Chapter 7 – Kaitlyn
SEVEN
KAITLYN
The pickup bumped over every rut in the dirt road, away from the butte, towards Widow’s Peak. I could still feel the burn on one side of my ass, and twisted in the passenger seat to put more weight on the other cheek.
“You okay?” he asked me.
Since I was blissed out from the greatest orgasm of my life, and my brain was still mostly numb, yeah, I was totally okay. “Yes, I’m fine. I wouldn’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“I wouldn’t ask for something, and then complain about the effects of it.”
“Noted. But you understand, it’s my job to take care of you from beginning to end?”
“If the BBQ lives up to the hype, you will have succeeded.”
He chuckled under his breath.
“Can I ask you something?” I asked him, interlocking my fingers in my lap to keep them still.
“Anything.”
“How do you know how to do it? ”
He didn’t say anything, but I could sense his eyebrows lift behind his aviators.
“You know what I mean,” I said, feeling embarrassed. Maybe we weren’t supposed to talk about what happened. Maybe the first rule of spanking was, we don’t talk about spanking?
“I’m afraid I do not.”
“All that stuff back there. Like you just know the right thing to do and say. I guess you’ve done this a lot before.”
He turned his head and smiled. That was always something I remembered about Tag.
He had this big smile that took up his whole face.
So incongruent with his normally stoic expression.
I think that’s why I had such a crush on him in high school.
It was like he had this secret, that he wasn’t nearly the badass everyone thought he was. But you only knew that when he smiled.
“Darlin, I’m not going to tell you yours is the first ass I’ve smacked, but if you think I’ve taken some kind of kink class, you’d be wrong.”
“So, porn then?”
“I think what you’re asking is, how do I know what makes you feel good?”
“Yes.”
He nodded. “I try to put myself in your head and think about what you need. What might get your focus and hold your attention. There’s a reason the pain turns you on. I’ve broken enough bones over the years to know that when you pass a certain threshold of pain, it’s all your brain can hold onto.”
That made sense. When I did my electric shock core treatments at the spa, all I thought about was my core. Not work, not my next trade, not why I wasn’t being promoted .
“My brain…” I said, but didn’t know how to finish the sentence.
“Can be a scary place?”
I laughed, which was almost as good as the orgasm. Who was I kidding? It was nowhere near as good as that orgasm. Nothing would come close to that orgasm. Maybe making partner? Seemed unlikely from this boneless plane of existence where I was currently living.
“That shit with my family,” I said, and he shook his head.
“Oh no, don’t go thinking about them and ruining all my hard work.”
Startled by his candor, I laughed again. When did Tag get so funny? Did I know this about him in high school? Probably not.
Tag pulled off the dirt road onto pavement, and then a couple miles later, he turned onto another dirt road past a sign painted black that just said Chuck’s BBQ.
“Kinda far away from town for a restaurant, isn’t it?”
“Nothing about this place makes much sense. Chuck cooks when he feels like it. Then he calls Harmony and she has a sign on the front window of the store she uses to let everyone in town now he’s open for a time.
He’ll sell BBQ until he runs out, and then it might be a couple of days until he bothers again. ”
“That is not a practical business model.”
“Works, though,” Tag said.
Chuck’s BBQ was a double wide trailer with a bunch of picnic tables set up in front. Luckily, they were all empty. I looked around the truck to find my purse down in the footwell and opened it to get my phone.
Mom and Harmony had each texted. And called. I ignored those .
I had over fifteen texts and seventy emails from work. Apparently, a family crisis didn’t translate to out of touch. Most of the texts were just directions to read emails ASAP so I didn’t need to reply.
I put the phone back in the purse and got out of the truck.
I would eat first, deal with work second, then think about what came next.
“Have a seat. I’ll fix us up,” Tag said, and walked over to the trailer and banged on the door next to a service window.
Gingerly, I took a seat at the picnic table. My butt felt like it was three times its normal size. I tossed my purse on the table, and then, because I couldn’t shake the habit, pulled out my phone again, answering some of the easiest emails just to plow through some of the low hanging fruit.
See, look at that dedication. She cares about the firm more than anything else that’s happening in her life. We should immediately make her a partner.
That’s what I wished they might think.
The reality was, they would expect answers to their questions, family crisis or not. One of the partner’s assistants was answering emails in the labor and delivery room while giving birth to her first child.
It was a culture of total accountability and access.
I felt the noise fill my brain again. The pressure and need to constantly be working.
To prove myself.
Don’t ruin all my hard work.
Right. I put my phone away and tried to just…be.
Widow’s Peak, where we were sitting, was high enough I could look back at the town nestled in the valley. It was pretty up here. Nothing but blue sky and the high plains coming to life after a long winter .
Funny, the Gulch seemed bigger from the peak. Full of all those good people Tag was worried about who had no idea how vulnerable their lives were. If I refused to help the McGraws. Or worse, if I did help, and failed, how long would the Gulch hold on? Four years? Five? Less?
How long had today taken, anyway?
For my mother to sit me down, take a deep breath, and explain that once upon a time she’d been deeply in love with Leroy McGraw. And he’d been in love with her. Leroy had gone to his family, to explain that he wanted to marry my mom, and they’d told him if he did, he’d be cut off.
Leroy McGraw chose his family and money over Mom. And he went on to marry the woman they wanted him to marry.
It was everything that Harmony had already shared with me these past few months.
However, what I didn’t know, what my sisters didn’t know, was that the story hadn’t ended there.
And, apparently, Leroy and Monica hadn’t stopped loving each other. They had an affair, which resulted in my mom getting pregnant with me. But when Monica went to tell Leroy, he was already breaking things off with her because his wife was pregnant again.
So she never said a word to him.
Then my Dad showed up in town, and took one look at Mom, and didn’t give a shit that she was pregnant with another man’s baby. He had been committed to her and me from the start.
Which, of course, made sense, because Edward, my dad, had been the best dad ever. I’d never once, throughout my whole life, felt like he’d treated me differently from my sisters.
But, somehow, I’d always known I was different.
So, Leroy had always been suspicious about Monica’s pregnancy, but hadn’t confronted her about it…me…until he knew he was dying.
How did I forgive my mother for keeping this secret, or for dropping it on me like this? What was I supposed to do now? Did everything change? Did nothing change?
Tag put down a paper plate in front of me, filled with food. Burnt ends, beef ribs, brisket, with a massive piece of cornbread.
“This is too much food,” I said, even as I unrolled my plastic fork and knife.
“I asked for the small plate,” he said, and he took his seat across from me with his own massive plate of food. “I’ll take care of whatever you don’t eat.”
He let me pick through the burnt ends before he took off his sunglasses and hit me with his penetrating gaze.
“You ready to talk?”
I lifted a single shoulder. “What’s there to talk about, really? My mom lied, my dad lied. Mr. McGraw lied. Both my fathers are dead, so there is no point in wondering what could have been. It’s best just to be practical about the whole matter.”
He said nothing, just sat there watching me. His food growing cold in front of him.
“What?” I pressed. “You want me to collapse on the dirt and sob my eyes out? You want me to scream at the sky for being lied to by the people I trusted the most? What does any of that get me?”
“Okay, if we’re going to put aside how angry you must be, let’s talk about the practical shit. You staying or going?”
I wiped my mouth with the paper napkin and pushed my plate toward him, so he could have what I didn’t finish .
“You mean, am I still willing to save the Swinging D, knowing what I know?”
“I get why this particular moment is all about you, Sunshine. What your mom and pop did wasn’t cool.
And, if the intention was to keep it a secret forever, then McGraw shouldn’t have done what he did, either.
But the old man was a manipulative bastard, and he thought he could use the truth to compel you to stay and help.
That’s what this was all about. If you said, ‘I’m heading back to New York tonight’, I don’t know if there is anybody that wouldn’t understand that. ”
I opened my mouth to say something, but he put his hand up to stop me.
“However, the Swinging D would still be in trouble. The town would still be in trouble. Your sisters’ businesses would be at risk. You know as well as I do, that without the ranch, and the activity around it, there just isn’t enough work here to sustain these people.”
“Towns die all the time.”
“No, sweetheart. They don’t die, they decay. Slowly, over time. I’ve been to enough places out west to see it happening, and it’s always sad and drawn out. Like a body dying of cancer.”
If I didn’t help, Tag would lose his home, too.
And Tag didn’t deserve that.