“When you’re ready.” Max waited. So did Cody and Tonya, not budging. The seconds on his watch ticked away, and the groups of teens with outstretched arms grew restless, shifting their weight and sighing.
“Okay, forget that. On three.” He cleared his throat, a wariness of his own suddenly creeping into his stomach. Must be picking up the kids’ nervousness. “One.”
Cody coughed. The kids below him stretched their arms farther, gathered in tighter.
“Two.”
Tonya sucked in her breath. Katie and Stacy squeezed in, Emma’s eyes darting back and forth from Tonya to Cody as if she weren’t sure who she’d rather catch.
“Three.”
Tonya fell into the arms of her friends.
And Cody landed flat on his back in the dust.
Chapter Sixteen
“What a day.” Max leaned against the wooden fence railing, propping one booted foot on the rail behind him. He yanked off his hat and rubbed his hair, the gesture familiar and comforting yet at the same time, unnerving. Moonlight against his profile highlighted his rugged features, which looked as weary as she felt.
“You can say that again.” Emma tried not to let him see her watching, tried not to let him see her hanging by a rapidly fraying thread. Was that even possible to hide anymore? Voices from the past rose up in a suffocating mist. She squeezed her eyes closed as memories assaulted, some from a decade ago, some from that very afternoon, sounds and images mixing and twirling in a cyclone she couldn’t escape. The comfort of snuggling in Max’s embrace on her parents’ swing. The hardness in his eyes the day he accepted that last delivery of drugs. The beeping of the monitors while she was in labor with Cody. The slamming doors of his rebellion. The thud as Cody landed flat on his back in the dirt.
Max’s voice softened. “He’s okay, Emma. I promise.”
He’d probably uttered those same words thirty-seven times in the past three hours, even after she’d seen for herself Cody was fine and moved on to the next activity as planned. But the assurances refused to soak into Emma’s heart. Maybe physically he was okay from his fall. But she wasn’t okay. And neither was Cody. Not really. Not where it mattered. How could he be?
“It’s my fault.” All of it. No, most of it. There was a good bit that was still Max’s fault.
But the fall was her fault.
She gripped the fence rail with both hands, aware of possibly gaining a splinter but unable to care. “I’m the one who had the bright idea to make the teens fall off chairs.” Stupid, stupid, stupid. Exercises like that at church youth camps were one thing—but among a group of potentially reforming delinquents? What had she been thinking?
“It’s not your fault.” Max leaned in and parroted back everything she needed to hear, everything she would tell someone else if the roles were reversed, but she knew better. Deep down, she knew better. She should have seen this coming.
“We saw the way those guys acted on the blindfold course.” She spun around, not realizing he’d edged as close as he had. The stars provided a canopy of light across the darkness above his head, enveloping them in the still quiet that could only come from a ranch after hours. The kind of quiet she wanted to embrace and tuck into her soul and keep once she was back in the hectic bustle of Dallas.