Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
BITTERN
I didn’t like that she was talking about needing to return to the city.
I mean, I get it, but God, I’m getting pretty used to having her in my bed, even though it’s been less than a week.
That night, after we talk by the lake, after the chores are done, I hope she comes to my house.
The clock ticks, it’s dark, and the stars are all out.
The night is balmy. Finally, I put my pants and shirt on and leave, heading towards her parents’ place.
I know which window is hers. Gathering a handful of little stones, I chuck them up at her windowsill.
It takes less than ten seconds for the window to rise. I smile—she was waiting on me.
“What are you doing?” she whispers.
“Coming to get my girl.”
She bites her lip. “I’ve been coming to you. Thought you might want to come to me.”
“Well…I’m not trying to get my ass kicked by Andy. He is my boss.”
She considers it, head cocked. “Stay there. I’ll come down.”
Her blonde head disappears. I wait, keeping to the shadows of the porch just in case anybody is inclined to take a look outside.
The front door creaks open, and she appears, looking like a million and one dollars in her nightshirt and shorts that show a little bit of her ass and a whole damn lot of her gorgeous legs.
She comes down the steps, and I wrap my arm around her waist, bending to kiss her.
A little moan works its way up into her mouth.
I kiss it free, biting her neck to let it out.
“God, you’re so fucking pretty,” I whisper.
Her nails scrape down the back of my neck. “So are you.”
She wriggles free and takes my hand, tugging me down from the porch. We run, down the hill, but we don’t stop at my house. Instead, we keep going past the dark barn, down the driveway, to the gravel road that leads to Ryder Ranch. I stop, pulling her to a halt.
“Where we going off to?” I ask.
She’s smiling, looking up at me as her hair glints in the moonlight.
“Just away so we’re alone,” she says, breathless.
“Why? Nobody’s awake.”
“The wranglers are burning trash to the west of the employee housing,” she says. “Listen.”
I cock my head, concentrating. My hearing isn’t all that great—the doctor said it retained some damage after the collapse—but I can make out the faint sound of music coming from way back beyond the houses.
It sounds a little bit like bluegrass. Somewhere deep inside, a place in me that’ll always wish for the mountains back home, wakes up.
“I hear it,” I say.
She bites her lip like she’s thinking. Then, carefully, she takes my left hand and puts it on her waist. She lifts up her right and spreads her fingers. I weave mine through and pull her close so we’re barely touching. Following her lead, I sway with her in the middle of the dusty gravel road.
“I don’t want to go home,” she whispers.
“Then don’t.”
The words come out before I can think. I don’t regret them, though.
“Don’t go home,” I say. “Quit the damn job. Come work for Deacon or something.”
The corner of her mouth turns up, but it’s a little sad.
Her head turns, settling against my chest. The powerful urge to wrap my arms around her and tell her not to worry, I’ll take care of keeping her fed and housed, comes over me.
It’s the first time I’ve felt this way. I never had the resources before.
I never felt this way about anybody until now.
“My parents paid for college,” she whispers. “Not just for me, but my older siblings. I’d hate to disappoint them.”
“You know they’d love it if you stayed.”
“Yeah, but it’s still a lot of money for me not to use my degree.”
“What’s your degree in?”
“Marketing.”
I’m not really sure what that is. Growing up, I went to school until I was a teenager, mostly because the truancy officer kept threatening Aiden that if he didn’t take us for the minimum allotted time, she’d have to call the county on us.
So Aiden made sure we were on the bus at least half the time.
They couldn’t come get us unless we were absent for thirty days running.
He never did the same for Freya. She missed so much school, and I regret not stepping in and standing up to Aiden over that—not that it would have done much.
None of us were heading to college even if we wanted to go, that was clear.
The men in our county went right to the factories and the mines.
The girls got pregnant and shacked up before their twentieth birthday.
Nobody wanted to do either, but after the corporations and the pharmaceutical companies were done with our towns, there wasn’t much else to do but work and fuck and make more babies so they could grow up to do the same.
I never thought I’d be where I’m at right now.
“Having a degree…that’s something I never thought much about,” I say finally. “I knew I’d never get one. Wouldn’t know what to do with it if I did.”
She shifts to look up at me. “I always thought it was just the way things were done,” she says. “But then I met you, and Freya. I got some perspective.”
“How’d you mean?”
“It’s a pretty big privilege,” she says, like she’s thought about it a lot. “Mom told me some of the things Freya went through. It gave me some perspective I never had before.”
I consider this, surprised. “What things?”
She’s thinking, cheek back on my chest.
“I was safe growing up because my parents were around. They made me go to school, made sure I had life skills to get me by. They loved me,” she says slowly.
“Dad sat with me for hours doing homework. Mom talked to me about all the awkward things, like not getting pregnant, staying safe. They paid for my school and co-signed my loans when they couldn’t. Nobody did that for Freya.”
A sharp pain goes through my chest. “No, they didn’t.”
“Did they do it for you?” her voice rasps.
Which part? My mind goes back to the darker parts of growing up.
Aiden always talked pretty plainly about sex in front of us boys, so I was always aware of it.
When we hit adolescence, I remember him telling us to wrap it up or we’d end up like him—working his ass off every day with four mouths to feed.
A warning with a side of guilt, like we were responsible for our own existence.
The education discussion never came up. It just wasn’t a possibility when every day, there was a new bill in the mailbox.
“Nah, not really,” I say. “Aiden just made sure we had jobs.”
She lifts her head, looking up into my eyes. “Do you hate him?”
My throat is dry. I swallow something dark back.
Aiden was my father but not my blood. He raised me like I was his own, but he didn’t love me like it.
He was rough, toxic, dangerous, and he wanted sons just like him.
There was a time when I thought that was narcissism, but now I know he was trying to keep us alive.
Aiden hit me, fought me, tore me down, but he also fed me and kept a roof over my head despite my existence as a reminder of his greatest trauma.
For that, I don’t hate him, not even for keeping me so doped up he didn’t have to face what happened in the mines.
But for the things he did to Freya, I do.
For that, I’m glad he’s dead.
“Hate is a real fucking heavy thing to carry around,” I say finally.
Her head shifts, nestling into my chest. I run my palm up between her shoulder blades.
Maybe she feels a little bit of guilt, coming from an uncomplicated home, but I like that about her.
As for me, I’ve had all the complications I need in this lifetime.
I’m ready to live out something simple, more than ready to have control over my own place, my own family.
It’s what Freya has, and I see what it’s done for her.
“I think…it’s alright to decide something just ain’t for you,” I say finally.
She sighs. “I guess so. I just hate it.”
We sway for a while. Then, the wranglers start settling down, and the only sound left is the lowing of cattle.
I take her hand, and we walk down the road, heading in a big, slow circle back to the employee housing.
The sky overhead is real clear, stars brighter than daylight.
Now that I’m looking at them, they kind of seem like the same stars that hung low over the porch back home.
We end up at the barn, circling around back. I sink down on the bench and pull her toward me.
“What’re you doing?” she whispers.
A tiny part of me sweats bullets when she looks at me like that. Big eyes, hoping for something…hoping for what? For me to make the first big move and tell her I need her to stay? How can I do that when she just spilled her heart out to me over leaving?
I don’t say a word. I just pull her into my lap.
She straddles me and slides her arms around my neck.
Our mouths meet, and I forget all about the heavy stuff.
We don’t go further than making out. I like that, the innocence of kissing behind the barn.
I never got to have innocence. I like that she’s still got hers.
My mind drifts back to the birds lined up on the bench by the pond. All kinds, all shapes and sizes. I might be a bittern, quiet and unassuming, but she’s a gentle bird too. A bright little sparrow, never hurting nobody.
Slowly, we untangle. She pulls back, her eyes glassy.
“I’m heading home tomorrow,” she blurts out.
“I hoped not,” I say. “But I thought you might.”
She bites at her lip. “I need to make an appearance in the office and check on my apartment. I’ll be back, I promise.”
Sliding my hand around the nape of her neck, I lean in to kiss her again. “I hope you do.”
We stay like this for a long time, leaning on each other. In the silent space between our bodies, we both know this isn’t a fling. The axis of the world shifted and ground to a halt, spinning out in a new direction when we laid eyes on each other.
Nothing’s ever gonna be the same.