Chapter 23
Lawson
The remainder of dinner is quiet.
The last of the ranchers start dispersing before long, heading home after a busy day of work. Jackson, Remi, and my mom bring dishes and silverware into the kitchen to be cleaned. Beside me, Oakley is eerily still.
“All right?” I ask him, keeping my voice low.
He nods in a sharp jerk that doesn’t reassure me at all.
I feel bad for causing the mood to drop after shutting down conversation about my love life, but, frankly, it’s not something I want to discuss with my family right now. Especially considering I haven’t had the chance to discuss it with the one person it matters most to.
I make to grab our plates, but Ash beats me to it. “Go on,” he says, canting his head toward the exit. “There are plenty of us to clean up.”
“You’re not supposed to,” I point out, knowing Ash is officially off the clock at this point in the day.
He rolls his eyes. “It’s no trouble. You two get.”
Not about to argue against relinquished dish duties, I stand. Oakley joins me as Ash mutters something to himself about turning into a real damn cowboy.
Oakley wanders toward the back door, so I do the same, both of us stepping out onto the deck. There’s a jitteriness to Oakley’s movements as we stop along the glass at the back of the house, but when I reach for his arm, he skirts my grip, turning to face me.
“Did you mean that?” he asks, a frantic sort of gleam in his eyes that makes the blue look bright amidst the brown.
“Mean what?”
He tosses his hand toward the dining room. “What you said in there. That you’re not interested in dating.”
“Well, yeah,” I say slowly.
Oakley blows out a short breath, bending at the waist before nodding several times. “Yeah, okay. Wow. I really thought…”
“You thought what?” I ask. “What’s going on?”
“I just, uh… Shit. I don’t think this is a good idea anymore.”
“What’s not?”
“Us,” he practically spits, his hand flicking between him and me. “Fucking around.”
My gut sinks like a stone.
Is that what it feels like to him? Fucking around?
“Oak…”
“I can’t, Law.” He shakes his head quickly, disrupting his already unruly hair. “I know I said I was okay with it. With this. Well, now I’m not.”
My throat closes up real fast, this conversation not one I thought we’d be having. Ever. “I don’t… I don’t get it. What changed?”
He huffs an incredulous laugh that feels all sorts of wrong. “Really?”
“Yeah, really.”
“Jesus Christ, Lawson. I know you can miss what’s right in front of you sometimes, but surely you see it?”
I take a reflexive step backwards, hurt flaring in my chest. Oakley’s eyes go soft, instant regret there.
“I’m sorry, Law. Fuck, I’m making a mess of this.
” He paces a step away, looking out over my family’s land.
The dairy cattle are moving about, some sheltered in the shade of wide-branched trees.
When Oakley turns back, his face is resolute.
“You talked about choice in there. I get a choice, too. I needa be done.”
My mouth opens, but Oakley steps past me without another word. I grab his arm, my alarm ratcheting. He doesn’t pull from my grip, but there’s wariness in his eyes. And what looks a lot like a whole lot of pain.
“The fuck, Oak? You…you can’t just leave me.”
The sound he lets out is wounded. “I’m not leaving you, Law. Not ever. I’ll always be here. I’ll always be yours.” He slowly plucks my hand off his arm. “But if we keep this up, I’m the one who ends up getting hurt. And I know you don’t want that, either. Find someone else to have fun with.”
With that, Oakley rounds the corner of the deck toward the dining room door. He shoves his feet into his boots as I rush after him, my pulse racing fast.
“How does that hurt you, Oak?”
He ignores my shout, passing through the dining room with me at his heels. A few of my family members stop what they’re doing, watching us pass. I don’t look away from Oakley’s back.
“Hey,” I call, the man barreling through the front door now. “How does it hurt you?”
Oakley stops at the bottom of the porch stairs, the look on his face when he turns around carefully shuttered.
He’s nothing but stone when he’s always been utterly transparent with me.
Warm and bright. Not now. Now, there’s ice in his eyes that chills me to the bone.
“The fact that you don’t even know says everything, Law. I’ll see you later, all right?”
I don’t move an inch as Oakley gets into his truck, the man pulling down the drive before long, dust kicking up behind his vehicle.
How the fuck does it hurt him, what we are? How is my not dating other men a reason to end things? Because…
Because I’m holding him back?
Because we’re only fucking around, as he said, and if Oakley is with me, he can’t find the person he wants to build a life with?
The person who, apparently, isn’t me.
Fuck.
“Law.” Remi’s voice is gentle. I turn, finding my youngest brother standing on the porch, the door open behind him. “You all right?”
“I… I don’t understand what just happened,” I admit, my chest so tight I can barely breathe.
“Colton’s an ass. That’s what.”
I huff a laugh entirely devoid of humor, scrubbing a hand over my face. “It’s not Colton’s fault. I don’t think.”
Remi seems to weigh his words as I glance out toward the dust in the driveway that’s yet to settle. “You really don’t feel that way about him?”
“Feel what way about who?”
He cocks his head when I look back at him. “You and Oakley. We all thought… Well, we all thought y’all were dating already. Except maybe Colt. Like I said, he’s an ass.”
That leaves me entirely confused. “What are you talking about? Colton didn’t ask me about dating Oakley. He asked…”
I fall silent as the implication of my own words tumbles into place.
Remi blinks at me, shock on his face. “Law… Don’t you think Oakley would have taken what you said to mean you didn’t want to date him either?”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” I bite out, having come to the same conclusion myself. “That sonofabitch.”
“Holy shit,” my brother whispers. “The swearing.”
“I gotta go. Where the fuck are my keys?”
“Here,” Jackson says, tossing my keyring through the open front door. “Go get ’im, brother.”
I take a step before remembering I’m not wearing any shoes. Jackson tosses my boots out the door, Remi laughing as I shove my feet hastily inside.
“What’s happening?” Colton calls, but I’m already stomping down the porch stairs, and I don’t stop.
Remi’s voice is light as he answers. “Lawson’s on his way to get his man.”
“Wait…” Colton says. “Lawson has a man?”
Jackson grumbles out a, “Good Lord,” and I leave my brothers to it, my mind firmly on Oakley and his incorrect assumptions.
The drive to his house feels endless. I pull the old acorn Oakley gave me when we were kids out from the center console, cradling it in my palm, my thumb rolling over the cap as I curse a good dozen times inside my head.
He thought, after everything that’s changed between us, after everything that hasn’t changed at all, he could end things that easily? He thought I wouldn’t care? That I’d just let him go? That I don’t want him with every fiber of my being?
I can tell even before I park that Oakley isn’t home. His truck is missing, the living room dark. Bell saunters over from behind the house, looking at me through the fence, her tail swishing.
Frustrated, angry, and real damn hurt that Oakley wouldn’t fight harder for me, to keep me, I turn my truck around and get back on the road. I call my best friend before I’ve even left the gravel of his drive.
It rings and rings before going to voicemail.
“Goddamn it,” I mutter, the acorn rough against my palm as I take a turn.
I call again.
This time, Oakley picks up, sounding wary. “Lawson?”
“You think it didn’t mean anything to me?” I spit out.
His voice echoes throughout my truck’s cab. “What are you—”
“You thought I could be so careless as to cast aside your feelings, as if how you feel isn’t the most important fucking thing to me?”
“Jesus, are you pissed off?”
“Yes, I’m goddamn pissed off. Because apparently you thought I don’t feel a damn thing for you.”
He sucks in a harsh breath. “Do you?”
“Yes, I do.”
There’s a long beat of silence. “Like…”
“Yes, like that. Exactly like that.”
Oakley puffs out a breath rife with both relief and exasperation. “Why the heck didn’t you say something, Law?”
“’Cause I just figured it out! What you meant when you said you’d get hurt. The fact that I want to kiss you, Oak. I can’t stop thinking about it. About your lips on mine.”
“Jesus, Lawson.”
“The fact that, yes, I have feelings,” I go on, my anger still burning hot. “I have a whole fucking lot of them, Oakley Beaumont. I don’t want to date other people. I already know who and what it is I want. And I’m guessing, based on the way you left, you feel the same.”
“I… I didn’t think…”
“No, you didn’t. You were reacting. ’Cause you were hurt. And I get that. I do. But you don’t get to leave me, Oak. I thought we already covered that.”
He huffs out a breath, the sound mildly amused. “You think you just get to boss me around, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do. Because you made me a promise. Remember? You said we’d always be together.”
I roll my thumb over the acorn again, willow branches swaying in my mind’s eye. Bright painted eyes and pixie dust floating on the breeze. My friend’s voice telling me always, that very promise in the token he gave to me.
My voice is hoarse when I speak. “Which means you’re mine, Oak. You always have been. You’re my person. And now…”
I don’t finish my sentence, knowing that’s something we need to decide together.
Oakley’s own voice is hushed, barely audible over the sound of my truck on the road. “I’m at my parents’.”
I ease out a breath. “Figured. I’m nearly there.”
“Lawson, I…”
“Tell me when I get there. And then I need you to kiss me, all right, Oak? ’Cause—”
My words cut off when there’s a screech of wheels in front of me. I don’t have time to say a single thing more, barely have time to react, before my world is upended, Oakley’s cry nothing but a distant ringing quickly snuffed out.