Chapter 8 Ash
Ash
The table seats six though we use only five chairs. The sixth rests in the corner by the window beneath a stack of horse magazines nobody reads but nobody discards, a fixture I've noticed during every visit to this house, as permanent as the porch light or the dent in the railing.
Before, I sat between Marcus and Teague, Marcus to my left pretending I didn't exist while Teague to my right made me laugh until I choked on Boone's cooking.
Across from me, Boone would watch with that steady heat I convinced myself was paternal because acknowledging anything else would have burned me alive.
Tonight my legs carry me to the chair beside Boone's before my mind can object. When I settle into it, Teague's eyes drift from my chosen place to his father, then back to his plate. The corner of his mouth twitches with understanding, he mercifully keeps from blooming into a full smile.
The kitchen fills with the rich scent of cumin and onion rising from the cast-iron pot of chili Boone has placed at the center of the table. Beside it sits a skillet of cornbread and a bowl of shredded cheese, everything radiating the intimate warmth of a meal someone has poured themselves into.
Ledger is already spooning food into his mouth, following his private rhythm that dismisses the convention of waiting for others. Cass slides into his chair and reaches for the cornbread until Teague, without looking up from his phone, smacks his hand away.
"We're saying grace," Teague says.
"We've never said grace," Cass says.
"We're starting tonight. We have a guest."
"I'm not a guest," I say, but then I'm not sure what I am, so I stop talking.
Boone ladles chili into my bowl before I've reached for the spoon, without looking at me, without asking how much.
He just fills it and sets it in front of me and moves on to his own, like feeding me is part of the routine now.
"You're not a guest," Boone agrees, low enough that it's mostly for me. His hand settles on my thigh under the table and stays there, as I stare at my chili and try to remember how a spoon works.
For a moment, there’s just silence as everyone helps themselves to their own bowls, the soft clanking of metal and porcelain filling the space. There’s a few cracked smiles and I’m pretty sure Cass kicked Teague under the table before Boone grunts, cutting the humor to zero.
And then Cass grins, setting Teague off.
"So this morning," Teague starts, pointing his spoon at the table, focusing his attention on me. I forgot how lively the dinners here were. I’m so used to Marcus’ nonexistent conversations that silence became my best friend.
"I'm out by the east paddock and I see Junior, the bay stallion, the one with the attitude problem, and he's eyeing the fence.
Just standing there staring at it. And I think, don't do it.
Don't you do it. I can see the thought forming in his tiny horse brain.
" He taps the spoon against his temple and a drop of chili lands on the table.
He wipes it with his sleeve without breaking stride.
"And this horse looks me dead in the eye, Ash, dead in the eye, and jumps.
Clears the top rail with his front legs, beautiful form, genuinely impressive, and then his back legs just..
." He hooks his spoon on the edge of his bowl to demonstrate.
"Stuck. Tangled in the rail. And he starts screaming, like a man who's been betrayed by his own ambition.
" He does the voice, this high-pitched shriek making Cass choke on his cornbread.
A laugh bursts out of me at the stupidity of the story, the kind that uses my whole chest, and it feels so foreign and so good that my eyes sting. Boone’s hand squeezes my thigh a little, a silent approval that sends heat straight to my cock.
Fuck.
"So I run over," Teague continues, pulling me back from the heat traveling through me.
Teague leans forward, fully committed to the performance, "and I'm talking to him, trying to calm him down, saying easy boy, easy, we're gonna get you out, and Ledger walks up.
" He drops his voice into a deadpan monotone that's close enough to Ledger's actual voice that Cass snorts again.
"'You're making it worse.' That's what he says.
Doesn't offer to help. Doesn't suggest a plan.
Just stands there like a disappointed monument.
Meanwhile Junior is thrashing and screaming and I've got his head in my arms and I'm basically slow dancing with a fifteen-hundred-pound toddler having a meltdown. "
"You were screaming louder than the horse," Ledger says without looking up from his bowl, and the table erupts. Cass laughs with his mouth full and Teague throws his hands up in outrage as Boone just shakes his head with that quiet half-smile.
This is what I was missing. Not the sex, not the touching, not the way these men look at me, although all of that is staggering.
This. A table full of people who are loud and messy and happy to be in the same room together, telling stories about horses and arguing about nothing, and I'm in the middle of it and nobody is checking their phone and nobody is sighing and nobody is making me feel like my laughter is taking up too much space.
"I was matching his energy. It's a technique,” Teague spits out.
"It's not a technique."
"Ash, tell Ledger that matching a horse's energy is a legitimate training technique."
I look up from my bowl, startled at being pulled in, and find four pairs of eyes on me while I have a spoonful of chili halfway to my face. "I think," I say carefully, "that screaming at a horse who's stuck in a fence is going to make the horse think things are worse than they are."
Teague puts his hand over his heart. "Betrayal. In my own home."
"He's right," Cass says, pointing his spoon at me. "The horse doesn't know you're trying to help. The horse just hears noise."
"Since when do you know anything about horses?" Teague throws out, clapping Cass unnecessarily hard on the back. "You ride them like you're trying to punish them."
"I ride them fine."
"Mabel bit you last week."
"Mabel bites everyone."
"Mabel doesn’t bite Ash," Ledger says, and the table goes quiet for a second because Ledger voluntarily contributing to a conversation is an event.
"Ledger, how'd you get him out?" I ask, because I want to know, because I care about these horses in a way that used to embarrass me.
I'd ask about the animals more than anything else when I visited and Marcus would sigh and say you care more about the horses than you do about me, and I'd stop asking.
But he’s not here, which means there’s no one to tell me to stop. It feels so... freeing.
"Cut the middle rail," Ledger says. "Pulled it sideways. He walked out on his own once he had room."
"Is he okay?"
"Couple scrapes. Nothing deep."
"Can I see him tomorrow?"
He looks at me for a long moment, and then gives the faintest nod with something that might be the ghost of approval before he goes back to his chili.
Teague mouths he likes you across the table with theatrical exaggeration and Ledger says "I can see you" without looking up as Cass laughs with his mouth full.
Silence filters in again as I eat another bite, content for the moment. At some point, I’m going to have to deal with Marcus and really tell him to go to hell, most likely to his face. He doesn’t take rejection lightly and just disappearing on him probably wasn’t the best choice.
But I also don’t want to go back there, even if that means constantly wearing Teague’s clothes.
"Teague, what happened with the feed order?" Boone tears a piece of cornbread in half and hands one piece to me without looking, like it's reflex.
“Back to business,” I mutter to myself, grateful for the chance in conversation. It means no one’s looking at me or staring at my slightly flushed cheeks as Boone’s hand wanders a little higher on my thigh.
"Dawson shorted us again." Teague points his spoon at the ceiling for emphasis. "Two hundred pounds light on the alfalfa and he's acting like the invoice is wrong."
"Is the invoice wrong?"
"Dad. When has our invoice ever been wrong?"
Boone huffs out a grunt as he finishes chewing. "Call him tomorrow. If he can't make it right by Friday, we go through Harlan."
"Harlan's twenty cents more per bale." Teague shovels chili into his mouth while he talks, which should be disgusting but is somehow just Teague.
"Harlan also doesn't short us two hundred pounds."
Cass reaches across the table for more cornbread and this time nobody stops him. He breaks it in half, eats one piece in a single bite, and talks through it. "South fence needs work."
"How bad?" Boone asks.
"Bad enough the yearlings got through yesterday. Spent an hour getting them back." Cass wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and reaches for the cheese.
"You chase yearlings?" Teague leans back in his chair, grinning. "I'd pay to see that. Big man running through a field after baby horses."
"I don't chase them. I walk and they follow."
"He's not wrong." Ledger pushes a piece of cornbread through the last of his chili without looking up. "They follow him."
"Everything follows Cass," Teague says. "It's unsettling. Dogs, horses, that cat at the feed store. Ash, are you following Cass yet? Give it a day."
Boone drags a hand down his face, but he's smiling behind it. "Leave him alone."
"The real problem with Dawson is his wife," Teague says, scraping the bottom of his bowl. "She runs that whole operation and she knows it. Last time I went out there to argue about an order, she chased me off the property with a garden hose."
"You deserved that," Cass says.
"I absolutely did not."
"You called her honey."
"I call everyone honey."
"Don't call Mrs. Dawson honey," Boone states, his thumb tracing a slow circle farther up on my thigh under the table, like he's keeping track of me by touch while he manages his sons.
God, I missed this so much it carved a hole in me, and I've been filling that hole with excuses and distance for eight months, telling myself I left because of Boone when the truth is I left because of all of them.
Because sitting at this table showed me exactly what I wasn't getting at home, and the gap was so wide and so obvious that staying any longer would have made going back to Marcus impossible.
A tear dribbles down my cheek and then another, the reminder that I chose Marcus over all of this, over literally anyone or anything else hitting me square in the chest. A tear drops to my napkin, another falling on my hand, my breath catching in my throat. I don’t want to leave this comfort.
God, something must be wrong with me.
"You not hungry?" Cass says, looking at my barely touched bowl.
"No, I am. It's good. It's really good." I wipe my face with the back of my hand and try to smile but the smile wobbles so badly that Teague stops talking mid-sentence. "Sorry. I'm fine. I just haven't done this in a while."
"Eaten chili?" Teague muses, placing his chin on the back of his hands.
"Sat at a table with people who actually want me here.
" I wipe my eyes again, though the tears keep coming in that quiet, relentless way that has nothing to do with sadness and everything to do with relief.
"I missed this. I missed you guys, and I'm sorry I stopped coming. I'm sorry I stayed away so long."
Everyone’s expression softens, Boone’s hand moving to my hip, his thumb pressing into the sensitive skin there. “You’re here now, Ash. That’s all that matters.”