Dirty Cowboy (A Western Romance) (The Maxwell Family) Read online

  I passed the people who were staring at me and even a few who were trying to talk to me. I ignored them all. I just wanted to be alone, so I could process this and figure out why people would even consider the possibility that Emma was dead. That was ridiculous…wasn’t it? I made it to my room and locked myself inside. I sat down on the bed and looked at my phone. The last text I had from Emma was after I’d text her, telling her I really didn’t feel well, and I needed to study and wouldn’t be able to go out. She had text me back and said, “Okay, but all work and no play makes Alexa a dull girl. Love ya!”

  I hadn’t even text back that I loved her too. Why? It would have taken me two seconds…or less. Oh God! What if she was dead? What if I had that one last chance to be with her, or to tell her I loved her too and I had let it pass? The tears were running down the side of my neck now. I had to find some tissue…or just lie down on the bed and let them soak into the pillow…which was what I did. I lay there for a while, crying and shaking, rolled into a fetal position and I imagined what her family must be going through. Shit! Her family! I grabbed the phone and called my dad.

  He picked it up on the first ring and said, “Alexa honey, I was just going to call you…” Dad’s voice was husky, like he was trying not to cry.

  “It’s true?”

  “Yeah baby. I’m so sorry.”

  I let myself sob out loud then and my dad just sat quietly and let me. When I could speak again I said, “Do her parents know?”

  “Yeah, I’m headed over there now,” he said.

  “Oh God, Daddy! Oh God!”

  “I know baby. Do you want me to come and get you?”

  “I need to be home.”

  “I know honey. I have to go see Emma’s parents and see if there is anything I can do. Then I’ll be there, okay?”

  I’m not sure if what I said sounded like okay to him or not. To my ears it was just another strangled cry. I dropped back down onto the bed and sobbed. My poor Emma. I couldn’t understand why. She was so young…It’s just not fair!

  Chapter Two

  Ian

  I got to the gym at seven and started my routine. The owner of the gym was an old prize fighter and he and I got along really well. He also set up a lot of the MMA competitions I entered, and he knows how important my routine is to me. People leave me alone here, and that’s how I liked it. I did my work-out on my own three days a week without a trainer. The other two days I worked with my trainer and we worked on my foot work or my ground game or boxing or he set up a sparring session for me.

  I started learning how to fight when I was sixteen. I had a friend whose father was a UFC fighter for a while, before he got too strung out on drugs to remember his moves. He went through rehab and one or two in jail before finally cleaning up his act and deciding to help other guys become fighters. He’d converted his garage into a gym and he knew everyone on the circuit so he could not only produce fighters, he could get them into competitions too. His son and I were the same age and he trained us, just for fun. He didn’t want his son in that world, and that was probably a good thing, because my friend Ronnie was more of a lover than a fighter. Me on the other hand…I loved it and Ronnie’s dad, Dean told me I had a lot of potential. He wouldn’t let me fight until I was eighteen, but by that time, I was more than ready. He started entering me into every MMA competition in the seven county radius around our small town. Three years later, he was managing me and we were starting to aim higher.

  Every morning I start my routine with sprints to raise my heart rate and just overall get the fibers in my muscles ready to fire off some explosive movements. My biggest strength in the octagon was my speed. If they didn’t see you coming…they could fight back. I did my twenty-five meter sprints with a rest period every sixty seconds. After the first three, I heard my phone ringing in my bag. I ignored it and continued to work out. I couldn’t think of anyone who would be calling me during my work-out that I’d want to talk to. My family and my friends all knew better.

  My next station was push-ups and jumping jacks and bench dips. I did fifteen of each, alternating between them for a full five minutes. As I was finishing that one up, the stupid phone rang again. I should have turned off the ringer. I didn’t want to stop my work-out and go do it now, so I tried to just keep my focus and ignore it again.

  My next station was ten heavy bag burpees, twenty-five presses with the ten weights, Fifteen pound weight burpees and then ten with no weight. Again, I did this for five full minutes. That damned phone was driving me crazy!

  I went on with my routine, ignoring it but at the same time, wondering in the back of my mind who in the hell was trying so hard to reach me so early in the morning. When I finally finished I did a five minute cool-down and got some water and then I went over and took the damned phone out of my bag. When I looked at it and saw that I had five missed calls…and they were all from my parents, I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. Mom and Dad know about my work-outs. They know that I hate to be interrupted and they’ve never interrupted me before. Fuck! Something was really wrong. With my hand already shaking, I pushed the button for voice mail. They’d only left one message. It was my mom and she sounded like she was crying. She was telling me to call her back…now! I clicked out of that and saw I had several text messages too, all telling me to call home. Shit! I wondered if something happened to my dad.

  I called my parent’s house and Mom answered on the first ring. “Ian?”

  “Yeah Mom, it’s me. What’s up? Are you okay?” She dissolved into a sobbing, blathering mess and I could barely understand what she was saying. My heart was beginning to race because I knew that something was terribly wrong…I just couldn’t figure out what it was. “Mom, I can’t understand you. Did you say something about Emma?”

  “She was in an accident…Ian, honey, she died!” She was crying again and suddenly my dad came on the line. His voice was shaky and I could tell that he’d been crying too. I couldn’t remember ever seeing my father cry. That scared me worse than my mother crying.

  “You need to come home son,” he said.

  “Okay Dad. What happened?” Please God tell me that I didn’t really hear what I thought I did.

  I heard his voice catch as he said, “It’s Emma. She was in a car accident last night. She hit a patch of black ice and lost control of the car. She hit a telephone pole,” he sucked in a breath and let out another sob before he said, “Ian, she didn’t make it.” My hands were shaking so hard now that I could hardly hold onto the phone. I felt like maybe I was trapped in a nightmare. My sister couldn’t be dead. It wasn’t possible.

  “I’ll be right there, Dad.”

  “Be safe, son.”

  “I will.” I hung up and just stood there for a few seconds longer. It was like suddenly, my body didn’t know what to do. The pressure in my head was building and there was a little voice in there that kept repeating, “Emma’s dead….”

  I finally grabbed my bag and headed out. When I got into the car and I heard that voice again, I punched the steering wheel, over and over until my hand was screaming in pain. Fuck! This can’t fucking be happening!

  I drove to my parent’s house on auto-pilot. I was just suddenly in the driveway with no recollection of how I got there. The gym was on the opposite side of town from their house. Good job, Ian. That’s what they need today, two dead kids. I sat in the driveway for a while. I didn’t want to go in there. I could almost feel the pall hanging over the house from here. I finally forced myself out of the car and up to the front door. The door opened as I got there and Bill and Lucy, friends of my parents who lived down the street, came out. Lucy saw me first and dissolved into a torrent of tears. Bill grabbed and hugged me. I was taken by surprise, so I didn’t really hug him back. I’m not much of a hugger.

  “We’re so sorry,” Bill said. “We’re just so damned sorry.”

  I cleared my throat. There was a lump that had been there since I got ahold of my parents. “Yeah, me too. Thanks.” />
  “You be sure your mom calls us if she needs anything,” Lucy said.

  “I will thanks.” This was so freaking weird. Old people die. Sick people die. Young, healthy nineteen year old girls don’t die. It was too unreal. I stood there a few seconds after Bill and Lucy were gone and then finally I grabbed the knob of my family home and went inside. The first thing I saw when I walked in was the baby photos of Emma and me that my mom had hanging in the entryway for as long as I could remember. That was when I finally lost it. I sunk to my knees on the hard tile floor and I cried…I want to say for my sister, but mostly it was for me and my parents…those of us who are left to go on, knowing we would never see her again. I couldn’t remember the last time I had cried. It may have been when that picture was taken. I wasn’t a crier or a hugger.

  I don’t know how long I sat there, but when I finally pulled myself together, I got up and went to find my parents. My dad was sitting on the couch in the living room, staring at a spot on the wall. There was a plate of food in front of him and an unopened can of soda. I’m sure Lucy left it there, trying to get him to eat something and keep up his strength, but the sight and the smell of it from where I was standing made my stomach lurch.

  “Dad…” He turned his head so slowly it was literally like I was watching it happen in slow motion. When he saw me, he pushed himself up off the couch and I went over to him. He wrapped me up in a hug like I hadn’t had from him since I was eight years old probably and he held me so tightly that I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I guess when people die, that’s what other people do…hug. I didn’t move or pull away though. He was crying…he obviously needed to get it out. When he finally pulled back, he looked at my face and said, “I’m sorry.”

  “Please don’t say you’re sorry,” I said, clearing the lump out of my throat again. “As bad as I’m feeling right now, I can’t even imagine what you and Mom are going through. Where is she? Is she doing okay?”

  He cleared his throat now and swiped the tears away with the back of his hand. He suddenly looked embarrassed about breaking down. I didn’t want him to feel like that. “She’s in your sister’s room. She’s lying on her bed…she won’t come out.”

  “Okay. That’s okay. She probably feels closer to her in there.” I moved out of my parent’s house before I turned eighteen. Emma had been gone for a year and a half now at college. My mom hadn’t touched either one of our rooms. When I came home, I always felt like I was caught in a time warp. I never really understood it…until now. Maybe she was hanging onto them to help her remember us when we weren’t around. When I opened the door to my sister’s room and I saw all of her things, I could feel her presence there. Not like a ghost or anything weird like that…but just the spirit of the girl who grew up there. Happy, sassy, beautiful and taking life by storm…Shit! My fucking chest felt like a weight was crushing down on it. I went over near the bed where my poor mom was curled in a ball and gripping onto some old teddy bear that Emma hadn’t looked at in years. She had her eyes closed, but I could tell that she wasn’t sleeping. She was probably just trying to shut out the pain.

  “Mom?” She opened her eyes and looked at me. It seemed to take her a minute to process that I was there. When she did, bless her maternal heart, she smiled at me. She reached her hand up then and took hold of mine. I sat down on the bed next to her. “I’m so sorry, Mom.”

  She didn’t say anything. She was probably afraid she would start crying again. She sat up and wrapped her arms around me and we sat there while I rocked her back and forth like she rocked me when I was a baby and she cried some more. Every so often she would utter my sister’s name, or she would say, “Oh God Ian, what are we going to do without her?” I didn’t answer her, because I didn’t know. I just held onto her for a really long time, until she finally passed out. I laid her down on the bed and kissed her forehead. I put a blanket over her and went out to check on my dad. He was sitting in the same spot I’d left him earlier. I sat down next to him on the couch and said, “Hey Dad, are you doing okay? Do you need anything?”

  “I don’t know where to start, Ian. I don’t even know how. I feel so empty…you know. It feels like there’s just nothing inside of me…like that nothingness took hold of my heart and soul and before long, it’s just going to absorb me completely.”

  God, I hated this. I love my family more than anything on this earth, but words have never been my strong suit. I wanted to hit something. That would make me feel better. I looked at my hand and remembered I’d already done that, and maybe it wasn’t such a good idea. “I know, Dad. Me too.” I told him finally.

  He looked at me then and his normally blue eyes were so streaked with red that they were a strange shade of dark purple as he said, “You know, the policeman told us that she died instantly and she didn’t suffer. I guess that is supposed to make us feel better…maybe it does, I don’t know. You know what would make me feel better?”

  “What’s that, Dad?”

  “If she hadn’t died at all.”

  “I know Dad, me too.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Stop apologizing, please. Is there something I can do? What about calling everyone…I guess we should do that?”

  My dad suddenly started shaking again. He put his hands over his face and said, “Oh God! I forgot about your grandparents and Aunt Karen and Uncle Don! Oh God! What if they heard it on the news? That would be so awful…”

  “It’s okay, Dad. If they did, I’m sure they would have called by now. I’ll call them, okay?”

  He nodded, “Okay son, thank you. I’m sorry.” I could tell that he felt bad about asking me to do it, but he was obviously not up to doing it himself at all.

  “Stop saying you’re sorry,” I told him. “I’ll be right back.”

  I went into the kitchen and just stood there gulping in air. God, I would rather pull out my own teeth than do this. My grandparents…all four of them, are really old. They live about a hundred miles away and I know they’re going to want to head over here right away. I hope my Aunt Karen is around to drive them. They’re all too old to be driving on a good day. Shit! I picked up my phone and called my Mom’s parent’s first. My grandma Sadie answered the phone on the first ring. In a melodic voice she said, “Hello?”

  “Hi Grandma. It’s Ian.”

  “Ian? My grandson, Ian?”

  “Yeah Grandma, it’s me.”

  “Ian?” she said again. Then she said, “I think you were twelve the last time you called me and that was because your Mama made you do it. Oh no! Ian, what’s wrong?”

  Shit! “Grandma, is Grandpa there with you?”

  “Yes, he’s here and Uncle Don too…Ian, what’s wrong?”

  “Maybe I should talk to Uncle Don…”

  “Ian Michael! You tell me what is going on right now!”

  “Emma was in a car accident….”

  “Oh no! Ian, is she okay? Where is she? Why isn’t your mother calling me?”

  “She’s not okay, Grandma. She died…” There was an almost inhuman wail on the other end of the phone and I heard it drop. I could hear men’s voices in the background and then finally My Uncle Don picked up the phone and said, “Ian? What’s going on? Mom looks like she’s having a stroke!”

  Fuck! “Uncle Don, Emma died last night.”

  “Oh shit! Oh God…Oh Ian, I’m so damned sorry…Your mom! Oh God! She must be devastated, and your dad…damn it!”

  “Um…yeah, she is, they both are.” I could still hear my Grandma wailing and I think I can hear my Grandpa crying too.

  “Okay son, I’m so sorry. Let me deal with Mom. I’ll call you back in a while to find out what we need to do. Oh damn!”

  “Okay, thanks, Uncle Don.” I hung up the phone and that was when the bile that had been churning in my stomach all morning reached the back of my throat. I went over to the sink and I was finally able to puke. It was disgusting and a relief all at the same time. Damn it! I still had to call my dad’s parents. I rin
sed my mouth and called the other grandparents. The reaction was about the same…then I called Aunt Karen, my mom’s sister. Her daughter Cammie answered. “Hi Cammie, it’s Ian.”

  “My cousin Ian?” I guess I needed to call my family more often.

  “Yeah, your cousin. Is your Mom or Dad there?” Cammie was only fourteen. There was no way I was telling her.

  “Yeah, Dad’s here. Just a sec.” Good, talking to Uncle Brian would be a lot easier than telling Aunt Karen. I waited and a few seconds later, Uncle Brian came on the line and said, “Ian?”

  “Yeah Uncle Brian, it’s me.”

  “Hey buddy! How the hell are you? I heard you’ve been winning fights like a champ!”

  Shit! “Um…Uncle Brian, Emma was in a car accident.”

  “Oh hell. Damn, I’m sorry. Is she okay?”

  “Um…no, she died.”

  He was quiet for a long time. I felt bad for him. I know it had to suck being on that end of the line too. Finally he said, “Damn it, Ian…I don’t even know what to say.”

  “I know,” I said. “Me neither.”

  “Your Aunt Karen will be home soon. I’ll have her call your mom…”

  “Yeah…you might want to have her wait until tomorrow. Mom’s not really up for talking today.”