Daredevil’s Run

“You know what?” Sam said as she watched them go. “Neither am I.”

“Samantha…dearest,” her husband said gently, “what do you think you’re going to do? You can’t make two people fall in love.”

“Oh, horsefeathers, Pearse, they’re already in love-anybody can see that. They’re just bein’… bullheaded.” She said the last word with emphasis, and a meaningful glare for Matt, who was just joining them.

“Referring to me, I suppose,” he said as he rolled past them and inserted his room key card in its slot. He opened the door and gave it a shove, then looked up at Cory and Sam and added evenly, “But you’re talking to the wrong person. Trust me.” He pushed his way into the room, closing the door on Sam, who would have followed him in if her husband hadn’t grabbed her in time to prevent her.

“Pearse, you’re not going to let-”

“Shh…not now. Can’t you see he’s hurting? Give him some time.”

“Time? How much time? What are we supposed to do now?”

At that moment Matt’s door opened up again, framing him and his chair in an attitude Sam thought wouldn’t have been out of place on a Murderball court.

“How soon can you guys be ready to leave?” he inquired without preamble. “Because I’m thinkin’ it’s time to go home.”

“Ah…” Cory glanced at Sam. “Give us twenty minutes?”

“Right-twenty minutes.” The door closed.

Cory’s lopsided smile told her he was blaming himself for the pain his brother was in. She wanted to tell him something to make him feel better, at least let him know she understood how he felt, probably wishing he hadn’t tried to meddle in his brother’s love affairs. But what could she say? In the end she simply snuggled against his side when he hooked his good arm around her and kissed the top of her head.

“Right now,” he said with a sigh, “I guess we’ll do what we have to do-take him home.”

Alex pulled up in front of her house to find Booker T’s truck parked there and him sitting on her front steps, waiting for her.

She got out of the SUV and slammed the door, and held up her hand as she stormed up the walk. “Don’t you start with me.”

“I’m not doin’ a thing.” He slowly and creakily got to his feet. “Looks to me like you’ve about done enough already, all by yourself.”

“I mean it, Booker T.” She halted in front of him, hauling in quick deep breaths, which was way more air than she really needed and had the effect of making her feel all swelled up, like a toad.

Booker T paused, gave her a long, hard look, then took her by the arms and turned her around and sat her down on the step. He eased himself carefully down beside her and planted a hand on each knee, then let out breath in a gust. “Baby girl, what’m I gonna do with you?”

Alex stared down at his hands, all gnarled and beat-up from his days roping calves and breaking horses. Then all of a sudden the hands were swimming, and her nose was running a stream, and dammit all, she couldn’t help it, she had to sniff.

Booker T reached in his back pocket and took out a blue bandanna handkerchief and handed it to her. “You know Linda and I love you like you was our own, but-and I know this sort of thing ain’t done much anymore, but right now what I feel like I oughta do is turn you over my knee.”

Alex blew her nose and stared at him over the handkerchief. “What’d I do? I didn’t do a damn thing. I was getting along just fine. And he has to come along, and…and…Why’d he have to come back, dammit?”

“You know why he came back,” Booker T said, giving her a look, as if she’d said something incomprehensible. “He came back for you.”

“Yeah, well, he can just go on back to L.A., then,” Alex said angrily, “because I sure as hell don’t want him.”

“Now that is just a big old lie.” His face was as stern as she’d ever seen it.

Chastened, she blew her nose again, then leaned her head on his shoulder and sighed. “What am I gonna do, Booker T?”

He didn’t say anything for a minute or two, just sort of rocked her. Then she felt him nudge her head with his chin. “Tell me something, baby girl. Do you love him?”

She straightened up as if he’d stuck her with a pin and clapped a hand to her forehead. “I don’t know,” she wailed. “How the hell would I know?”

Booker T chuckled. “Oh, I think you know.”

“Okay, if I do, then how come it’s so complicated and hard? How come I’m not all gooey and dopey and nothing else in the whole world matters?”

“Because,” Booker T said, “that’s not you.”

“Yeah…” Suddenly she felt wrapped in misery, weighed down by it. Every part of her seemed to hurt. “Okay,” she said in a low, uneven voice, “even if…say I do love him. It doesn’t really matter-”

“Oh, it matters.”

“No-because what he wants is for me to need him. Think about it, Booker T. He’s not the kind of man who’s gonna be happy with a woman who’s bossy, and opinionated, and independent and used to running the whole show.” She glared at him, waiting for him to deny it. But all he did was smile. She hitched in a breath and looked at her feet, watched one of them scrape at the stones in the walk. “He wasn’t before-that’s probably why we used to fight all the time-and he sure as hell isn’t now. Even more now that he’s…” She couldn’t bring herself to say it. Caught another breath, shook her head and went on. “Anyway, he needs to feel he’s carrying his own weight, and probably half of mine besides.”

Booker T cleared his throat noisily. “Well, you do seem to understand the man pretty well.” He paused, evidently intent on studying the two cars parked out at the road. “Too bad you don’t understand yourself as well.”

“Okay, what’s that supposed to mean?”

He glanced at her, smoothed his mustache with a thumb and forefinger, then shook his head. “Not just you, honey, don’t get mad. It’s just the way people are made. Human beings are not meant to be alone. They’re hardwired to need each other.” He held up a hand when she started to interrupt. “No, now, hear me out. Of course you don’t need a man to defend your cave and go out and whomp a yak and bring it home to feed you and the kiddies. These days, women are pretty much capable of defending their own caves and whomping their own yaks. But see, the thing is, human beings with their great big brains have got to be born small and helpless or they can’t be born at all, and that means they’ve got to be protected and cared for and taught for years and years, and like it or not, sweet pea, that’s a job best done with two people.”

Alex snorted, ignoring a new little spike of pain, one she didn’t even know the cause of. “Yeah, well, that’s assuming you mean to have kids.”

Booker T kind of reared back and looked at her, and she remembered, again too late, about the child he and Linda had lost. Then he shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. We’re all still hardwired the same way. Tell me this. Do you want him? Do you want this man?” And then he held up a hand to stop her before she could answer. “No. Don’t think on it-don’t try and parse this, like it was a problem in logic to work out with your brain. This is a gut thing. What does your gut tell you? You want him, or don’t you?”

Do I want him? Memories swamped her. Memories of the way his hands felt, sliding up along her ribs, under her T-shirt. Memories of the way his mouth tasted, the way his laugh sounded, and the happy shiver that ran through her whenever he smiled.

“Yeah,” she said gruffly, then cleared her throat and said it again. “Yeah, I do.”

Booker T threw up his hands, the way a rodeo cowboy does when he’s finished throwing and tying a calf. “There you are, then. If you love him, and you want him, you need him. It’s as simple as that.”

A bubble of laughter fought its way up through the pain inside her and she caught it in the handkerchief. She sniffled, sighed, then muttered, “How’d you get so wise?”

He laughed out loud. “Me? I’m nothin’ but an old cowboy that had the good sense to get down off a horse and