Chapter 28
Gabriel
If it weren’t for the smell of cattle and the bellowing of at least a hundred head, this might actually be a cool moment. On the ridge above the cows, I can see River across the way, and through the dust and incessant clopping and mooing, there she is. And she seems happy to see me.
I’m relieved. I started walking when I woke up to her gone. Her phone and wallet were still there in the bedroom, so I wondered what was up. As I passed Sebastian and Elianna’s place, they were out doing yardwork and pointed me in the right direction.
I headed down, concern dully scratching at my brain. Kissing her last night reassembled parts of my brain that had been dead for a long time. I had to make sure she’s okay. I can’t mess up the good feelings between us.
Except now, River goes from smiling to panic-stricken in seconds, her eyes going wide. Her hands are waving in the air and she covers her head with them, like she’s ducking and running for cover.
It’s not until she smacks her own arm, then her knee, that I understand. She’s being bitten or stung by something. A lot of somethings.
I’m on the ridge directly across from her and she breaks out in a run. She’s in pain. I believe it’s a swarm of wasps. There are nests all over around here.
Without a thought, I’m down on the road. I look both ways at the press of cattle in front of me, and step into the madness. They’re slow enough that I can dodge between them, right?
Do cows attack people? I’m not going to wait around to find out, so I weave and bob in between them. I vaguely hear one of the cattle drovers shout a “Hey! Get back here!”
from high above his perch on his horse. But it’s too late to turn back. I have to keep going and hope for the best.
The cows seem . . . terrified of me. They’re bellowing at me with vacuous eyes, dancing around me with the finesse of a hippo in a tutu. I stop and start, speed up and slow down until I’m through.
When I reach River, her eyes are streaming with tears, her hair is slipping out of its ponytail, and red welts cover her arms.
“River!”
She collapses into my arms. I wrap one arm around her waist and try to help her back over to the stump.
“No.”
She shakes her head and wheels back around. “Nest.”
“Of course. Sorry.”
The nest was in the stump.
The drover who is stationed at the road with a big, orange flag gives us a look of loathing. Yeah, that was probably a stupid thing to do, and I might have riled up at least a couple of the cows walking through there like that.
But my wife was in danger.
We reach a large rock far from the stump and I help her sit. There’s an angry, white welt over her collarbone.
I move her hair off her face, and we’re both breathing heavily. “I’m going to call for help. Just breathe. I know it hurts.”
I’m hurting. My own skin stings because hers does.
“Are you allergic?”
She shakes her head, her face wet with tears. “No,”
she manages. I call Sebastian and ask him to drive down the road and bring ice packs and Benadryl.
“But hurry. When you see a cow migration, you’ll know you’re in the right place.”
I don’t wait for him to respond. And I don’t know how he’s going to manage to get across to help us. The thought of him walking through a herd of cows? Laughable. Except, if he had to, he would.
I make a mud paste with the dirt beneath our feet and water from the bottle I grabbed before leaving the cottage.
Settling in behind her on the rock, my legs on the outside of hers, I pull her close to me. I spread the mud in my hand along the largest welts I can see. First the one on her collarbone, then several on her arms. She sucks in a breath at the cold paste. Her breathing has slowed a little. “There, that’s good. Focus on the breathing.”
I kiss her below her ear, and she turns her head to bury it into my neck further. “It’s going to be okay.”
She closes her eyes and sinks back against me. We wait. Then, a slight giggle.
She’s laughing?
“Cowboy, take me away!”
Now she’s singing? And terribly off-key, to boot.
My lips find her warm temple and I feather a kiss. Then I focus on the woman I love in my arms and will Sebastian to get here soon.
He arrives within minutes and waits in his car as the last of the cows pass. He turns onto the shoulder of the road to pick us up, rolls down his window, and puts the car in park.
I help her down the ridge and into the car. “Hospital or your place?”
Sebastian shoots out.
“Our place,”
River says.
I’ve already got the Benadryl out and measured. “Are you sure?”
I ask. “River, it’s pretty bad.”
“Do you have any stings on the face?”
Sebastian asks.
She shakes her head, and I grab her chin to make sure.
“If she doesn’t, she might not need the doctor,” he says.
“I’m not having an allergic reaction,”
she insists. “It feels like I’ve been attacked by a dozen porcupines, is all.”
“It wouldn’t hurt to have you looked at by a doctor.”
I help her with the medicine and ice packs.
But the look she gives me is one of iron will. “Just take us home, Sebastian.”
When I get her settled on the sofa inside the cottage, I’m pulling up my phone for home remedies for wasp attacks.
“Dr. Internet insists I get you in the bath.”
Another curse word from her and half a smile. “I can get myself in my own bath, thanks.”
“I’ll draw it for you.”
I don’t wait for a response but go in the bathroom, turn on the water, grab a box of baking soda from the kitchen, and start dumping the whole thing in.
Back in the living room, River’s arms are even redder through the cakes of mud.
“Are you having trouble breathing at all? Any itchiness?”
I say, scrolling through my phone. “Maybe we should take you in just to be safe.”
“I need the pain to stop. I don’t need to sit in an ER for an hour or more.”
She’s rubbing her arms and legs, and once again, I feel helpless.
“Get in the bath. This is going to sound weird, but I don’t feel comfortable with you being in there alone before we know if you’re going to have a reaction. I saw the movie My Girl and it scared the crap out of me, okay?”
She’s scratching her arm, dried mud puffing into the air. “I’m not going in the tub with you sitting on the freaking toilet.”
“What if I stand?”
She rolls her eyes. “I’m fine. I’m not showing any signs of allergy. And if I do, I’ll yell for help.”
“What if you can’t yell?”
My stomach wrenches again with fear.
“I will keep the door unlocked and open a crack and you can stand out here and speak to me through the crack.”
Her tone is rough, but tears still dot the ends of her eyelashes. “If I don’t respond, you have my permission to enter the bathroom, okay?”
“That sounds good.”
“And Gabriel? I swear if you don’t give me the privacy I deserve, I’ll . . .”
She doesn’t finish her sentence, just groans and enters the bathroom.
I speak through the small opening, closing my eyes tight. “I won’t peek. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”
I hear her clothes hitting the floor. She turns the water off and that’s when I hear her humming that Chicks’ song about a cowboy taking her away. The water makes a sloshing sound as she climbs in.
Don’t peek, man.
Every couple of minutes I touch base with her by voice and she responds with a “I’m fine!”
And now, I start thinking of words to nursery rhymes in my head so I can get the image of her washing herself out of my mind.
She must be feeling better because her voice perks up. “Last night, we mentioned coming clean to your family. What are your thoughts on that today?”
Coming clean isn’t the real issue here, and we both know it. But it’s a slightly more temperate topic than the scorching hot one of making this the kind of relationship that lasts.
I sigh and she speaks again. “There are things about last night that I may or may not be ready to talk about, okay?”
A light lilt of laughter, a shyness, comes over her. “But this is important. Because I also think we should tell them at some point. I mean, if you still want to try to make this thing . . . not pretend, not business . . . we need to come clean and have a fresh start.”
“Agreed. And I do want that, River.”
“Well . . . good. Me, too. And what will you do if your father’s upset about it?”
“I—don’t exactly know.”
I rub the back of my neck. “Since Prague, I’ve started to realize what a weight this has been, to try to make him proud enough of me that it spills over onto my brothers, too. I’ve always thought if I could keep up the relationship with him, I could influence him to open up to my brothers. Because I noticed something when I was younger, that when it was easy between us, his worries were contained. He was less stressed about the business and the family. If I could keep him happy—”
A slosh of bath water and a squeak as she moves a leg across the surface of the tub. “That’s an unfair burden on a kid, though.”
“I know. I realize that now,”
I say. “But old habits die hard.”
“Tell me about it. I think, though, that we can help each other through our bad habits.”
Thoughts hammer in my head. There’s so much to say. I open my mouth to reiterate what I said last night, that I want this marriage to be real. But then, she changes the subject.
“I got attacked by wasps once when I was little. Probably eight or nine. Skye and I had been riding our bikes. The hornets didn’t so much as touch her, but I got six or seven good stings. My mom helped me bathe in baking soda.”
I slide my back down the wall of the short hall outside the bathroom and ease myself to a sitting position on the floor. “What were your parents like?”
There’s a long pause, and it sounds like she’s cutting her hands through the water’s surface, swishing it to make swirling eddies.
Finally, “Schoolteachers. Eighth and ninth grade. They used to joke that my mom broke ‘em down in eighth so my dad could build them back up again in ninth.”
I laugh. “Your mom was the strict one?”
“With her students, yes. But they were both greatly loved at the school. My mom taught math, but she immersed the kids in it. They barely knew they were learning because she’d spend a whole unit on these complex simulations—rocket ship crewmates or running a pretend mall full of shops—it was intense. Their assignments involved things the students would encounter in those immersive simulations.”
She stops, like she’s lost in memories. “After they passed away, the school created an entire curriculum around her system.”
“Wow. What did your dad teach?”
“Psychology and social studies. So when I say he built them up, he really knew how. He did a lot of community outreach stuff, promoting things like emotional intelligence and healthy family systems.”
“River, I’m sorry they’re gone.”
I’ve ripped away a small piece of her agony and it’s slamming into me now.
The clean, fresh scent of soap wafts out of the cracked open door.
Her light splashing of water stills. “I am, too,”
she whispers. “I think they would have loved you, Gabriel. I think they would have appreciated how much you make me smile.”
“I do love to try to make you smile. It has the best, built-in reward.”
“What?”
“The reward? Your smile, of course.”
“My smile has been hard fought.”
She hesitates. “I grasped this identity of someone soldiering on after my parents’ crash. For Skye. But no one knew how much effort that took. What a mask I had to strap on every single day.”
“That’s painful.”
I pause. “You don’t need the mask with me. I know what I said about loving your smile, River. But I want to know everything about you. The ups and the downs. I want to help you hold all of it.”
She doesn’t say anything and the water’s quiet. “River? You okay?”
That’s when I hear a sniff.
“Yes.”
Her soft voice is a shadowy echo against the water and the tile.
“Good. Let it out.”
She does. Her quiet shaking and gentle gasps of air are breaking my heart. I want nothing more than to walk in there, climb in the water with her, and hold her.
Maybe someday I can.
I hope so. She’s been abandoned by her parents—through no fault of their own. But I have to be strong for her. Steady and present. Patient with her pain.
Can I do this? The “philandering gambler”
side of me can’t.
But that isn’t the real me. I know.
When she emerges, ruddy faced and in a cloud of soap-scented steam, she’s in that bathrobe again. If I could paint, if I had any artistic ability at all, I’d paint her in that thing.
I tug her close and lead her to the sofa, which I’ve covered with a clean sheet. “Lie down and I’ll apply calamine.”
“Calamine?”
“Elianna dropped it off. And I should try to remove the stingers, too.”
She reclines and I’m on my knees on the floor next to her, using tweezers and sponging her skin with cotton balls soaked in chalky pink liquid.
“I can’t believe you risked life and limb to help me,” she says.
“Of course I helped you.”
I gently roll up one of her sleeves and start dabbing that arm.
“It was foolish, Gabriel. Cattle stampedes are a real thing.”
“I’m an expert cattle weaver inner and outer.”
She laughs. “Don’t you know that a thousand people die every year in the US from cow stampedes?”
I glower. “No, they don’t.”
“Okay, so they don’t.”
She beams. “But still, those cowboys were mad. If there hadn’t been so much mooing, they probably would have chewed us out.”
“The mooing was pretty loud.”
“It got annoying.”
She smiles, and I reach over to grab a lock of hair and move it out of her way.
Pressing a pink-soaked cotton ball on a welt on her collarbone, I thank her for letting me do this.
She gives a strangulated moan. “I’m sorry you have to.”
She tries to sit up halfway, but I stop her.
“It’s fine. I don’t mind.”
Of course I don’t mind. Are you kidding me? “It’s nice that you’re being taken care of, instead of being the one who takes care of everyone.”
“I don’t take care of everyone.”
“River. I’ve seen you with your sister, and your sister’s dog, and everybody at Tate.”
She scoffs, but then her face pulls into a frown. “I’ve been with the company a long time. I’m sorta the mama.”
I take her in for a moment before I shake my head. “Mamas need help sometimes.”
I gently lift one of her legs and inspect it for more welts. “Did I miss any stings?”
She sits up. “Probably. But I can get those areas myself.”
My mind stalls on “those areas.”
I love all her areas. But I don’t say that. I hope someday, in time, I can. That I could tell her how much she means to me.
I have to stand and back away from her because this is getting more and more difficult to keep the boundaries we’ve set. I busy myself in the kitchen with feeding treats to the dog so she doesn’t keep trying to jump up on River.
How am I not going to mess this up? She’s too beautiful. She’s too . . . River. There is no one like her.
Am I going to be able to make this work?