Buck rested his forehead to mine and whispered, “Baby, please.”

“Then I find you,” I whispered back. “And I can live on hope Tia’s okay. Because I’ve got you. And I can step up for Tatie. Because she’s sweet and because I’ve got you. I can fall in love again. And I can make you fall in love with me. And you’re mine. All of you is all mine. And we don’t even get an entire day to enjoy that, and now…this.”

Buck stopped trying to get me to go inside.

Instead, his fingers curled in my hair and he pressed his knuckles tight to my scalp and didn’t move away.

“I should get dressed and see Rogan,” I muttered.

“Yeah,” he muttered back.

Neither of us moved.

We stood out in the cold, the thin Arizona creek meandering by us, and stared in each other eyes.

Eventually, it occurred to me that I was wearing his tee.

Buck was out in nothing but jeans and bare feet.

I needed to get my man inside.

“Let’s just go do this,” I said.

“Babe?” he said.

“Right here.”

“My sister burned herself and my mother to death, and I’m still standing.”

I sucked in breath.

Buck kept speaking.

“My dad’s incarcerated. Probably the only way you’ll ever know him is sittin’ across a table from him in a visitation hall in a prison. You’ll never taste how good he can make a meatloaf or hear how loud his laugh booms or be able to hand our kid off to him and watch him get down on the ground and play like he’s good to do that for weeks. I hate that like fuck, but I’m still standing.”

Our kid?

Buck went on, “The woman I loved turned into a bitch I couldn’t stand the sight of and took my kids away from me, and I’m still standing.”

“We’ll get them back,” I promised.

“We might. We might not. But whatever happens, Gear will be standing. Tat will be standing. You’ll be standing. And I’ll be standing. That’s my only goal. That’s what I live for. And that’s life, Toots. You’re right. It’s never, not ever, easy. The key, gorgeous, is to stay standing.”

This was very wise.

Sad.

But wise.

I nodded, the movement of my head moving his.

“Now, let’s go do this,” he murmured.

He also made to shift, but I stopped him by catching his beltloops on either side.

“I feel pain about this, Buck,” I admitted.

“You loved him. That’s not a surprise. It’d be a surprise if you didn’t.”

I nodded, but said, “I just want you to know, it’s not about still having feelings for him. It’s about having had feelings for him.”

“I know that, Clara.”

I studied him closely.

“You sure?”

“Babe, if I thought you were holding a torch for this guy, you would not be in my bed. Remember? I don’t share.”

“Oh, right,” I mumbled.

His lips twitched and he replied, “Right. Can we get out of the cold now?”

I yet again nodded.

But this time, he didn’t move.

“Are we going inside?” I asked when we both kept standing there for a good while.

“From the minute I learned all of it, I wanted the power to erase your life, write it new.”

My eyelids fluttered rapidly, shock and something else, and that something else was something beautiful, pulsing through me.

“I didn’t have that power, Clara, so I did what I could do.”

Oh my God.

He did what he could do.

And there I was.

I had, indeed, leaned on a man.

Because I needed to.

And he gave me a home, a family, a job, a car.

And his love.

“West,” I whispered.

“I lied,” he declared.

Again with the eyelids fluttering.

“Sorry?” I asked.

“I knew just how deep I was in it with you when you were holdin’ Tatie’s hair back when she was pukin’. But I fell in love with you over a game of pool.”

Oh.

My.

God.

I melted into him and didn’t have it in me to do anything but breathe, “West.”

“We can’t do anything about those pages that were already written, baby. But we’re past those. Now we’re writing it new. You with me?”

I was so with him, I could become him.

If I did that, however, I couldn’t kiss him.

Which was what I did to share I was with him.

We made out for a spell on his deck in what Arizonians considered cold (when it was probably around seventy degrees).

Buck ended it.

And took me inside.

30

Still Standing

“You’ve got to be fuckin’ shitting me.”

Buck spoke words I was thinking when we saw Kristy’s junker sitting outside his house on our way back from visiting Rogan.

I went in to see him alone.

I went in prepared.

I found, upon seeing my emaciated ex-husband, who’d once been so handsome I could barely look at him and breathe at the same time, now had aged thirty years in six months, and I was not prepared.

What I was, was forgiving.

He needed that.

He was dying.

I gave it to him.

I wasn’t sure I meant it, not totally.

What I was sure of was that I no longer had the time to find my way to the place of forgiveness.

I also knew I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself knowing I didn’t offer it even if I wasn’t there yet.

And last, I knew that now he could die having it.

I also assured him I was fine. I had a good job I liked doing and I was moving on.

I did not tell him about Buck.

That was something he didn’t need to know before he was lost to this world.

“It was stupid,” he’d rasped before I left.

“We don’t need to talk about it, Rogan,” I told him.

“I wanted it, when I was gone, to take the place of me,” he explained.

He was talking about the money.

“Nothing could have taken the place of you,” I replied.

It took visible effort, and was hard to watch him make that effort, but he nodded.

“You’re going to think I’m ass, sweetheart,” he warned. “But I don’t regret doing something stupid to look out for you. I regret that doing something stupid took you away from me so I didn’t have you. Not when I needed you. That I just didn’t have the time I had left with you.”

I didn’t know how to respond.

I went with honest.

“I regret you did that too.”

“You loved me, right?” he asked.

My throat closing, I took his hand in mine and kept being honest.

“I loved you, Rogan. So, so much. You were the best thing in my life up to that point. I’ll always have that. And I’ll have it because you gave it to me.”

And I could tell by the expression on his face that was what he needed to know before he was gone.

Needless to say, I was in a quiet, reflective mood.

And Buck was giving me that, but doing it holding my hand tight in his, resting on his thigh.