Chapter 30 Boone
Boone
I'm on the porch just after six with nothing in my hands, sitting in the chair I've been sitting in for twenty years, watching the morning come in over the east ridge the way it always does.
The air smells like dew, hay, and the particular coolness that means the season is turning.
Summer loosening its grip, the first suggestion of fall hiding in the early hours.
Through the kitchen window, I can see Ash.
He came out of Cass' room about ten minutes ago, barefoot, wearing one of Ledger's shirts and a pair of shorts that might be his own, the ones from the boxes they brought back yesterday.
He went straight to the coffee pot without turning on the overhead light, navigating the kitchen in the dim glow from the stove clock, pulling four mugs down without hesitating.
Ledger's black ceramic. Teague's chipped green one.
The large one Cass uses that's technically a soup mug. And the blue one, his blue one.
He pours Ledger's first. Black, nothing in it, because Ledger takes his coffee the way he takes everything, without embellishment.
Teague's gets a spoon of sugar, stirred twice, the spoon tapped on the rim.
Cass' gets enough cream that the color barely qualifies as coffee, a preference my youngest will defend with physical violence if challenged.
Ash makes his own last, light with sugar, and carries two mugs down the hallway toward Cass' room without spilling.
He comes back, picks up the other two, and delivers Ledger's to wherever Ledger has materialized this morning.
I hear a low murmur through the window, Ash's voice, then a grunt that constitutes a full thank-you from my eldest son.
Ash reappears in the kitchen, leans against the counter, and drinks his own coffee with his eyes closed and his body still.
He looks different. Not in a way I can point to with a single feature. The difference is in how he occupies space. Two weeks ago, Ash stood in rooms like he was trying to locate the edges so he could flatten himself against them.
He kept his elbows in, took up only what he needed, apologized for that. The man leaning against my counter has his hip cocked against the wood, his shoulders open, his bare feet planted flat on the tile. He's just standing there, existing, taking up exactly the amount of room a person should.
My sons drift through the kitchen in succession.
Cass first, shirtless, carrying his mug with him.
He wraps an arm around Ash's waist from behind, pressing his mouth to Ash's neck, and Ash leans back into him without opening his eyes.
Watching Cass soften out these last two weeks has been everything.
Teague is next, his hair a disaster, his grin already operational. He steals a bite of the toast Ash made at some point and Ash swats his hand without looking up. Teague laughs, hooks his chin over Ash's shoulder, before saying something I can't hear that turns Ash's cheeks pink.
This is what I wanted. Not just the sex, not the submission, not the beautiful sounds he makes when my sons take him apart. This. A man making coffee in my kitchen because he knows how everyone takes it. A man who fits.
The screen door creaks and Ash steps onto the porch carrying a new mug of coffee, steam curling off the surface in the morning air.
He spots me in the chair and his face does what it always does when he sees me, the slight softening around his eyes, the way his mouth curves before he decides to smile, his body reacting to my presence half a second before his brain signs off on it.
"Morning, Dove."
"I brought you coffee." He crosses the porch and holds it out, the mug warm between his hands.
I take it from him, our fingers overlapping on the ceramic, and set it on the railing beside me.
His brows furrow at the mug being set aside instead of sipped, the confusion lasting about one second before my hand finds his hip and pulls him down.
He settles sideways across my thighs, his legs curled up, his shoulder against my chest, his head finding the spot beneath my jaw that seems to have been designed specifically for him.
I tilt his chin up with my finger and kiss him slowly, tasting coffee and the particular sweetness that lives on his lips when he's just woken up.
His hand slides up to the side of my neck, his thumb resting against my pulse, a mirror of how I hold him. He learned that from me. The realization hits my chest harder than it should. He pulls back, his eyes heavy-lidded, his cheeks flushed pink. "More," he says. "Please."
I chuckle, the sound rumbling through my chest into his. He can feel it because his smile widens, that uncomplicated grin that's been appearing more frequently over the last few days, the one that uses his whole face.
I pull him in again, deeper this time, my hand sliding into the hair at his nape.
He opens for me immediately, a soft sound falling into my mouth, his fingers curling into my shirt collar.
I kiss him until his breathing changes, until his body goes pliant against my chest, until the morning has warmed around us enough that the coffee on the railing has stopped steaming.
When I pull back his eyes stay on my face, tracing something there. His thumb moves once against my neck.
"Can I ask you something?"
"Always."
"Why does the porch light stay on?"
The question surprises me. It tells me he's been holding it for a while, storing it, and waiting for a morning quiet enough.
He noticed the light the first night, when my truck pulled into the drive at three in the morning.
He'd mentioned it then, something about nobody coming up my road at that hour.
"My father kept that light on," I tell him.
"Every night, dusk until he went to bed, which was usually well past midnight.
He'd sit on this porch the same way I do, same chair, same view.
One night when I was about ten, I asked him why he bothered when we were twenty miles from the nearest neighbor and nobody was coming.
He told me you don't leave a light on for who you're expecting.
You leave it on for who might need to find their way. "
Ash stays quiet as he curls up a little tighter against my chest.
"When he died, I took over. I didn't think about it, didn't decide to, just started turning it on every evening the same way he did.
Then I raised four boys alone on this land and the light took on a different weight.
It meant this house is open. If you need somewhere to go, there's a porch with a light on and a man behind the door. "
"Your wife," Ash says carefully.
"Left just after Cass’ tenth birthday." I reach for the coffee on the railing and take a sip.
"She was a good woman who married a man she didn't understand and moved to a place that didn't suit her.
The isolation ate her alive. She needed people, noise, a life that looked like other people's lives.
I couldn't give her that and I wasn't willing to leave the land to try.
She took Marcus with her for about three years before she sent him back.
Said he was too much like me, which at the time I took as a compliment. "
"Marcus lived with his mother?" Marcus is the oldest of the four and while he’s never acted like it, knowing that he was sent back at eighteen, reveals even more of a story Marcus never told me.
"For a little while. He always loved his mother more than me.
She had a much softer touch to life than I did.
Marcus was made for the city like his mother.
But when she gave up on him, he came back angry and never stopped.
Without much to his name he stayed here for a few more years before he moved out.
The other three grew up here together, and built something between them that Marcus was always on the outside of.
He wouldn't come in. The door was open, the light was on.
He stood in the yard and resented everyone inside. "
Ash's fingers tighten on my shirt. I can feel him fitting this into the picture he's been building, the frame expanding to hold the shape of my family. “That sounds a lot like him.”
"The sharing didn't start as a philosophy," I tell him.
"It wasn’t even on our radar until years later.
Cass was probably 23 or 24 at the time. It started because I raised my sons close, closer than most families, and they grew into men who loved without boundaries.
Teague had just hit 26 when he brought a man home and the rest fell into it like water finding its level.
I watched from the outside before I understood that what they'd built wasn't something to correct. It was something to protect."
"When did you join them?"
"The second time. They brought someone home and I saw the way they worked together to give one person everything he needed.
The care. The coordination. I realized I'd built something in this house bigger than I'd intended, and standing outside it while my sons carried the weight felt wrong.
" I press my mouth to his temple. "So I walked through the door. And the light's been on ever since."
Ash is quiet for a long time. The morning fills in around us, birds in the pasture, a horse nickering in the barn, the distant sound of Cass's boots on the kitchen floor. The sun has cleared the ridge, the porch warm now, gold light catching dust motes between us. “Why do you not talk about Marcus at all? I know he’s an asshole and he’s…
he’s not considerate but he’s still your son. ”
I shift Ash in my lap, offering him a small smile as I caress the side of his face.
“Because he disrespected me and this house. I can understand that he didn’t want to be part of what we built.
It’s not for everyone and I would never force him to do this.
However, he doesn’t get to disrespect it.
He doesn’t get to throw shame on the ranch or the life we’ve built around our animals and the business.
” Anger lives behind those words, memories of the fights I had with Marcus as he demeaned the business he grew up in.
Ash hums, nodding into my chest. “I can see that. He hates hard labor. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize for him. He’s a grown man who has to live with his choices and the consequences that come with him. None of what happened is your fault. Remember that.”
I tilt his head up just a little to make sure he understands me. All I find is warmth and love directed at me, an expression I’ve been dying to see for longer than it was appropriate.
"Boone."
"Yeah."
"The two weeks end tomorrow."
"I know."
He pulls back enough to look at me, his dark eyes searching my face. I can see the question building, the one he wants me to answer without him having to ask it. He wants me to say stay.
I'm not going to do that.
It would be easy. One word and he'd melt into my chest and never bring it up again.
He'd stay because I told him to, the same way he stayed with Marcus because Marcus told him to, the same way he's spent his whole life following the current of whoever's will was stronger than his own.
I could keep him here with a sentence and he'd be grateful, and somewhere underneath the gratitude would be the quiet knowledge that he never chose it himself.
However, I already know what he wants. My sons have already told me about the confession and how much Ash wants to stay.
I already know that tomorrow, he won’t be finding a way to leave.
He’ll wake up in one of our beds and make coffee just like he did this morning before asking what he can help with.
But I want his words.
"You're not going to tell me to stay."
"No."
"Even though you want me to."
"Especially because I want you to." I brush a strand of hair off his forehead. "That has to be your word, Dove. Not mine."
He’s quiet for another moment before doing something I’ve been dreaming about. He gently cups my face in his hands and pulls me into a kiss he fully initiates. “Boone, I’m staying. I don’t want to leave. If you’ll still have me.”
I chuckle against his lips. “Guest bedroom will always be yours.”
“I don’t think I’ll be using it much.”
No, no he won’t be.