Chapter 25
twenty-five
Briar knew she couldn’t keep kissing Tarr without telling him more. She always seemed to have more to talk about than he did, though he’d just admitted that one of his goals for next year was to get married.
Briar had given up on marriage a long time ago—maybe even before her first serious boyfriend.
She’d been stunt riding since the age of ten, and as her talent for it became more and more obvious, and the spotlight shifted away from her parents and their roles in the rodeo to their star of a daughter, her mother had started telling her that men only wanted one thing from “girls like her.”
At the time, she hadn’t been sure what a girl like her was, but her more casual dating had told her that men liked her curves and were sometimes more interested in kissing her than anything else.
She’d put up a pretty impenetrable wall at that time, which had only been reinforced by her mother telling her that marriage would only trap her in a place or tie her to a person she might not want to be trapped or tied to forever.
When her parents had gotten divorced, Briar, once again, wondered why anyone would get married.
She’d started dating a man seriously after that, and he’d been like a child in a big body. She didn’t want to mother her husband. Yet, every man she’d dated seemed put together on the outside but could barely function inside his private life.
She’d told Tarr almost nothing about the men she’d dated and why she didn’t like cowboys, and how she’d nearly lost everything after trusting one with a boyish face, a quick smile, and sugared lips.
She finally got control of herself and stopped kissing Tarr. She loved being physically close to him, but she’d be lying if she said it was enough. She knew it wasn’t, and Tarr did too, though he’d kept his promise and had never pushed her to tell him more than she was ready to tell him.
She pressed her lips together and swallowed. “I think maybe I could believe in love and marriage again,” she said. “With the right person.”
Tarr simply hummed and rubbed his thumb up and down from her elbow to her wrist, where he circled the bone there and then let his fingers start the journey again.
“I dated a lot of losers,” she said. “Two bull riders and one roper.”
Tarr said nothing, and Briar took a deep breath to center her thoughts. “But it wasn’t just them that broke my confidence that men could be good, and that someone could love a woman for more than her status.”
“I don’t care about any of that,” Tarr said, his voice somewhat defensive.
Briar didn’t need him to reassure her, but she gave a quick nod against his chest. “Anyway, my parents didn’t have a good marriage,” she said.
“And my mom told me she wished she’d never married my dad.
She said men—especially cowboys—just want their women in the kitchen, and I was meant for greater things than that. ”
Briar closed her eyes, and once again, she simply let the memories wash through her, hoping they too would drain away the way the ones at Christmas had.
“For a long time, I believed her,” she said.
“I was stuck-up and snobby. I didn’t have any friends, only people who wanted to be associated with me because I was good at stunt riding. ”
Tarr slid his hand down past her wrist, aligning his fingers between hers.
“I let myself feel like I was more important than them,” she said. “And I trusted the wrong people. Then, of course, after the accident, I realized that I had created the bed I now found myself sleeping in.
“Of course no one was going to be on my side. I had never been on theirs. They weren’t going to back me up. I had been taking from them at every opportunity. I think most of them were delighted to see me fall, though they probably didn’t wish two broken legs and a hip replacement on me to do it.”
“I don’t know that woman at all,” Tarr said.
“I’m a completely different person now.” Briar’s voice turned tinny as she struggled against her emotions. “But Tarr—"
Her voice quit, just simply quit on her, and her throat had narrowed so much she couldn’t even swallow. She felt like she might choke, and panic reared through her. She sat up and sucked at the air.
“Hey, it’s all right,” Tarr said.
She shook her head as air finally went in right. “I’m okay.”
He didn’t reach for her or demand she lay back in his arms. She took another breath and looked at the bright screen with colorful pictures that Tarr had pulled up, the video games they had come downstairs to play somehow comforting her in that moment.
“Baby, there are consequences to how I used to be,” she whispered. “And not just that I’m really salty sometimes or that I don’t trust people yet, but, like, physical consequences.”
“All right,” Tarr said, easily.
“Sometimes my hip really hurts,” she said. “And I’m real stubborn about going to the doctor about it. And sometimes—”
She couldn’t look at him, though she needed to. She took another breath and swallowed. “You know how sometimes my stomach hurts?”
“Yeah,” he said simply.
“It’s not really my stomach,” she said. “It’s my…female stuff. I’m kind of messed up inside. The doctors told me they aren’t sure if I’ll be able to have kids.”
Her voice broke, and Tarr reached for her then. She snuggled back into his chest and let herself cry.
“I didn’t care at the time,” she said, her voice nasally. “Because there was no possible way on this planet that I would ever want a child. But now…now I’m thinking maybe I should go to the doctor and get that stuff figured out.”
“So you do want kids?” he asked, his voice a little rougher around the edges than she’d heard it before.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never considered myself to be very nurturing, and like I said, dating and marriage and kids were never in the cards for me until—” She cut off and reached for her inner well of bravery.
“Until you, Tarr. You’ve made me think about things and reevaluate them and want something different than I’ve ever wanted before. ”
“Good things, I hope,” he said calmly.
“Yeah,” Briar said. “But you should know, Tarr, if one of your goals is to get married and have a family, I might not be able to do that, and you might want to find a woman who can have your kids.”
“Stop it.’”
“What do you mean, stop it?” Briar asked. “It’s a real thing, Tarr. What if I can’t have babies? I’ve known people who’ve broken up because of that. It’s a real thing.”
“I’m not saying it’s not,” he said, that frown coming between his eyes that told her he was thinking. “And while I’d take a baby girl who looked like you any day—even with all your fire and sass and saltiness—there are other ways to build a family.”
His eyebrows went up as he searched her face. “Aren’t there?”
A tear streamed down Briar’s face as she nodded, and Tarr’s composure crumpled. He gently brushed her tears away with his thumb, pure compassion shining in his eyes. “All right, sweetheart. Just lay down. It’s okay.”
He shushed her again the way he would calm a small child or a frightened foal. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “It’s all going to be okay.”
And because Tarr had never given her a reason to doubt him, she believed him.
The first Wednesday of the year arrived, and with it, so did Briar’s watercolor class. She hurried through her morning chores and only made it to half of the animals before she had to leave.
“It just goes until twelve-thirty,” she said to Tucker. “And then I’ll be back to finish.”
“Yeah, no problem,” he said from where he stood at the rails watching Jessa go through her warm-up. He called something to her about keeping the horse up off her left shoulder, and Briar turned to leave the arena.
It hadn’t snowed for a couple of days, but that just meant the world existed in ice and snow and freezing temperatures, everything within sight flat and white and gray.
Excitement bubbled inside Briar because she loved learning new things and being creative, and this watercolor class would provide both.
She drove the half hour to the community center and collected the bag of supplies she’d pre-purchased for today’s class.
She smiled at another woman walking in, and after they’d both checked in for the watercolor class at the front desk of the community center, the woman said, “My name is Teri. Have you done watercolors before?”
Briar shook her head. “I’ve painted other things, but not watercolors. I’m Briar.”
“It’s great to meet you.” Teri smiled like she really meant it. “I did an oil painting class last year, but mostly I’ve been painting walls and cabinets in my house as we remodel.” She gave a light laugh, and Briar smiled at her.
“I mostly do crafty types of art,” she said, surprised that she was talking to this woman at all.
“What do you mean by that?” Teri asked.
They turned into the classroom, which had huge windows facing south, bringing in a plethora of natural light. A dozen stations had been set up with easels and canvases, and Briar stopped for a moment just to breathe it all in.
“I cut wood and stain it and make signs,” she said. “I can show you some.”
She and Teri picked out two stations in the middle row on the right side, and Briar set down her bag of supplies to swipe through her phone.
She found the sign for the Goatel and showed Teri.
“I work out on this farm in the Deerfield area,” she said.
“And the owner has over one hundred goats, and I made this Goatel sign.”
“Oh, that’s adorable,” Teri said, peering at the phone.
“If you swipe, you can see a sign I made for my boyfriend,” Briar said. “It says Home Sweet Home. He’s a former rodeo rider, so I put on a horse, and he loves my dog, Wiggins.”
“Oh, that’s cute,” she said as she swiped. “Do you cut these with a jigsaw?” She looked up, interest in her eyes. “My husband does custom cabinetry, and I’ve never thought about cutting out wood and doing stuff like that.”
“It is a jigsaw,” she said. “Stabilized with a table, so I guide the wood, not the saw.” Briar swiped one more time. “This is one I made for one of my boss’s clients. He’s a current rodeo rider—a roper.”
She could see the Eat, Sleep, Rope, Repeat sign in her mind that she’d made for Alex Monterro. He’d laughed and laughed when she’d given it to him, and he’d placed it above the small window in his trailer, where he could see it every day.
“The lasso was really hard on that one,” she said. “I cut through it three times before I finally got it right.” She took the phone back and smiled at Teri. “Do you have any of your oil paintings I could see?”
Teri dove into her phone too, because of course she had pictures of her art.
Briar realized at first glance that this woman was far more talented than she was, and she gushed over the woman’s fall landscapes—reds with such vibrant golds, tangerine, crimson, and even green, as leaves didn’t change color all at the same time.
“These are incredible,” Briar said.
“All right, everyone,” the instructor called, and Teri quickly took her phone back, smiled at Briar, and the two of them settled onto their stools. The instructor stood up on a platform so that they could see her past their easels, and she wore a light-blue dress with an art apron over it.
Briar had not brought an apron, as it had not been on the list of supplies she’d been told to bring, and she glanced around to see if anyone else had.
“My name is Arantha Adams,” the woman said. “I know it’s a pretty weird first name—my mother was from Colombia—and I mostly go by Ari.”
She smiled and extended her arms wide to both sides.
“I’ve been painting since I was a child, and I attended art school at the Art Institute of Chicago.
” She grinned and scanned the students. “We’re going to be here together for the next twelve weeks, learning and experimenting with watercolors, and I’ve brought you all a gift. ”
She stepped over to a table where she also had an easel.
“Now don’t all rush up at once, but you can come forward and get your art aprons.
I sewed these myself, and I make one for all of my students, because you need somewhere to wipe your hands or your brush, and you don’t want it to be on your clothes.
” She grinned out at all of them. “Though I suppose with watercolors, it would wash out easier than other types of mediums.”
She held up one apron that had been done in a bright patchwork quilt of colors with black rickrack between the squares. “Come on; don’t be shy. Come get your aprons.”
Briar stood up and followed Teri past her easel to the aisle, suddenly anxious to get her art apron. This was the second apron that had meant so much to her in the past couple of weeks, and as Briar tied it around her waist, she could almost feel Tarr’s hands doing it for her.
She felt like she’d climbed so many mountains in such a short time and turned several corners, and as she settled back at her station for the first lesson, that same feeling descended upon her.
I see you ran through her head, and it took her a moment to realize that it was a message from God.
Warmth filled her from head to toe, because while she believed in God and even prayed to Him, she hadn’t felt like He knew who she was or cared where she went or saw anything she did, but the words I see you rang through her mind again, as did I always have.
You are mine, and I will never abandon you.
Briar’s vision blurred behind tears, and she quickly blinked them away as Ari was already demonstrating the first lesson—blending colors to make skies—and she didn’t want to miss a moment of this class.
She also didn’t want to miss another moment of living her life, and she realized that the past few years had been exactly that: her trying to hide from who she’d been and trying not to live her life. She hadn’t become the person she should be, the person God wanted her to be.
“And this is just the first step,” Ari said, and Briar could apply that to almost every aspect of her life as she started mixing her paint and her water and swishing her brush across the canvas.
Some of the burdens she’d been carrying simply washed onto the paper. She didn’t have to carry them anymore. The canvas could. She never had to carry them again, because Christ would.
As her class finished and Briar started packing up her things and looking at Teri’s sky and gushing over how she’d gotten the blue and indigo to fade so perfectly together, she couldn’t wait to get back to the farm and tell Tarr everything, from how she’d made a new friend, learned a new skill, and realized that she was a child of a God who had not forgotten her.