7. Bex
Chapter 7
Bex
“Whose house is this?” I stared through the windshield at the ranch-style home Tucker had pulled up to outside of town, situated on quite a bit of land.
I might’ve blocked out a lot of memories about this place in self-preservation, but I knew there hadn’t been a house out here when I left. Which made me all the more curious because new builds weren’t common in Rust Canyon.
Tucker pushed open his door. “It’s mine.”
My jaw dropped. He’d brought me to his house?
Why would he think that was a good idea? Especially when we were in the middle of a scavenger hunt?
The truck door slamming shut jarred me back to reality, and I jumped down from the passenger side.
“What are we doing here, Tuck?” I asked as he stepped onto the front porch.
He paused, turning to face me. “There’s no guarantee it’ll work, but I remembered something from a science course about how heat increases the pressure inside closed containers. Figured it was worth a shot to see if we could use a blow torch to pop the cork on a wine bottle.”
My eyes bulged. “A blow torch? Are you crazy?”
“Maybe.” One of his shoulders lifted. “But if it works, I’ll look like a genius.” He opened the front door. “Just gotta grab a bottle of wine from the kitchen. You can come in if you want, or you can wait for me over by the detached garage. My workbench is inside, and we’ll conduct our little ‘experiment’ there.”
I hesitated. Did I want to go inside his private space? Would doing so cut into the old wounds, making them bleed again at seeing what could have been if things had been different?
It was a terrible idea, but my feet moved automatically, climbing the porch steps.
Tucker slipped inside, allowing me to follow him. He hung a right into the kitchen, and I stopped short, a gasp catching in my throat.
The wooden cabinets featured glass doors painted a light cornflower blue. The backsplash was glossy white, with the tiles laid in a chevron pattern above the marbled countertops. It matched the farmhouse sink, set before a window, perfectly. An island sat in the center of the space, large enough for only two stools.
This was the kitchen of my dreams. The one I’d described to him when we were teenagers, back when I thought we had our whole lives ahead of us. He had promised me then that he would give it to me, but I never imagined he would hold true to that promise when he’d broken so many others. Though, technically, he hadn’t given it to me. I didn’t live here. I never would.
“Do you like it?” His tender voice had tears threatening behind my eyes.
Swallowing around the lump in my throat, I nodded. “It’s beautiful. ”
Eyes dropping to the floor, Tucker’s chest expanded on a deep breath. “I’ll grab the wine if you wanna take a peek around.” Then he turned his back to me to complete his task. It was almost as if he knew I needed a minute to regain my bearings.
With only one entrance to the kitchen, I spun around and began to explore the family room.
I could tell the place wasn’t big from the outside, and if I had to guess, there were two, maybe three bedrooms. Living as a single man, he didn’t need much space. As the town physician, he likely spent most of his time at his office or making house calls when necessary. I wondered if he was lonely out here, isolated from the rest of the community.
Stepping through the family room, I moved toward the fireplace, where the mantle contained several framed photographs.
The first one I encountered made me smile. Tucker was pictured on the seat of a tractor, his arms looped around three redheaded babies in his lap.
Boots on hardwood sounded behind me, and I grabbed the picture frame, turning to face Tucker on approach. “Patients of yours?”
His blue eyes scanned the photograph, and I watched as a peace settled over him. “No, those little rascals belong to Evie.”
Now that I studied their faces more closely, I could see the resemblance. “Did she get remarried?”
I might have not wanted to hear news of the boy who’d broken my heart, but my mother kept me up to date on the rest of the goings-on in Rust Canyon during my absence. Last I’d heard, Tucker’s sister had gotten divorced and come back home to live with their parents.
There was a chuckle before he replied, “She did. To Jenner.”
“Oh.” My lips parted, and I couldn’t stop a surprised rush of air from escaping. Jenner was Evie’s first husband, and if what Tucker said was true, her second as well .
Having borne witness to their love, I’d been shocked to hear of their split. It made me wonder, if a couple like them couldn’t make it work, what hope did the rest of us have?
“Came as a surprise to the rest of us as well. But we couldn’t be happier they’ve found their way back together. Evie’s back where she belongs.”
My gaze dipped to the children in the picture. “And they have triplets?”
“Not exactly. They’re Irish triplets.”
I tried to work that out in my brain. I knew Irish twins were babies born less than a year apart, but three babies? And they all looked to be about the same size, so it didn’t make any sense.
When I looked to Tucker in question, he explained, “Hope’s adopted.”
Staring at the little girl, her red hair was very similar to that of the other babies. “You’d never know it, looking at them.”
“She fits right in, that’s for sure. The boys, Hunter and Hendrix, are identical and biologically Jenner and Evie’s, born only three months after their big sister.”
“Twins wasn’t enough?” I teased. “Had to throw one more on top?”
Tucker’s expression grew solemn. “It’s a long story, but they tried to conceive for a long time, and that’s what ultimately led to their divorce.”
My heart clenched in sympathy. “I had no idea.”
He nodded. “They kept it really quiet. It was a deeply personal struggle.”
I couldn’t even begin to imagine the pain and heartbreak they must’ve suffered.
“When they reconnected, they decided to adopt. The boys were a bonus.”
“They’re adorable.”
“They’re the light of my life,” he replied .
Returning the frame to its place on the mantle, I moved to view the next one. It featured Tucker’s parents standing alongside him on what appeared to be his graduation from med school if the white coat were any indication.
The next three of them had my chest tightening. They were all of me and Tucker. One from his junior prom—I’d skipped mine because he’d been away at college. One of us both atop a single horse on Sullivan Ranch. And one of us sitting in his truck bed, wrapped up in each other’s arms, not even looking at the camera, so lost in love that we hadn’t even noticed the picture being taken.
I could still remember that day. It had been one of the last few before everything fell apart, right before I went off to California with Aspen and Tucker returned to college in Baltimore. That happy girl in the picture had no clue how much heartache was headed her way at the hands of the boy holding her, the one she never thought would hurt her.
Letting out a shaky breath, I couldn’t face him when I asked, “Why?”
Tucker moved in so close that I could feel him standing at my back. “These are the people who are most important to me in the world.”
Couldn’t he just let me go? Let me move on with my life? Why was he acting like he still cared when he was the one who’d run off and married someone else, divorce be damned?
Blinking back the tears, I whispered, “You shouldn’t have brought me here.”
His exhale was heavy. “Maybe not.” I caught sight of the bottle of red wine he held up in my periphery. “Shall we finish up and head back?”
“Yeah. We’re probably running tight on time.”
“Right,” he agreed. “This way.” Tucker stepped toward a back door that led from the family room onto a back deck .
We crossed the stretch of grass between the house and garage, the warm spring wind whipping my hair around my face wildly. I struggled to keep it out of my eyes to see where I was going.
Once inside, he set the bottle on a wooden workbench and retrieved the blow torch. He also brought over a pair of safety goggles, offering them to me, muttering, “Just in case.”
Well, if that didn’t instill a ton of confidence. My eyes might be protected from potential shattering glass if this went sideways, but what about the rest of me?
Affixing the thick elastic band over the back of my head, I adjusted the goggles before pulling out my phone.
We didn’t speak as he lit the torch, placing the flame near the curve of the bottle closest to the neck. I held my breath as I watched the wine bubble as it heated. Then I saw it, the tiniest movement on the cork. Slowly, it inched higher and higher above the lip of the bottle until suddenly, it burst free, shooting into the air.
I was so surprised that I let out a little squeal. “Can’t believe that worked!”
Bending to retrieve the discarded cork, Tucker’s voice held a trace of humor. “Me neither.”
“It was your idea!”
He shrugged, opening his mouth to retort, but before he could, an alarm blared so loud that I winced, fighting the urge to cover my ears.
“What the hell is that?”
Tucker pulled his phone out, jaw locking tight. “Tornado touched down in the area. We gotta get to the storm cellar.” He gripped my good wrist and began to tug me toward the door.
“No.” I wrenched my arm from his grasp. “There would be a siren for that. ”
He whipped around, his eyes hardening. “Yeah, well, a lot changes when you don’t come home for ten years.”
Oh no, he did not get to guilt me for that.
“Fuck you, Tucker,” I spat. “You know exactly why I left and stayed away.”
Shaking his head, he huffed, “Now’s not the time for this, Bex.”
I threw my arms out wide. “Then when? Should I schedule an appointment?” My voice rose over the volume of the alarms coming from our phones.
The air whooshed from my lungs when he dropped his shoulder and pressed it into my belly. It took a minute to process why I was bouncing upside down with Tucker’s ass in front of my face.
“Put me down!” I screeched as his long strides ate up the distance between the garage and the house.
“Not when you’re trying to get yourself killed!” he shouted back.
A hiss flew from my lips, along with a muttered curse, when I beat on his back with both hands, having forgotten one was injured, and a brilliant burst of lightning zinged up my forearm.
In the distance, a siren wailed.
“Happy now?” Tucker taunted.
The wind kicked up, and that was when I realized how dark it had become. It was the middle of the afternoon, but it looked like nighttime. The sky was angry, thick gray clouds blocking out the sun in preparation to unleash its fury.
Tucker set me on my feet so he could unlatch the metal doors that led to the storm cellar beneath his house.
His face betrayed that he wasn’t in the mood for games even before his voice came out edged with steel. “So help me God, Bex. Get in the fucking cellar. ”
Shoving at his chest with my good hand, I stomped past him and down the stairs.
The last thing I wanted was to be stuck in a room with him, but I wasn’t dumb enough to believe I had a choice.
There was a heavy thud and a bolt sliding into place, indicating the doors were sealed.
I paced the far end of the underground concrete cellar. Sharp bursts of air flew past my nostrils, and all it would take for me to charge was Tucker to wave that red flag.
Having cleared the last step, he came into view and ran a hand through his wind-blown sandy-brown hair. “Tell me one thing, Bex.”
My restless motion didn’t stop. “What?”
“Are you happy?”
I came to a sudden halt, my temper flaring. “What kind of question is that?”
“A simple one. Yes or no, Bex. Are you happy? With him.”
There was no question as to who the him in this scenario was. Somehow, he’d heard about Aaron. Probably from Mac.
Scoffing, I replied, “Don’t pretend to know anything about my life. We might as well be strangers anymore.”
Tucker took a challenging step forward. “Sounds like you’re avoiding the question.”
“Of course I’m happy,” I huffed, not willing to give him any ammunition to use against me.
“With him?” he pressed.
“Yes.” The lie slipped easily past my lips.
Voice softening, Tucker asked, “Do you love him? ”
My breathing hitched as he searched my eyes. How could I convince him when I couldn’t manage to convince myself? I didn’t love Aaron. If I hadn’t fallen for him by now, I wasn’t sure I ever would.
So, I turned it around on Tucker, not giving a damn that my deflection had already been called out once.
“I’m not the one who broke us.” My hand gestured between our two bodies. “How dare you ask me to justify how I’ve chosen to pick up the pieces and move on,” I spat.
“You have every right to be angry with me, so go ahead and get it out of your system now when there’s nowhere else to run. Yell, scream, hit me. I deserve it.”
Like the wine, the temperature on my rage reached a boiling point, and the cork popped on my bottled-up emotions, letting them all burst free.
“You broke my heart!” I cried, unable to hold back a moment longer.
Tucker hung his head. “Yeah, I did. Broke mine too.”
“No, you don’t get to do that,” I huffed. “You’re not the victim here.”
Something I couldn’t name flashed in his eyes, mixing with the defeat I found in their blue depths.
There was more to this story, and I deserved answers. Now was as good a time as any to demand them.
“Why did you marry her?” I yelled the question, my words echoing in the small space.
When he didn’t answer, I pressed on. “What made her so fucking special that you would throw away everything we had?”
His body vibrated with tension, hands sliding into his hair and tugging on the short strands. Then, finally, he shouted, “Because I knocked her up!”
My stomach bottomed out, and I stumbled backward at his admission. The betrayal went so much deeper than I could have ever imagined.
He was the one who had decided we should wait until I was eighteen to have sex. There had been dozens of times when I’d begged him for it during our years of dating, but he always held firm, adamant that I was worth the wait.
Not sure why I was surprised that it had all been a lie. The trail of broken promises from this man was a mile long. Of course, he was having his cake and eating it too, fooling around at college while the devoted girlfriend he planned to marry sat at home. Until it backfired, and he got her pregnant.
It all made so much sense now, why he’d rushed into marriage.
God, I was such a fool for ever trusting him.
Whisper-quiet, Tucker added, “At least that’s what she led me to believe.”
My head snapped up. “What? You’re saying the kid’s not yours?”
He huffed out a wry laugh. “There is no kid.”
I was so confused, a million questions poised on the tip of my tongue, and I couldn’t settle on which one to ask first.
Collapsing onto that bottom step, he rested his elbows on his spread knees. He looked as broken as I felt.
“November of my junior year, I passed this really grueling test in a course known for having a high failure rate. So a bunch of us went out to celebrate. Needless to say, it got out of hand, and the next morning, I woke up in bed naked with a woman.”
Gripping the shelving behind me, I barely managed to remain upright.
“My immediate need to vomit had nothing to do with alcohol consumption and everything to do with how sick I was over fucking up the best thing in my life because I’d gone out and got drunk one night. I didn’t remember how I’d gotten back to my room, and I certainly didn’t recognize the woman asleep beside me .
“I spent weeks agonizing over how I was going to tell you about the mistake I’d made, praying that you’d remember how much I loved you, see how torn up I was about betraying you, and by some miracle, you wouldn’t kick my pathetic ass to the curb. I didn’t even care that it ruined the big surprise I had planned for Christmas; all I needed was to know that our relationship could survive, that we could still have the future we planned. The rest could wait until we were back on solid ground again.”
Swallowing, I rasped, “What surprise?”
Voice thick, he replied, “I was going to ask you to marry me. Evie had already helped me pick out the ring.”
A knife pierced through my heart, and the first tear slipped down my cheek. It was even more painful to hear how close we’d been to our happily-ever-after when it had been ripped away.
“Did you—” My voice broke. “Did you give that ring to her ?”
“No.” Tucker shook his head. “That wouldn’t have been right. Believe it or not, I still have it, though. Bring it out sometimes to stare at it and imagine the future that should have been. Guess I’m a glutton for punishment like that.”
My knees gave out, and I crumpled to the concrete floor. Tucker jolted, like his first instinct was to run to me, to offer comfort, but he held himself back, remembering his place in our new dynamic.
This was all too much. Maybe I’d been better off in the dark before because the truth would torment me for the rest of my life.
“So, um.” He cleared his throat. “As you can probably guess, I never got the chance to beg your forgiveness. Brooke”—I flinched at the mention of her name—“showed up at my door in early December to tell me she was pregnant and that I was the father.”
Tucker stood, shaking his head, self-loathing evident in his tone. “I was in freaking pre-med. I should have demanded proof, but I panicked. All I could hear in my head was what had been drilled into us growing up: if you got a girl in trouble, you married her. So, with my back against a wall, that’s what I did.”
I pressed a palm against the nausea churning in my gut.
“I was too busy reeling from the change in direction my life had taken to notice the warning signs that something was off. She begged me not to mention the baby to my family when I brought her home to meet them. Said she wanted to make a good first impression, and I agreed because I knew the risk of miscarriage was higher in the first trimester.
“And wouldn’t you know, a few weeks after we got back to campus, she called me crying from her dorm room, saying she was bleeding.”
The woman might deserve all my hate, but I wouldn’t wish losing a child on anyone. That pain was unimaginable.
“I ran over there to discover she’d locked herself in the bathroom. I begged to be let inside, but she refused, leaving me on the other side of the door, listening to her pained cries. Hours later, when she finally emerged, she explained that she’d been passing clots when she recognized one of them as being our baby. She’d miscarried.
“When I demanded she let me take her to be evaluated by a doctor, she burst into tears again, saying all she wanted was to crawl into bed and mourn. I didn’t know what to do. I was only twenty and completely out of my depth. And it’s not like I could call anyone for help; no one knew about our situation. So I gave in, tucked her into bed, and said I was sorry. I might not have been happy about the circumstances surrounding my impending fatherhood, but I never wanted anything bad to happen to that baby; it was still a piece of me.”
Hugging my knees to my chest, I whispered, “I’m sorry, Tucker.”
His eyes lifted toward the ceiling, and he blew out a heavy breath. “There’s nothing to be sorry about, Bex. ”
My brows furrowed. “I don’t understand.”
“You know I’m divorced, right?” I nodded, so he continued, “I was in the first year of my residency, working ridiculous hours, more often than not dead on my feet. They sent me home early one day after a review of the logs indicated I was past the legal limit on consecutive hours, and the hospital could get in trouble if I made a mistake due to sleep deprivation. Honestly, it’s a miracle I made it home in one piece; I was struggling to keep my eyes open on the drive. But I woke up in a hurry when I heard Brooke and her girlfriends cackling in the kitchen. It wasn’t their presence that shocked me into awareness, but their words. They were having a real good laugh about how Brooke had pretended to be pregnant to sink her claws into me, knowing I was a good country boy who wouldn’t hesitate to ‘do the right thing.’ I’d been top of my class, on track for a promising career, and she saw an opportunity.”
My jaw hit the floor.
“Fuck, she even admitted to slipping something in my drink that night, so I wouldn’t remember that I hadn’t even slept with her.”
A trembling hand came up to cover my mouth. His ex-wife had not only lied to him about being pregnant, but she’d drugged him to make it believable? I shuddered to think that Tucker had wound up married to a woman capable of that level of diabolical scheming.
His fists clenched, and he gritted out, “She stole my virginity, Bex. The thing I’d been saving for you.” A humorless laugh sounded. “And the worst part? It wasn’t even when I thought. No, she got that, along with everything else that belonged to you, once there was a ring on my finger that matched the one on hers.”
How was I expected to process this information dump? My head was swimming, trying to sort through which part to focus on first .
“But it’s my fault.” Tucker pressed a finger violently to the center of his chest. “ I was the one who should have asked for a paternity test or, at the very least, an ultrasound. I’m the one who put us through hell.” He deflated before my very eyes. “I’m so sorry, Bex. I need you to know that I never meant to hurt you, and I’ve spent the last five years wishing I could go back and change how I reacted.”
Tears streamed freely down my face. His explanation—his apology—was like a bandage thrown over a bullet wound, and I was bleeding out.
My heart was breaking all over again—for the time we’d lost, for the people we used to be, but mostly for the fact that I couldn’t snap my fingers and undo the damage of the past ten years. It had left scars on my heart, making me afraid to trust, afraid to love. I would never be the same.
We sat in silence for a long time. Tucker had run out of words, and I didn’t know how to respond to all he’d shared.
Our phones chimed in unison with an incoming text.
I didn’t bother digging mine out because Tucker was quicker. “Looks like it touched down a ways out of town, and Mac’s gone to help with the cleanup. Doesn’t sound like anyone was hurt, but Aspen’s calling everyone back to the ranch.”
Nodding, I pushed off the cold ground, hanging back when he unlatched the metal doors that would set us free.
My lungs expanded, and I held a deep breath inside them before releasing it and climbing the steps.
The sky was clear, a beautiful blue, when it came into view. There were no signs of the earlier storm; almost as if it had never existed.
If only it were that simple when it came to my life.