Chapter Eleven
B uck kept scanning the pandemonium of the yard, waiting to see if she was going to arrive. It was an unseasonably warm September, and they had set up tables outside for their barbecue dinner. His brothers were talking and laughing, and occasionally, even Boone almost smiled at him.
There were kids. So many kids. Toddlers and teenagers scampering around the place.
But he was waiting for Marigold to get there. And suddenly, her car rounded the corner, and both him and Colton stood up. Wow. He was acting like a teenager. Because he looked just like his son.
“Lily’s here,” he said.
“Yeah,” Buck said, rubbing his chest. He had missed Marigold so much over the last few days. All he had wanted was to go to her house, get in bed with her. Take them both to the places they’d gone when they’d made love that afternoon.
He needed her again. So badly, it made his jaw ache.
But there just hadn’t been a chance. Yeah, the kids were in school all day, but they both had inconvenient things like jobs.
He was getting the logistics worked out for the ranch. And the build for her new facility. And she was continuing to do the job she had already been doing.
When Marigold got out of the car, he couldn’t say it was only his body that was affected by the sight of her. It was everything. She made his heart beat faster; she made everything in him feel like it was on red alert. That woman. Good God, that woman.
Colton was halfway to them before they finished getting out of the car entirely. He didn’t have any of the self-possession that Buck did. Buck knew how to play it cool. Buck...was walking toward them too, and he hadn’t even fully realized it.
“Can I help carry anything?” Buck asked, as Marigold got out and opened up the back of the car, taking out a basket.
“If you really want to,” she said.
“I live to serve.”
Her cheeks turned pink, and he knew exactly what she was thinking of.
“You know I do,” he said.
She elbowed him in the stomach. And he laughed.
Then realized that Colton and Lily were watching them.
“You know, she is my best friend’s younger sister,” he said. Like that explained the familiarity. And not that he’d hooked up with her.
It felt good to say it like that. Like she was still Jason’s sister, instead of it just being in the past. And Jason was still his friend. Like he had never lost the right to call him that.
They walked back over to where his family was, and he made introductions: Lily as Colton’s friend, and Marigold as Lily’s mother and his business partner. He had already told his family all about them, and about the fact that he was investing in the business.
Obviously, he had not told them that she was his friend with benefits. Because that was just between them.
Marigold had brought a basket filled with rolls and a couple of different cakes to put on the table for dessert. They paired beautifully with the barbecued brisket, hamburgers and sausages that his father had grilled up.
And even though Buck had been back now for a little while and had experienced family gatherings like this before, this felt different. Significant. Complete in a way that nothing else had.
He looked to his right, at Marigold, and wondered how much of it had to do with her.
Then he looked back at his food.
His sisters-in-law took to Marigold immediately and spent the whole dinner talking her ear off, while Lily was easily chatting to Boone’s stepdaughters, who he intuited she already knew from school.
He stood up to go get another helping of food and just about ran into Boone at the serving table.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
He nearly got a smile out of his brother.
“Marigold is nice,” Boone commented.
“Yeah,” Buck said, frowning. “She is.”
“You seem to like her quite a bit.”
“What’s not to like? Anyway, she’s my business partner, and of course Colton is dating Lily.” How many times had he said this exact thing to different people over the course of them working together, even in conversations with her? An easy, well tread justification for why they spent time together. For why he liked her.
It was the damnedest thing.
“Seems like you’ve been settling in pretty well,” Boone said.
“Yeah. I guess. And the bruise on my face is healing.”
“Sorry about that,” Boone said, clearing his throat. “My wife informed me that it wasn’t an appropriate way to greet my brother.”
“I don’t know about that. You had your feelings. You were entitled to them. I’m not going to pretend that my behavior in the past was...honorable.”
He had talked to all his brothers quite a bit since he had come back. But Boone least of all. And they hadn’t addressed the way they had greeted each other. And he wasn’t sure—was that what was happening now? Maybe there was just enough distance between that moment and this one. Or maybe somehow the difference had to do with Marigold. He couldn’t quite figure out how, but he felt different because she was here.
And maybe Boone could sense that.
“I felt like you left everything to me,” Boone said. “All the grief, all the responsibility. Everything. And I... Believe me when I tell you, a certain part of me gets off on that shit. I’m a champion martyr, Buck. I was in love with my best friend’s wife for over a decade.” He looked across the space, at Wendy, who was currently talking to Marigold. “I wanted her, and I couldn’t have her. And everything in my life felt like a struggle. I think I wanted it to feel like one. But you were my bad object. The person I blamed all of it on. Well, not Wendy being married to somebody else, but all the other stuff. I’ve dealt with a lot of things over the last few years. I have Wendy now. But apparently, I was still carrying around a little resentment toward you.”
This felt comfortable. Being resented. Buck kind of wanted to thank his brother for it.
“Hey. I don’t blame you. What I did back then was selfish. And at the time, I really did believe you were all better off without me here. It’s that kind of depressive thought that sends you down really dark roads. And I went down a pretty dark road. But when the fog finally cleared, I realized how selfish it had been. At that point, I’d been gone so long I didn’t know how to come back. That was selfish too. But part of me really was afraid I was going to disrupt whatever you all had put back together in my absence. I didn’t want to do that. I threw myself into my work, but it was when I adopted those boys that I really understood... Family is important. It makes a huge difference to these boys and...”
“You can say it makes a difference to you,” Boone said.
“Of course it does.”
“Are you glad you’re back?”
He felt like he was being jabbed in the stomach with a red-hot poker. “Yes. Of course I am. I missed you.”
Emotion tightened his throat. He really didn’t like how close to the surface all his feelings were now that he was home. Now that he had kids. Now that he was...trying to be healed. Whatever all of it was...it was creating a damned difficult way to be.
Maybe that was part of why he had avoided coming home for so many years. Maybe that was why he had stayed away. Because somehow he had known that, if he came back here, he was going to feel things. Everything. And yes, he had done a lot of work on himself, but he had also spent a lot of time living a life that allowed him to control what people knew about him, what he talked about and when and what he allowed as far as emotional closeness.
Everything was more volatile here. Everything had been more volatile since he had adopted Reggie, Marcus and Colton. Because there was no control when it came to caring for kids.
They were mean to you, they were wonderful to you, and you loved them all the same. They jerked you around, endlessly. They made you feel like you would cut off a limb to be there for them. To do whatever they needed.
The experience had left him raw and vulnerable, frankly, and coming home had only made it worse.
He’d missed his family.
And he grieved the loss of those years. That was perhaps the hardest part.
Because the loss was his fault. It had been his choice.
And that was something that transcended the guilt he was comfortable with. It overrode the self-flagellation that made him feel most at ease.
“I missed you. And more than that, I wish like hell I hadn’t stayed gone for as long as I did. I regret that. I missed so much of your life. So much of Callie’s. So much of everybody’s. I’d like to say I regret most that I left you with all that responsibility, but hell, I regret the most that we weren’t close. That we have a relationship to rebuild now, because I shattered it. Because I didn’t just...” He closed his eyes. “I lost my friends. And I felt helpless and responsible for that. But maybe feeling responsible was a way to find some place for all that anger to go. Because it’s just such a helpless, infuriating feeling. Losing people you care about like that. I hated it. I still do. And I hate this. I hate that the end result of everything that happened was losing time with my family, even if it was my own choice. When I know how short and fragile everything is.”
“Yeah,” Boone said, looking down. “I mean, I get that. I’m mad at you about that. And I still feel some resentment sometimes toward... Wendy’s ex, I guess. For all the years I couldn’t have her, because he was wasting her time. But mostly... When you get something good, you kinda gotta just take it. I have Wendy now, so what’s the point of being angry about all the years I didn’t have her? What’s the point of being full of resentment? I have what I want.”
“I don’t quite follow.”
“You made your choice. I can’t even say it was a bad one. Because who knows what would’ve happened to you, who knows if you could have healed the way you did, if you hadn’t made the choice. You wouldn’t have ever met your boys. That you don’t regret, do you?”
“No,” he said. “Of course not.”
“Exactly. So... Yeah, parts of this were hard. And there are always going to be things to regret. But those were the decisions you made. So here we are, all together now.”
“Yeah. I guess we are.”
“You like her,” he said, gesturing toward Marigold.
“I... Of course I do. She’s my friend. She’s Jason’s sister. There’s a lot of baggage there.”
Except that felt like the smallest piece of what they were. They understood each other. Because they had both been through difficult things. It was more bonding than baggage, and not in a traumatic way. It was something he would never be able to explain to another person. He wasn’t sure he would ever fully be able to articulate it to himself.
“No. Come on. You know what I mean. You’re into her.”
Buck flashed back to kissing her. “Yeah,” he said. “I am.”
Because there was no point lying when he was sure his desire for her was written all over his face. When he was sure his brother knew him better than that.
In spite of the distance. In spite of the time they had spent apart.
“What are you going to do about it?”
“Are you asking about my sex life?”
“No. I don’t give a shit if you’re sleeping with her or not. What I want to know is—are you going to let yourself have her? I’m not talking about physical stuff.”
Boone was talking about love.
And it was all fine and good for his brother to believe in that sort of thing. For himself.
But Buck... He couldn’t see a way forward with love.
“I’m just... Whatever we can have, for as long as we can have it, that’s what I’m here for,” he said.
“Because?”
“The kids are dating,” he said.
“Right. So you’re going to give precedence to a couple of teenagers’ first relationship over what could be the real thing?”
“No. I... That isn’t it. There’s no way to say this without sounding like a vampire in a teen movie. Okay? But there are just some things that can’t be fixed. There are some scars that leave you too...messed up to move on from.”
“Yeah. You’re right. You do sound like a vampire in a teen movie. Ridiculous. The thing is, Buck, it’s your life. I’m not really sure why you’d choose to live in hell when you’re alive and could choose something different.”
He grimaced. “It is not that simple.”
“Well. I’m glad you’re home. How about that? And someday, I hope all of you comes home.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It means as long as you keep part of yourself hidden away, you’re not really here. You’re not really living. Enjoy your food.”
And Boone walked away, leaving Buck standing there wishing his brother had just punched him in the face instead.