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everything, he did. We had a good life.”
    What they’d had was a trailer they could barely afford and two boys that they could barely feed.
    Not that his mother had concerned herself with either. She’d been too busy ignoring their problems during the day, and hiding from them in her damn spiked coffee every night.
    â€œI’ll find the mask. Just close your eyes and get some sleep right now. Everything will be okay.” He tucked the edges of the blanket around her and killed the small light that burned on the warped nightstand.
    Closing the door behind him, he walked back into the living room. Picking up his mom’s discarded cell, he typed in her password—Sawyer—and scrolled through her calls, searching for any communication from Coop. There was nothing since last week when he’d left a voice mail telling her that he was fine and he would be home soon.
    But soon had come and gone. He’d missed freshman orientation already. If he didn’t get his shit together, he’d be out for good. Stuck.
    Tyler hit the CALL BACK button and listened as his brother’s familiar voice came over the line.
    â€œYou’ve reached Coop. I can’t take your call right now. Leave a message and I’ll call you back.” Beeep .
    â€œThis is your brother. Again. Call me. I mean it, Cooper. Time’s wasting.” He stabbed the OFF button and tossed the cell to the couch. His gaze snagged on a ragged throw pillow, the edges frayed, the expensive brocade fabric marred by several cigarette burns.
    He could still remember the day his mother had bought it. She’d come home from Fancy Designs, an elite shop owned by her second cousin Liza Sawyer, with a crisp black shopping bag stuffed full of gold tissue, the store’s trademark logo embossed on the side. He’d been a gangly thirteen, his feet too big for the worn cowboy boots he’d picked out of the donation bin at the local church, the toes scuffed and the soles worn down to practically nothing. Cooper’s boots had been in the same condition, squeezing his eight-year-old feet to the point that he was nursing blisters. The fridge had been empty and the cabinets bare. But none of that had mattered when his mother had plopped down their last forty dollars for the genuine cowhide pillow.
    â€œLiza has one just like this at her place,” his mother had declared. “She says it’s the latest.”
    He hadn’t been too sure what that meant at the time. He just knew that he’d hated the crisp, ripe smell of cured hide and fancy fabric.
    The thing was but a shell of itself now, pungent with the stench of cigarette smoke and spiked coffee. Just like his mother.
    Like the entire trailer.
    The walls seemed to close in on him in that moment. The air stalled in his lungs. He reached for the bottle of Jack and took a long swig. It did little to ease the anxiety knotting his muscles. There was only one remedy for that.
    He set the bottle down and reached for the doorknob. The fresh night air hit him, pulling him out of the stench and the past, and into the present. The door slammed behind him. He breathed deep and hit the steps before crossing the distance to his truck. Climbing inside, he keyed the engine. A Luke Bryan song blasted on the radio, and the air conditioner stirred the new-car scent.
    â€œAny word?” Duff glanced up from his own phone and the text he was reading.
    â€œNothing.” Tyler took one last look at the sad-looking trailer and shoved the truck he’d won six months back at a rodeo in Arizona into reverse.
    A few seconds later, he hit the road that led into town. He dropped Duff off at the Rebel Quality Inn then headed for the rodeo arena and the small apartment that sat just above the foreman’s office.
    The place was reserved for long nights when the events ran late and the arena boss, Jack Gallagher, needed a place to crash that was closer than his spread, which sat a