CHAPTER 12
Maxie
I decided I would go back to the ranch after lunch but I made the choice to set up in a far corner of the property and work on the fence there first. I worked until the sun went down and then rode Bob home to my little cabin. Once I was inside and showered, I looked at my phone and saw I had missed messages from all three of my bosses.
Arlo: You still didn’t eat anything, Max. I’m bringing home a plate for you.
Rhett: Where are you? We’re back at the ranch and we can’t find you.
Shep: You can run and hide, sweetheart, but it won’t change anything. We have unfinished business.
I dropped my phone like they were somehow watching me through it and I was doing something wrong. Shep’s words hit me harder than the rest, the reminder that we had business at all enough to make my core clench. If he meant the kiss we’d shared ten years earlier, what was unfinished about it? There was a ten-year gap, that meant the business was finished.
Yet… It didn’t feel that way. Seeing them again and spending time with them was taking me right back to that night. I’d always been a good girl, never one to earn my parents’ ire. I played every role I was supposed to. So what if I didn’t have friends? So what if I spent more time on the ranch than in school? I still got great grades, good enough to get a full ride to any college in Texas that I wanted to attend. Not that I ever left for college.
That night ten years earlier had been possibly my one and only break from the strict life I led under my parents’ thumb. It was late and I’d had to be up before the sun to start my morning chores but I’d seen them earlier that night, my brothers’ friends and the men I had painfully inappropriate crushes on. They hadn’t looked like themselves. They’d looked…broken. So I stayed up late and snuck out with a basket of my baked goods for them. I told myself that if they were already inside their cabin and asleep, I’d leave the basket and go. They weren’t inside, though. They were outside, sitting around a fire, the smell of beer and liquor stronger than the burning pine.
The three of them had looked up at me and I could see how haunted they were in the reflection of the fire in their eyes. Older than me by around fourteen years, I had no business sneaking out to see them. Once I was there, though, I knew I wasn’t leaving until I made sure they were okay. I fed them from my basket and hurried around them, cleaning up the empty cans and bottles, along with the cigarette butts they’d smoked. I’d never seen them smoke before so that had shocked me. They’d stretched out by the fire, seemingly content to watch me. Until watching wasn’t enough.
It was Arlo who moved first. Arlo, the most stoic out of the three of them, had cracked before his best friends and he’d done it by catching my hand when I moved past him and tugging me into his lap. I’d fallen with all the grace of a foal just out of the womb but then I was in his lap, his hands on my waist, the waist that was supposedly too big to catch a husband, according to my mom. He’d stared into my eyes for what felt like an eternity, his eyes so dark and with my body blocking the fire, they appeared black.
I should’ve gotten up. That’s what a good girl would’ve done. For just five seconds, I didn’t want to be a good girl, though. I wanted to be the fire that burned in his eyes. Instead of scrambling out of his lap, I moved my hands from his shoulders to his neck and leaned forward, offering myself to him. I didn’t know what I was doing but I wanted a kiss. When Arlo groaned and closed the gap between our mouths, I’d whimpered. I’d never felt anything like it. His rough beard around my mouth, his tight grip on my waist, the hardness I was sitting on, it was explosive.
I struggled to keep up with his mouth, trying to mimic what he was doing to me, but he growled and nipped my bottom lip, forcing me to hesitate. Then he absolutely plundered my mouth. I was floating into the clouds overhead, my heart beating as fast as a hummingbird’s wings. They moved almost as one as Shep and Rhett moved closer and Shep pulled my mouth from Arlo’s to kiss me himself. I had my first kiss on the laps of three grown men who tasted like tobacco, whiskey, and the chocolate muffins I’d brought over.
Shep’s kisses had been playful but when Rhett pulled me into his lap, the play was gone. He pulled me over his lap so I was straddling him and he held my head in his hands while he kissed me out of this world and back again. He bent me backwards and I’d rocked against the hardness under me, seeking relief for the ache between my thighs, when Arlo snapped out of whatever daze he’d been in.
That quickly, the kisses were finished. I hadn’t worried, though. I’d been kissed by my crushes and I was floating with the clouds. They’d gone quiet but that hadn’t worried me, either. I was too young and dumb to read the meaning behind the campfire so they’d sat there, getting drunker and drunker, while I imagined what life with the three of them would be like. I wasn’t even giving the dream space for my parents’ disapproval. That was how much I wanted them.
When the three of them were hammered enough to pass out that night, I’d used all of my strength to get them inside their small guest cabin. I struggled with each of their massive bodies and then silently pulled their shoes off and tucked them into their beds. I’d even left glasses of water on the nightstands next to the bed, worried about how they’d feel when they woke up. I’d pressed a kiss to each of their foreheads and I’d snuck back home with the childish notion that the next morning would be the start of the rest of my life, a life I’d planned instead of dreaming that night.
They didn’t come to breakfast the next morning, though. With a growing sense of worry, I’d packed another basket of goodies and rushed to their cabin in time to find them loading up the jeep they’d arrived in. The back gate was rusty and it screamed when Arlo slammed it shut, having just loaded the last of their bags. They’d been surprised to see me. Then, they’d been quiet. Quiet was bad, I quickly learned. Then came the hit. They barely remembered the night before but whatever they’d done, they were too drunk to know any better and it would never, ever, ever happen again. They’d emphasized just how thoroughly it would never happen again until it was almost cruel and I had to bite a chunk out of my tongue to keep from sobbing. All my dreams and heart filled doodles crashed and burned.
They’d shown me once that taking risks with your heart was stupid. It ended in pain. I learned that breaking the rules and daring to dream bigger than my parents wanted me to was a bad idea. That was a lesson I learned time and time again towards the end of my mom’s life. It was better to follow the rules and stay small, invisible. Do for everyone else and never complain. Veering from that meant pain. They’d shown me emotional pain but later I’d learned a different, physical pain. One that cemented the conclusion I’d come to that morning after our kiss. It was better to stay in line and do what I was supposed to.