When he began to cry, it was Emilie's turn to reach up and touch his face. She ran the pad of her thumb over the tear tracks, not quite connecting the dots as to what caused the silvery proof of sadness. It didn't make sense to Emilie, but that didn't keep her from soothing him. There were times, rare as they were, that a sliver of the caring girl she once was would peek through.
The quiet before the storm.
"Don't cry," she whispered gently. "Cowboys don't shed tears. They shed blood. Bang, bang, remember?" But he was calling her baby again and leaning in, his lips soft as they brushed over one of her cheeks. It was the first true kindness she had experienced since Ezra left, and it might as well have been a knife to her heart.
Then he was giving her a prescription, two pills, but it wasn't the little green crystals she so desperately wanted, and her expression shifted from empathetic and soft to heartbroken and confused. "Not what I need," she insisted with a hard shake of her head. "Not what I need, Rodeo. Give me what I need, please."