Chapter Forty-Five
Icrouched before the woodfire. Stot placed a blanket on my shoulders, his hands resting one breath.
His shack was cozy, colorful afghans tossed all over, One Eye lounging before the blaze, a knotted rug the hues of sunset warming his oak floor.
I ran a hand along One Eye’s back and held off a shiver, the prophetic vision of the homesteader haunting the edge of my thoughts.
It was fantastical, I couldn’t explain it, but I recognized her.
Not because she kept arriving on my land, but because I remembered her.
The embers crackled; the air scented of smoke and storm.
I was much obliged that the voices urged me to take cover. As we led Cricket to a stall, Stot and I hollered over the wind about the cyclone. His cellar wasn’t large enough for us both, so we’d wait out the thundershaker aboveground.
I rubbed my face, One Eye draping his body over my boots.
“I could—” I wanted to check on my animals, but my horses should be safe in the barn and my cows should instinctively migrate to the lowland.
Stot removed his pocket watch and placed it on the side table with a clack. Then he lowered beside me.
“Your animals ought to be fine.” His hand swept my jawline, brushing back a loosed curl. “I’ll ride on over, after the cyclone passes, check on them.”
I nodded. A soup gurgled on the stovetop, scenting of spice and potatoes.
I went to the window, pulling aside the starchy lace curtain to check the sky.
Just the swell of rain clouds and the shatter of storm.
I fidgeted with the hoop of my key, the necklace now resting below my collarbone.
As he moved about making tea, Stot glanced at my fingers, a faint gentling beside his eyes.
He handed me a cobalt flow-blue teacup. I sipped, chamomile sweetened with honey, and looked out the window, the ink of night pouring over his land, a scrawl of lightning to the south.
Stot stood behind me, his chest warm against my back.
He threaded an arm across my shoulders and tucked me against him, his shirt smelling of evergreens.
Thunder rattled the walls. I turned, the bristly blanket snagging on his soft flannel, the firelight turning his eyes hazel.
He was nothing like anyone I’d met before.
Others seemed a gesso haze when Stot was full color and texture.
I scraped my nails up his nape and touched my lips to the underside of his jaw.
He slid his palm along my neck and kissed me, slow and deep.
A moment, warmth from the fire flushing my cheeks, then I tugged up his shirt, reached for his trouser button.
He stepped back, the hollows of his cheeks deepening. “Are you sure you want this?”
“I think?”
“You know I want you.” Under my blanket, he ran a hand over my hip, brushed the side of my breast. “But I want us to be a choice you can’t walk away from. One that you choose because it’s all the options.”
There were unending options in life, unending people and places and possibilities.
I could have stayed in Kansas, I could have fled.
That first day in the creek, I could have been kind to him, I could have argued.
I could have done so many things. How could the future be just one option?
The possibilities seemed endless. But he hadn’t said one option, he’d said all the options.
“All the options?”
“When I look forward,” he said, “I see many likelihoods, but all of them include you beside me.”
The rainstorm rumbled, wind roaring across the prairie. My pulse hammered my throat. His hair was damp, brushed back from his widow’s peak. He asked, “Do you see me in any of your possibilities?”
“Yes.” I spoke instinctively—of course I saw him in my future.
He held my hand, rubbed his thumb across my knuckle. “I want a romance with you, but I would like that to be when you’ve chosen it, not only something that happens in passion, in secret, in the dark.”
I wanted his body on mine. I yearned for those hidden, unlit places—but there was nothing casual or haphazard about Stot.
He was as traditional as he was turbulent.
Honor and vows mattered to him. Of course I wanted a relationship with him—but marriage wasn’t something decided in passion: It was something rational, something chosen.
And watching my parents, I’d seen that marriage wasn’t something chosen once, but daily.
“What about your wife?” I asked. “You never told me her name.”
“Emily,” he said. “My daughter would’ve been Elizabeth, like Emily’s ma.”
I swallowed. “Would you tell me about them?”
“Not now,” he said. “Someday.”
He sat on the couch, settled me across his lap, and wrapped the blanket around our shoulders. “But I reckon you’re wondering, as I said marrying again would dishonor her.”
“You did say that.”
“I did, didn’t I?” He rubbed his scruff.
He shifted his weight, drawing me closer.
“I don’t think I understood what life could be.
Now I can’t figure how a relationship with you, something that feels as inevitable as breathing, would dishonor her.
Emily’s gone, and though I’ll always miss her, the love I have for her memory doesn’t brush up to what I feel for you. ”
I placed my hand on his jaw, tipped his gaze to mine. “I’m sorry you lost them.”
He studied me, flames pattering across the hollows of his cheekbones. He folded my hand into his, pressed his lips to my knuckles. “Thank you.”
We sat together before the fire, One Eye yelping in his sleep, a candle guttering over a brass chamberstick, and considered all that had come before.
I supposed loss was never easy. He unwound the blanket, and his fingertips worked at my top button.
“At least shuck these overclothes, let me hold you.”
As he unbuttoned my blouse, rain plinked on his metal roof and heat from the fire slipped down my neck.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt a more sensual moment than him helping my worn body from my stiff clothes, shaking the blankets to check for critters, leading me in my chemise to bed.
He tucked me below quilts, then slipped outside to check on the animals.
With the windstorm howling outside, the air scenting of warm, sweet beeswax, I realized I could begin my life all over again.
After a time, Stot came back, scenting of rain, and changed into his nightclothes.
He stoked the fire and joined me in bed, his long, hard body warm behind me.
He held me, his inhales and exhales steady, storms roaring beyond.
I rubbed the wiry hair on his arms and snuggled closer, his body a comfort on such a night—and I recognized I’d found something not yet nameable in the wide unknown.
In the morning, with sunlight flashing through his sheer curtains and the sparrows spiraling in their song, with the crackle of woodfire and the distant sound of cattle, in that ease of bright, honest, unhidden day, I reached for him.
He woke, swept me below him. I wasn’t sure of much, but I knew he wasn’t just a reaction to my tragedies, he was something I chose.