The rough ride, p.18
The Rough Ride, page 18
She wanted to go back to the bubble. Where they had been in bed together. And it had felt simple. Nothing but them and their desire and that mattress.
That blanket.
“Steady on, mite. You don’t need to solve all the problems now.”
“When will we solve them then?”
“Maybe not in this lifetime.”
“And you’re just...okay with that?”
He took a deep, heavy breath. “Here’s the thing. I’m okay. After getting nearly burned alive, I’m not in pain anymore. But you can still tell it happened, can’t you?”
“Well. Yes.”
“You can’t fix it. It doesn’t rub off. It doesn’t go away. There’s a measure of it that not even time sorts out. My face is kind of an object lesson. I stopped expecting things to just feel right a long time ago. Some things are messed up forever.”
“You don’t mean us.”
“I’m not talking about last night, no. But maybe there’s always going to be a certain level of discomfort. With things. I don’t know. I’m not... There’s a reason that I didn’t want to do this with you.”
He just kept saying that, over and over. It made no sense, not when he clearly wanted her. “Well, I guess it’s time to get down to that reason.”
“I just can’t... There’s a certain amount of distance that I keep between me and people in my life. It just is what it is. I never wanted to trap you with me.”
“But you did propose to me.”
“Yeah, I did. Because I’m weak, it turns out. And I wanted to have it both ways. I wanted to have you without having you. And I lied to myself enough to think that I could. And... I’m a little blown away by that. Because I’ve always felt like I was pretty damn honest. With myself and other people. But I managed to get one over on myself pretty good with you. But I wasn’t going to touch you. Except...”
“You did.”
“Yeah, I did.”
“You really did want me?” And she felt a little bit raw and foolish asking that.
“You have no idea.” He let out a hard breath. “I know what I am. There’s a reason that I go out of town to hook up. I’m sorry about what I said last night. It was an asshole thing to say.”
“So it wasn’t true?”
He laughed, a bitter sound. “Oh no, it was true. I just shouldn’t have said it to you like that. It was unkind. And I don’t actively try to be mean to you. I promise. It’s just sometimes I come off that way. Because sometimes I’m... Well, sometimes I’m mean. There you go.”
“But you wanted me,” she persisted. “And I want to know when. How.”
“I can’t quite explain why it happened. I was so pissed off at myself. There you were, so pretty. Eighteen and...you made me feel like I was sick in my soul. A scarred up guy my age wanting you. But there’s something about you. I don’t know if you know it, or if you can see it. But you sparkle, mite. You really do. You always have. And it used to scare me, all that fire in you. Because I know how fire can burn you up. But also, I... I liked it. Because I know that I can’t let myself burn hot like that.”
“You were just always there to put me out.”
“Yeah. But then it became something else.”
“Angus McCloud,” she said, her heart going tight. “Did you have a crush on me?”
“No,” he said, laughing. “I wanted to strip your clothes off you and lay you down in my bed and corrupt you. And I don’t think that’s the same as a crush.”
A heat wave washed over her. “No. It isn’t. It really isn’t.”
She had sort of hoped he had a crush. Because it would’ve felt soft and special and sweet. Like she kept trying to say that he was.
But all of this reframed his offer of marriage. It came from a place of possessiveness, rather than affection. And she just always thought that maybe she and Gus had something kind of special that way.
“So...does it mean you don’t...like me particularly?”
“I do,” he said. “The same way I always have. It’s just that when you got grown up, then I also wanted to sleep with you.”
“So, you’ve been into me for like six years.”
“Yep.”
He said it so easily. Like it was a fact. “I didn’t know.”
“I know. You said that already. But you didn’t know because I didn’t want anyone to know. Because I never intended to act on it.”
“But now we have.”
“Yeah.”
“Should I... I mean... My room...”
“Keep your room, Alaina,” he said as he pulled the truck up to the front of the house. “There’s no...there’s no need to rush things, or make declarations or anything like that.”
“Except the no sleeping with other people.”
“Yeah, except for that,” he said.
“And if I came to your room tonight?”
“I wouldn’t kick you out.”
“Well, good.” And something still felt distant, and it still didn’t feel quite like enough, but maybe she just had to listen to Gus. Listen to what he’d said about the fact that sometimes things were just going to be uncomfortable. She didn’t believe they had to be forever. But maybe she couldn’t solve it all right now. And that thought made it feel like a huge weight had been shifted from her shoulders. Because there was just so much going on. She was having a baby, they were having a baby, they’d gotten married. They’d had sex for the first time, and they were trying to navigate what all that meant. Maybe there really was no way to fix it. Maybe there really was no way to satisfy all of their wants. And maybe it was just going to be difficult.
But she could rest in that. She could take it one day at a time. One moment at a time.
Sitting in his unsolvable problems and finding a way to be grounded without picking at all the mysteries there.
And he made her feel settled, even while he changed her.
Because he was there, to put that hand on the back of her neck and make her feel like it was all okay.
Because she worried about a lot of things. And she’d been left by people she loved. But he didn’t make her worry about that. She worried about certain things, but not that. Not with him.
“Come on. Let’s get that coffee.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
GUS WAS COMPLETELY DISTRACTED. He knew what he was supposed to be doing—finishing up the woodwork inside the cabin. But it was identical to the cabin that he’d just slept in with Alaina, and that was all he could think of.
Her hands. Her body. Her mouth.
He hadn’t showered, because he still wanted to smell her on his skin.
And all he could think was having her in his arms again.
And this was...this was the problem. Right here. He was supposed to be less involved than this.
And he was not doing a very good job of that. No, he wasn’t.
The other thing he should be doing was itemizing his update for the town hall. And getting his financial report together, so that he could report the expenditures to the other families—who functioned as a board. This kind of thing had been natural for Gus for years. Back when he and Denver and Daughtry King, Sawyer Garrett and Fia Sullivan had first sat down with a plan to get this place back to its former glory and beyond, they’d laid out the parameters for how it would run. From the town hall meetings, to the ways that they would pool their resources.
And it had been running great in the near fifteen years since.
So great that Gus didn’t even have to think about getting all this together usually.
But town hall wasn’t just a couple of days, and he was...
He barely knew which way was up as far as the whole world went, much less a sheet of financials.
He walked out of the cabin, down the path that led to the main paddock.
The place was looking amazing. He’d done this. And he knew he should feel some sense of pride, but instead it just felt like...not enough. Like he was trying to atone for something, and there just wasn’t a way to atone for what you were. That was the problem. He just felt exhausted all of a sudden, because no matter how many people he took care of, no matter how much of this he tried to... No matter how hard he tried to make all this right... To make himself right... He just didn’t know if it was possible.
“We have our first sign-ups.”
He turned, and saw Brody standing there. He was holding a printout in his hand. “We’ve got an autistic child who just got adopted from foster care. He’s missed out on a lot of therapy he should’ve had. It’s been a real difficult run. And his new family wants to try this.”
And something in Gus’s chest went still.
“That’s... great.”
“You know I didn’t really appreciate this,” Brody said. “That what we were doing could make a difference. I was just thinking in terms of it being a good business venture. But you thought of it, didn’t you?”
“Brody...”
“You thought of it, because you’re the one that’s been through all that shit. I just still don’t think of those things.”
He stared at his brother, and he kind of wanted him to say it. To say that Gus had had it harder. They all avoided that. They all avoided throwing that at Brody. Because he lived in the middle of all the violence, so surely it wasn’t actually easier. Except... Brody hadn’t been hurt. Not physically.
“It’s okay, Gus,” Brody said. “I get it. And I know you don’t want to say it. I get that. But you can.”
“You know, yeah. But...do you need therapy?”
Brody looked down for a second, then laughed. “I consider a night at the bar and a beautiful woman in my bed to be therapy, but thanks for asking.”
“So the answer’s yes,” Gus said.
“I don’t know. We’re not...really part of that therapy generation.”
“But here we are, facilitating people getting it. Here we are, working the land, spending a hell of a lot of time with horses on the site where all this stuff happened. Sometimes I think maybe we’re trying to therapize ourselves. Anyway. You still didn’t answer my question. Do you probably need therapy?”
“I’m sure I do.”
Gus shrugged. “Then what’s the point? What’s the point in me saying it? Yeah. I got set on fire. Honestly, I think I have more entitlement to issues than any of you do. Not just you. Like sure, Lach got punched in the face. But me too. And then I needed a bunch of skin grafts. I kind of win. But we’re all a different, fun kind of messed up from him. So did anybody win?”
“But you think people can come back from it,” Brody said.
“I think some people have a shorter distance to walk.”
And he didn’t know what he said was even something he believed. He believed it for his brothers. But that was the thing. Yeah, he might think they’d all suffered. But he did know that he’d suffered the worst. And he also knew that when pushed, he made decisions that looked a lot more like his dad’s than like the ones he wished he made. And he also knew that none of them had ever done anything like that.
It wasn’t just anger. It was the enjoyment of it. It was the thing he got out of it. Out of the violence.
It haunted him. Lived in him. And he just had to wonder if it had been forged in flame that day, and there was nothing he could do about it.
“I was always thankful I had you,” Gus said. “And Tag and Hunter, and Lachlan. We were always in it together, and you were never separate from that.”
“But I was,” Brody said.
“That was part of the abuse, Brody.” And as soon as he said it he understood it. “It was part of what he did to you.”
“Whatever. Look. I just... Thanks for this. I would never be involved in something this good if it wasn’t for you. I’d just be off drinking myself to death and screwing anything that moved.”
“If I had your face I’d be doing the same thing. But I don’t.”
Brody laughed. “I don’t know that you would. Anyway, you’ve got a wife now.”
Yeah. A wife that things had gone a lot further with than he’d intended. But Brody was right. He had her. So now the question was...what all was he going to do with her?
“Lachlan and I are going out to Smokey’s tonight. You want to come?”
“No. No, thanks. I’ll... Pass on that.”
“That’s a shame,” Brody said. “You really are the best wingman.”
“And you’re usually a better liar than that.”
“Well, just don’t say you weren’t invited.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“I’ll let you know if we get any more sign-ups.”
“Thanks. We should be ready to open right on target. So the more the better.”
“See you.”
He nodded. And stared down at the paper his brother had handed to him. It was coming together. This thing.
And he wanted to hang on to this moment. Where Alaina was his, and he was going to be a father, and he was maybe doing a good thing, and nothing terrible had happened yet.
He hadn’t messed it up.
And he suddenly related to her. To that restlessness she’d shown earlier. Of course, she wanted to jump ahead and make sure that everything would be okay. And he wanted to freeze the moment. But he knew that time just kept going. And there was always the possibility that something worse was lurking right around the corner. Always.
* * *
ALAINA HADN’T BEEN back to the farmhouse at Sullivan’s Point since she got married, and that was just silly. She’d visited with her sisters, but always out at the barn. Or in the area they were renovating to make into the farm store. Out in the garden, where she’d gone to pick up fruits and veggies, and at the coops where they had eggs.
But she hadn’t been back home.
But now she was helping get ready for town hall, which meant baking extra bread and cakes and other delightful things, and while that would never be her primary joy, she did like their big baking and canning days.
When she got there, it was a full house. Evelyn Garrett was there, along with Violet Garrett, and of course Elsie, and Nelly. Even Penny Case, the young woman who’d grown up with the Kings, was there. Then there were her sisters. Arizona wasn’t there, but Alaina wondered if that was out of loyalty to Landry. Fia’s Landry animosity was such that Alaina would hardly blame her.
“There you are,” Fia said, wrapping her arm around her. “Miss you, sister.”
And Fia threw an apron on over the top of her head, and it gave Alaina extremely filthy flashbacks to last night.
That had just been last night? When Gus had...
Her face went all hot.
“Oh,” Fia said, blinking. “What’s up with you?”
“Nothing.”
Rory stared at her. “How is married life?”
“Good,” Alaina said, trying to keep her face placid. “Just...good. Everything is good.”
“You said good a lot,” Quinn said.
“I did,” she returned blandly.
She pushed her way into the knot of girls standing around in the large kitchen.
“We need to plan a baby shower for you,” Elsie said. “And a bridal shower. Because you need things for your kitchen, don’t you?”
“Oh... It’s very early for a baby shower.”
“Nonsense,” Quinn said, suddenly looking bright. “I’m going to be an aunt. I would really like to buy a whole bunch of baby clothes.”
“Well, you should wait until we know what it is,” Alaina said, feeling twitchy.
“Yeah. I guess,” her sister said. “But do you and Gus need anything in the house?”
She stopped herself from saying she would like a collection of sexy lingerie, except...she was sort of thinking she might. Just thinking about seducing Gus in a variety of different outfits made her feel warm.
He’d always wanted her.
That made her chest feel tender.
“Okay,” Fia said. “You seem especially spacey today.”
“I’m distracted,” she said. “Or maybe I have pregnancy brain.”
She had Gus McCloud brain was what she had.
She had not anticipated this.
It was so strange to think back on the Alaina that she’d been a couple of months ago. Because that girl had been a trial. Impatient, and nervous, and so desperate to push her way into the next thing. And nothing had actually been about...being in the moment. It had all been about pushing past difficult moments. The last night with Gus, she’d been entirely in the moment.
Her first time having sex had been about getting past the moment. Getting the thing over with.
She had never wanted her time with Gus to end.
And she felt calm here too, while she assisted with the baking, especially after everybody quit talking about her. Especially after they all started focusing on jam and bread, and pies.
“We’re putting in for a big community injection of cash,” Rory said. “Because we need to get this farm store up and running. And we need signage, and to get a new road.”
“A new road?”
“Yeah. It’ll be easier and faster to get to the farm store from the highway if we pave and excavate a new road,” Quinn said. “But it has to go through the back part of Granger land.”
Alaina recoiled. “You have to deal with the Grangers?”
There were other ranchers in the area, of course. Four Corners was the biggest spread. It was the biggest spread in the state. But there were others. And often, they didn’t play nice with the Four Corners folk. The Grangers being one of them.
