Chapter 21 – Dallas
I'm sure there are many ways a person could describe me if they had to.
Son of Giselle Golden, winner of three golden globes and model featured twenty-two times in Playboy magazine throughout the eighties and nineties.
Stepson to Jackson Roe, beloved director of Emmy Nominated TV drama, the Big Splash amongst other major series casting some of the highest paid actors and actresses in Hollywood.
The youngest CEO to have ever built and sold their app for over five million dollars by the age of twenty years old.
An engineer.
A decorated marine.
Avid surfer.
Hobby farmer.
But none of those things and yet all of those things make me into who I really am.
I’ve been grappling with an identity crisis since I separated from the Marines.
And instead of confronting the root of it, I’ve found myself burying the fragmented pieces of my past—scattered across various years, careers, identities, and what feels like multiple lives back in Los Angeles and moving to the middle of nowhere.
It was similar to how I was currently planting garlic in the freshly fertilized garden of my backyard.
The ground was fertile, but it wouldn't grow unless the herb was buried correctly.
I, too, was trying to plant myself correctly in Lonestar Junction so that I could rediscover who I am.
I space each clove about 2-4 inches apart, pointed end facing upward and still covered in their husks. I press the cloves down into the dirt two inches further moving slowly as I count, my mind whirling with thoughts of how tonight might go.
Sure, I've been lonely since moving to this small town but perhaps always thinking that Dove was nearby has kept me from going out to try to find a date, meet someone to spend my time with, and instead, it’s kept me home bound working on my new farm, contemplating what my life has become.
I’ve never been a green thumb, and painfully realized that when I first moved here, my eyes landing on the mess of overgrown garden and weed filled fields that littered Golden Farm.
But Wylie had been closely helping me chip away at the clean-up and I’ve been finding new meaning and purpose in spending my nights with a bottle of whiskey, researching the appropriate crops to plant for the season and the best way of doing it.
Golden Farm was a work in progress just like me. A parable for the life I was now living.
When I was younger, I believed I could bulldoze my way through anything I tried. I never had to put in effort for my grades, my career, or even getting women. Everything came naturally to me. I lacked humility, patience and needed a damn good humbling.
Farming, growing, planting, and tilling took patience, consistency, and a whole lot of humility. When things come too easily to you in life, you stop trying to learn. The failure of a crop that you've invested months in, and money into, will humble you quickly.
But there'd been a slow metamorphous occurring inside of me since the day Dove first wrote to me twelve years ago. And just like the patience I’d been developing to learn how to cultivate a well-rounded garden and a thriving farm, I’d have patience in earning her forgiveness for abandoning our friendship, building new trust with her, and possibly, her friendship again.
Given my past and her current situation, including the person that she was in love with, I didn't know if anything more could ever come out of our relationship.
But my time overseas and my somewhat lost life that I was currently living had taught me that sometimes, you just have to let things be and not push for more.
Regardless of how little I wanted to be just friends with her, I decided to focus on the present moment and see where the night would go.
I finish another row of garlic, turn to my barrel full of mulch and scoop a thick layer over the planted buds before watering it carefully.
Once I’m satisfied with how they look, I head inside to prepare for my first Thanksgiving with the Cameron's at Ashwood ranch. While Wylie and Stevie’s ranch neighbored mine, Nash and Jovie Cameron’s were on the opposite side, an equally expansive and impressive ranch that Jovie’s grandfather, Clarence Ashwood had left to her in his will.
Thirty minutes later, I’ve showered and changed into my usual casual attire: a pair of jeans and a plain black t-shirt.
While the Cameron boys and their friends typically wear cowboy boots, hats, and button-up flannels, my style was more city-relaxed.
I quickly learned that my new friend Wylie would never let that go without saying something.
“You might be a big, tough Marine who can handle most dangers on the battlefield, but I stand by my belief that you'll end up getting stung by a poisonous scorpion or attacked by some wild animal if you don't start dressing like you belong in Texas.” He gestures with the serving spoon full of mashed potatoes that he’s mid-scooping onto Stevie’s plate, pointing it directly at me when I enter the dining room at Ashwood.
“Jovie knows all about scorpion stings,” Clay chimes in with a big grin.
“Don’t remind me of the many times you've put my wife's life in danger,” Nash responds.
I smile as I glance around at the group, taking the bowl Wylie passes to me and serving myself with a generous portion.
Growing up as an only child, I was raised in a unique family dynamic where all of the attention was consistently, and often painfully, focused on me.
My parents divorced when I was just three years old, and shortly after, my mom met and married my stepdad, so our small trio at holiday gatherings was the norm.
But this—being included in the Cameron family holiday traditions—felt more like how the celebrations should be spent.
Potluck styled meals instead of takeout, inside jokes and loud laughter instead of quiet conversation and classical music playing in the background.
It filled me with warmth and gratitude to have found my chosen family here.
Jovie enters the dining room, her and Nash’s two twin boys on either hip as she plops them in to bouncer seats at the end of the table.
“Ok you two. Sit here, be cute and let me eat, please.”
Nash hooks his ankle around the bottom of the bouncers to pull them closer to his chair so that Jovie can have some undistracted time without the wild babies.
“It’s so nice to have you with us this Thanksgiving, Dallas. This is Stevie’s first holiday spent living in Lonestar Junction, too.”
“Second, technically,” Stevie replies.
Wylie grunts, “Can’t forget the first one. I had Stevie for dessert.”
“Language!” Jovie shouts, “My children are listening.”
Wylie snorts while Stevie rolls her eyes. “Sorry sis, but I can’t imagine how wild of a time y’all are going to have it with those two.” She points at her two nephews on the floor who coo and smile back at their aunt.
“Just keep ’em away from Uncle Wylie and maybe they’ll have a chance at meeting a nice woman instead of having to have a contract to get someone to marry them,” Clay chimes in with a grin as he sips his beer.
That elicits another loud laugh from Wylie who throws his arms around Stevie’s shoulders and kisses her passionately on the lips.
Clay was the youngest of the Cameron gang by ten years and currently managing Ashwood Ranch for Nash and Jovie while they focused more on the co-op and raising their newborn boys.
I didn't know him well, but the little time I'd spent around him since moving to Texas I quickly realized that he was consistently keeping the family laughing with his antics and perpetually happy countenance.
“So… Dallas… I want to hear about what happened with Dove last night?” Stevie asks, trying to change the subject discreetly and failing miserably.
“We agreed to meet up for dessert tonight at the co-op. She said she's bringing a pumpkin pie that I need to try.”
Wylie snorts, “Sounds like someone else is getting dessert tonight.”
Stevie nudges him in the ribs as Jovie groans out a quiet, “Gross.”
“Oh, cool it, JoJo, like we didn’t have to hear you and Nash going at it for months when you first moved down here.” Wylie shoots back as she blushes and returns her attention to her meal while Nash chuckles and shakes his head.
“Take me through this again, you know Dove how exactly?” Wylie asks.
I go on to tell the group about the years-long pen pal relationship Dove and I kept up when we were younger, leaving out the more personal details I want to keep just between us.
I feel protective of that bond and wouldn’t share anything with her friends—who’ve known her far longer than they’ve known me—without her permission.
“The last letter she wrote me I just received a week ago.”
“She wrote you… recently?”
I nod, “Yea. She said she sent it while she was on tour.”
“Anything interesting in it?” Stevie asks.
Oh, just her telling me to fuck off and that she’s done with holding out hope for ever meeting me since she’s in love with some random guy.
“Nah, not really.” I consider mentioning the part where she said she was in love but decide to keep that information private.
I’d never want to betray Dove’s trust and wasn’t sure if it was a relationship that she wanted to be public considering it didn’t seem like she’d brought the guy home with her this weekend.
“Seems kind of odd that she wrote you a letter one week ago and then here you two are, meeting for the first time,” Nash chimes in.
“Or romantic,” Jovie sighs with a smile. Wylie catches my eye, likely noticing my blank expression and thankfully, changes the subject.
“Speaking of romance… Clay, how are you and Savannah doing?” he asks.
“I’m glad you asked…” Clay starts then launches into a long-winded story about something he and his girlfriend got into while he helped her record a baking video at the co-op last week.
The rest of Thanksgiving dinner is filled with light, happy banter with the Camerons.
As the meal winds down, Clay and I offer to do the dishes and clean-up since we didn’t contribute to the preparation.
A few minutes later, I find myself elbow-deep in soap suds while the Cameron spouses take a stroll around the property, pushing the twins in a stroller and enjoying the cooler evening before we all head over to the co-op for dessert.
“You have a fun family,” I tell Clay while handing him a dish to dry.
He chuckles, “They’re good people. It’s gotten a lot better since Jovie and Stevie married my brothers. My dad and their mom are in Australia for the holiday but if they were here too, the conversation would have been even wilder.”
“I can imagine it’s a lot when everyone is together.” I hand him another dish to dry.
“So, what’d you do to Dove Hart?”
My brows furrow as I continue to scrub at the porcelain dish in my hand, “What do you mean what did I do to her?”
He shrugs, “I mean, I get the whole pen pal story you just told us about how y’all met but the look on her face last night when she realized who you were had way more of a story behind it.
I've known Dove for years, she's just a few years older than me, and she’s always been a spit fire, wild spirit doing her own thing. Not much catches her by surprise but she looked shocked to see you.”
“It’s like I said, life happened, and we stopped writing to each other.”
“And then you just showed up in her hometown? A little creepy, don’t you think? I bet that’s why she was freaked out.”
“She doesn’t think it’s creepy.”
Clay snorts, “You’re probably right. She probably thinks it’s romantic. That’s something that happens in those romance books Savannah reads and when it's done in a book, it’s all ’so romantic,’ but have a man do that in real life and the woman is screaming ‘stalker!’”
I laugh, “I’m a former marine. If I wanted to stalk her, she wouldn't know. I was never hiding here.”
Clay nods as he finishes drying another glass and places it in the cupboard.
“So, Savannah is the hopeless romantic type, eh?”
He snorts again, “Definitely the hopeless romantic type.”
“What about you?”
He shrugs, “We officially got together just a year ago, but I guess she’d been crushing on me for a while, and I hadn’t noticed.
I love her and think we'll end up together but we're still really young. I've been itching for something more than working on the ranch, ya know? I’m just trying to figure out what that something more is.”
“I get that.” I dry my hands and clap him on the back. “Sometimes you gotta keep trying new things until you figure out what you’re not good at, but enjoy, and that’s where to put pressure, you feel me?”
He nods, “I do. Is that what you did?”
“Sort of.”
He’s quiet for a few minutes, deep in thought. “I’d like to hear more about how you landed on the marines. You want to ride over to the co-op together?”
I smile, “You got it, Clay.”