Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
MADONNA, “CRAZY FOR YOU”
When I reached the Corys’ lane, I slowed down to see if Matt’s car was there. It wasn’t, so I continued driving along the gravel road until there was a farm lane, and I parked my car there.
Shimmying through the fence, I trekked through the pasture to the horse barn. When I peeked my head inside, there was no one there; as I stepped backward to close the door, I bumped into someone and jumped around with my hand on my heart.
Isaac wiped his dirty, sweaty brow with his arm. “Hi.”
“Hi,” I replied while my shoulders relaxed. Just being in his presence lifted the weight of the world from them. “Are you going to ask me why I’m here when Joanna’s funeral is this afternoon?”
He shook his head .
“Why not?”
“Because,” he reached past me to open the barn door, “I’m just really fucking glad to see you. Do you want to tell me why you’re here?” He lifted his T-shirt and wiped his whole face.
It was scorching, and so were his abs which distracted me for a few seconds.
“Brenda Swensen was the driver who hit Heather and Joanna. And they think she’d been drinking.”
“Yeah,” he said, giving me a shrug. “She died too.”
There was no way that Isaac didn’t know about the affair, not after his reaction to the couple in front of us at Opryland. We’d been dancing around the topic.
Right?
“And?”
Isaac squinted. “And what? She was drunk. She killed two people. And she paid the price.”
“She didn’t pay the price. She’ll never pay the price. Brenda’s dead. She’s not here to suffer the consequences of what she did to my friends and your family.”
“My family?”
He doesn’t know?
I opened my mouth to speak, but I didn’t know what to say.
“You mean Matt because they were his friends too?” Isaac asked.
Had I not had another funeral to attend or just stormed out of my house, I would have told him. Out of everyone, I wanted to be honest with Isaac because I believed what we had would last—maybe for a lifetime. His trust mattered the most.
“Yeah,” I whispered. “They were Matt’s friends too. ”
The lines of confusion on Isaac’s face vanished. “I’ve wanted to call.”
I nodded slowly. “Yeah, well, don’t call now. I think I just ran away from home.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I blew up at my dad and ran out. I have a dress for the funeral in my car that I parked at the tractor turnaround. Then I walked through the pasture.” I lifted my foot. “And I got poop on my shoe.”
“You’re homeless?” He lifted a brow.
“Yes. Can I sleep in the barn?”
“You can sleep in my bed.”
I gave him a dead stare before casting my gaze on the ground between us. “Can we just go back to Nashville?”
“I’ll drive.”
I reached for him because I loved him for saying that.
“I’m filthy,” he said, taking a step backward and holding up his hands.
“I don’t care.” Again, I reached for him.
He took another step away. “You have to put on a dress in a few hours.”
Everything was falling apart, including me. The only hands that could put me back together were his.
“I-saac …” His name shattered as it fell from my quivering lips.
With his brow furrowed, he grabbed my face and kissed me. I curled my fingers into his shirt, tugging it, needing him to be as close to me as possible. If I could feel his heart beating against my chest, I thought mine would remember to keep beating too.
Everything ached bone-deep. The blank space Heather and Joanna left inside of me needed to be filled before I crumbled into something irreparably broken. It was a hundred degrees outside under a cloudless sky, but I hadn’t seen light in days. My world was dark and suffocating.
I shoved Isaac’s shirt up his sweaty chest, and he pulled it over his head and removed mine. As he walked me backward, we kissed, and he discarded my bra.
“Make it better,” I whispered while his whiskery jaw brushed my neck. “Make everything better.”
He closed the door as we stepped into the tack room, fighting for leverage to remove each other’s clothes. The need felt unquenchable—a runaway passion so raw it brought tears to my eyes.
I loved Isaac more than anyone. He didn’t earn it the way Matt earned my love. It wasn’t bestowed by genetics. I didn’t fall in love with Isaac. I found myself in love with him.
In him, I found myself.
“Oh god … ” I tipped my head back and closed my eyes when he lifted me onto the bench and filled me. “I love you,” I whispered as we moved together with my legs wrapped around his waist.
“You’re my beautiful Sunday Morning,” he said, kissing up my throat, dragging his tongue along my sweaty skin. “You’re my every morning.” He teased my earlobe. “And I thank God for you.”
I kissed Isaac’s bare shoulder as tears burned my eyes. Why did he have to remind me that I didn’t hate God? Why did he have to be the better person? Despite the unimaginable tragedy and loss, I had Isaac. And when we were as close as physically possible, I could breathe.
I didn’t feel hollow.
And even in the dark room, he helped me see the light .
“Isaac,” I curled my fingers into his hard glutes, “thank … you.”
Thank you for taking it away.
Isaac rocked his pelvis into mine with purpose, slowly losing control with me. His calloused hands brushed along my cheeks before diving into my hair as he kissed me with an open mouth and a deep moan vibrating his chest.
My heart lost all control. Isaac didn’t think I belonged to anyone, but he was so very wrong. I wanted to be his in every way possible.
No more coveting.
I wanted to be his world because he was mine.
For a moment, I felt nothing but waves of pleasure, and I didn’t want it to end. Then he pulled out, and I was swimming in too much bliss, and the room was too dark to see what he was doing. But when he grunted and moaned deeply, I realized he had his hand around his erection, and he was coming on my stomach instead of inside of me.
Isaac dropped his forehead to my shoulder. We were drenched in sweat and my skin pulsed from head to toe.
Condoms.
I didn’t once think about a condom. A million other emotions consumed my mind, preventing me from having a single responsible thought about a condom. But his withdrawal brought a little clarity—and a little panic.
“Isaac,” I whispered, slowly unlocking my ankles from his waist.
He threaded his fingers through my sticky hair and kissed my cheek. “Yeah?”
“If I get pregnant, I won’t?—”
“I know,” he murmured .
“You don’t know.” I teased the nape of his neck, resting my head against his. “I’m not Danielle. I won’t get?—”
“I. Know,” he said, skating his hands along my legs to my hips. “I didn’t …” He sighed. “I would never ask you to do anything you didn’t want to do.” He unhooked my legs from his waist and stepped back. Then he turned on the light as I eased off the wood counter.
With an old rag, he wiped off my stomach. “For the record, I’m not trying to get you pregnant.” After tossing the rag aside, he pulled on his briefs and jeans as I slipped on my shorts.
“My bra and our shirts are out there.” I nodded toward the door.
“Did you hear me?” he asked, zipping his jeans.
I glanced up at him.
“I’m not that guy,” he said.
I didn’t want to accuse him of anything, but what happened, happened. He couldn’t erase the past or blame me for needing to make my position clear.
“And I told you I’m not that girl, the one who gets an abortion.” Pleasers, like myself, got lost in everyone else’s expectations. But of all of my relationships, my one with God was the most complex, which was odd since He was the only one I believed loved me unconditionally—at least I thought that before the accident.
I wanted to be a good human, but I wasn’t perfect. My values were personal, and I didn’t want my dad or anyone else telling me what I should do or think. But it had been my experience that the people who cared for me held strong opinions about my life and my decisions.
But not Isaac .
He opened his mouth to speak just as the door to the barn creaked. I covered my breasts, and my heart exploded with panic. He held a finger to his lips and shut off the light before cracking open the tack room door, squeezing through, and closing it behind him.
I was being punished. God had it in for me.
“What are you doing?”
I held my breath. It was Matt’s voice.
“Whatever I want. Why?” Isaac said.
“Dude, you have a girl in there?”
My bra.
“I do. Would you mind getting out of here and shutting the door behind you?”
“That’s …” Matt’s voice paused. “Sarah has that shirt.”
I closed my eyes, fighting the tears.
“Good for her. What’s your point?”
Isaac didn’t know it was over. The lie was out. Matt got me that shirt at the State Fair the previous year. He won it by playing a carnival game.
“Sarah?” Matt said with a tight voice.
“Dude, get the fuck out of here,” Isaac said.
The tack room door rattled.
“Sarah!”
“Get the fuck out of here!”
“She’s in there! Get out of my way. Sarah!”
There was a clanging noise, and one of the horses neighed.
“I swear to God, if she’s in there, I’m going to kill you,” Matt said.
“Get your hands off me,” Isaac said. “Or you’ll regret it.”
I didn’t even try to wipe my tears before I opened the door, grabbing a horse blanket to wrap around my torso. Both men turned toward me. Isaac deflated as tears streamed down my face while I kept my gaze locked on Matt’s.
He slowly shook his head, jaw set, eyes red. “What have you done?” he whispered.
I sobbed. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.
Matt swallowed hard as the muscles in his face twitched; his whole body shook. “Virgin to a whore.”
I winced, turning my head like he’d slapped me.
“Matty,” Isaac grabbed his neck, and Matt clawed at his hand.
“Isaac!” I yelled.
He ignored me as he walked Matt backward toward the door. “You don’t get to talk to her that way. I won’t allow it. Not today. Not ever. I love you, but I love her more. You and everyone else are done sucking the life out of her. You’re done taking. Your privileges have been revoked. So go back to the house. Be the coddled child you’ve always been because you don’t deserve someone you don’t really see. Are we clear?” He released him.
Matt gasped, rubbing his throat. When he looked at me, I averted my gaze to the ground.
“When he knocks you up and leaves you for six years, and your parents kick you out, don’t come crying to me,” Matt said through gritted teeth before slamming the barn door behind him.
I continued to stare at the floor.
Numb.
Dazed.
“Look at me,” Isaac said.
I didn’t move .
“Look. At. Me.”
With a shaky inhale, I peered up at him just as he pulled his shirt over his head. Then he took my bra and T-shirt and proceeded to dress me.
“I’ll make my father buy me out. We’ll pack up and go to Nashville, or anywhere you want to go.”
I furrowed my brow. “What are you talking about? Buy you out of what?”
“The ranch.” He closed the tack room and tucked his hands into his back pockets while facing me. “My dad did something. I helped him out. And in return, he gave me fifty percent of the land.”
Fifty percent of the Corys’ ranch added up to more than a fourth of the land in and around Devil’s Head.
Brenda.
Isaac knew about Brenda, and Wesley gave him half the farm to keep his mouth shut.
“What did he do?” I asked.
“I can’t say.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
He shook his head. “Can’t.”
I frowned. “I already know. But I don’t want to do this now. I need to figure out where to rinse off so I can get dressed for the funeral.”
“I don’t know what you think you know, but you’re way off,” he said.
“I’m not. But it doesn’t matter. I have to go.”
“It does matter,” Isaac said as I brushed past him toward the door.
He grabbed my arm. “Sarah, whatever you think you know, you?—”
“I know about the affair.”
Isaac’s grip on my arm tightened for a few seconds until I tugged it away from his hold. When I glanced back at him, his tan face began to lose its color.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured. “But I’m tired of the secrets. They’re destroying everyone.”