“I’m on the way. Are you okay, Dalen?”

“They messed me up, Dash. I mean I’m a big dude and I take hits day in and day out on the field, but there were three of them.”

“Son of a bitch. Do you need to go to the hospital?” Dixie gasped and bolted up next to me. She put a hand on my arm and patted the muscle that was locked in a battle-ready position. I would rip anyone that hurt the kid apart limb from limb. I would make them suffer in ways they couldn’t imagine. I would hunt them down and run them to ground if it was the last thing I did.

“No. My face is busted up. Split lip, couple black eyes, and my knuckles are busted open, which is going to piss coach off. I tried to call Dad but he got a call out to the Holler and won’t be back in city limits for another hour. I told my buddies I would find my own way home. I don’t want them in trouble for skipping school. Coach will bench all of us for the next game if he finds out.”

The Holler was a trailer park way out in the boonies. It wasn’t easy to get to and the people that called it home weren’t easy to deal with. Jules was going to be pissed when he found out what had happened.

“Hate to break it to you, kid, but once the old man catches sight of the damage done he’s gonna want to talk to your friends. They’re witnesses to an assault. I’m headed out the door right now, so sit tight.”

He mumbled a sullen agreement as I turned to look at Dixie, who was also climbing out of the bed, her curls clasped in a hand to hold them away from her face.

“I gotta go get Dalen. The kid is in bad shape, and I need to call Jules so I can fill him in. Can you go get Elma Mae and get her settled at her place? I know that’s asking a lot.” She nodded without hesitation and grabbed some clothes from the pile I’d brought in from the laundry room last night.

“Of course I’ll go get her. I hope your brother is okay.”

I clasped the back of my neck and squeezed the thick coils of tension that were suddenly there.

“He’ll be all right. The redneck assholes that fucked with him won’t be able to say the same thing. I’m glad he called me. Surprised but glad.”

She paused and gave me a serious look as she covered her nakedness with her bundle of clothes. “Of course he called. He’s giving you the opportunity to show up because he wants you to prove that you still care about him the way he still cares about you. You were his idol and he’s giving you a shot to reclaim your position as his hero. He could have called the police, in fact he probably should have. He could have called a friend’s parent or another adult he trusts, but he called you. Don’t screw this up, soldier. This is a mission you cannot afford to fail.”

She was right about most of it. She was wrong about me being any kind of hero.

A hero wouldn’t have bolted when things got tough at home. A hero wouldn’t have let the man he idolized and adored grieve alone for the second woman he’d loved. A hero wouldn’t have abandoned his little brother with no explanation and no justification. A hero wouldn’t make love to the woman of his dreams over and over again knowing he was going to end up doing irreparable damage to her heart. A hero wasn’t terrified to let himself fall in love, because all real heroes knew that pain was unavoidable and it was the suffering that was optional. Hell, half the guys I served with had those very words inked on their skin somewhere. It was a reminder that I didn’t just choose to suffer, I embraced the suffering until it was the only thing I could feel aside from duty and obligation.

I had been many, many things in my fairly short and most definitely exciting lifetime but a hero wasn’t one of them.

Dixie

Julian’s massive 4x4 dwarfed me. The shiny red truck had wheels that came up to almost my hip and gleaming chrome runners that ran along either side under the doors that I most definitely needed to use when I pulled myself up into the motorized beast. I was sure I had to look ridiculous behind the wheel but the interior of the truck was nicer than anything I had inside my apartment and I couldn’t deny that I felt almost as badass sitting up so high and on top of so much horsepower as I did in the leather chaps Church was so fond of. I couldn’t resist snapping a selfie, complete with duck face to send to Wheeler, because even though the truck was newer and not one of the classics that he preferred, I knew that he would appreciate the hilarity of me being the one behind the wheel of the beast.

I got a text back filled with question marks and a whole bunch of confused-face emojis followed by one that simply said sweet ride. I owed him an explanation as to why I’d been so distracted and dismissive on the phone earlier, not that I could figure out one that wasn’t a lie. We were close and shared a lot, but I doubted we were “talk about the amazing sex I was having with the guy you almost threw down with in my living room” close. Hell, apparently there had been issues behind closed doors with him and my sister for a while now and neither one of them had bothered to fill me in. How was I supposed to help if I didn’t have all the information?

Maybe Church was right. Maybe it wasn’t my problem to try to fix. Maybe it wasn’t my place to wade in and play peacemaker even though that’s what I had always done. Kallie had to find her way to the truth and I couldn’t walk Wheeler by the hand to forgiveness if he didn’t want to go. Even if all the mediator tendencies I harbored and hoarded were screaming at me to do something to smooth everything over so that my family could stay the way it was. I wanted everyone to be happy, but spending these last few days with Church and being dropped into the center of his fractured family had shown me that sometimes wanting happiness wasn’t enough. You had to work for it, and once you had it, you had to cultivate it and care for it. I liked to pretend that everything was always coming up sunshine and roses, but being on Church’s home turf reminded me that every day had a night. That the sun had to go down and that as pretty as flowers were they all eventually died, no matter how carefully maintained they were. There was no good without the bad, no joy without sorrow, no peace without war, and there definitely couldn’t be love without the sour taste of hate. You had to know what one felt like to fully experience and appreciate the other. All of the things I wanted and strived to bring into my life and the lives of others couldn’t be experienced without the furious backlash of the opposite emotion.