23. SIENNA
SIENNA
The road is uneven here. I feel every dip through the seat, through the thin denim of my jeans, through skin that still remembers his hands.
Carter drives with both hands on the wheel. The window on my side is cracked and the air coming in smells like eucalyptus and dry heat. I watch the hills. I watch my own hands in my lap. I look anywhere that isn't him, because looking at him right now feels like standing too close to something hot.
We haven't said anything since we left the hotel.
I've been thinking about what happened since we straightened ourselves in the office.
Carter looked at me and said we needed to talk.
I don't regret it. What happened between us felt like something that was inevitable. Like it had been decided for a while and we just finally caught up to it.
What I don't know is what it meant to him.
He walked out of that office like nothing had happened, enough distance between us that no one in the lobby would have guessed.
He led me to his car and motioned me in without words.
Now we've been driving for ten minutes without a word and I'm sitting here on the warm leather of his passenger seat, not regretful, just unsure. Very unsure.
His hand comes off the wheel and settles on my thigh.
He doesn't look at me. Doesn't say anything for a moment.
"We're almost there. Doesn't look like much, but the coffee's good." A pause. "Then we can talk."
I nod. Try for a smile. I can feel how strained it is.
He keeps his hand there for a moment, then puts it back on the wheel.
I look at his forearm. Muscled. The way his grip shifts on the leather. I think about those arms around me just minutes ago and I feel it low in my stomach. The pull coming back already, so I press my knees together and look at the hills.
The old airstream is parked in a gravel pull-off with a hand-painted sign listing breakfast options. There are three tables outside. A generator hums somewhere behind it. The warmth coming off it is specific, not sun-warm but engine-warm, that particular heat that smells faintly of metal.
We order coffee. The woman at the window hands them through without ceremony.
Carter looks at the tables. Looks at the trail opening near the back of the gravel. "Sit or walk?"
"Walk," I say.
We take the trail side by side, gravel under our feet, the valley dropping away on the left. The hills are bright and golden in the morning light.
The silence here is different than it was in the car. It has more texture.
We walk for a while. Then Carter changes his coffee into his left hand, reaches over and takes mine.
He still doesn't say anything. Just holds it. After a second he squeezes, once, like he's testing whether it's real.
I look down at our hands. I look back up at the trail.
I can't stop the smile. This has to mean something, right?
We reach an overlook that has three benches facing the valley. Nobody else is here. We sit on the nearest one and I wrap both hands around my cup. It is genuinely beautiful, the hills rolling brown and gold in the distance.
Carter takes a sip of his coffee. He's looking at the valley. I look at his profile. The line of his jaw, the slight furrow in his brow that might be concentration or might be something else.
"Truth is important to me," he says. "So it means a lot that you came and told me directly what happened." He pauses, looks at me and I can see his eyes narrowing in a warning. "I don't like that you put yourself in danger. We'll talk about that later." He says it evenly.
I’m about to start to defend myself but he raises one hand, wanting me to wait.
"But I also need to tell you the truth." He looks back at the valley. "I already knew. Adrian called me this morning."
I’m surprised by what he is saying. "Adrian called you? Why?"
"He wanted to make sure I had the facts straight. And to threaten me if I fired you because of it." Carter scoffs with these last words.
The fact that Adrian would worry enough about me to do this is a little shocking. The last time we spoke, it was clear that Adrian was intent on putting some distance between us.
"What did Adrian tell you?" I ask.
Carter shrugs, "Just what you told me". He tilts his head, finds my eyes. "Why, Sienna. What else happened?"
Now it’s my turn to look at the valley. The oak trees on the far ridge are still. A hawk circles above them, rising without effort. The coffee is warm in my hands and the breeze smells like dry grass and I need a second.
How do I do this? How do I sit here, with a man I was intimate with, and tell him that a few days ago I slept with one of his friends. That yesterday another one kissed me.
I can barely make sense of it myself. The thought of saying it out loud, of watching his face change while I say it, makes something in me want to go quiet.
But I'm not doing that anymore.
I take a breath.
"Me and Adrian." I find the courage I need and go on, "After he picked me up from the station. We...we…" I stop again. The words are right there.
But, I don’t need to say them. Carter finishes the sentence for me and says, "Slept together."
I nod.
He looks away. His jaw tightens, just slightly, the muscle moving once. He looks at some fixed point in the valley, brings his coffee up slowly, takes a sip and sets it back on his knee.
The silence is heavy.
I wait. I don't try to fill it. The hawk is still circling. The grass below us moves in a long, slow wave.
After a moment: "Do you have feelings for him?Or is it just…" He doesn't look at me when he says it. He makes a small vague gesture with his free hand, leaving the alternative unspoken.
"It's complicated." I look at my coffee. "I do. We kind of just… it wasn't planned. There's something between us I don't really understand." A pause. "The same way there's something between me and you."
He turns and looks at me.
I feel the heat in my face before I've finished the sentence. I set my coffee down on the bench. Then I cover my face with both hands.
"God." My voice comes out muffled. "I'm sorry, that came out— I'm not trying to—"
His hands close around my wrists and he pulls them gently down from my face.
He looks at me. "You don't owe anybody any justification. You're a grown woman." A pause. Something shifts in his expression. "As long as you're not deceiving anyone." He holds my gaze. "Including yourself."
I think of what he just said about the truth. About how important it is to him. And I think, this is already so complicated beyond repair I might just get it all out in the open.
"Yesterday William kissed me." I say it quickly, followed by a short self-deprecating laugh. "But, there is nothing to worry about there. He only did it because he was furious that I was poking him."
Carter stares at me. I can see the shock in his face as he tries to absorb this information.
I keep going. "Also, Adrian made it very clear he's not looking for anything serious, so that's..." I trail off.
I don't know how to end that sentence.
Carter looks like a man who has been handed more information than he asked for and is deciding, carefully, what to do with it. Like a man choosing not to say several things.
He stands briefly, walks to the small bin at the end of the path and drops both empty cups. Then he comes back and sits, closer than before. He takes my hand.
He looks down at it.
"You have scratches on your hand."
"It’s from the rose bushes," I say.
“You should wear gloves.” He admonishes.
I just shrug. I should.
He nods slowly. Runs his thumb along one of the scratches. I can see that his mind is faraway, lost in his thoughts. And I can’t reach him.
The bird calls again from the tree line across the valley. Below us the grasses move in another long wave.
"I married my high school sweetheart." He's still looking at my hand.
Turning it over slowly, tracing the lines.
"I was madly in love with her. I couldn't wait to start my life with her.
Build a home and a family with her. We married young and I worked my ass off in construction so we could have all the things that we dreamed.
We had this whole life mapped out." He stops.
Turns my hand palm up. "Found out, the hard way, that it was only me who thought so.
" A long pause. "She was with someone else. Someone who had money. We divorced."
I put my hand over his.
"I'm sorry that happened to you," I say. "You didn't deserve that."
He nods. Keeps his eyes on our hands. "I was lost for a while.
I started drinking. Getting into fights.
There was a lot of rage and I kept looking for somewhere to put it.
" His thumb stills on my palm. "That's how I met William.
He was bouncing at a bar one night. Stepped in before something went very bad.
" A short exhale through his nose. "We became friends first. Then business partners.
I knew about construction and property. He knew nightlife. First a bar. Then a club…"
"And now you own MH Group," I say.
He nods. "The worst thing that happened to me was also the best thing."
I know what he is saying.
"I know what you mean," I say. "The same thing happened to me. In a way." He looks at me, waiting. But, I don't want this to become about me right now, so I deflect.
I bump his shoulder with mine. "So are you going to invite your ex to the Vale Hotel opening?"
He gives me a quiet laugh. "No." He shakes his head. "She has a dentist husband. Two kids." A pause. "I guess she got what she wanted."
I can’t help it and I ask, "And you? Did you get what you wanted?"
He looks at me. His teeth catch his lower lip for just a second.
"Almost." he says.
He looks back at the valley. A moment of quiet. Then he starts talking again.
"That's why truth matters so much to me. Being truthful with others. Being truthful with yourself." He's watching the hills. "If she had been honest with herself she would have known that the life I was offering her wasn't what she wanted. Would have saved us both a lot of pain."
He turns and looks at me. “I will not allow myself to be in another situation where I am lied to. This…” and he gestures to the space between us with two fingers.
"Amazing as it was, and I don't regret it, it can easily become a situation where someone gets hurt.
" He looks at me steadily. "You understand what I'm saying. "
I do.
He holds my gaze for one more moment. Then he looks at the valley.
"We should get going."
He stands. We take the trail back. He walks beside me. He doesn't hold my hand this time.
In the drive back everything is the same. The scent of eucalyptus through the cracked window, the uneven road, same hills, same light.
It doesn't feel the same inside me.
He pulls into the hotel lot and we get out.
I need to say something. I need to go back to a moment where we were… something. "Wanna come see how the kitchen garden is coming along?"
He looks at me. A small hesitation.
"Maybe later." He is already turning and going to the hotel.
I stand in the lot. The sun is warm on my face and the rest of me feels heavy. The day has been too much. Too many things in too few hours, and my chest is full of all of it with nowhere for it to go. The only thing I know to do with that is work.
I found that at Greenhaven. Hands in the ground, enough physical demand to quiet everything else down.
It got me through then. And it has been helping ever since.
I go to the kitchen garden and see that Celia has done most of what was planned. She looks up when I approach. "All good?" she asks.
"Yeah," I say.
She nods and goes back to what she was doing and I am grateful for that. For people who understand that sometimes yeah means no and that it’s better to leave it.
I dive into work. Rosemary that needs spacing.
Two sections of ground cover. A stretch of edging that's been waiting two days.
I stay in my body and let my hands do what they know how to do.
The weight of the shovel. The resistance of dry soil.
The specific ache across my shoulders after too long bent over.
I don't think about Carter or Adrian or William. I just work.
By the time one of the hotel staff appears with the usual basket with snacks and water the light has shifted and my arms are tired in the right way.
I take the sandwiches. I take the water.
At the bottom of the basket, under the napkins, there is something wrapped in tissue paper.
I unwrap it.
Gardening gloves. Good ones. The expensive kind, reinforced on the palm, supple leather fingers.
The kind that last.