Chapter 25
TILLY
The game is on hold.
Temporarily.
I had every intention of having today be the one where I made Rowe eat his tongue, but my body had other plans.
The pain was bad enough last night, but this morning, I couldn’t so much as stand without cussing and palming my stomach.
This trailer doesn’t have a single thing I need to help me get through the next couple of days, and while I had myself convinced that I could just ask Ash to make a stop at the store, I didn’t make the call.
I’m thirty-three years old. I shouldn’t be calling my brother and asking him to drive a town over to grab me a heating pad and double-chocolate ice cream. There are certain things you never involve your brother in, especially when you’re a grown adult.
Glancing at the ceiling, I scrub a hand down my face. The cramping is only one-half of the reason I’ve been unable to get to work today. I’ve worked through this pain for far too many years to have it keep me tied to this bed. It’s this fucking never-ending sadness that won’t cut me loose.
Sadness is a bland explanation of the way I feel, but it’s the easiest. It’s really the emptiness that uses my pain and wacky hormones as an opening to take me by the head and shove me beneath its black waters.
Decades of time spent flailing in it hasn’t taught me how to swim.
Not when stone hands wrap around my ankles and keep me stuck in place, forcing the inky liquid to fill my lungs.
That’s the morbid, honest description that never leaves my mouth.
I keep my eyes open and turn onto my side, facing the tiny closet.
The thin, orange bottle of pills on my nightstand gawks at me, almost tauntingly.
I’m not ashamed to take them, but I do wish I didn’t need to.
Some days, I even feel like I don’t need to anymore.
I’ve been living with depression for so long that I know that feeling never lasts.
It’s what my therapist back in Nova Scotia was so great at explaining to me, amongst other things.
Moving a hand low on my belly, I look away from the pills and to the doorway. It’s silent. Too goddamn silent. I’m going to lose my mind if I have to spend an entire day staring at the wall with nothing to do but listen to the voice in my head.
I grab my phone from the fold in the blanket and tap the screen. It illuminates with a few messages that I open only to close again. The notifications disappear, and some of my tension slips away. Out of sight, out of mind. For now, at least.
The time on the screen reads 9:04 a.m., which means my absence should have been noticed by now. Faye wasn’t exactly a ball of sunshine when I called at sunrise and told her I wasn’t coming. Apparently, the old woman doesn’t give a shit about feminine issues. I’m shocked.
Rowe’s name wasn’t amongst the ones on my screen. He doesn’t have my number, so I shouldn’t be so upset about him not texting or calling. What did I expect him to do? I doubt he’s even noticed that I’m not at the stable, anyway, which bites like a motherfucker.
Exhaling, I hide my phone in the blanket again and find that same spot on the ceiling.
It’s brown and round from leaking water.
None has fallen onto my face while I’ve slept so far.
If I’m lucky, which I hardly ever am, it’ll hold off for as long as it takes me to convince someone to replace the shingles.
Minutes seem to pass slowly. I count my blinks, then lose track of them when I start to drift off.
There’s a horse whinnying close by, but the sound drifts away.
Diesel engines pass every few hundred blinks, and then I think even a quad rips by.
My toes are warm from the heat gathering beneath the blanket as the temperature rises.
I can’t sleep.
My mind won’t fucking stop running.
There’s a rough rumble in the distance that grows in volume instead of quieting. I blink, staring out into the living room. Another swell of pain pulls a groan from my throat before I look away, squirming.
The rumble disappears. I bite my lip and swallow. Then—the slam of a car door, followed by heavy footsteps not quieted by the grass. I tug the blankets up on instinct, hiding my half-naked chest and watching as the front door whips open and a tall, wide-built man comes crashing inside.
Rowe heaves in breaths, his eyes searching the trailer frantically until they land on me through the bedroom doorway.
I stare blankly, but my mind is running too quickly to make sense of any specific thought.
The cowboy whom I’ve known for almost all my life whips the door shut behind him and takes three jilted steps toward me.
He sweeps a deep, almost terrified look over where I lie before his shoulders drop. His next inhale is longer than the prior ones.
“Why was your door unlocked?” he attacks, nearly roaring.
“I didn’t know it was.”
A hand knocks his hat off before he’s rubbing it over his buzzed head. “What’s wrong?”
“With me or you?”
“Don’t be cute. Answer my question.”
I don’t have the energy to argue. “I’m not feeling well.”
“And you didn’t think to call me? To call anyone? Something could have happened, and I didn’t fucking know! What if you—”
“Had left?”
Silence. Rowe’s fingers go white around the top of his hat before he drops it out of view.
The dirt flecked across his chaps and the lower half of his shirt tells me that he’s been busy this morning.
It isn’t news to me, though now that I see it, I want to hear the details. Even just to busy my mind.
“I called your mom. She knew I wasn’t coming,” I add.
“Me.”
I lift a brow. “You what?”
“You call me next time. Not my mom, not my father. And sure as fuck not one of the other men here. You. Call. Me.”
“Is that an order?” I ask, unable to help it.
His eyes flash, lightning filling the grey. “It is.”
“Okay.”
The confusion that follows my blunt acceptance works across his face. I simply pull up the blankets despite the sheen of sweat on my body and look away. He doesn’t come into my room. Not until I’ve heard him take off his boots and then the chaps that fall heavily to the floor.
Once he’s lowered himself at my bedside, I meet his gaze again. It’s a lot less rough now. “Are you sick?”
“You could say that.”
“Tell me what’s wrong, hellcat,” he prods softly.
My chest cracks under the weight of the unexpected concern. “I’m on my period.”
“Alright. What do you need?”
“I don’t need your pity care, Rowe. I just need to take the day.”
His fingers touch my face, then tuck my hair behind my ear and linger. “It’s not pity.”
I swallow thickly, refusing my body’s desire to pull him into bed. If he did, I wouldn’t let him back out. I want him here with me more than I’m prepared to admit out loud or even accept myself.
“Tell me what to do to help. I’m not going to tell anyone that even Tilly Whittman needs help on her period.”
“You have work. It’s harder for you to take the day off than it is for me.”
“Let me worry about that,” he says.
The bottle of pills on my bedside becomes the focus of his attention a beat later.
I watch him while he reads the label, and when he looks at me again, it’s with more understanding than I thought I’d find.
The name of the drugs isn’t the same as the one I took throughout my teenage and young adult years, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that they do pretty much the same thing.
He hasn’t forgotten as much about me as I thought he had.
“Tell me what you need,” he demands once again.
It’s too exposing. Whatever I ask him to do now will give him an unfair advantage over me. It’s not fair, but I do it anyway. Refusing won’t help me. I want him too damn bad to punish myself by continuing to push.
“I don’t have a heating pad for the cramps.”
“Where can I get one?”
I shake my head against the pillow. “No. Just . . . can you open the window? And then get in the bed.”
Keeping my eyes cast down, I avoid seeing his reaction in real time. He shifts his right leg, then his left, before he steps out of view. I hear the window behind me slide open and feel the soft breeze ruffle my hair.
“It’s hot in here, Tilly. I’ll give you a fever or something.”
I blow out a breath that would have been a laugh any other day. “I don’t care.”
The bed dips. I scrunch my face up and trap my tongue between my teeth when my first instinct is to demand he hurry closer. My head starts fucking with me, and before I know what’s happening, I’m pressing a finger to my lips to keep them sealed shut.
We’ve never shared a bed like this. Not without someone else here with us, either on the floor or sitting on the edge casually watching. But now . . . he’s here. And the last few days are still so fresh in my memory.
“Where does it hurt?” he asks roughly, his voice the only noise in the room.
I hesitate, but he doesn’t wait for an answer. His strong, thick fingertips find my shoulder as he guides me onto my back. Blinking at the ceiling, I try to ignore the rapid, impatient throb beneath my chest bone.
My lips part around a silent moan when he slides his hand beneath the blanket and palms my belly. I turn my head and look at him in complete and utter silence. He begins moving it in small circles, pressing down hard enough for me to feel the heat from his skin sinking into the sore muscles.
“Is this okay?”
“Yes,” I croak, closing my eyes before I do something embarrassing like cry. “That’s . . . good.”
He hums, facing me in the bright room. “Do you need anything else from me?”
“Not unless you can get my therapist on a plane and fly her out here to talk to me.”
“Is that something that would help?”
“Speaking to her usually does.”
He doesn’t say anything for a few breaths.
I sink into the mattress, focused completely on the feel of his hand moving so gently over my body.
It’s the same hand that brought with it so much pain that night, but never toward me.
I touch it before I can stop myself, just holding it as he massages me.
“Does she do video calls?”
“Most do. We’ve never had one.”
“There’s a woman in Cherry Peak. She’s good. It doesn’t help for right now, but for the future.” He clears his throat. “If you stayed.”
I tip my chin. When I reply, it isn’t in response to that. It’s random. A thought that’s been pinging around in my mess of a head today.
“You didn’t tell anyone the truth about why you did what you did that night. Why?”
“Nobody but those who already know will ever find out.”
I gulp, keeping my eyes shut. “It would have been easier for you if you’d given them the real reason instead of letting them see you as the bad guy. Maybe with your parents too.”
“No, it wouldn’t have been. That thought never crossed my mind, Tilly. Let it go.”
“You’re stubborn,” I whisper.
“You should nap.”
“Is all my talking bothering you?”
He curls his fingers and lightly scratches my belly around his palm. “No. I’ll be here when you wake up and start again.”
There’s a stream of light in the dark water. It doesn’t appear so endless in this moment. With Rowe lying beside me, his hand on my body. I don’t need to count my blinks to distract my thoughts.
The soft strokes of his palm are more than enough.