“Don’t you dare throw my words back in my face. It’s not my fault you have a reputation as a playboy. What did you expect me to think?”
“I expect you to trust me. You should have at least given me the benefit of—” His cell phone buzzed on the nearby counter, so he lifted it and glanced at the screen. “I have to make a call. Can we argue about this when I get back?”
I nodded silently, feeling the awkwardness between us when he shifted his eyes away from me and headed toward the exit without so much as a good-bye. He swung the door open just as Dan filled the doorway, wearing a medical boot on his injured foot and lifting his hand to knock. When his knuckles only swept air, Cowboy chuckled and moved aside, allowing him entry.
Dan wasn’t the least bit amused as he tapped his cane back and forth on the floor and stepped inside. “Very funny, asshole.”
Cowboy looked back at me and grinned, long enough for me to feel the tension dissipate between us, then he disappeared out the door. I hoped that was his way of saying all was forgiven, but I wasn’t entirely sure it was. But I couldn’t worry about it right now.
“Hi, Dan. How are you?” I asked loudly, letting him follow the sound of my voice.
He found the chair next to me and sat. “Stop yelling. I’m blind, not deaf.”
I coughed a little, which helped stifle my giggle. “How are you doing? You okay?”
“Fractured my ankle. Doc says I have to wear this fucking boot for a few weeks.” He gave me one of his big rotten-toothed grins. “Since they released me, I came to see how you fared with our death-defying leap out the window.”
“Actually, I didn’t jump from the hayloft. Apparently, there was an old ladder on the outside of the barn. That’s how I got out.”
The smile Dan wore melted. “What the fuck is wrong with you, girl?”
“I, uh…beg your pardon?”
He shook his head in disbelief. “You let a blind man leap out a fucking two-story window while you climbed safely down a ladder?”
I tried not to smirk, afraid that he would hear it in my tone. “No, no, you got it all wrong. The smoke overwhelmed me before I could make it out. That’s when I sort of stumbled upon the ladder. Had I known it was there, I never would have let you jump.”
I sat quietly as Dan recounted his harrowing “brush with death,” as he called it. I actually felt bad for the guy when he got to the part where he had to force himself to jump from the hayloft. Leaping out of a burning building would be frightening for anyone, but especially someone blind who couldn’t see how high up they were or what they might possibly land on. Thankfully, he landed feet-first in an unruly pile of brush—hence the “brush with death” part—which cushioned his fall. Otherwise, his injuries could’ve been more severe.
Dan finally got to the part where my ex-convict father found him and moved him away from the burning building. He said he told the man there was a woman still inside and the man went silent, like he’d disappeared. Guess that was when my father ran to the barn to locate me.
But why? After everything he took from me and after my testimony had put him in prison, why did he—
“Can I borrow your pisser?” Dan asked.
“Of course.”
He sat there quietly for a moment. “You gonna tell me where it is or do you want me to guess?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. The bathroom is directly behind your chair about five feet away.”
Dan rose and tapped his aluminum cane back and forth on the tile until he found the bathroom. He disappeared from sight just as a light knock sounded on the room door. I didn’t even have a chance to say “come in” before the large door pushed open and Mandy came into view.