49. Audrey
AUDREY
I woke up Friday morning tangled in Holden and Ridge, the three of us in Holden’s room, a large light-filled space with pale green walls and the same beautiful wood furniture that filled the house.
Graham had never reappeared, but that hadn’t stopped Ridge and Holden from fucking me senseless, taking possession of my body in more ways than I’d known were possible.
I was bleary-eyed and sore, and it took me a minute to realize my phone had buzzed with a text.
I picked it up, then sat up straight when I saw that it was from Dean.
Something came up. I need you to take Ella this weekend. I’ll get her from school Tuesday.
I forced myself not to ask questions. Dean’s life wasn’t my business, and I’d take every opportunity to have more time with Ella.
That’s fine.
I waited for a response, got none, and set my phone back down with a sigh.
“Everything okay, doc?”
“Dean needs me to take Ella this weekend.”
“He say why?” Ridge asked.
“No, but it’s fine. I love having her.”
I started to get out of ned and was pulled back in my Ridge. “Stay.”
I laughed. “I can’t. I have work, and you’ve both fucked me raw anyway. I need a break.”
It wasn’t entirely true. I wan’t sure I’d ever need a break from them — from Graham, as distant as he still was — but I wasn’t even ready to admit that to myself yet.
Holden slapped my ass as I got out of bed. “You weren’t complaining when you came for the fourth time last night.”
My face heated. “Shut up, you.”
I let myself out of Holden’s room and hurried — naked — next door to my room where I took a shower and got ready for work.
Graham was in the kitchen when I got downstairs.
He pushed a travel mug, already full, toward me. “Heard you in the shower upstairs.”
I tried to hide my surprise but wasn’t sure I did a very good job of it. “Thanks.”
I picked up the mug and took a drink. Our eyes met through the shadowed kitchen, and I had to resist the urge to walk around the island, kiss him goodbye.
I almost knew how his arms would feel around me, the scratch of his black henley against my cheek, the smell of hay and fresh air enveloping me like a warm blanket.
Almost.
“Well, thanks for the coffee.” I was halfway to the door when I remembered Ella. “I’ll have Ella this weekend. Something came up with Dean. Sorry.”
He gave me a tip of his head. “That’s fine, wildcat. You do what you need to do.”
I was still thinking about him when I got to the hospital a half hour later.
I didn’t know how it was possible when Ridge and Holden were the ones who’d occupied my body for half the night, but Graham was like the fragment of a dream, something I wanted to hang onto even though it kept slipping from my fingers.
I thought about what Ridge had said, the first time we’d been alone together, about Graham having a story that was his to tell, and wondered what that story was.
Wondered if he’d ever tell it to me.
I spent the next eight hours working the ER, tending to the patients that came and went: broken bones and lacerations, one psych patient, an overdose, another car accident, this time with an older man who probably shouldn’t have been driving.
I tried to be present with them all. It was too easy to start seeing people as just names on the whiteboard, waiting to be cleared so we had another empty room, and I’d promised myself when I’d started working the ER that I would try to connect with the patients, that I’d never stop really seeing them.
I didn’t know if I’d succeeded, but I tried, and it served another purpose too, pulling me out of my own troubles, allowing me to set aside my increasingly complicated life to help other people deal with theirs at what was often one of their worst moments.
I was excited to see Ella at the end of the day, excited to have extra time with her, and I left the hospital in scrubs and headed for her school.
Her face lit up when she saw me in front of the greeter’s desk.
“Mommy!” She ran into my arms. “I thought Daddy was coming.”
I squeezed her tight, inhaling her scent and the feel of her in my arms. “Something came up so you’re with me this weekend.”
She pulled back to look at me, her brown eyes bright. “At the farm?”
“Yep!” I studied her face, clocking the fact that her new tooth had come down a little farther since I’d seen her Tuesday morning.
She was growing and changing even when I didn’t get to see it, and I was hit with a wave of sadness, wondered if Dean felt the same way.
“Yay!” Ella said.
“Come on,” I took her hand. “… let’s ditch this popsicle stand.”
She giggled. “This isn’t a popsicle stand. It’s school.”
I waved to the greeters and pushed through the doors. “Oh my gosh, you’re right.”
“You’re silly, Mommy!”
It was nice outside, a warm June afternoon, and I felt my spirits lift when I thought about the summer stretched in front of us on the ranch.
With the Bulls.
My brain — my heart — clanged an alarm but I was too happy to listen.
Ella held tight to my hand as we crossed the parking lot to the car. “Guess what?”
“What?”
“I stayed at Grandpa Bill’s and Grandma Mari’s last night.”
I looked down at her with surprise. “You did?”
She nodded. “We had chicken.”
“That sounds good,” I said. “How come you weren’t with Daddy?”
“He had a work thing,” she said.
A work thing. Right.
“Grandpa and Grandma were whispering about it.”
We’d reached the car, and I looked down at her, taking a beat to make sure I wasn’t being inappropriate by asking questions. “About the work thing?”
Ella nodded, and climbed into her booster seat. “Grandpa Bill said it was a war.”
My heart stuttered. “A war?”
Why would they talk that way in front of Ella?
She buckled herself in and got Bun-Bun out of her backpack. “I don’t know what that means, Mommy.”
“That’s okay, honey. It’s a grown-up thing.”
This was my explanation for everything that didn’t seem age appropriate for Ella. So far it had worked, but I knew it wouldn’t last forever.
She hugged Bun-Bun and I closed the door to the back seat and got behind the wheel with my pulse racing.
Dean’s parents, Bill and Marianne Ashcroft, had a fucked up relationship that had been a window into my future if I’d stayed with Dean.
But they took family seriously, banded together with their money and their contacts when the situation called for it.
So why were they talking about a war?
And why had Ella been with them instead of Dean the night before?