Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
Ramsey
I take Cooper around town until we end up at Morton’s for lunch. He settles in across from me after taking in the bar and studying me for a moment.
“You really fit in here. You know that?”
“I’m from here, so I’d hope so.”
“I know, but seeing this place, I get why you came back. I might have to see how Bea feels about it. Maybe we can find a cabin or something for sale up here. I’d love to have a vacation home in a place like this.”
“You might be better off closer to one of the ski towns, at least finding something. A lot of the folks here are generational. They’re never-sell-their-home types.”
“But you’re thinking about letting it go?” He looks at me thoughtfully as he takes a sip of his drink.
“I’m thinking about what my next move is in general.”
“Well, I think if you want to come back to the Chaos, there’ll be room for you next year. If you stay in shape, keep training, all that… They only signed the guy to a one-year deal. I know everyone fucking misses you, and Quentin, Easton, and I would all kill to have you back. Most of the guys really. The only holdouts would be the ones who went to college with the new guy. You know how that is.”
I laugh. “Yeah, I know how that is.”
“But the coaches I know have already grumbled about missing you in camps.”
“Well, I appreciate being missed.”
“Would you come back?” Cooper’s question is pointed.
“I mean. I miss playing a fuckton. Being on that field. Playing with you guys. There’s nothing like it in the world. I just don’t want to set my hopes too high.” The idea of never setting foot on a gametime field again haunts me, but I know the reality of my situation.
“I swear, I honestly think there’s a ninety-percent chance of you coming back. Barring the new guy being Superman and shooting to the top of the league in sacks or something this year… They’d rather have you out there.” Cooper tries to comfort my ego.
“I guess it’s wait and see then. I’d like to be back out there. It also just depends on how all this goes.” I glance back over my shoulder in the direction of the ranch—not that my chances there are any better.
“All this being your wife?”
“Yeah. Her. The ranch. Being home. I forgot how much I loved everything here.” I wince as I admit it.
“Are you guys really giving it a try? I know you mentioned she was engaged, but they broke up? Bea said something about your parole officer wanting you here, and I didn’t press her for more information.” Cooper’s brow furrows.
“They’re on a break while we work things out and I get through this parole. They’ll revisit their situation when that’s over.” I shrug.
“Oh.” Cooper looks down at his drink and swirls the ice around once before he looks back up at me. “You gonna be all right if that doesn’t end the way you want?”
“Were you gonna be all right if Bea went back to your brother?”
He gives me a flat look and shakes his head. “It’s none of my business. It’s just that you’ve been through a lot in the last year. I hate to see anything more for you like that.”
“I know. You and Bea are good people. But I have to see some of these through for better or worse. Prison gave me more time to think than I’d had in a long time. I’d been in such a routine with practice and games and off-season training and just all of it… Having to just sit with my thoughts. Fuck. I don’t wish that shit on anyone.”
“Yeah. I can only imagine.” Cooper gives me a sympathetic look.
“I fucked up a lot of things. Ran instead of standing my ground and seeing it through. I don’t know if I chose the wrong path or not, but I have to see what it could have been like.”
“And she’s fine with that?”
“I told her if it doesn’t work out, I’d give her the ranch and the inn—all of it and a nice settlement too.”
“That’s a pretty big bribe to leave your ass.”
“Maybe. But it’s what she wants, and I’d rather see her have it, whatever way it goes. I just wanted a shot at making it work first.” Cooper’s the only one I could really admit this too. My brothers wouldn’t understand, and her brothers would gut me for trying.
“And how’s that going?” Cooper looks at me thoughtfully.
“Ha. Well… she hates me. That’s for sure. For everything I did and didn’t do.” It hurts to say it out loud, but it’s the truth .
“But?” He looks at me hopefully. “There’s a but, right?”
I shrug. “She likes fucking me. So I’ve got that in my corner. Having someone to take her rage out on when she’s having a bad day doesn’t seem to be hurting my cause either.”
Cooper laughs and shakes his head. “I guess that’s all you can ask for.”
“I want a lot more than that, but I’m willing to wait her out. Fuck knows, I deserve a lot of her anger, and then some. I wasn’t the best husband after things went down with my parents.”
“Understandably.” Cooper gives me a look of sympathy. “She knows you’re sorry for it though?”
“I think so. I apologized a lot.”
“Back then or now?”
I sigh and tilt my head to the side before I take a sip of beer. That was the question, wasn’t it? If I could only figure out how to apologize to her now, in a way that meant something to her.
“Right.” Cooper nods, understanding me without having to explain more.
When we return from our trip to town, Bea and Hazel are just getting back from their ride and want showers before they change for dinner. So I take Cooper around the property in the truck, showing him the ranch and some of the trails. We’re finishing up in the old pole barn that’s full of my family’s stuff while we wait.
“So what happens if she takes the ranch and runs? Are you leaving all this stuff here?”
“No. I’ll have to move it to wherever I end up. But I need to go through it first, and a lot of it are things that belonged to my parents.”
“She kept it all here for you?” Cooper looks at me surprised.
“Yeah. Why?”
“Nothing. I’m just pretty sure Bea wouldn’t have done that for Rob.”
“What wouldn’t I have done?” Bea pipes up, and we turn around to see the two of them have returned, showered and dressed.
“You look gorgeous,” Cooper responds, instead of answering her question. He takes her hand and spins her around. She’s wearing a sundress and a pair of boots.
“Had to dress the part if I was going to be on a ranch. Hazel let me use them for riding, but I might have to get a pair.” Bea grins.
“They look good on you.” He returns her smile with the kind of ease that makes me grin like an idiot just watching them.
“Ooh. We should go dancing somewhere.” Bea spins again, and Cooper dips her over.
“You think?” Cooper asks.
I turn my attention to Hazel, and she’s smiling at them so hard I think she might be falling for them herself. My eyes travel over her; she’s wearing a black dress that hugs her curves and flares at her waist with her own pair of black cowboy boots. I couldn’t dream up someone more beautiful than her, and I’m racking my brain for something to say that won’t make her glare at me, but she speaks before I can.
“Wait… what’s on your wrists?” Hazel asks, noting the spot where black ink marks the inside of each of their wrists as Cooper spins her around one last time. “Do you have matching tattoos? That’s adorable.”
“They don’t quite match.” Cooper smirks.
“Close enough. I was just a little later.” Bea gives him a look but kisses him softly and then returns her attention to Hazel, holding out her wrist for her to inspect. “They were Cooper’s idea because neither of us had one.”
“It was really your idea. Your bucket list and all.” Cooper smiles at her the way only someone completely lost in another person can.
“Well, true. But the tattoo idea was his. They’re the coordinates of where each of us was when we realized we were falling for the other one.”
“Oh my god. That’s so…” Hazel’s eyes go wide, and she looks between them. “That’s just… wow.” Hazel’s lost for words, and that’s a rarity.
“Oh, I’m sure whatever Ramsey’s done for you is just as romantic.”
My mind flashes through all the things I’ve done since I got here, and I feel guilt swirl in my gut. But Hazel smiles at me like I’m the sweetest man she’s ever met.
“He can be very romantic when he wants to be.” She covers for me, and that makes the guilt turn into knots. Fuck.
“Speaking of romantic… dancing?” Bea suggests again. “Is there somewhere we can go? I’ve always wanted to learn line dancing.”
“My friend has a place in town. Seven Sins. She teaches too. We can get dinner and head over there. Ramsey doesn’t dance though.” Hazel flashes a grin in my direction, like she’s curious to see if I’ll try again for my friends’ sake.
“I don’t mind watching.” I shake my head, not wanting to let anyone down. “You and Dakota can teach them, and I can keep the drinks coming.”
“Sounds like a plan to me.” Cooper looks at me thoughtfully.
“All right. Dinner and dancing lessons it is.” Hazel and Bea take off for the car while we trail behind.
“They’ve become easy friends.” Cooper looks at them amused at how they’re walking arm in arm.
“Yeah. Bea reminded me of Hazel a little bit. If Hazel was missing the mean streak a mile wide.”
“But that’s what you like about her, isn’t it?”
“I couldn’t live without it.” Then I look at him. “And when did you become such a fucking goddamn romantic?”
“When I realized I was going to do whatever it took to win her over, despite the odds.” Cooper grins like a fool and then looks at me, raising a brow. “I highly recommend it if you’re fixed on coming out of this with everything you want to keep.”
I lean back on the porch swing and stare out into the evening after Cooper and Bea have gone off to bed for the night. Even though it’s still technically late summer, the temperature has dropped with the sun, and a cool chill drifts over me. A moment later, I hear the creak of the screen door, and Hazel’s standing there.
“Mind if I join? I brought beer.”
“No, I don’t mind.” I scoot over to make room for her, and she hands me the extra bottle.
“Your friends are really nice. I see why you did what you did for them.”
“They’re good people. I’d do it again if I had to.”
She stares at me in quiet contemplation for a moment before she takes a draw off her bottle and kicks her feet to make the swing rock.
“They’re so in love too. That fresh kind where everything seems possible. I didn’t ask how they met. Did they meet at your work?”
I smirk. “Nah. She was his brother’s girl. ”
Her heel catches on the deck, and the swing stops again.
“What? No way!” She looks back at me, mouth agape.
I nod. “Don’t say that to him though. In his mind, she’s always been his.”
“Wow. I would have never guessed someone as sweet as her for something like that.”
“Love’s love, I guess.”
“I guess,” she says in a tone that sounds doubtful, starting the swing moving again as she contemplates it.
“Never been in love like that?” I ask. Stupidly, I might add.
“To go after one of your brothers? No, can’t say I have. Although Grant does look really good in a suit.”
“You wouldn’t fuckin’ dare.” I point the end of my bottle at her.
“If Curtis wasn’t around, maybe. Just to piss you off. It might be worth it.” She grins at me and takes another sip.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t know if you could lure Grant to his death like that. He’s got a strong self-preservation streak.” I have a hard time believing any woman could lock Grant down for more than a night.
“He does, doesn’t he? Still not married. Living alone in his tower. Has he ever been in love?” Hazel muses.
“Couldn’t tell you. If he has, he’s never said.” I shrug.
“Lev?” she asks.
“Lev’s had someone I think he loved once. He might have forgotten her now that he’s moved on with life.”
“Lev pining after someone is a real vision to wrap my head around.” Hazel laughs. Levi is hard as nails, tougher than the rest of us by a long shot. But he has a soft core—one that the right people could reach when they needed to.
“He’s not that different from me.”
“I have a hard time imagining you pining too.”
I give her a flat look, and she smiles, but it fades quickly.
“I know you loved me. I don’t doubt that. But I mean… the kind of pining love where you write poems and love letters and can’t stop thinking about a woman.” Her eyes soften as she looks me over.
“Is that what it takes to win you these days? Love letters and poems?” More stupid questions on my part.
“Maybe,” she says quietly. “Would that be so bad?”
“I don’t remember you ever being that romantic. Is that how he won you over?” My heart strains in my chest at the idea, and my mind drifts through all the ways I fucked this up. I’m fucking terrible at feelings—processing them, expressing them. After my parents’ deaths, I tried therapy. The local therapist struggled to make any sort of progress with me, and he sent me to the city for someone more specialized. I’d gone for a few more weeks after that and then given up. Football was better therapy for me than any talking I’d ever done. I worked my shit out on the field until I had to see someone again in prison.
She looks at me warily. “You don’t want to talk about him. Not really.”
“Not really,” I admit. “I’d rather beat his ass for putting his hands on my wife.”
“Bea said she didn’t even know you had a wife before the trial. Did Cooper know about me?” She deftly changes the subject.
“I mentioned it once when he asked about my life back here.”
“What’d you tell him?”
“That I was married once, but I had a fucked-up life here. A family involved in things that cost them their lives, and the aftermath of that cost me my wife.”
We sit in silence after that summary of our end. It was true enough. The black and white bare bones of it, but it lacked all the color that had made it so painful .
“I packed a bag that night after you left.” She breaks the silence between us.
“A bag?” I turn to look at her, but her eyes are on her bottle, peeling the label off the front.
“I changed my mind, or I thought I did. It hurt so fucking bad without you in the house. Seeing your stuff still in the closet, your bike still in the barn… It was like you were going to come back any day, when I knew you weren’t.”
“Haze…” I say softly.
“I’d never felt pain like that… not really. Grieving someone that way. Someone who was still alive. I thought I could just pretend you were dead. Make peace with you being gone like I did my mom and your parents. Then I didn’t have to imagine you happy somewhere without me or with someone else. But all the things that people say when they’re gone—that they’re in a better place, that you’ll see them again someday. None of that’s comforting when they’re still alive.” She sighs. “Not that I wanted you to be hurting, but…”
“I did hurt. Like hell. For weeks at night, I’d just stare at that spot in the bed where you were supposed to be. Questioning if I did the right thing. I went to pick up the phone so many times, but I was worried I’d only make it worse.” I confess things I never told her.
“How many weeks until you put someone else in that spot in the bed?” she asks, raising her lashes to look at me.
“Haze…” I beg her not to go down this road as her eyes search my face.
“You’re right. I don’t want to know. Not any more than you want to know about him.”
We sit in silence for a moment. I’m desperately trying to think of the right words to say. Something that will salvage what was an otherwise good day.
“I’m sorry,” she says at last, breaking the silence. “I fucked it up. Maybe we just need to… make an agreement about that. I don’t ask about the in-between, and you don’t either. We just live in the bubble we’re in for the next few weeks, and we make the best of it.”
“If that’s what you want.”
She downs the rest of her beer and sets the bottle on the windowsill.
“What I want is sleep after this long day.” She gives me a soft smile and stands. “You coming in soon?”
“You go on ahead. I’ll be in in a while. I just want to sit out here and watch the stars for a bit while I still got ’em at night.”
“No stars in Cincinnati?”
“Not like this.”
“Well… soak it in while you can, cowboy.” She leans down and kisses my forehead before heading back inside.
“I intend to,” I whisper after her.