Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-Three
ELIZABETH
Together Again
I look up from the grocery list I’m making when Charlotte breezes into the kitchen.
“When’s PawPaw and Gramps coming home?”
Daniel and Drew get a kick out of whenever the kids call them grandpa. The first time Marcus said it when he was a baby, Daniel burst into tears.
“Tomorrow. I’m trying to figure out how much food to get for Sunday’s cookout.”
Not the brightest idea leaving things until the last minute. I’ll try to eke out some time to go to the store before the races tonight.
She snatches a banana from the fruit bowl on the counter island. “Who’s coming?”
Biting the end of the pen, I do a mental head count.
Julien, Elijah and the boys. Jayson. Meredith and Bryce and the girls.
Aurora and JD and their brood. Knox and his family.
Trevor and Austin. Tate and Peyton. Shelby and Prescott.
Ben and Renee and their kids…good grief.
I add a few more items to the list when I realize that we’ll need more hamburger meat, hotdogs, and about everything else to feed the big crowd coming.
“About thirty people.”
“Cool,” she says like it’s no big deal. I should give her the list and make her go to the store. “Is it okay if I sleep over at Chelsea’s tonight?” She consumes the banana in three bites and tosses the peel into the compost bin.
“Fine by me. When do you want to go school shopping?”
Charlotte groans like a drama queen. “Don’t remind me that summer is almost over.” Kissing me on the cheek, she practically skips out, her long blonde ponytail swishing as she goes. “I’m heading to Grant’s!”
“You didn’t answer my question!” I call after her.
The front door closes.
Rolling my eyes with exasperation, I go back to the monumental task of figuring out how much food thirty people will eat, but I’m immediately interrupted when my phone chimes.
Fallon: Miss me?
A goofy smile curves my mouth when I read his text.
He said he had to take care of some business stuff with Trevor and Aurora and would meet us at the Fields later.
He stayed over again last night. It was nice waking up to him curled around me in bed.
The morning orgasms were even better. But the simple act of being with him, sitting out on the back veranda and watching the sunrise over coffee, then having breakfast with the kids, was my favorite part of this morning.
Fallon helps fill those chasms that had been left empty for so long after Ryder passed away.
This morning, the kitchen was filled with happy laughter and loud talking.
Smiles and hugs and playful banter. It felt so damn good to have that again.
To have a home that is filled with those noises and those feelings.
Me: Tremendously. Don’t work too hard.
Fallon: Tell that to Trev and A.
Me: We’ll leave here around six and head on over.
Christopher asked if he could drive my car tonight. It’ll be fun seeing Stella II tear up the track once again.
Fallon: Hey, Kitten?
Me: Yes?
Fallon: Love you.
Once he spoke those life-changing words, the floodgates opened, and he’s not shy about telling me. He gives me the gift of those words so freely and never expects anything in return.
I watch the sunlight glint off the pale yellow diamonds of my wedding rings as my thumb hovers over the screen’s QWERTY board.
I love you, too, I type before deleting it and replying,
See you tonight kiss emoji.
Setting down the phone, I brace my hands on the quartz counter and stare out the window at the magnolia tree down the hill. I’m ready to move on. I want to be with Fallon. So why is it so hard for me to tell him that I love him?
Movement in the distance snags my attention. My brow furrows when I see the shape of a person standing next to Ryder’s grave, then dips even lower in confusion when I recognize the person’s profile.
Not bothering to slip on sandals, I head outside, the grass soft beneath my bare feet as I walk down the hill.
A few gray cumulus clouds dot the sky, and the air is heavy, laden with a type of humidity that foretells rain is on its way.
People often say they can smell rain. It’s not a lie. Nature takes on this damp, musky odor.
As I get closer, Jayson bows his head, and his voice carries along the wind as he talks, but I can’t make out what he’s saying. Sensing me, he looks up, and my footsteps falter at the devastation etched on his face.
“What are you doing here?”
I haven’t heard from him since we talked yesterday, so seeing him here, now, is unexpected.
“I’ll leave if you want to be alone with him,” Jayson replies, and my worry compounds when I notice his red-rimmed eyes.
Taking his face between my hands, I hold his teary gaze in place. “Are you okay?”
He shakes his head. “No.”
I don’t detect any alcohol on his breath, and I hate that was the first assumption that popped into my head.
“Whatever it is you’re struggling with, you don’t have to face it alone. Talk to me. Let me be the place where you feel safe.”
He drops his forehead to mine and releases a pent-up breath. “You were always my safe place, Liz. I wasn’t yours.”
“Yes, you were,” I tell him, remembering all the times he crawled through my window and held me until I fell asleep.
All the times he comforted me when I missed Dad when he went on tour for extended periods of time.
The way he took care of me when Maria broke my heart and told me she was never my friend.
Jayson pulls something out of his back pocket. A wrinkled piece of paper folded in thirds. “He wrote me letters.”
I don’t take it. Whatever Ryder wrote him is between him and Ryder.
Gently taking the letter from his grasp, I tuck it back into the pocket of his jeans. “I’m finding out that he wrote a lot of letters to a lot of people.”
We turn to face Ryder’s gravestone, and our hands automatically come together, fingers interlocking tightly, like they do whenever we stand in front of Elizabeth Ann’s grave.
Jayson and I shouldn’t be reunited over and over by death, but it’s been a recurring occurrence for us over the last two decades.
“There’s so much I want to tell him that I’ll never get the chance to,” Jayson says.
It’s a horrible truth that I struggled with ever since the doctor said that awful word: cancer. How can you fit the past, present, a future you’ll never get to have with the man who was supposed to be your forever in the short amount of time it took for the cancer to take him?
“Tell him now,” I reply, turning to Jayson and touching his chest where his heart beats. “He’s right here. He never left. Whatever you need to say, tell him. Just like we talk to our daughter, talk to Ryder.”
Jayson’s nostrils flare with his audible inhalation, and he nods. “Okay.”
My lips fold under as I try not to cry at the desolate, lost look on his face. “I’ll be right back.”
“Liz, wait,” he says, sounding almost panicked. “Where do I even begin?”
I hope my smile comes off as reassuring. “How about starting with, ‘Hey, Ry.’ The rest will come on its own.”
Jayson nods again.
I take my time walking back to the house, and once inside, I head straight to Charlotte’s room.
I find what I’m looking for on the middle shelf of her bookcase.
Grabbing the worn copy of Where the Red Fern Grows , I go into the kitchen and pack the small picnic basket I keep in the walk-in pantry with some snacks and canned drinks.
When I get back to Jayson, he’s sitting on the grass, pulling at errant blades as he talks to Ryder.
I set the basket down and sit next to him. “What did I miss?”
“About three years so far,” Jayson says with a chuckle.
I pass him a soda and take one for myself, popping the tab and slurping the fizz that bubbles up.
“I’d like to hear about those years, too.”
He sees the book in my lap. “I remember when you read that to Elizabeth Ann.”
Putting down my drink, I riffle through the pages. “It was the book I gave to Ryder the first day we met. I never returned it to the library.”
I told Mrs. Heard I lost it. Of course, she didn’t believe me.
“You owe, like, thirteen hundred dollars in late fees.”
I grin. “I know you won’t rat me out.”
Jayson grins back, giving me a glimpse of the boy I once knew hidden beneath the man he’s become.
His grin is the same one that used to get us both into trouble, the one that promised adventure and mischief.
It’s the smile of my best friend, who used to know all my secrets and made me believe we could outrun the world together.
In that moment, I’m rediscovering the Jayson I thought I had lost.
He bumps my shoulder. “Never. I’m still your partner in crime.”
Handing him the book, I tap his leg, indicating my intent, then flip over onto my back and rest my head on his thigh. “I’m ready.”
His silver gaze looks down at me, lingering for just a moment before he opens the book with one hand and begins stroking my hair with the other.
I watch the clouds drift by overhead as Jayson reads the story about a determined boy and his two brave coonhounds to the man we both love and wish were here with us.