Chapter 15 - Beckham
BECKHAM
My phone’s spot on the coffee table was a heavy presence on my conscience as I fought the urge to pick up the device. My hands itched. My mind was warring. But most of all, my heart hurt.
The worst part was that I should be on fucking cloud nine right now. I lay in bed with Parker and ended up with her in my arms by morning. What more could I want right now?
It was a stupid question, because I was greedy, and all I wanted was to text my best friend and tell him I got her back. I held Parker in my arms, and I didn’t fuck it up.
Garrett’s phone was still connected. His mom never stopped paying his bill, and if one day she decided to, I’d take it over.
She kept it plugged in on the nightstand in his childhood bedroom so if either of us wanted to hear his voice, we could call and listen to his voicemail.
What we were doing to ourselves was cruel, but no one really taught you how to grieve.
Did you move on completely, erasing everything but the memories that inevitably would fade?
Or did you leave reminders of him around so that when you missed him, you could ease the ache in some way?
I think that was why I hadn’t mustered the courage to tell my family about his passing. Their lives were completely separate from my life in rodeo, which made it easy to hide it. But I didn’t want my processing of all of this to be rushed by society’s pressure to go back to normal.
There was no normal after you lost someone, anyway.
There was just existing, and finding ways to cope.
Parker in my arms last night, her breasts pressed up against my chest with only the thin material of her tank top separating us—that wasn’t coping. That was living a fucking dream.
If someone had told me months ago, “Hey, don’t waste away, asshole.
The love of your life is going to come back,” I likely would’ve punched them in the face—much like I had with my brother—and told them I’d do whatever the fuck I wanted.
Because that’s what happens sometimes when people grieve—they get angry.
“Is your favorite color still green?” Avery asked, arranging her colorful plastic horses around the mini bale of hay I’d made her with leftover baling twine and broken pieces of straw. She had a whole farm set at my house, complete with a barn, tractors, and an arena.
We’d finished the breakfast Parker had prepared for us this morning: a heaping pile of waffles covered with strawberries and whipped cream, alongside some slices of bacon. Now, Parker was cradling her Dr. Pepper on the couch while she watched Avery and me play imaginary farm animals.
“Hmm,” I hummed, setting the toy dog by the water trough. “I think today it’s yellow.”
Avery scrunched her nose. “Why do you change it so much?”
“It’s only fair to all the other colors,” I told her. It definitely wasn’t because Parker wore a pale yellow crewneck today.
“What’s your favorite color?” Avery asked, looking over her shoulder at Parker.
She smiled. “Mine’s yellow, too.”
“No one in my class likes yellow,” Avery said, a little disappointed.
“Well, now you’ve got two people who do.” I scruffed her hair, and she swatted my hand away with a toothy smile and a giggle before we went back to playing.
“Where’d you get that longhorn skull from?” Parker asked, gesturing with her drink to the one sitting on the wall above my TV.
“Uncle Beckham said it used to be his friend’s,” Avery answered.
Intrigue lit Parker’s expression. “Really? Which friend?”
“An old one,” I answered gruffly. “Avery, why don’t you go get your coat? I think your mom and dad will be here soon.”
“Okay!” She shot up and was out of the room in a flash.
I began tossing her toys back in the bin I kept stashed in my wooden TV stand.
“It’s nice looking,” Parker acknowledged, standing from her seat to get a better look.
To this day, we still didn’t know how it survived the accident fully intact.
“Are you okay?”
I looked up to find Parker tracking my movements as I put away the toys.
“Yeah. Are you?” I responded.
“You seem different, Beck.”
With the rug now clear, I set the bin back in its spot and stood.
“Ten or so years will do that to a guy.”
A line formed in the center of her forehead, doubt shining between the cracks. “Yeah, but you were never like…”
I stepped into her space, instinct causing me to grab both of her hands and grip them between us. “Like what?”
She shook her head, not in denial, but like she was clearing the fog swirling around in her thoughts.
“You never answered me,” I murmured.
The crease deepened. “What?”
“Are you okay?” I asked again.
She looked down at her belly brushing my shirt and our hands grasped on either side of it. Then her eyes lifted back to me. “You’re holding my hands.”
My thumb moved like the past was fueling it forward, brushing across her knuckles. Memories of me holding her hands just like this, under a wide-open sky filled with stars. Of when I’d help her down from my truck bed after ravishing her. “I am.”
“Beck.” My name was barely a whisper.
“Park.”
Her head moved subtly from side to side.
And just like that, we fell into the past. Into over a decade ago when she was mine and I was hers and we were unstoppable.
Maybe history would repeat itself.
I’d never wished harder for a statement to be true.
A knock on the front door had her sliding her hands from mine and taking a step away. A bouncing Avery emerged from the hallway, coat falling off her slender shoulders.
“Is that them?” Avery squealed.
“It should be.” I glanced once more at Parker to be sure she was alright before heading for the door. Avery skipped alongside me, beating me to it.
“Can I open it?” Big, round eyes bored up at me. “Pleeeassee.”
I couldn’t help my smile. I didn’t know how Callan restrained himself from buying her the world. “Go for it.”
In a flash, the door was torn open and Avery was running at her mom and dad. She was gentle as she hugged Sage, then Callan lifted her by the armpits and tossed her in the air before setting her on his hip.
“Did you have fun?” Callan asked, tucking her unruly hair behind her ears.
Avery nodded like she’d somehow found my stash of sugar, and proceeded to ramble on and on about everything we’d done.
Callan listened intently while I waved Sage inside. Cal already knew Parker from our childhood, but Sage and she were complete strangers.
Parker had moved to the kitchen to busy herself, but promptly stopped her wiping of the counter when she saw Sage.
“Parker,” Sage said, flashing a sweet smile.
Parker quickly wiped her hands on her leggings. “Sage.” Unexpected relief coated her tone. “How’s your finger?” She moved to quickly hug Sage, and something about her going right in, past a handshake, had me fighting a smile.
“Doing fine. Just a few stitches, nothing major.” She lifted her finger to show it off after Parker stepped back.
“Thank goodness. I was worried.” Parker’s gaze flicked from her finger to me before settling back on Sage. “We’ll have to get together sometime. Have Beckham give you my number, and we’ll talk.”
“I’d love that,” Sage replied. “Just keep him out of that shell he crawled into for a few months, will you? It’s nice having this Beckham back.” She shot me a wink.
Relief washed over Parker’s face. Whether it was from Sage’s ability to not acknowledge her pregnancy or the prospect of having a friend in this, I wasn’t sure. But I was damn happy to see it, either way.
Sage quickly said her goodbyes and joined Callan and Avery on their walk to the truck. As soon as the door was closed, Parker went back to wiping the counters.
Her silence was deafening.
“What?”
She lifted a shoulder. “Nothing.”
I frowned. “Parker.”
She stopped, leaving her hand on the towel as she faced me. “‘Out of that shell’?”
I sighed. Of course she caught that.
“It’s been hard since I quit rodeo,” I explained.
She stared at me like she was waiting for me to go on, and when I didn’t, she resumed her cleaning. “Okay.”
I wanted to tell her more. Tell her all of it. But it hurt too damn much to even try to speak the words.
I grabbed my keys and left before I could crack, feeling like the biggest piece of shit for not confiding in her.
We used to be that for each other. But that was the kicker, wasn’t it?
Parker and I were in the past.
And this was my reality.
Later that day, the cool breeze drifted through the browning fields ahead of me. I’d forgotten a coat, but I needed the bite of cold to ground me. If it didn’t, I feared I’d end up in my nightmares instead of here, sitting in the grass on my parents’ ranch.
I’d taken one of their horses and led Bucky beside me until we crested the far hill. I needed the distance today—the physical isolation—because mentally, I was suffocating.
Both horses grazed beside me while I watched the sun inch closer to the horizon with every inhale.
Bucky was a retired bronc. I’d been scrolling Facebook one day when I saw he was going up for auction. Having experience with my mother’s nonprofit, Bottom of the Buckle Horse Rescue, it was a no-brainer that he’d end up in a kill pen and shipped off to slaughter.
Bailey and Lettie had been up at the auction house in Montana, so I’d called my dad first thing to be sure they grabbed that horse.
Now, I couldn’t be more damn thankful I had.
Bucky was a walking reminder of Garrett. One of the few things I had left of him.
Garrett and I had learned all we knew on that horse. Sure, in rodeo, you rode every damn level of crazy, but Bucky was the go-to at some of the local clinics.
Sometimes I wondered if that horse felt the loss of Garrett.
If he could feel it in the breeze or the hollowness of the trees.
If he, too, noticed how everything around us felt like the life had been sucked out of it.
Or maybe it’d only been sucked out of me.
Maybe I was projecting my grief, the emptiness so strong, it felt like the air was nonexistent.
A speck of something cold and wet slid down my cheek, and I swiped it away. The hole in my chest seemed to grow every time I let myself think, but all those articles I’d scrolled through online said to embrace the emotions. Not to bottle them away and stew in them.
It was a hard pill to swallow, given I grew up thinking men shouldn’t cry. That it made us weak. Pathetic.
So who the fuck was I to sit here sniffling over him?
I tore my gaze from the drifting clouds to Bucky, where he was pulling the grass up around my boot. Hatchet, one of my dad’s horses, grazed farther away, both of their manes fluttering in the wind.
Everything around me was moving, living, thriving. I simply felt frozen. Like time had ceased all movement four months ago, and this pit in my stomach was incurable. I often wished the clock could reverse just a little bit more before it stopped, to a time when Garrett was smiling.
God, what I’d give to hear his laugh again.
A rustle behind me had me sniffling and clearing my throat, wiping my cheeks once more for good measure before I twisted.
“Heard your brothers were hard on Parker,” my dad said as he gently tugged the reins.
He wasn’t one for a ton of words, usually reducing himself to grunts and frowns, so the unexpectedness of his visit, especially way out here, made me weary.
Did he think something was wrong? Or was this one of those times where he’d be bluntly honest and tell me I was being a fool?
His horse stopped, and he dismounted. Letting the animal do his thing, he lowered himself beside me.
“She forgave them,” I told him. Parker was too good to hold a grudge against many people.
My dad was silent as the sky reflected in his blue eyes. His mustache was unmoving, but I could see the frown he always wore beneath it.
After what felt like minutes, he spoke. “Is the baby yours, son?”
My gaze fell to my scuffed boots. “No.”
Neither of us moved a muscle. I’d never been more grateful for my dad’s silence than right now.
“You wanna tell me what’s been goin’ on?” he asked.
I’d spoke too soon.
My eye caught on a particular cloud in the sky, all puffy and fake-like. Out of all the people I thought I might dump my feelings on, I wouldn’t have guessed it’d be my dad.
“You don’t wanna tell me, that’s fine,” he grumbled. His voice was hoarse with old age and time spent yelling at cows—and his sons—on the ranch. “But don’t peg me as a fool to not know where you got that from.”
Forehead creased, I turned to meet his gaze.
“Don’t keep things from the people you love just because you think that’s how your ol’ pops battles with his own struggles,” he went on.
“What struggles, Dad?”
His cheeks moved like he was rolling his lips together beneath his thick ‘stache, and he swallowed. Another few minutes of silence, and he was shoving to a stand and setting a hand on my shoulder.
“Even cowboys cry, son.” He squeezed. “Only the brave ones can accept that.”
Without another word, he walked over to his horse, grabbed the reins, and hefted himself into the saddle.
And as he disappeared in the distance, heading back toward the barn, I disappeared somewhere else.
Into the horizon.
With tears in my eyes and Garrett on my mind.