or other. I don’t even remember what it was for now. It didn’t matter to him. He didn’t need an excuse; I just had to be in the same house with him. Anyway, he beat me up pretty good that night.”

  Nikki exhaled as quietly as she could, tears prickling beneath her lids. She forced herself to stay quiet, to not interrupt him.

  He rubbed the bump on his nose. “He broke my nose. I think that was the second time he broke it. He lost it after that, worse than he normally did.” He rubbed his left arm, but from his expression she could tell he was so lost in his memory he was unaware he was doing it. “All I could do was curl up in a ball on the floor. So he started kicking me.” His hand covered his right side. “He said I was a sniveling coward who was damned well going to take his punishment.”

  Her hand trembling, she touched his wrist, stroking it gently. She ached for the little boy he’d been, wishing she could wipe such horrid memories from him.

  His eyes closed, and he took a couple deep breaths before opening them again. “Back then, I used to be scared of the dark. To teach me not to be a coward, he used to lock me in a work shed and leave me there overnight. He dragged me out there again that night. I begged him not to leave me, but he just kicked me again and told me to stop my whining. Then he shut the door on me. I hurt so much, Nik, and it was so cold, I thought I was going to die.”

  “Oh, Brett,” she whispered, her voice strained from trying not to weep for him. He needed her strength, not her tears. “You were just a little kid. You must have been so terrified.”

  “Dillon noticed I didn’t show up for his party the next day, so he came looking for me afterward. Pop came out back later. Told me the Barnett bastard had been by. Said he’d told him that I was out somewhere. He laughed about it, said he hadn’t even had to lie. He thought he was so fucking clever.”

  No words—of comfort or of any other kind—sprang to mind. She covered his hand with hers. He flipped his over and clasped hers like it was a lifeline and he was about to drown.

  “I begged him to let me out, Nik. I begged him for water because I was so fucking thirsty. But he just walked away and left me there.”

  Nikki covered her mouth with her free hand. The tears she’d been fighting burnt a trail down her cheeks. Her throat constricted against the grief radiating from Brett, and the ache in her chest spread until each breath was a struggle.

  She glanced over at Dillon, who was leaning against the doorframe, out of Brett’s sight, the same look of despair on his face she felt on hers.

  “When I didn’t show up for school on Monday, Dillon came looking for me again.”

  Dear God, he’d been locked up for three days? Thank God Dillon’s birthday was in April, not mid-summer, or Brett might not have been alive three days later. As it was, it was a wonder he’d survived at all.

  “This time Pop was gone. He was at a bar, I found out later. Anyway, I guess Dillon knocked on the front door but when no one answered, he came around back, where he knew I kept the spare key.” His voice died off as if he were trying to gather himself. It took a couple minutes before he picked up the story again. “I heard him, so I yelled for him to let me out. That’s when he broke the lock and found me.”

  “Thank God,” Nikki breathed.

  He went on as if he hadn’t heard her. “He ran off for a while. I thought he’d left me like Pop had, but then he came back with some water. I guess he must have phoned his folks too because a couple minutes later, Mr. Barnett showed up with the cops. He took me to the hospital and told the doctors to send him the bill. He and Mrs. Barnett visited me every day. Once I was released, they took me home with them and told me I was going to live with them from then on.”

  He raised his head; his eyes were dry, but filled with raw pain. “Don’t you see? If Dillon hadn’t come looking for me? I don’t know how much longer I would have lasted. I owe him my life, Nik. If it means I have to give up a shot at being with you, that’s a small price to pay compared to what I owe him. To what I owe all the Barnetts.”

  He let go of her hand and pushed himself to a stand, then hesitated as if undecided what to do, a state she’d rarely seen him in. “I gotta go.”

  Nikki reached out to touch his arm, but he walked toward the front of the house without looking back. A minute later, the front door slammed and his car roared away.

  Dillon let the screen door bang in the frame behind him. He’d taken his hat off and was running his hands through his hair. “I had no idea he felt he owed me like that.”

  He swore and buried his fist in the wall beside the door, drywall dust floating down over his boots. “Goddamn. The fucking idiot, he never once told me he was still interested in you. He’s been my best friend. How come I didn’t see it sooner?” His voice broke. “Oh God, why didn’t I see it?”

  “Because he made sure you didn’t.”

  “But I should have. Goddamn it, Nik, he’s more than my best friend. He’s even more than a brother to me than Matt or Griff.” His eyes scrunched shut, as if blocking back tears. His other fist curled at his side. “Shit, Nik, if you knew what I did to him that night after Tater’s party. If you knew how I acted. I was such a first-class prick and all that time, he…”

  For years she’d tried to scrub away the memories of those last few months of high school. To forget the hasty marriage to Wade that for the first few months had seemed so wonderful then turned ugly so quickly. She dragged up the past and tried to focus on what else had happened, but failed. “What happened, Dillon? What did you do?”

  “Right before Christmas, there was this Garth Brooks concert I wanted to go to.” He prowled the kitchen in a random pattern. “My cousin Jimmy had a couple extra tickets and offered to take me and Brett if we wanted to go with him and his girlfriend.”

  “Wait a minute, it’s coming back to me. Brett told me why you didn’t come to the party. Your parents found you’d snuck out when you weren’t supposed to and grounded you.”

  “Yeah. I’d let my grades slide, and it was a school night anyway, so Mom and Dad said we couldn’t go. We’d decided to go anyway, except Brett got sick. I didn’t want to miss it. I swore him to secrecy, then. I snuck out the window and hoofed it over to Jimmy’s place. But I hadn’t counted on Mom checking in on Brett before she went to bed. She found my bed empty. When I got back she and Dad were waiting. They busted my ass big time and grounded me for two weeks. I was so pi
ssed off because I wasn’t allowed to go to the party, but Brett was.”

  He rested his head against the wall. “He was so happy when he came home from the party. Shit, Nik, he couldn’t stop smiling. I hadn’t seen him like that since my parents told him he’d be staying with us, that he wouldn’t have to go back to that scumbag of a father. Then he told me about how you’d kissed him, how you’d necked all evening.” He thumped his forehead against the wall. “I was so fucking jealous—of him getting to kiss you, of him getting to go to the party when I couldn’t. I hit him. He didn’t even defend himself. He just let me whale away on him. Dad had to haul me off of him.” His fist hit the wall again, making a hole beside the first one. “Oh Christ, I nailed him so hard I broke his nose. The same way his father had. Why had I never put it together before?”

  She covered her mouth with her hand. Dillon had beaten up Brett? He’d never said a mean thing against anyone in his life that she’d ever seen. He treated everyone like his best bud; he’d never let anything get him down. “How could you have hurt him like that? Brett was your best friend. What were you thinking?”

  “I was eighteen, damn it. I thought I…ah, hell, I was stupid and confused, and I didn’t think about what I was doing.”

  She folded her arms across her chest. “I hope you apologized to him.”

  “I did. Later. When he finally came back.”

  “When he finally came back,” she repeated. He hadn’t been sick the way Dillon had said? Nikki took a step back. “What do you mean, ‘when he came back’?”

  He rested his forehead against the wall. “A couple days after I pounded on him, Brett and I got into another fight because I’d believed a lie someone else had told me about him. I wouldn’t listen to anything he said so he took off. He ran away. My parents called the police, but they were told that he was eighteen so he could legally leave if he wanted. The only person who looked for him was Tiny.

  “I didn’t mean to drive him away, Nik. Honest, I didn’t. I felt so bad afterwards, but I couldn’t find him to apologize. He was gone almost a week before Tiny found him living on the streets in Dallas. It took another week Mom and Dad to convince him to come live with us again.”

  He inhaled deeply again. “But when he came back, he moved out of our room and moved in with Griff. He froze me out, Nik. Even after I’d apologized to him.”

  “Sometimes saying you’re sorry isn’t enough.”

  A strange look flickered across his face. “That’s what Dad said.”

  “But you’re friends now. So he must have accepted your apology eventually.”

  “Not at first. He started hanging out with Tiny whenever Tiny was off duty instead of hanging out with me the rest of that semester.” Dillon finally opened his eyes, his expression as bleak as Brett’s had been earlier. “Then instead of applying to Aggie the way we’d planned, he applied to Boston College. Told everyone he’d decided to become a cop.”

  Would Brett think everyone he loved had deliberately hurt him again? “We have to find him, Dillon. We have to show him we care about him. That we worry about him.”

  “Yeah. You’re right.” He scrubbed his hands over his face, then bent down to pick up his hat. When he straightened, he looked at her for the first time since he’d walked in. “Are you coming back here after this, Nik?”

  “Let’s find Brett before we start worrying about where I’m going to live.”

  Would she come back here? Or would she go back to her own place, date Brett perhaps? Or at least learn exactly who Dillon was before she got in any deeper. God, what a tangle it had all become.

  Chapter Nine

  Dillon eased his truck off the road and parked it behind Brett’s car. “He used to come here when we were kids. Before he came to live with us. He called it his thinking spot.”

  He switched off the ignition but stayed in place, his hands clenching the steering wheel. “You know the weekend his dad beat the crap out of him? Before I checked his house, I’d come out here on my bike. I knew things were tough at home, so I figured maybe he’d run away.” He rubbed his thumbs into his eyes. “After he moved in with us, we used to come here all the time to fool around once our chores were done. We had us some good times here.”

  “Let’s go find him.” Nikki opened her door and hopped down to survey the area. It was typical Texas brush, buffalo grass and bluestem fighting for space with prickly pear and yucca. Perfect rattlesnake country. While she’d never been bitten, Rascal had tangled with one the previous summer. After seeing what he’d gone through, she’d been cautious ever since and was glad she’d taken the time to put on her boots instead of her sandals.

  Dillon grabbed what he called his whacking stick from the back of the truck and swung through the grasses to scare any snakes into retreat.

  He skirted a section of Bull Nettle, making sure she didn’t come in contact with any of the stinging hairs. A few steps later, he reached down and plucked a yellow flower, sticking it behind her ear with a half-hearted smile. “Tickweed. Just to make sure you don’t pick up any fleas.”

  “Gee, thanks.” What a romantic story to tell her friends—the first flower he’d given her was a flea repellent. Chuckling, she touched the blossom, knowing she’d treasure it anyway. If they ended up staying together. Her smile faded.

  “This place is beautiful in the spring.” Dillon tapped the ground as he approached a fallen branch to scare any rattlers. “The whole field is covered in Indian Blankets.”

  His love of the land must have sprung from the days he’d spent right here, she realized. She tried to picture him and Brett as youngsters running through the fields, playing tag or, more likely, cops and robbers.

  They reached the crest of the hill. A creek, its waters higher than normal from the storm they’d had the day before, wound its way through the harsh terrain, widening out at the far end to a pond that probably dried up in the summer heat. But today, it glimmered bright blue, reflecting the sky above.

  “Takes your breath away, doesn’t it?” Dillon wrapped his arm around her waist. A part of her land—and his—looked exactly the same. To her it was harsh land, rock and dirt and weeds. But now, standing here, she tried to see it through his eyes. Not scrub, but mesquite trees laden with grape vines marking the river’s path, lush greenery combined with the water-worn rocks lining the creek’s banks. Thick marsh grasses lined the edges of the pond, the occasional bird swooping down in sudden arcs, catching bugs skimming along the surface. At the far end, a stand of sweetgums and loblolly pines stood as silent sentinels, guarding the pond.

  “Come on, Brett’s probably up ahead. There’s this one spot he used to like to sit.”

  They scrambled down the bank, following the creek along its meandering path until it widened and became the pond. While Dillon continued, Nikki paused and shielded her eyes from the sun as she scanned the area. It took a few moments, but she finally spied Brett sitting beneath the overhanging branches of a massive old beech tree halfway down, tossing pebbles into the water. As they approached, he stiffened and turned his head away from them.

  Dillon hesitated, the first time she’d ever seen him unsure. “Maybe we should just leave him alone for a while.”

  “No, he needs to know we’re here for him. Both of us.”

  Yet he still hesitated. “I don’t know, Nik. Brett’s a private person. Even when he was in the shed, his arm and ribs all busted up, he didn’t want me to see how much he was hurting.”

  “Then you stay here. But I’m going to him.” Not taking her eyes off the hunched figure beneath the beech tree, she skirted Dillon and continued along the side of the pond.

  As she got closer, she could see Brett’s jaw tighten, the tension in his shoulders and arms, how he looked like he was prepared to jump up and run.

  “Brett?” she said softly, slowly her pace. “Are you all right?”

  “You here to tell me how you feel sorry for me? Poor little abused kid and all that crap?”

  The bitte
rness, the sarcasm in his voice sliced through her. She did feel sorry for him, but she knew he didn’t want to hear any form of pity. Any more than she’d wanted to hear “you can always try again” or “it wasn’t meant to be” about her miscarriage.

  She ducked under the branches and sat beside Brett. Dillon moved behind both of them to hunker down on Brett’s other side.

  “We’re here because we were worried about you.” She chanced having him bolt by placing her hand on his upper arm. “You’re my friend, Brett, and friends are there for each other.”

  He stared at her for a second, then nodded and stared at the pond again.

  No one said anything for another few minutes until Brett swore and threw a handful of pebbles into the water at once. He stood up. “I can’t do this, Nik. I can’t pretend anymore.”

  Before he could take a step away, Nikki reached out and caught his hand. “Brett, wait. Please.”

  “What do you want of me?” His voice was husky, as if he’d been screaming for hours. Maybe inwardly he had been.

  “I want you to talk to me. And to listen. Please.”

  Though it took him a moment, Brett finally settled into place beside her.

  “At the very beginning of this, I asked you if it was all right to go out with Dillon, and you said you were fine with it.”

  If Brett saw Dillon straighten and stare at her, he didn’t give any indication. She shoved away the thread of guilt that arose. They hadn’t been dating then, and she’d been perfectly within her rights to check to see if Brett was interested, she told herself. She turned her attention back to Brett, reaching out to touch his arm with her fingertips, to re-establish the contact she’d had with him.

  His eyes closed at her touch. “You deserve to be happy, Nik. You’re happy with Dillon, and he’s happy with you. He loves you.”

  “But you do too, don’t you?”

  It took a long moment before he nodded.