Chapter Fourteen
L ily was safely off with her friends before the dance ended, and Marigold breathed a sigh of relief when the last of the kids filtered out of the gym.
She felt Buck approach, and she turned to him. Her heart lifted, lodging itself in her throat. He was just so...handsome. She wished she could see a way out of how complex all of this was. But there were just so many reasons for what was between them to not be the big romance. And yet it was beginning to feel like one.
She wasn’t sure what to do about that. The best thing to do would be to stop sleeping with him.
Yet she didn’t want to. Hadn’t she done enough behaving?
She didn’t want to behave.
She had lost this part of herself for so many years, and she felt like she was awash in new tones of color ever since the two of them had first kissed.
She couldn’t go back.
“I told the boys I was headed to my parents’ house. That I wouldn’t be home.”
“Oh.”
“I lied to them,” he said.
“You lied to them?”
“Yes. Because I’m a very bad man. And I would like to spend the whole night showing you exactly how bad.”
That was so cheesy. She shouldn’t respond. But she was responding to that. Because she knew about his brand of wickedness, and it lit her skin on fire. It lit her soul on fire.
“Are they going to be all right by themselves?”
“Colton is seventeen. They’ll be fine. I just have to drop them back at home.”
“Okay,” she said.
“I’ll meet you back at your place.”
She drove home, giddy and fizzy. They had a whole night to themselves. The luxury was almost impossible to take on board. Normally, they only had stolen moments during the day.
She wanted to sleep with him. Share the bed with him all night. Let him hold her.
She had ordered some sexier underwear, since this new situation had developed where she actually needed it. So she took the extra time she had to herself to get a bit of a performance together. She found a red lace bra and panties, and put a red silk robe over the top of it. It was a little a cliché, but men were simple. Buck was very simple, in the best way. She didn’t worry about being sexy enough for him. He seemed happy no matter what she was wearing, or not wearing.
She had never really been in... She hesitated to call this a relationship. But it was the closest thing. The same man, a man she talked to, a man she knew, a man who had gotten to know her body as she had gotten to know his.
When he knocked at the door, she hopped in place a couple of times, trying to get the excitement more reasonably distributed through her body so she wasn’t shaking when she went to kiss him.
She opened the door. There he was. Tall and perfect and beautiful. The exact delivery she had been hoping for.
“I can’t believe we have all night.”
He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He didn’t grab her and kiss her like he normally did. He took his time. Slowly, he put his hat on the peg by the door, took his jacket off and hung it there too.
And she was mostly naked.
It was erotic, if a little bit irritating, because it seemed imbalanced.
But instead of commenting on it, she just untied her robe and let it drop down to the floor.
And she could see that whatever he had been intent on doing, he’d lost his resolve completely when he saw her body.
His eyes were like a blue flame, and she felt his own need echo inside of her.
“Well I’ll be damned,” he said.
“Do you like it?”
She sounded more hopeful than she had intended to. A little more insecure. She wasn’t normally insecure. But she did want to hear how much he appreciated her. It was like he had opened up a well of need inside her that she hadn’t known previously existed.
It just felt really good to have someone who seemed to want to spend time with her. To have someone in her life who thought she was beautiful. To be touched, casually and intimately. Intensely and softly. He was everything, all the time.
And she was used to carrying all the things by herself.
But not with him. Not with him.
He closed the distance between them and began to kiss her, deep and hot, carnal.
It didn’t even feel strange anymore. To be everything—every part of herself—that she contained. To know she could have this wildness and still be the Marigold she wanted to be. To know she could be sexual and sensual and responsible and good all at once.
She began to unbutton his shirt, pushed it off his shoulders. She kissed her way down his body and knelt down in front of him, slipping his belt through the buckle.
He grunted as she exposed his hardness to her touch and then, leaned forward and took him in her mouth.
She felt wicked. In the very best way.
Luxuriating in this, in him.
She wanted to give to him.
It was like a dam had broken inside of her. And she knew one thing above all else. She didn’t have a place inside her that was angry at him. Not anymore. She didn’t have a place inside her that grieved her brother separately from everything else in her life. Just like she didn’t have a place inside her that was only good and responsible or a secret chamber where she kept her sexuality. She was everything. Everything all at once. And only when the intensity of those emotions, the certainty of what she felt, was free to flow, to be, could she see the truth.
Yes. Everything was complicated. Yes, they were complicated. But she was falling in love with him all the same. It could never be physical only. Because she had too many feelings for him.
She had made him her bad object once.
She had been slightly concerned for a moment that she was just making him a good object, rather than a whole person. But that wasn’t it. He wasn’t the one who needed to change. She was. She had closed off so much of herself because of fear. She had been the best mother she could be. She loved her daughter. She put all her ferocity, all her care into that relationship. But she hadn’t tried to make friends. She had never tried to have relationships. She had been so careful with her parents.
It was all just trying to protect herself. From bad feelings. From difficult feelings. Trying to be healed when... There was healing to be had, she believed that.
But perhaps more than healing, she wanted to be brave enough to try and dig deep and find a purpose in the tragedy that had happened. Not to make bland comments about how it was God’s will, or it was Jason’s time—she didn’t believe that. It was a mistake. It was a bad thing that happened. And if she could go back and choose it all over again, of course she would never shorten her brother’s life in the name of her personal growth.
But she didn’t get to choose it.
What she got to choose was what she did with it now.
She wanted to love Buck.
She wanted to be a great mother.
She wanted to be a good daughter.
She wanted to be a businesswoman. Someone who mattered in the community.
She wanted to be everything. She wanted to be bold. She wanted to risk. She wanted to care.
She poured all of that into him now. Into pleasuring him.
Everything.
And right when he was on the brink, he gripped her and pulled her to her feet, branding her mouth in a searing kiss. “Marigold,” he said, his eyes wild.
She was pretty sure she had done to him what had just happened to her. That all the walls were down, that everything was flooding out.
That he was everything.
The good man and the bad one. The one who had made mistakes and the one who had spent years trying to correct them. The one who had been made a scapegoat when he didn’t deserve it. The one who had hurt his family. The one who had loved his family.
The boy she had been attracted to then. The man she loved now.
She took his hand and led him up the stairs.
Brought him into her bedroom.
They fell down onto the bed, and he stripped her the rest of the way, rolling her over so she was sitting on top of him. Then he handed her a condom packet.
She tore it open, rolling it over his hard length and positioning herself on top of him.
She took him in, inch by inch, relishing the feeling of joining, knowing that she cared for him. Or rather, enjoying the immense, incredible feeling of not trying to hold anything back.
She clung to his shoulders, clung to him. Rolled her hips in time with her need, riding them both to completion, their harsh cries of pleasure mingling together as they both found their release.
She collapsed over him.
“Stay with me,” she said. “All night.”
“Of course,” he said.
The complicated stuff was just going to have to work out. It just was.
Because she wanted him.
The question was, how big of a risk was she willing to take to have it all?
The last thing Buck expected to see when they tumbled down the stairs the next morning to get coffee was Lily and Colton sitting there at the breakfast table, looking like two disapproving parents.
Marigold stepped behind him, holding her robe closed, and he felt like clutching his own nonexistent pearls at the fact that they had been caught by their children.
“Good morning,” Lily said, looking sideways at Colton.
Colton took a sip of the coffee, looking at Buck disapprovingly. “You didn’t come home last night,” he said.
“No,” Buck said. “But I told Marcus to let you guys know something came up.”
“You did,” Colton said. “You weren’t honest about where you were. You said you had to go to Grandma and Grandpa’s. Is this Grandma and Grandpa’s, Buck?”
“It isn’t,” Buck said, giving his son the most deadpan stare he could manage.
“I didn’t think so. It’s very disappointing behavior.”
“Well, very sorry for disappointing you.”
“We just want to know that you’re being safe,” Lily said.
Marigold sputtered. “Excuse me?”
“Emotions can run high in these situations, and it’s very important to know that you’re making good choices. Your health and safety is very important. As is your future. Mom, you’re about to start a business, and given that, you know it’s not a good time for you to have a baby.”
“A baby!” Marigold looked like she was going to faint away.
“Well, accidents happen,” Lily said.
“And on that topic,” Colton said. “Buck, anybody could see your truck was parked in the driveway all night. You know how the neighbors will talk. And it is much more difficult for the women in these situations than for the men. People are very judgmental.”
“All right,” Buck said. “That’s it. Enough.”
“Don’t take that tone with me,” Colton said. “Sorry,” he said, “it was for the bit.”
“Well the bit is done,” Buck said.
“You just should’ve told us,” Lily said. “Instead, we had to figure it out by watching the two of you at the dance last night.”
“Which anyone could have done,” Colton said. “Because you were putting on a performance for our entire school. How do you think we feel about that?”
Marigold pushed forward. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to...”
“Don’t worry about it, Mom,” Lily said. “I’m not mad. I just wish you would’ve told me.”
“I thought it was too complicated.”
“There’s no complication,” Colton said. “We broke up.”
“What?”
“Yeah,” he said, shrugging his shoulder. “A while ago. We’re just friends now. And we’re going to college at the end of the school year. It’s not that deep.”
Buck stared at his son. He didn’t think Colton was being honest at all. There was a strange kind of detached way he was talking that Buck recognized a bit too clearly from when he had first met Colton at the ranch.
It was the way he responded to trauma. And Buck didn’t like that at all.
“What we wanted to say,” Lily added, “is that there’s no reason you two can’t...do your thing. Date. Whatever this is. You’re adults. And yes, we wanted to give you a hard time, since you gave us a hard time too. But whatever reason you have for hiding it... You just don’t need to anymore.”
That was such a strange sensation. Getting a blessing from their kids. And yeah, he supposed that did mean they didn’t have to hide it anymore. But that also meant they needed to come up with a different label for it. Which he had been pretty aware of for a while now. There were feelings between them, and those feelings transcended the physical. They had for a while. Last night... Last night had been transformative in a way he hadn’t been anticipating. It had changed things.
But he still didn’t know... He still didn’t know what he wanted. Or what it meant.
He just knew that he cared about Marigold, and he wasn’t ready to let go of whatever this was.
“Well,” Colton said. “Lily and I will leave you to it.”
“You will?” Buck asked.
“Yeah. We’re going to go out and get pancakes. See you later.”
Colton stood up, and Lily followed, and they walked out. Leaving Buck and Marigold alone.
“Well. I guess... We weren’t being as secretive as we thought.”
“I need to talk to her.”
“You just did,” Buck said.
“She can’t just be okay with the fact that her and Colton broke up.”
“Sure she can. They’re young. Like she said, they’re going to school.”
“I just don’t believe it.”
“How about we deal with the two of us for five seconds. What about that?”
She turned to look at him. “And what? What are we?”
“I guess we have to answer that question. Because we don’t have the excuse that we did fifteen minutes ago.”
“What excuse is that?”
“That it’s too complicated because of the kids.”
He wasn’t sure he wanted to go there. Wasn’t sure he wanted to take the conversation in this direction, but he was doing it. Because he was pretty sure it wasn’t fair to be bringing this up when he didn’t think he could answer the question either.
Can’t you?
“I keep thinking about it,” Marigold said, looking at the back wall.
“What exactly?”
“Us. This.” She shook her head. “We had a good reason to keep it a secret. There were a lot of complications. You went and talked to my parents. We discovered that wasn’t really a complication. Our kids came here and talked to us, and now that’s not really a complication. So where is the complication exactly?”
“I’m not following.”
“It’s us. It’s us, or there isn’t one. I don’t know. But I realized something last night.”
He felt everything in him go tense. “What’s that?”
“I think I’m in love with you, Buck. And I say that as somebody who knows how scary life is. I say that as someone who has spent so many years protecting myself that I don’t even remember what it’s like to be...fearless. And young. My foundation, so much of me, is based on loss. And I told myself for a really long time that I was just being responsible. By not bringing men into my and Lily’s lives. That I was being respectful and careful by not talking to my parents about you or Jason. You left town. I withdrew in a different way. I made myself into a different person, and I cut a lot of myself off. And last night it was like... It was like I realized that I was feeling everything for the first time.”
His heart hammered.
Everything in him felt stuck. Sick. He didn’t want to hurt her, not in any way. But he also didn’t think he could give her what she was asking for. Because with love, came a set of responsibilities he had never once managed to live up to in his life.
He was trying. He had adopted the boys. But dammit, to throw a relationship on top of that? Another kid?
He had abandoned his family. Nothing in him was...
He didn’t deserve this.
And above all else, he couldn’t handle it.
“What exactly do you think you want?” He asked it carefully. Slowly. Because he was making assumptions. He was jumping to conclusions. And she didn’t deserve that.
“Everything. Nothing less. I didn’t want to fall in love with you, Buck. You are the most inconvenient person for me to fall in love with.” Her eyes filled with tears, and he wished he could say something to make it better. Except he was the one making her cry. He was the one who was going to make it worse. He was the one who was going to break everything.
So there was nothing he could say. There was nothing he could do.
“Of course you didn’t,” he said, his voice rough. “Nobody would.”
She shook her head. “No. It isn’t because of you. It’s because of me. Because I told myself you were absolutely the worst person to fall in love with, but what if my perspective was all wrong? It’s a terrible thing, trying to figure out how to categorize your brother’s death. Trying to figure it out while you’re all laden down with the stuff life throws at you. And at the same time, people say all these things to you. Well-meaning people say the most horrendous things. About how it was meant to be. About how he’s in a better place. But I always wanted him to be here with me.”
“Of course you did,” he said.
“It’s just, because of that, I really resisted looking for meaning in what happened back then. Like finding any meaning there was a betrayal. Like it diminished the loss. But not accepting what it meant, that was just me fiercely holding on to pain I didn’t need to hold on to. I think I can believe both things now. That Jason should be here, and that because he isn’t here there were certain things I had to learn and accept. Certain ways I had to grow. And certain people I am connected to. Forever.” She made eye contact with him, her gaze like an arrow. “You. I think you are one of the only people in the world who could possibly understand me. My pain, what I’ve been through. I think you’re the only person, other than my parents, who felt the impact of that loss. But you do.”
“Yeah. Because I’m complicit.”
“You’re not. And you know that.”
He did. But something in him was desperately seeking a shield to throw in front of her words. And taking responsibility for her brother’s death was a big, easily accessible shield.
She was quiet for a long moment. “I can’t help but notice that you’re not saying it back.”
That stuck him, right in the gut. The truth of the matter was, he couldn’t say it back. But he also couldn’t deny that he did love her.
He loved her.
He had fallen in love with her over the course of these weeks, months. And it wasn’t just working together, sleeping together, these family dinners, seeing her with his family. With his boys. It was everything. It was the way she smiled, the way the sunlight caught her hair. It was the way she made him feel. Like anything was possible.
But he knew it wasn’t.
Because he knew what he was.
He was the man who had left his family for twenty years. He was trying to make up for it. He was trying to be new, trying to be better, trying to be different. But he wasn’t. Not yet. And he maybe never would be.
And so he couldn’t say that he loved her. He couldn’t promise her a future. He couldn’t promise her anything.
“Now you don’t have anything to say.”
“I can’t.”
“You know, there was a man who once told me he paid close attention to what the universe was trying to say to him. To his intuition. The checks in his gut. Where is that man?”
“I’m listening to my gut,” he said.
“And your gut says you can’t be in love with me?”
“My gut says we can’t make a future out of this. My gut says I went way too far off the path to get back on it now. I’m sorry. I wish things could be different. But I have Colton and Marcus and Reggie, and I am trying to make up for the fact that I have been a bad son and a bad brother for two decades. I am trying to make up for the fact that...”
“I don’t believe that. I don’t believe any of it. You know what I believe? You need your guilt. Because it’s your security blanket. Without it, you’re afraid of what you’ll become. But I know you don’t need it. You’re a good man, Buck Carson. I don’t care what anyone in this town used to say, and I don’t care what my thirteen-year-old self said to you in the streets all those years ago. You don’t need guilt. This is why you didn’t want to accept my forgiveness. You wanted to come home and have everybody throw stones at you. All the better if your own family would’ve picked up the rocks. Because then you can insulate yourself with that guilt. You could say you were right to be gone. Because everybody hates you. Is it that bad to find out people are actually happy to see you? That we actually want you?”
“I just can’t do this.”
He turned away from her, and he walked to the door. He got his coat and his hat from the peg. And he felt like a damned coward. He felt like he was doing the same thing he had always done.
But sometimes it was for the best.
Because just like back then, he knew leaving was the right thing to do.
Was it the right thing to do?
He gritted his teeth, and he walked out the door.
But Marigold followed him.
He made his way to his truck and opened the driver’s side door, but she kept on coming.
“You are a coward,” she shouted.
“We don’t need to perform this for the neighbors,” he said.
“Why? Because we are so evolved now? Because we’ve changed? Because I’m not thirteen anymore, so I don’t get to yell at you in the street? I will. If that’s what it takes for you to understand. What’s the point of growing up if you don’t grow up? What’s the point of all this? Of being so good. Of both of us being so damned responsible. What is the point of any of it? I’m letting it all go. I’m giving it away. I’m not responsible. I’m not good. I am heartbroken. And I am angry at you. For throwing all of this away, for throwing us away. How dare you.”
“You don’t understand,” he said, slamming the door shut again. “I’m trying to protect you. You’re right, you have done a lot of work. And what am I? Nothing. No matter what I do I am never going to be able to erase the way I messed things up. My parents are old. My siblings grew up without me. They had to take care of everything while I was off licking my wounds. I didn’t apologize to your parents, I didn’t apologize to Ryan’s parents, I didn’t apologize to Joey’s parents. All I did was take all my hurt and stuff it down deep inside of me. I made it all about me. That’s who I am. When everything is terrible, I make it about me. And it is only my guilt that finally dragged me out of it. It is only my guilt that finally made me take a good, long, hard look at myself and say that if I was still breathing, I better the hell make it count, because my friends were dead, and I was wasting my chance at life. Yeah. Guilt pulled me out of rock bottom. And I’m sorry if you don’t understand why that worked for me. But it did.”
“You’re more than that,” she said. “This is your sign. This is your other opportunity. To look around at yourself, to look around your life and ask why are you breathing?”
“For those boys.”
“Breathe for yourself too.”
He shook his head. “I can’t.”
“You are the biggest catfish on the planet,” she said. “Because you are so charming and so handsome, and it is fake. Inside, you are a mess. The same mess you were when you left. You haven’t grown at all. You’re just hiding behind something different. Now it’s this facade of the benevolent martyr. How nice for us. And how nice for you. You can roam around in a philosophical hair shirt for the rest of your life and never have to take a risk again. Because you’re already dying. So what are you afraid of? Living. That’s what you’re afraid of.”
“Maybe,” he said, feeling like he’d been stabbed straight through the chest. “But you know, a lot of people are afraid of bad things happening to them. I’m afraid of the way I seem to make bad things happen to other people. And I don’t know what to do about that fear.”
It was the truth, even if it was a little overdramatic, even if it didn’t entirely make sense. He knew. He understood. He felt the truth of it, burning there at the center of his chest. There was something in him that was just rotten and wrong, and if he didn’t control it... If he didn’t control it, then everything would be ruined.
“Maybe it’s best this way,” he said. “Best if you don’t understand. And you just hate me.”
“We’re business partners,” she said, clearly exasperated, broken, and it was his fault.
“That’s not going to change. I won’t go back on my word.”
“Is that the game you play? You make all these commitments that you can’t get out of, and then you tell yourself that even if you withhold your heart, you’re doing the right thing? Is that the point of you following fate?”
He knew it wasn’t. He knew what she said wasn’t totally true. Except, maybe when he had adopted the boys, he hadn’t anticipated loving them like he did. Really loving them like his own sons.
But he just... He just couldn’t do more.
“You’ll thank me for this later.”
She bent down and picked up a pebble, as he got into the truck, then threw it at the door as he pulled out. He heard it hit; it dented.
He unrolled his window. “Are you nuts?”
“If I am it’s your fault!”
Well. That said it all. And that was why he had to go.
So he kept on driving, until he couldn’t see her anymore.