Rivers Rescue (River's End #9) Read online

  Rhonda left. “Is there anyone you are not friends with?”

  “It’s a very small town. Too small. But I like visiting it. People are mostly very nice. Not much else to do but talk to people.”

  “You’re not from around here?”

  “I forgot you probably don’t know me either.” She shook her head. “No. I grew up along the Puget Sound, in a city called Everett. Do you know it?”

  Negative head shake.

  “My parents divorced when I was fifteen. I didn’t handle it well, but that’s an entirely different story, and one I plan to never tell you.” She smiled to let him know she was kidding. “Shortly afterwards, my mom met Joey Rydell. We came here to stay on their freaking resort and in many ways, my mom’s heart never left it.”

  “So you lived here too then?”

  “No. Actually, Mom didn’t move here until after I graduated high school. Then we stayed with my dad, who still lives in Everett with his second wife, Trinity. However, she came along before the divorce.” She rolled her eyes to indicate the inflection in her voice. “But I guess I’m good with her now. And I’ve spent every summer here except for one, since I was fifteen. Lots of holidays and long weekends too.”

  “You’re only here for the summer.” He didn’t change the expression on his face, but his tone was so flat, she couldn’t tell if it were a statement or a question. The more they talked, the more she noticed that. Although it didn’t really matter, it did throw her a little bit.

  She shrugged. “This time, I don’t know. I just finished graduate school and it’s time for me to step out and experience real life, according to my parents.”

  “Oh.” His gaze dropped down. Insecure? Yes. She saw it in his face at the mere mention of graduate school.

  She let Finn read the menu. But when he stared too long at it and ignored her, she finally reached across the table and touched his knuckles with her fingertips.

  His attention back on her, she said, “So, where are you from? How did you end up here? Give me some basic background so I can be sure you’re not a psycho, or a stalker or a killer or something.”

  He barely cracked a small smile. “None of those.”

  “Well, how about the basics? Where you from?”

  “Lots of places.”

  “Okay, then where have you lived the longest?”

  “Coeur d’Alene. Just over the border.”

  “Oh. I’ve been there. Dad and Trinity took us to the Coeur d’Alene resort for a vacation one year. Gorgeous area.”

  “Well, I am not familiar with the hotel…”

  “Your family lives there?”

  Head shake to the negative.

  “Finn?” she questioned. Tilting her head, she nudged his leg with her foot under the table. “Talk to me. Interact. Pretend like you might like me. I’m the only friend you have around here. Don’t be rude.”

  “You’re the only pain in the ass I’ve got, I know that,” he mumbled. She kicked him again, making him lift his head to reveal the grin.

  “All right. So you’re from Idaho? Why are you here?”

  “I saw the advertisement for the job.”

  “What did you do before?’

  “I’ve been every version of stable boy you can imagine. Works for me. Few people, mostly animals. Few instructions needed…” Right. His deafness. Everything seemed to revolve around that.

  She cleared her voice, and was grateful he didn’t know how her nerves climbed up her throat right then.

  “Wouldn’t it be easier for you to live closer to your family?” She couldn’t fathom leaving her family. She still regretted her parents’ divorce, despite that it was already a decade old. She hated the loss of the family unit, which she equated to the moon and stars. Out of nowhere, she was suddenly informed they were divorcing. And if she were deaf as well? Lord. She’d be nestling right down in the bosom of her family.

  “They… they’re..”

  “Finn?” Something made her spine shudder. There was a break in his voice, where he usually showed little or no feeling.

  Back to the steely-eyed gaze. No emotions. Blank face. No inflection, like his voice usually was. “They died. My entire family died in a car wreck when I was little.”

  Just as she began to reply…

  “Oh, Brianna. What a delight to see you. What can I get for you?” Kelsey, a long time server in the café, came up behind Finn, so he had no idea she was there. She also must have heard at least part of his sentence. Her eyes widened and she stared down at her shoes. “Oh, shit… I’m sorry… I’ll come back…”

  Kelsey spun around swiftly and left. Finn followed her gaze and then looked back at Brianna.

  Something sunk in her stomach. What could she say to that? Was there anything? Her mouth opened up before he simply lifted his gaze. He didn’t have to know her reply and in many ways, she was relieved at not having to find the words. But she still had to respond to him.

  She leaned closer and gripped his hands in hers without letting go. She wasn’t just tapping him for his attention. “I’m sorry.”

  He nodded. Swallowing hard. It had to be hard. Even two decades later. She pressed his fingers for his eyes to return to her mouth. Finally, he did. “The accident involved both your parents?”

  “And my sister.”

  Brianna gasped. “How old was she?”

  “She was nine. I was six.”

  “Can you… talk about it?”

  “I honestly don’t know very much about it. We were not in this country when it happened. I don’t remember it. I was sent back here but no one ever told me very much.”

  She started to sigh. His monotone voice gave the grave, grisly words a creepier tinge. “Oh, my God. I’m…”

  “Yeah. It sucked.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “We didn’t have a big family. Just us, really. The state managed to find a distant cousin of my mom’s. Like he was supposed to know what to do with a deaf kid he never knew or had a connection with? He took me in for a while. But eventually, I took off on my own.”

  Her entire core flipped upside-down. She felt like she’d been wrung out and slowly untwisted. She licked her lips and tried to collect her scattered thoughts. His former situation was beyond comprehension to her. “When you say, you took off on your own, do you mean really on your own? You don’t have anyone? No one to call? No family to hang with? No one?”

  “No. Not really.”

  “Because they all died.”

  “Yeah. And my shitty guardian after that wasn’t exactly companionable.”

  “And when you work on ranches, do you ever meet any other hard of hearing or deaf people?”

  “Not a one so far.”

  “So it’s not too easy for you to form new relationships.”

  “Pretty much. Yes. But it could be worse.”

  “How? How could your situation be worse, Finn?” She shook her head to punctuate her point. No. It was awful. Isolating. Completely unacceptable to her. But he couldn’t fully realize it because he’d been alone for so long. Maybe he didn’t even know how lonely he was.

  “I can work and function well enough. Imagine if I couldn’t speak or read lips. In the hearing world, I would never find a job. At least, I can always get work.”

  She shut her eyes for a moment when a sharp stab of pain pierced through her temple. She never considered that. Finn’s abject vulnerability as a young boy nearly tore her heart from her chest. Compounded with the loss of his sister and his parents. She blinked rapidly and tears filled her eyes.

  “Well, this officially makes me the most spoiled jerk ever. You must really hate me.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because I was all sad and crying over my brother who is, at least, still here. Cami and poor me without friends. But all I have to do is go home to Everett and there are plenty more. I still have my mom and dad… along with their spouses, who are both decent people and would care for me unconditionally. I
also have a slew of grandparents, cousins, aunt and uncles…”

  “That’s normal, Brianna. My situation is unique. Just as I am.”

  She licked her lips. “So when you take care of the horses, that becomes your entire life, and your world, wherever you live.”

  “Yeah. This place is far better than anywhere else I’ve ever lived or worked.” He said with a casual shrug of his shoulders. Her breath hurt her chest.

  She couldn’t make heads or tails of Finn’s reality. All alone. He was completely and utterly all alone. And deaf. Trapped for life in a silent world… Despite his difference, he managed to function. He could carve out a decent life for himself. But there were many limitations, and the more time she spent with him, the more she began to notice them.

  Alone in silence.

  She leaned back when Kelsey returned to take their order. Quieter now, she took Brianna and Finn’s orders before mumbling, “Be right back with your drinks.”

  The drinks arrived and Brianna sucked down several gulps of pop through the straw. Her former cockiness before his story totally vanished. She wasn’t sure how to approach him now.

  Still, he came to the restaurant with her, and tolerated her, regardless of her careless attempt to steamroll him into a date. She had no damn clue what and who she was dealing with. “Can you hear at all?”

  “No.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Always?”

  “No. I lost my hearing when I was around three. That explains why I have better syntax than most deaf people. I learned to speak as a hearing person, and I retained my speech.”

  “Oh. God, Finn…”

  He drank a sip and looked away. She began to notice how often he did that. Did he not like what she said? Or maybe he just needed periodic breaks?

  She gently kicked him under the table again. Not hard but just enough to grab his attention. Surprised, he looked at her as he pretended to lean down and rub his leg. “Do you always physically assault your…”

  “Who, Finn? Whom do I physically assault? My dinner dates?” She kept her gaze hard and heavily on him. She couldn’t back down now. His gaze dimmed with hesitation and his mouth tightened. She had to treat him as she did before. He needed normal. That was all she could think of. He needed a friend. He needed her. And whether he knew it or not, he had her now.

  “And tapping you isn’t exactly assault.”

  “What?”

  “Well, then it’s a good thing you met me.”

  “How is that?”

  “You’re no longer alone. I know a lot of people. I have a huge family. In fact, the Rydells are part of it now. So you no longer have to be alone.”

  “I don’t mind being alone.”

  “Right. Because it’s so much easier to hide.”

  His mouth tightened. “I’m not hiding. I just can’t be like you. Even if I could hear. But without hearing, it’s much harder.”

  “Sounds to me like your entire fucking life has been hard.”

  He sighed. She realized that he could not hear it. “Yes. It has.”

  “Well, I’m super easy… so…” She shook her head and smiled. “That didn’t come out right.”

  Surprisingly, she made him laugh. But it was way too loud. People across the aisle glanced at him sharply, and a woman frowned in annoyance. He noticed their reactions and ducked his head before turning his face the other way. Brianna glared at the woman, touching his hand. “It’s nice to hear and see you laugh and smile. You don’t smile much. And you have a great smile.”

  “You say funny things.”

  “I don’t intend to. See? I should be the self-conscious one.”

  “But you’re not, are you?”

  “No. I just figure we all have our moments, you know?”

  “And being so beautiful and charismatic, the world laughs with you, not at you.”

  “It does. You think I’m beautiful?”

  “You all but told me you were.”

  “I did not!”

  He grinned again. Her heart beat faster at the sight of it. “See? You’re right; you are easy.”

  “I make you smile,” she countered.

  His eyes twinkled as he evaluated her. “Yeah. I guess you do.”

  Their meals came and he stared at his, and then looked up at her.

  She bit into the noodles she ordered. “What?”

  “I don’t like to eat with others.”

  Why? She had to take a second to figure it out. But duh. That was because he could not hear his own chewing. He might stress over what munching sounds he might inadvertently create. It all clicked in. It also made her cringe with how encompassing his life experience was. “Finn. Eat. Eat your meal. Don’t worry. I’m not half as petty or judgmental as I assume you think I am. Honestly, lots of people accuse me of being petty and judgmental.” She shrugged. “I don’t know why they think that. It follows me. Everyone except for Cami and Charlie. That’s why I always loved my summers here with them.”

  “Jealousy probably. You have a look about you that suggests you could be…”

  “The mean girl? Yes, you’re not the first to suggest that either.”

  “I was going to say the popular one. The one in the spotlight. The one everyone else wants to be.”

  “Well, here it’s just you and me. So please, eat.”

  He nodded and Brianna knew he tried very hard to monitor his movements. He also didn’t want to talk because he kept his eyes down. Decompressing after their last conversation perhaps, Brianna thought since she also needed to. Her heart was still beating much too hard.

  It was so much to take in.

  She thought about Finn losing his whole family all at once as a small child, and being left alone and unable to hear anything. Anything at all. And no one who cared for him? No one cared deeply anyway. Was he really all alone? He must have been from what she was starting to piece together. And even if she lost her family, she still had friends and real, deep, abiding bonds. That was what she lived for and what she used to define her life. It gave her life its meaning. She was free to be honest and truthful and vulnerable.

  No wonder he stayed quiet and hidden. There was no one he could be his real self with, and add to that his limited interaction with the hearing world? She could not begin to imagine what his early existence must have been like. They both finished their meals and let their dishes be taken before Kelsey set the check down with nothing more than a tentative smile. She must have picked up on something different about this interaction.

  Finn pulled out his wallet and Brianna took out hers. “Let’s split it,” she suggested and he didn’t argue.

  Once more, they were in his quiet car. This time, she embraced the quiet and didn’t fidget around. She just let it be. Her thoughts were still reviewing his unique reality.

  All she could imagine was the eternal silence. In his head. In his life. Alone. So damn alone.

  He didn’t know it, but he wouldn’t be so alone anymore. Not if she could help it. And now, she was convinced she could.

  She was surprised when they met in front of his car and he asked her a question. “What is it you do? If you’re not in school anymore, what’s your job?”

  “I sell stuff.”

  “You sell stuff?”

  “Yeah. I majored in marketing and I’m pretty good at selling stuff. I advertise on social media and that’s why I know what works on websites and the like. I might not be a full techie about it, but I can do basic designing. I did my own and I have an eye for it.” She beamed at him. “Thank you for asking.”

  “You ask a lot of questions so it occurred to me I should probably reciprocate.”

  “You should. And besides, don’t you want to know? Don’t you feel curious?”

  “Depends on who it is.”

  “How do you know if you don’t give anyone a chance to know you?”

  “Well, it’s different in Deaf culture.”

  “What do you mean
?”

  “Sign language is a much more direct way to talk. There aren’t as many nuances as there are in speaking. So it is inherently more direct, and better still, I know it well. I don’t miss anything with it, so if I were talking to a deaf person, it would be a lot easier for me to ask questions and understand their responses.”

  “So you do have some involvement with people?”

  “No.” He glanced away, but kept speaking. “I used to. Probably the last real conversation I had was with the translators I worked with at high school.”

  She winced when he so boldly admitted it. No waffling. No polite way of getting around it. Couldn’t he find that involvement again, and shouldn’t he? What did he call it? Deaf culture. He should do it again. But where? At River’s End? Or in a rural town in Idaho, where he’d been barely sustaining himself while associating with no one? Job searches didn’t count.

  The rush of warm feelings towards him nearly overwhelmed her. No. No more. No more was Finn going to be left completely alone with no one to talk to other than Jack Rydell.

  She fully intended to change Finn Alexander’s life. She intended to start right now.

  He just didn’t know it yet.

  “Well, I’ll see you, Brianna.” He briskly walked away without waiting for her answer.

  She nodded to his back and said out loud with raised eyebrows, “Oh, that you will, Finn. You will see me. You will talk to me. Your life is going to completely change because you met me. Just you wait and see…”

  Chapter Six

  WHAT THE HELL SHOULD he do with Brianna Starr? Finn wondered. She was always there. He couldn’t get his head around her. He looked up from work over the next several days and found her close by. She’d been standing there for who the fuck knew how long? and she’d just respond by smiling at him with a huge wave. She was hard to resist. Eager. Excited. She spoke with her entire body. She had huge smiles and waves and laughs. Her eyes were enormous and bright. Her whole body supported whatever she said and she liked to use her hands when she spoke. She would have been a good candidate for sign language, judging by the way she waved her hands around so frantically to emphasize her words. She could have been shallow and snooty but seemed the opposite of that. She was goofy and unique and she said the damnedest things unexpectedly. She was sweet too although he didn’t think that at first. He still found it hard sometimes to be around her and overly concentrated on everything that he did, assuming he did it wrong. That included his self-convinced failure at being witty and smart and exciting.