Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
The Ranch
I parked the side-by-side at the base of a hill and cut the engine.
We climbed out and Cas came around the hood of the vehicle to grasp my hand.
There was no path where I was taking him.
But he was quiet as I led him up the hill.
The fading sun kissed green earth, turning everything a whimsical gold.
“Gorgeous, isn’t it?” I asked, taking in the surroundings and breathing it in deep.
“Gorgeous,” he agreed.
I looked at him. He wasn’t staring at the view.
“Come on.” My throat thickened as I turned in the direction of my favorite place on earth.
The red cedar tree came into view, its trunk thick with age and deep roots. It leaned to the side and I couldn’t believe it hadn’t fallen over yet.
“Mom found this tree one day on a ride,” I explained. “She loved riding. Exploring. It’s funny. I love exploring too, and you’d think I’d enjoy horseback riding, but it never stuck. Hadley, though. She loves it.”
I took a step closer to the tree and placed my hand on the trunk.
“The tree’s actually dead. It was dead when she found it, but because it’s so old, it can stand for years.
We’re technically not on our land, which is why she never had anyone come tend to it and cut it down. This is national forest.”
Cas came closer to the tree and I watched his eyes scan the bark. I knew he saw it when he stilled, and then placed his palm on the tree.
My mother’s initials and mine were carved inside of a heart.
“She never would’ve carved it on a live tree. She wasn’t about destruction.” I laughed softly. “She wasn’t, yet I am.”
“What have you destroyed, Salem?” His hand dropped from the tree and he placed his hands on my shoulders to turn me to him. “Nature’s a funny thing, you know? Some things can’t grow until other things die.”
He pulled me into his arms and I buried my head against his chest.
“Some trees don’t release their seeds until they burn in a fire,” he said, his lips brushing my head.
Emotions ricocheted through me. My insides rearranged; they burst open and began to make space for something new and beautiful.
My heart had been closed like a metal chest, and yet it suddenly sprang open.
“That day . . . in the shower,” I murmured. “You didn’t make me talk about it. Why?”
“Because if you needed to talk about it, you would have. That wasn’t about me. It was about you. And what you needed.”
“It wasn’t just about my father in the hospital.”
“I know.”
I pulled back, just enough so that I could stare up at him. “I didn’t need to say anything because you just understood.”
“I understand you, Salem.”
“Yeah. You do.”
He leaned down and pressed a kiss to my forehead. “I think a lot of people try to change each other instead of loving the person as they are.”
I buried my face against his chest again. “I wish you’d known her.”
“You’ll tell me about her. You’ll show me photos. You’ll tell me stories. And I’ll listen.”
“Death is so weird, Cas. It’s so very personal and yet universal.
My world changed when she died. And I looked around at everyone else and I just wanted to scream because they were smiling and happy and they had no idea that someone so wonderful was gone.
I was angry—on their behalf—because they’d never gotten to know what a wonderful, amazing woman she was. ”
Tears I couldn’t contain finally spilled from my eyes. They blotted his shirt, but they wouldn’t stain. When his shirt dried, there would be no evidence that they’d ever been. Only a memory.
She was a memory.
And one day, I wouldn’t be here to remember her anymore either.
“Why do we do this?” I wailed. “Why do we live? What’s the point of it all if all we do is lose the ones we love?”
He cradled my cheeks and forced me to look at him. “We live to love, Salem. That is the reason. It’s the only reason that makes it worth it.”
My heart fissured even more. It cracked all the way open, and pain and remorse and loss and love and everything that had to do with hope sprang forth like a geyser that spewed from the broken earth.
But I wasn’t broken.
I’d never been broken. I just hadn’t healed fully.
Not until now.
Cas held me long after the tears had run their course, long after the emotions had passed, long after the sun had finally set.
I pulled back and scrubbed my face. “Take me home, Cas.”
We walked down the hill, his arm wrapped around me, the dead tree that would one day be gone from this world behind us.
Cas took me back to the house. He undressed me, put me in his clothes, and then tucked me into my childhood bed, sliding in next to me. He left the bedside lamp on its lowest setting.
We didn’t speak for a long time.
I was exhausted. There was nothing like the storm of an emotional break that left you empty, but lighter in a way too.
“I’m jealous of Hadley and Declan,” he murmured. “They have the cabin—their own space.”
“Not much space. Not with a baby goat and four crazy working dogs.”
“Privacy, Salem. They have privacy.”
“Yeah, privacy would be nice,” I murmured against his chest. “I love that cabin. We used to have movie nights in there.”
“Yeah?”
I nodded. “It was our place to go and hang out with our friends.”
“What kind of movies did you guys watch?” he asked.
“When it was just Hadley and me, we watched old musicals. Mom’s favorites. When we had friends over, we usually let them decide. Never horror movies, though.”
“No?”
“Definitely not. We were in a cabin near the woods. I know how those movies end.”
He chuckled, brushed my hair away from my face, and pressed a kiss to my brow.
“Thank you for showing me the tree.”
“No one else has seen it,” I said.
“No one?”
“No.”
“Not even Hadley?”
“Not even Hadley. It was a me and Mom thing. Hadley has things that are just between her and Mom too, I’m sure of it.
It’s nice, actually. We’re twins, you know?
And people call us the twins and sometimes it feels like we don’t have a separate identity.
Mom always made sure we felt like individuals. ”
His hand stroked up and down my arm. “So, you never showed Gideon the tree either?”
“No. Gideon’s never seen the tree.”
I placed my hand on his heart, loving the steady pulse of it. Reminding me that he was alive. We both were. And that I was no longer scared of the future or what it looked like.
“He sent letters,” I said quietly. “One a week from the moment I left and went to New York. I returned them all to him. Unopened. He stopped writing after a year.”
“Why?”
“Because he finally understood that I wasn’t coming home.”
“No, not why did he stop writing. I meant, why didn’t you open them?”
“Hadley was the only person, the only connection I could stand from home. Everything and everyone else . . . it was too painful. Too much of a reminder. Gideon was everything I was trying to forget. I hurt him, deeply. When I left and when I didn’t answer him.”
“Self-protection.”
“Something like that. I didn’t want to hurt him. But I was hurting too much to even be able to think of anyone else’s pain.”
“You were young.”
“And I’m not young anymore? Old at the ripe age of twenty-three?”
“You’re not even close to old. Not like me.”
“Right. You’re thirty-four. What was it like during the Civil War?”
“Brat.”
I giggled. And then Cas rolled me over so I was on my back, and then he attacked me with tickles until I was gasping for breath.
“Surrender!”
“Never!” I fired back.
He clasped my wrists, held them above my head, and pinned my lower body with his.
Cas peered into my eyes. “You’re a fighter. I love that about you. And I love you, Salem.”
I swallowed. “You love me?”
“Yes.”
No flowery words. No poetic delivery.
Just blunt truth.
Because that was Cas.
“The name inked on my hip,” I said. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
“I know it doesn’t mean anything.”
“No, you don’t understand. It doesn’t mean anything because there is no Jean Luc. It was just a name I had tattooed on me because I knew it would drive other men crazy.”
“Jean Luc doesn’t exist?”
“Nope.”
“There was never a Jean Luc?”
“There was never a Jean Luc.”
He let out a laugh and pressed his forehead to mine. “You were put on this earth to drive me insane. I’m convinced of it.”
I wiggled underneath him.
He moved just enough so I could free my legs. And then I wrapped them around him.
“You’re welcome to drive me insane.” I lifted myself up and brushed my lips against his. “In fact, I insist that you do.”