23. Lettie
Lettie
W hen I woke up the next morning, Bailey was gone. He’d scribbled “Took Rouge out to check on Bucky” on the tiny hotel notepad that sat on the nightstand. I laid on my back, unable to keep my thoughts from straying to last night.
After he gave me another orgasm while The Notebook credits rolled by in the background, we watched an episode of Family Guy and fell asleep.
I'd meant it when I said I was tired, but something about his cock pressed against my ass made me unable to sleep.
Sensing that, he'd disappeared under the covers and used his tongue in more ways than I could count.
Sometime in the middle of the night, I’d woken to his arm wrapped around me, his chest to my back with Rouge at our feet.
I couldn’t help the smile on my face at how that moment felt.
Almost like nothing changed between us, yet everything did.
Like there wasn’t a big chunk of our lives without each other in them.
Since my shirt was destroyed, he’d let me sleep in his, and as I got dressed in an old Coors Banquet t-shirt and high waisted Kimes Ranch jeans, I debated stuffing it in my duffel bag to keep it forever.
He smelled like cinnamon and the sun and I wanted to fall asleep to that scent every night.
I tucked my shirt into my jeans and slid on my boots just in time for Bailey and Rouge to come back into the room.
Knowing he’d notice if his shirt was gone, I left it out of my bag and zipped it up. As amazing as last night was, I didn’t think it’d happen again, and if that was the case, stealing his shirt would just be weird.
As if he read my thoughts, he said, “You can keep that if you want.”
I stopped with the shirt in my fist, hovering over his open luggage. “What?”
“My shirt. You look good in it.”
I set the shirt in his bag. “I don’t want to take your clothes…”
He stopped in front of me, picking the shirt up and holding it in between our chests. “I want you to.”
I shook my head, my gaze dropping to the clothing in his fist. “It was a mistake Bailey. I don’t-”
“Want to ruin things between us? Tell me, Lettie, what would giving in to what we both want ruin?”
He was right. God, why was he always right?
He gently grabbed my chin with his other hand, guiding me to meet his eyes. “I don’t want to ever hear you say that what we do is a mistake. You leaving for five fucking years was a mistake. Me not chasing after your ass was a mistake. But us? That will never be a mistake.”
“I’m sorry, Bailey, I a-”
He shook his head, his thumb running over my jaw. “Don’t apologize to me, Lettie. That’s in the past now.”
I nodded and he let go of my jaw, waiting until I grabbed the shirt from his hold to zip up his bag.
“We can hit the road if you’re ready.”
I nodded again, not trusting myself to speak through the lump of emotion stuck in my throat.
He may not want me to be sorry, but I was.
I’d never stop apologizing for my selfishness that caused us to be apart for half a decade.
Where would we be now if I had stayed? If I had given in to him instead of running three hundred miles away?
I silently followed him out of the room as he held our bags and Rouge’s leash, my hands empty, but my mind loaded heavy with regret.
***
After grabbing a quick bite to eat and loading up the five horses from the auction house, we started the long drive home.
Every hour, we stopped to check on the horses to make sure they were all getting along and none of them looked visibly ill.
The stress of the past few days could catch up on them quickly, and the last thing we wanted to deal with on this drive was colic.
We listened to my country playlist up until the fourth hour when I turned the volume down.
“I feel bad,” I confessed.
Bailey glanced at me before bringing his eyes back to the road. “Why’s that?”
“Well, you got me to... And you didn’t get to... So I don’t think that’s fair.”
He chuckled, shaking his head. “You mean orgasm?”
I nodded, facing forward to look out the windshield. “Yeah.”
I watched as we passed wide open fields that stretched for miles, no end in sight.
The West was truly breathtaking. Montana especially.
Once you crossed over the state line, it was like the blue sky opened up and you felt free, like you could slow down, take a deep breath of air, close your eyes, and enjoy the sun beating down on your skin without the stress of life wearing down on your shoulders.
It was a place of serenity like no other.
“I don’t mind, Huckleberry.”
I crossed my arms. “Don’t you want, like, I don’t know, road head or something?”
He snorted as he burst out laughing. When I didn’t join in on the laughter, he looked at me. “You’re serious?”
I widened my eyes as I raised my eyebrows in a way that screamed “duh.”
“If that’ll make you feel better about it, Huckleberry, have at it. I won’t stop you.”
I frowned at the center console. These damn new trucks had them in permanently with no ability to lift them out of the way.
“Well, I can’t even if I wanted to.” I gestured to the leather dividing us.
He shrugged. “Guess it’ll have to wait until we’re in my truck.” He drove an older vehicle, so the front was a bench seat. It made road head easy. Not that I’d know.
I narrowed my eyes at him, pressing my lips into a thin line. “I guess it will.”
I gnawed on the inside of my cheek, turning my attention out the window.
“You’re gonna chew your cheek clean off if you keep at it.”
Swallowing my nerves, I said, “It was the way you looked at me.”
His brows furrowed with confusion. “What?”
“The day I turned eighteen, something changed between us. I knew if I told you I was leaving, you’d try to change my mind.”
He nodded. “I would have.”
“At the time, I didn’t want my mind changed. But now, looking back at all this lost time, I wish you did.”
“Like I said, Lettie, that’s in the past.”
“I know. I just wanted you to know that I noticed it.”
“Huckleberry, if you noticed it, you would’ve seen I’ve been looking at you like that since the first day I laid eyes on you when we were kids. It was you who looked at me differently that day, not the other way around. ”
I didn’t respond as I sat there thinking back to my eighteenth birthday when Bailey showed up with a vanilla cake coated in homemade huckleberry frosting.
He’d made it from scratch, and if I knew anything about Bailey, it was that he didn’t bake.
But he did it for me, and it was the best cake I’d ever had.
My lips twitched with a smile at the memory. “You want to give me the recipe to that cake you made me?”
He shook his head. “I’d rather make it myself for every birthday you have from this point forward.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “Since when did you become such a romantic?”
He flashed his teeth with a smile as he clicked on his blinker to pull over since we were approaching our fifth hour in the truck.
Shifting to park, he got out to check on the horses and the trailer.
I wondered if my family would see that something changed between us on this trip when we got home, and how my brothers would feel about it if they found out.