20. 20
20
Colton
I ran a hand down my face, noticing I was beginning to morph into Beau with the length of my stubble, while the other itched to ditch the phone currently pressed against my ear across the paddocks. Glenn was grumbling away down the line. I could imagine him wearing a tailored suit, bolo tie getting swallowed by neck rolls and snip toe boots kicked up onto the desk of his Texas office. A big white Stetson would be strangling his big head. A cigar would either be smouldering away in an ash tray or between his fingers. A steaming black coffee wouldn’t be drunk until cold. Glenn was a dick. But also a good manager.
Right now, though, he was purely a dick.
‘With Cooper out, you’ve already gained a position! You gotta get back home, son!’
I felt my jaw clench, my hand tightened around my phone. Home . I was home you big, loud Texan.
‘I’m not riding success of being in the top three on the back of a rider who’s in a coma, Glenn,’ I muttered, leaning against the verandah railing.
The sun was just rising, the purple sky exploding with orange. Beau had left not long ago for a two-day horse sale with a truckload of our most prized youngsters, hoping to get a pretty penny for each of them. Inside, I could hear Dad shuffling about and grumbling as he made his morning coffee. I told him time and time again to let me make it, but he was a stubborn bugger rushing his recovery. The sling had already been tossed away in a huffing fit of agitation. The doctor was going to kick our arses at the next appointment.
Dad’s silhouette lurked on the other side of the window, nowhere near where he usually made his coffee. I wanted this conversation wrapped up before he could earwig. For two blokes bent on privacy, my family had no problems prying into mine.
‘The poor bastard was thrown into the fence and knocked out cold. What if it was me? Would you be poaching the next rider?’
‘Well, yeah.’
I rolled my eyes even though he couldn’t see.
‘Look, kid. I get it, your dad is sick. But he ain’t dyin’ and it sounds like your brother ain’t letting you help anyway. So how about you come on home and look after me? The manager who’s been with you from the start?’
I sighed, looking out into the paddocks where Mum’s headstone would be brightening. I missed her twentieth anniversary . I stiffened when the silhouette of a woman riding a horse appeared on the horizon. I blinked, then rubbed my eyes. Christ, now I was seeing her. Just like Beau said he did. But when the Appaloosa came into focus, I didn’t know if I was then dreaming.
‘Kid, you there?’
‘Yeah, Glenn. I’m here. Look, mate. Can I call you back?’
‘I’ll give it to you straight.’ Glenn’s voice turned stern. ‘I’ve got young kids banging down my door for me to get them a contract. You’ve got what they want. So what do you want, kid?’
Honey had slowed Misty down to a walk as they kept moving in my direction. ‘I, uh …’
‘You call me back when you have the answer. Let’s just hope your contract still exists by the time you do.’
I wasn’t even bothered when the call was disconnected. I moved slowly along the verandah as Honey jumped down from Misty, tied the mare’s reins to the fence and hopped over. This made me cock my head with a small grin. The gate always squeaked. She didn’t want someone to know she was here. I watched as she approached me, her hands shoved deep into the back pockets of her jeans as she stood at the bottom of the steps. It was still early, but I hoped late enough for my morning wood to stay limp since I could see directly down her tank top. I couldn’t help but wonder how her body had matured in the years since my hands had roamed over her skin. Back then, I’d been young and impatient. If I had my way now, I would be slow and grateful. I would worry about her needs more than mine. I would lay her against the bonnet of my ute and—
‘Beau awake yet?’ she asked timidly.
This had my eyebrows dipping into a deep frown. ‘… No. He’s gone for two days at the horse sale?’
‘Oh, right. Of course.’ She was chomping on her bottom lip like a rabbit with a carrot. It was how she kept her tears at bay.
I took a step down. ‘Is everything okay?’
‘Yes. Well, no.’ She wrapped her arms around herself, her eyes yet to look at my face.
‘Okay … you gonna tell me why you came over here at the crack of dawn, or do I have to keep playing twenty-one questions?’
Her voice went small and quiet as she asked, ‘Wanna go for a ride?’
***
My curiosity was bursting at the seams as I cantered on a young gelding alongside Honey and Misty. I wanted to halt the horses and demand Honey tell me what the hell this was all about but I fought not to. Whatever it was, it was big and I couldn’t help but feel that it was whatever she mentioned the night I dropped her home and what Ellie-May had almost let slip yesterday. Then there was the fact that she looked like she hadn’t slept.
I slowed my horse when she brought Misty down to a walk. We rode in silence. Birds chirped around us in their morning songs. The horses snorted and snagged at the long bits of grass they walked through. I looked to Honey who was staring off into the distance with a sad look on her face. I was growing more concerned by the second, but I didn’t dare speak. Whatever she had to tell me was big and it wasn’t something easily spoken about.
‘There’s something I need to give you.’ I watched as Honey reached into her pocket. A strange feeling of sad nostalgia came over me when the diamonds and sapphires glittered beneath the sunrise. She seemed to hesitate before extending it towards me. ‘Here. It’s not like I need it anymore. Get your money back.’
‘But I got it for you,’ I said with a throat that felt like it was strangled.
She gave a scoff. ‘You got it to marry me, Colton. Something you clearly didn’t want.’ She halted Misty. ‘Please take it.’
I took the ring from her gently. Looking into the glistening faces of the sapphires, I could feel the nerves about proposing course through me all over again. I’d had to ride the quietest horse of our herds so that a youngster didn’t pick up on my emotions and buck me to Timbuctoo. I’d hoped like crazy Honey hadn’t detected the tremble in my voice when I asked her if she wanted to go riding. Something we’d always done. I’d been the only one to know that ride would be so different. I’d been nineteen and proposing. A nightmare for other blokes my age. But I’d wanted it all. Honey as my wife, following me to the US. I’d been young and dumb. My head too big. I expected her to sacrifice her dreams to be in the sidelines of my own.
I looked at her now, her eyes also focused on the ring. I could see my nineteen-year-old self sliding down from the saddle. Pulling the ring from my pocket and going down on one knee by Misty’s front legs. Honey staring down at me with wide eyes as I’d spluttered out the speech I’d configured for weeks in one big breath.
Yes.
‘Sort of feels like we’ve come full circle, huh?’ Honey gave a sad smile before squeezing Misty into a walk.
I fumbled to shove the ring in my pocket and jogged my horse alongside her. ‘Is that what this is about? The ring?’
Tidy nails picked at her leather reins.
‘Jesus, Honey. I hate seeing you like this. Please, just tell me.’
She sucked in a deep breath, closing her eyes. Calming herself. When she looked at me again, the corners of her mouth wobbled with the threat of losing it. My heart pounded; harder than the day I drew The Bounty Hunter. My mouth became dry, like when I made a mistake that would haunt me for years to come.
‘I was pregnant.’
The world around me halted. It was like I was in a bubble, where everything around me silenced and slowed. Through its wobbly walls, Honey was looking at me with sorrow and fear.
‘ Was? ’ I managed to breathe out.
She nodded. ‘I found out about a month after you left. I was going to tell you once I knew everything was okay at the twelve-week scan … but I lost it shortly after.’
I swore under my breath as I felt tears prick at my eyes. It felt like ants were running all over me, running up into my scalp so fast there was a roaring in my ears. I wanted to run. I wanted to jam my boots into my horse’s sides and have it run and run and run … but to where?
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘What good would it have done?’
My mouth opened and closed. ‘Well, I would’ve supported you.’
Honey gave a bitter chuckle. ‘Colton, you broke things off with me only months after proposing to live your dream. I’m sorry if my trust in you was shattered.’
There was an aching in my chest. I’d had a child. With Honey. The girl I’d loved. The girl I’d left. The girl I’d left behind to deal with pregnancy then the trauma of a miscarriage. Alone.
‘How? How did it happen?’
She hesitated. ‘Lots of things can cause miscarriage in the early trimester. But for me, the doctors … they said it was stress.’
I felt numb as I dismounted my horse and walked a short distance away. I felt like I was going to be sick as I crouched in the grass, my hands through my hair. A baby. We could’ve had a baby . But it’d died. Because of me. Because I’d been selfish in chasing my dreams and left Honey to cope with being a single mother.
The stress I’d put on her had killed our baby .
‘I’m a fucking arsehole.’ I quickly wiped away a tear that had burst its banks and was travelling down the side of my nose.
‘No, Colton, you’re not.’ Honey’s shadow appeared in the grass next to me and I heard her intake of breath as she sat down. ‘For so long I hated you for it. Because it was easiest. I blamed you the same way I blamed my parents. But this time it was my fault. I should’ve told you the moment I found out, no matter how things were between us. I didn’t give you a chance to support me. But I was nineteen, I was still a kid. We were still kids, no matter how much we thought we’d grown up. Not telling you, not allowing you to make things right, it made it easier to hate you. To move on from you. That wasn’t fair, though, to you or our baby.’
I couldn’t stop the choking sob which retched out of me. I thought of Honey, holding that positive test in trembling fingers. Had she done it in the bathroom at home alone? Or had her granny or Ellie-May held her hand through it? Had she lay awake at night, wondering how in the hell she was going to raise our child when I’d taken off to galivant across the US without a backwards glance? I thought of her teenage bedroom, one I’d been in so many times, imagining it to be decorated with a crib at the end of her bed, baby clothes and toys strewn about the floor. Had she wanted it, that baby? Even though I was gone, had she been determined to take that little life and give it never-ending love despite the relationship between its parents? Or was the miscarriage a painful blessing?
‘I killed our baby, Honey. If I’d stayed …’ My throat constricted.
‘If you’d stayed then it might’ve happened anyway. Or we would’ve had four kids and resented each other through a divorce. I can’t go back down the path of what-ifs. And neither can you because let me tell you, it’s the fastest way to unravel.’ A soft hand squeezed my shoulder, soft pink nails digging into the fabric of my shirt. ‘I’m sorry I’m only telling you now.’
‘I’m sorry I left you to suffer alone.’
‘I had Granny and Ellie-May. They’re the only ones who know,’ she said quietly.
I snapped my head to face her. ‘What about Beau?’
Her hand tore from mine as if it’d been scorched. ‘Beau can never know. He already struggles with the amount of history between us. Can you imagine if he found out there was a baby too?’
I allowed myself to fall back into the grass, wrapping my arms around my folded legs. I glanced over to Honey, a look of composure when my head was a steaming mess. ‘How are you so … okay?’
She looked over to me, the morning sunlight catching in the flyaway strands of her braid. I waited for the resentment to fill those deep blues, for her mouth to scream, ‘Leaving me wasn’t enough. You had to put me through our baby’s death, too!’ but it never came.
Instead she only smiled gently, tucking those flyaway strands behind her ears as she looked at the horses grazing nearby. ‘I’ve had seven years to grieve, to recover. You’ve had all of, what? Seven minutes?’
‘Was it bad?’ I swallowed roughly. ‘When you lost the baby …’
The only sign of discomposure she showed was a shuddering breath. Then I realised while she might’ve had more time to come to terms with the loss, it still killed her, but she was holding herself together for me .
‘It was horrible. I was told that some cramping in the early stages was normal, but this day they were too painful. I knew something was wrong.’ Another shuddering breath. ‘That night, when I was doing something as mundane as watching TV, our little baby just … let go. I went to hospital, bleeding and scared out of mind. They did an ultrasound, trying to pick up its heartbeat but there was nothing there.’
I pinched my eyes closed, bile rising in my throat with the knowledge that while I was schmoozing new sponsors, she was suffering through that .
‘I wasn’t angry at myself for losing the baby,’ she continued quietly. ‘I never drank or smoked. I didn’t eat anything I wasn’t meant to as soon as I found out. I did everything I was meant to. It was just bad luck. But I hate myself for the relief I felt. Of course I was sad. But I was so scared about raising that baby. Of having a constant tie to you when I hated you so much …’ She sucked in a sharp breath as a gust of wind swept through, like it could move along the heaviness. ‘Some people pray for a baby but are never blessed with one. Yet there I was, relieved to have lost one.’
I shook my head gently, the shock of the news steadily wearing off. ‘You can’t compare yourself to others in those situations, Honey. Most people wanting would be prepared and be welcoming it into a loving home. What sort of life would our baby have been coming into? A teenage mum, scared of doing it alone and an absentee father on the Ebr circuit?’
‘Like I said, the what-ifs are torture.’ Honey hesitantly rested her cheek against my shoulder and I absorbed the feeling. I imagined her rays of sunshine and love helping ease the new pain in my heart. ‘If I gave you a chance, though, I think you would’ve come through on being a good father.’
I cleared my throat, moving my head to look at her, my breath catching when her eyes were looking up to mine. ‘You wouldn’t have needed me around to be the best mum.’
With our breaths mingling, my eyes found her perfect rosy and pout lips instantly. I wondered if they were still as soft. If they would still drive me as knee-buckling crazy. Of course they would. It was Honey. The first girl I’d loved and possibly the only. The girl I’d wanted to marry. The girl I’d been stupid to throw away. The girl who’d carried our baby.
The girl who was dating my brother.
Honey seemed to have the same realisation, her body reeling back like she’d been slapped. An alarm was blaring from her phone. Had it been going this entire time? She shot up to her feet, hastily dusting off her jeans as if she was trying to rid herself of the moment we’d just shared.
‘I, uh, I’ve gotta get to work.’ She silenced the alarm and shoved her phone back into her pocket. When I came to stand in front of her, her brow knitted together worriedly. ‘Will you be okay? I hate having to leave you like this after what I’ve just told you.’
I forced a smile on my face, even though inside I felt like I wouldn’t smile for days. ‘Yeah, I’ll be fine.’
Honey looked unsure, reaching out her hand to dig those nails into my shoulder again. ‘If you need me, just call me.’
I nodded, grabbing the reins of my own horse as she vaulted up into the saddle on Misty. Then she was gone, cantering back to Appleyard Farm, leaving me to grieve for so much more than I thought I’d already lost.
***
I was still numb, having unsaddled and turned out my horse on autopilot, when I stumbled into the house. Dad was sitting at the kitchen table, glasses perched on the end of his nose, a horse magazine opened in front of him. When he saw me practically stagger to the fridge and twist open a beer, the magazine closed and his bushy brows joined.
‘What happened?’
I fell into one of the chairs, staring at the pattern of the tablecloth, which hadn’t changed since Mum had died, the lines beginning to blur into blotches of colour. Fuck, I never cried. I searched for that switch I’d instilled in myself, willing my emotions to desert my mind, but it was like I was in a dark room fumbling along the wall.
‘There was a baby, Dad,’ I choked out, shoving the beer away from me. I scrubbed a hand over my eyes, unable to stop the trembling of my shoulders. ‘I should never have gone. I shouldn’t have left her— them .’
There was the scraping of my dad’s chair and his good arm wrapped around me. All he said was, ‘It’s alright, son. It’s going to be alright.’
For the first time in years, I let myself unravel, grateful to have my dad’s comfort through something I didn’t know how in the hell to come to terms with.