I walked over to him and patted him on the shoulder. “I know. You wouldn’t be any kind of man if you did. She needed to tell me. It wouldn’t have gone as well if she hadn’t.”
Carl watched me for a second, disbelief on his face. “So, you’re not pissed?”
“About Kadie or about you not telling me?”
Carl shrugged. “Either? Both?”
I chuckled. “What’s the point of being pissed about it? The important thing is I know now, and I can start making up for lost time. Y’all had to keep the secret from me because y’all didn’t understand the situation, but that was then, and this is now.”
He shook his head. “Damn, bro. You’re way more relaxed than I thought you’d be.”
“Why? What did you think was gonna to happen?”
“I thought you were gonna punch my lights out when you found out.” He knelt down to pick up his hammer and nails again. “I was gonna let you. I figured I had it coming for keeping that sort of thing from you. Man, my stomach’s been killing me over this.”
“Don’t worry about it. You gave me a place to work and a place to stay. It’d be mighty ungrateful of me to punch you.” I shot him a grin.
Carl grinned back.
This is what I needed and wanted. No secrets, just friendship. I knew I could never go back to what we all had in high school, but it wasn’t like Carl, Joe, Perri, and Aspyn were strangers either.
“I better go check on the horses,” I said. I waved to Carl, and he waved back.
Heading back, I whistled. Even though I’d had the nightmare, everything else seemed perfect. Maybe I wasn’t together with Aspyn again yet, but at least she knew the truth, and she was going to let me see my daughter.
Hope. That’s what I was feeling. Honest-to-God, actual hope. Not just you’re “kind of, sort of” hope. It’d been so long since I’d actually felt it, it was almost hard to recognize.
I knew one thing now for certain. Coming back to Livingston hadn’t been a mistake.
* * *
After I’d finished up for the day, Carl tracked me down and pulled me over to his porch for a beer. He’d been so busy avoiding me that we’d not really sat down and relaxed much. Now that he didn’t have to keep a secret from me, he was like a whole different man.
That was wrong. Actually, he was the same man, just the one from before, the good-natured and happy man who I’d envied. It sickened me a little that my crap had messed with him and forced him into worrying so much. It was yet another thing I’d have to make up for, but at least this time, I thought I had some chance at doing that.
I popped open my can of Budweiser and took a sip. Nothing like a little beer after a long day of hard work outdoors.
Carl plopped down on a wooden chair on his porch. I sat in the one opposite him. Just like old times.
“So what’re you gonna do now, bro?” he asked.
“Huh? About what? I got everything done today I needed. You have something else you wanted me to do?”
Carl took a drink of his beer and shook his head. “Not with the ranch. With Aspyn.” He gestured with his can. “Now that all the crap’s out in the open, everything’s different.” He stared at me. “I wasn’t sure before. Figured you would relax and then run, but you can’t be planning to leave now. Not with everything you know.”
I locked gazes with him. I’d not thought about it all that much. Carl was right. My original plan was to come back, relax for a while, and then maybe leave.
Kadie made that difficult, if not impossible. Even if I could never get Aspyn back, I did have a responsibility to my daughter. The last thing I should have been thinking about was leaving.
“Nothing left for me in Texas,” I said. “Not like I had a girlfriend there or even many friends. No reason for me to leave Livingston, and at least a couple of good reasons for me to stay.”
“Hot damn, bro,” Carl said. “So glad to hear you say that. And what about you and Aspyn, though?”
I shook my head. “She told me we’re not a couple.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Not yet.”
I shrugged. “Maybe never. I know how it can be hard to let go of your past. It doesn’t matter. Not saying I still have feelings, but I’m letting her make the call on a lot of this crap.”