The conversation was getting a little too touchy-feely for me. I stepped back in case Will was close to breaking out in tears and needing a hug. I wasn’t the person to hug when someone was in the midst of a meltdown. I was the person who shook the hell out of someone and ordered them to get their shit together. “Well, that’s a Precious Moments story, but it does me a whole lot of no good because my problem ain’t no woman.”

“Your daddy?” At least if he was going to bring it up, he didn’t beat around the bush and he looked me in the eye.

“Daddy, ashes to ashes, dust to dust—literally—dearest.”

Will didn’t blink. I suppose when a person had lived as many years as he had, there was little left to be seen or heard that could surprise them. “And what makes you think your daddy dying is causing you to lose your head when you’re up there on a bull?”

“Because he’s probably some poltergeist following me around, giving me a ghosty shove when I’m up there, and getting a good laugh in his hereafter watching me eat dirt.” Will raised an eyebrow. “Because, okay? I know.” He lifted his other brow, waiting. “You’re a stubborn one, aren’t you?”

“Only about as stubborn as you are. But I’ve had fifty extra years of experience, so don’t you think for a moment your stubbornness can outdo mine. Older men than you have tried and failed.”

I got why Josie was such a fan of the eye roll when I was around. Being around someone as bull-headed as me almost made me want to roll my eyes. “The only thing Clay ever said to me that wasn’t insulting, derogatory, or slurred in a drunken haze, was that men like him and me—men without land or cattle or a lot of money—could only find glory one way.”

“Eight seconds on the back of a bull,” Will stated, no hint of a question.

“The only kind of glory men like us could ever hope for.” I dropped my hands on my hips and exhaled.

“Well, I can tell you what I think about that.”

“That it’s a whole load of shit?” I almost hoped Will would say that. Then I’d know one other person in the world felt the same way. Most of the time I accepted Clay’s glory axiom, but a few times—moments like those—I wanted to believe it was the biggest, falsest load of shit to be spread.

Will’s hand clamped my shoulder. “That it’s a whole load of sad. A person’s glory doesn’t come from trying not to fall off, but picking themselves up when they do. That’s the measure of a person’s glory.” He headed toward the end of the arena. Apparently his confounding work was done and he was calling it a night.

Proverbial whiplash . . . why, yes, yes I am your most recent bitch. “So since I’m covered in a mixture of bull shit and mud, I must be swimming in glory? Is that what you’re saying?” I called after him.

“You’re not swimming in glory until you find someone to swim with you. Glory isn’t glory if you don’t have someone to share it with. It’s just pride and bullshit on your own.”

Unbelievable. Will Jones wasn’t only one badass cowboy; he pretty much could have been the love child of John Wayne and Yoda.

“I think I get why you married the crazy one!” I hollered. “You needed someone to keep up with your special brand of it.”

Will glanced back for a second, tipped his hat, and kept going.

And I thought the bull had fucked me up good.

IT WAS ANOTHER Thursday night, and somehow I’d wound up with more bruises and dirt between my teeth than I had last Thursday. The whole “things can only go up from here” concept hadn’t made my acquaintance yet. I’d run out of pain reliever a few days earlier and had yet to restock my supply, so I let half a bottle of whiskey have a go at it instead.

My brain still felt like it wanted to burst out of my skull, and the rest of my body felt like it had been tumble-dried with a load of rocks and needles. To say I was in pain was like saying I was freezing. One of Montana’s notorious cold snaps had set in, and my breath wasn’t just fogging—it was about a degree away from crystalizing. The one positive to the frigid temperatures was that it made my body numb, thus dulling the pain.

Who ever said I wasn’t a silver lining kind of guy?

I’d just burrowed down in my sleeping bag and closed my eyes when a loud thump lurched me awake. The sound had come from behind me so, after defogging the window, I gazed out to find the face I’d been trying for weeks to forget about. I’d failed miserably.

“What the hell, Black?” Josie yelled, thumping the window again with her mittened hands. “What the hell is this?”

So much for flying under the radar. Sighing, I cranked down the window and stuck my head out of my truck. “I was in the middle of a sweet dream, Joze.”

“That wasn’t a sweet dream, you idiot. That was your body shutting down thanks to hypothermia.”

At that stage in my life, they were the same thing. “What are you talking about? It’s balmy in here.” I hadn’t seen Josie so pissed in . . . well . . . Actually, I’d never seen her that pissed.

“I bet. That must be why your nose looks like it’s about to fall off.” She was bundled up in her knee-length down jacket, a hat and scarf coving all of her face but her eyes. If I’d never seen her so pissed and two-thirds of her face was hidden from view, she was close to going nuclear. “You really are a bastard. You know that?” I was about halfway through my nod of agreement when she narrowed her eyes even more somehow. “Your dad burns to death, and his son freezes to death three months later. Isn’t that just a goddamned fairy-tale ending?”

She sounded like she was just getting started, so I decided to use the silence while she sucked in a breath. “Did I miss something? Why are you acting like you want to hang me up by my toenails and skin me?”

“BECAUSE I DO!”

Even through my hat, that scream did some permanent damage to my eardrums. “Mind explaining yourself before you scream me deaf?”

I hadn’t even said it with sarcasm, and she was glowering at me like she was willing me to die on the spot. “You told me you were staying at a friend’s place. You told me you were somewhere with a roof over your head, with running water . . . with a kitchen . . .” Okay, she was starting to break. As much as she was trying to fight them, a couple of tears surfaced in the corners of her eyes. “You told me you were safe . . . and . . . and warm.” She gestured at where I sat in my truck, close to breaking out in shivers. “And here you are, camped out in your truck in front of your burnt out trailer in the middle of negative degree temperatures. You lied to me, Garth. You lied to me.” From the looks of it, there was no greater offense.

I had lied to her. Not because I’d wanted to tell Josie a lie, but because I wanted to admit the truth much less. I’d been living out of my truck for months on land I’d essentially been evicted from because I didn’t want to burden anyone. I’d clearly been a burden on Clay all twenty-one years of my life, and since I was free of him, I didn’t want to pass that burden baton on to someone else. The Walkers or Josie especially. If I was going to be a pain in the ass leech, I sure didn’t want it to be on one of my real friend’s backsides.

“What do you want? An I’m sorry? Because I’m not.” The only good thing about arguing with Josie was that it was heating me up. Which brought my Thursday night war wounds back in all their throbbing glory.

“No. Screw I’m sorry. You owe me a hell of a lot more than that after what you’ve been pulling the last couple months.” Grabbing the door handle, Josie flung the door open. “You owe me the decency of getting out of that ice box of a truck into mine, and then I’m taking you to my place. You can thaw, eat a warm meal, and figure out what the hell to do next. Because living out of your truck isn’t a viable long-term solution.”