up at his tone and words and whose hands had slowed before they busied themselves again and tried to ignore his rudeness.
“Of course not,” she said, with a look that said she didn’t expect anything better out of him.
“I’m glad I can live up to your low expectations.” The words were out, and he hadn’t meant to say those either. Athena seemed to loosen his tongue in all the wrong places.
Definitely time for him to go.
He opened the door and walked out.
Cowboy Crossing wasn’t huge, but it did have a barbershop, and he stopped there first before he went to the feed store. He didn’t really have anything he needed to buy, just wanted to kill time to keep from going home.
He’d been meaning to pick up a pair of gloves and figured he could at least do that.
Something to occupy himself to keep from having to go back to his house and all the things he had to face there.
Clark Hudson’s wife Marlowe was behind the counter, and he nodded at her as he walked in. He spent some time just looking at the shelves, staring at them without really seeing anything, and wondering if he was up for all the changes that were going to be happening in his life. That were happening now.
He didn’t want to lose his peaceful home.
He didn’t want people there who would see what he was doing and judge him for it.
He didn’t want to have to change what he was doing because of those people.
He didn’t want to have to be responsible. A dad. Didn’t want to be nice, to engage in conversation, to brush shoulders with people constantly.
It wasn’t even the idea that death would be in his house. He’d seen death. He’d seen death in the worst way possible.
He lived with the memory of that terrible death every day.
Not a day had gone by that he hadn’t heard Shane’s yell falling away until it stopped abruptly.
The alcohol could mute his mind. But he could hardly drink himself into oblivion and pass out on his couch when he had a woman who was dying beside him while her caretaker looked at him with scorn and derision.
Maybe he should rent a place until things calmed down. Until he was ready.
Would he ever be ready?
He paid for the gloves without doing more than grunting at Marlowe’s smile and cheerful comments about the weather, then he stepped out onto the sidewalk, wondering if there was something else he could do to kill a little time.
He hadn’t figured anything out when he saw Deacon Hudson stepping out of the church and closing the door behind him before walking down the front steps.
Deacon was a great guy. Preston had spent time with him at the single dads’ group meetings that he’d gone to over the years. It was where the men of Cowboy Crossing hung out, not necessarily for just single dads. He really liked Deacon, having a lot of respect for him, his life, and the wisdom he occasionally shared.
But he was the last, very last, person Preston wanted to see right now.
He didn’t want anyone telling him how ridiculously pathetic he was and how he needed to grow up and take responsibility and face the things that life had thrown at him with a lot more dignity and responsibility than he had been showing so far.
Unfortunately, after glancing up and down the street, he realized there was no place where he could duck into, unless he turned around and ran right back into the feed store, and knowing his luck, Deacon was on his way to the feed store. It seemed to be the place where folks in Cowboy Crossing went on a daily basis.
His dilemma was moot when Deacon saw him.
Deacon’s face broke into a grin, his hand lifted, and he called, “Preston! Wait up. I wanted to talk to you.”
Preston hadn’t been moving, so he didn’t need to stop. But he didn’t walk to meet Deacon like he might have another time.
They shook hands. With Deacon smiling and looking so happy to see him, it was hard for Preston to keep his black cloud around him.
Being happy always felt like a betrayal of Shane.
“I’ve heard there’s some changes happening at your house,” Deacon said.
“I guess,” Preston replied, not wanting to talk about it.
“Well, I won’t press because it’s really none of my business. But I was wondering if you’d give me a hand. I have some feed I need to load in