23. Gianna
— ? —
Gianna
Maya took Alex for the night. First time I’d been away from him overnight since he was born, and I spent the first twenty minutes overthinking it.
“He’s fine,” Orion said, watching me fidget in the passenger seat. “Maya’s raised four kids of her own. She knows what she’s doing.”
“I know she does.”
“And she has your number. And my number. And the pediatrician’s number.”
“Yes.”
“And she’ll call if anything…”
“Orion.” I turned to look at him. “I know. I’m just… adjusting.”
He nodded and didn’t push further and drove.
“For what it’s worth,” he said after a moment, “I checked my phone six times in the last hour to make sure I hadn’t missed a call from her.”
“Only six?”
“I’m trying to be cool about it.”
“How’s that working out?”
“Terribly.” He shot me a sideways glance, and there was something warm in it. Something that made my stomach flip. “You’re handling it better than I am.”
“I’m handling it by not handling it.”
“Ah, the denial approach. Classic.”
I found myself smiling despite the anxiety still humming under my skin. This was new, this easy banter, this lightness between us. We’d had it once, before. I’d almost forgotten what it felt like.
I’d expected him to take me somewhere fancy. A restaurant with a waiting list and a tasting menu. A rooftop bar with craft cocktails and a view of the city. The kind of place where his money announced itself before we even sat down.
Instead, he pulled off the highway onto a gravel road I’d never noticed before.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
The gravel took us past a dark line of mesquite and then opened onto a parking lot full of pickup trucks and dusty sedans. Beyond it, a low wooden building with neon beer signs glowing in the windows and the sound of live music drifting into the night.
A dance hall.
“I’ve lived in Texas two years,” I said, staring at the building. “I’ve never been inside one of these.”
“I know.” He cut the engine and turned to face me. “You told me. First year we were together. You said you always wanted to learn to two-step but never had anyone to teach you.”
I remembered saying that vaguely. One of those throwaway comments you make when you’re in love and everything feels significant, before you learn that the person you’re talking to isn’t really listening.
Except apparently he had been.
“I kept meaning to fix that,” he said quietly. “I just never did.”
“You remembered.” My voice came out thick.
“You’ve been telling me things for three years.” He held my gaze. “I’m finally doing something with them.”
We went inside.
The dance hall was everything I’d imagined and nothing like what I’d expected.
Sawdust on the wooden floor. Christmas lights strung along the rafters year-round.
A stage at one end where a four-piece band was playing old country songs I half-recognized.
The air smelled like beer and leather and something sweeter underneath, maybe the hay bales stacked decoratively in the corners.
“Come on.” Orion took my hand and led me toward the dance floor. “I’ll teach you.”
“I’m going to step on you.”
“Probably. That’s okay.”
Turns out the rancher could two-step. Of course he could. He’d probably learned before he could walk, growing up on this land, surrounded by people who moved to this music as naturally as breathing.
He was patient with my feet. Counted the beats for me. Didn’t flinch when I stomped on his boots for the third time in a row.
“Sorry, sorry…”
“You’re doing fine.” He spun me out, and I went the wrong way, and he caught me before I could crash into another couple. “Better than fine.”
“Liar.”
“I never lie about dancing.”
“That seems like a very specific moral code.”
“A man has to have standards.” He pulled me back in, and suddenly we were close, closer than we’d been in months. His hand splayed across my lower back, warm through my shirt. “Besides, you’re a natural. You just don’t know it yet.”
“I’ve stepped on you four times.”
“Five, actually. But who’s counting?”
“Apparently you are.”
“Only because each one gives me an excuse to hold you tighter.” His voice dropped. “In case you fall.”
I looked up at him. The Christmas lights caught his face, softened the angles, made him look younger. More like the man I’d fallen in love with and less like the one who’d broken my heart.
“I’m not going to fall,” I said.
“I know.” His hand pressed more firmly against my back. “But I’m going to be here anyway. Just in case.”
The band shifted into something slower. Orion pulled me closer, one hand warm on my lower back, the other clasped around mine. We swayed more than danced, my head coming to rest against his shoulder, his chin brushing the top of my hair.
“I missed your laugh,” he said quietly, so close I could feel the words against my skin. “I missed making you laugh.”
“I missed laughing.”
We stayed until the band stopped playing.
He bought me cheap beer and loaded nachos, and we sat in a corner booth talking about nothing important.
The first movie we’d seen together (a terrible romantic comedy neither of us had really watched).
The argument we’d had about whether his ranch dogs counted as indoor pets (they did, he was just wrong about it).
The time I’d tried to make his grandmother’s pecan pie recipe and nearly set the kitchen on fire.
Small things, forgotten things. The threads of a life we’d built together before I’d started feeling invisible in it.
“We should do this more often,” I said as we walked back to the truck.
“Dancing?”
“Talking. Just… being together. Without pressure. Without anything we have to figure out.”
“I’d like that.”
He opened my door for me, an old habit. One I’d stopped noticing until I started noticing again.
Then he hesitated. His hand on the door, his eyes on mine.
The parking lot was dark except for the neon glow from the dance hall. The music had stopped, but I could still feel it in my bones. Or maybe that was just my heartbeat, suddenly too loud in my ears.
“Can I kiss you?”
My heart stuttered in my chest.
I thought about it. About everything we’d been through. About the woman I’d been months ago and the woman I was now, standing outside a dance hall in the Texas Hill Country, feeling something I’d almost forgotten how to feel.
He waited, and didn’t push. He stood there with hope and fear warring in his expression, giving me all the power I’d never had before.
I leaned up and pressed my mouth to his.
His breath caught. His hand tightened on the truck door.
I meant to pull back. I meant to climb in and let the night stay sweet and unfinished. I didn’t.
I kissed him again, slower, and his restraint cracked like thin ice. A sound left him, low and almost pained, and then his mouth opened under mine, and four months of careful distance collapsed in the space between one breath and the next.
He crowded me back against the open door, one hand at my waist, the other still braced on the frame like he needed something solid. The kiss turned hungry. Like he’d been waiting for permission and now that he had it, he didn’t know how to be reasonable about it.
“Inside,” I whispered against his mouth. “Orion. The truck.”
He went still for half a second, like he was making sure he’d heard me right. Then he was lifting me onto the passenger seat, following me in, pulling the door shut behind him with a quiet thunk that sounded too loud in the dark.
The windows were already starting to fog at the edges.
He kissed me like he had all night and none of it. Mouth, jaw, the place beneath my ear that made my fingers fist in his shirt. His hands stayed maddeningly polite, my waist, my back, the outside of my thigh over my jeans, like he was afraid of going too far even while he was already too far gone.
“Hey.” I caught his face. “You can touch me.”
“I am touching you.”
“You’re hovering.”
A rough laugh against my mouth. “There’s a parking lot full of trucks out there, Gianna.
One good shove and this whole thing starts rocking like a confession.
” His thumb traced the waistband of my jeans, stopped.
Didn’t go under. “And you had surgery four months ago. I know what they had to do to get him out.” He cut himself off, forehead dropping to mine.
“I don’t want to be the reason anything hurts. ”
Something in my chest went tight and warm at the same time.
“Nothing hurts,” I said. “Not like that. I’m cleared. I’ve been cleared. You’re the only one still treating me like I might split open.”
“Because I wasn’t there.” His voice was wrecked already, and we still had our clothes on. “Because I’ve spent weeks watching you wince getting out of bed and knowing I wasn’t in the room when it happened. Because I don’t get to be careless with you anymore. I already was. I’m not doing it again.”
I kissed him for that. Soft, grateful. Then I took his hand and put it under my shirt, over the faint ridge of the scar, and held it there.
He went very, very still.
“It’s just skin now,” I whispered. “It’s not a warning. It’s proof we made it. Touch me like you used to. Please.”
His fingers spread, gentle as prayer, tracing the line like it was something sacred instead of something he was afraid of. Then his mouth followed, pushing my shirt up, kissing along the scar with a tenderness that made my eyes burn.
“You carried him,” he murmured against my stomach. “You walked around with my whole world inside you and then they cut you open to get him out.”
“Orion…”
“You’re the best thing that ever happened to this ranch. To me. To that little boy sleeping at Maya’s.” He kissed higher, between my breasts, then found my mouth again. “I don’t deserve how patient you’ve been. I’m going to spend a long time trying anyway.”
I pulled his shirt off. He let me. The neon from the dance hall painted a thin red line across his collarbone. I put my mouth there and felt him shiver.