Sweet Like Honey

29. 29

29

Colton

W hile Beau had the creek bed, I had the big gum tree that sat at the border of Double Q Ranch and Appleyard Farm. As a kid, I’d scaled these branches like a spider monkey. Before it’d become the spot where I’d meet Honey, it was my sanctuary when Mum died. Amongst its calming scent of eucalyptus and the limbs shielding me from the hurtful world, I’d allow the pain of losing my mum flow free. Because cowboys didn’t cry. Cowboys were strong and tough and rigid. They didn’t mull over hurt feelings. They got on with the jobs that needed doing; training a young horse, mending a fence or branding cattle. Mum was the only one I could cry around. Beau would pick on me and Dad was always awkward with comfort and feelings.

So when she died, the big gum tree took her place.

Today though, aboard another youngster who needed miles put on him, I wasn’t a sad little boy seeking refuge to cry. Rather a fully grown man who had to hide from his dad’s disapproving looks and steer clear of his older brother’s simmering resentment. The colt beneath me walked in energetic strides, his neck slightly arched and head bobbing along. Something suddenly caught his attention. His brown ears pinged forward and my legs shuddered against his sides as he let out a whinny.

It wasn’t until we neared the big tree that a familiar Appaloosa rump came into view. Misty’s tail swished lazily against the flies. The mare’s head hung over from the other side of the fence she was tied to.

‘Shit,’ I muttered to myself.

I clenched the leather reins in my hands tighter and squeezed my right leg against the youngster’s side to turn him back for home. But after he’d walked a few steps, I halted him and spun him back around. Then halted him again. The whole point of coming here was to not piss off Beau further. If he found out that Honey and I were sitting up here alone like old times, it wouldn’t be Glenn dragging me back to the States but Beau catapulting me. But Honey still owned my heart. Years ago, I’d promised to always be there for her, a promise I hadn’t kept. I urged the colt onwards, his hindquarters digging deep to climb the slight hill to the tree.

A strong sense of déjá vu plagued me as I tied my horse to a low-hanging branch. It was as if the paddocks surrounding us wavered and we’d been thrown back to the years of our childhood. When things were simpler, until they weren’t. Until I’d left Honey, wearing the ring I’d given her only months before, unknowingly abandoning the little life we’d created inside of her too. As I rounded the thick trunk of the tree though, the older version of Honey reminded me that we hadn’t been thrown into the past. Although she didn’t look too much different, either. As a teenager, she’d always had a nervousness about her. Those same eyes, gorgeous and blue as blue, were always ping-ponging around in what she knew was an untrusting world. I could always almost see the weight of her childhood weighing her down with the way her shoulders hunched. Closed in on herself, preparing for the stick of life to give her another wallop. Making herself invisible to try and silence the whispers and rumours.

My heart nearly split itself in two, when all these years later, she still looked like that young and broken girl with her knees drawn to her chest.

I moved slowly, hoping she spotted me in her peripheral, just like how I’d always been told to treat nervous animals.

‘Easy now, son. You don’t want to be startling her.’

I crouched down. Honey still stared into the distance, the wind lifting the light tendrils of hair which escaped a messy ponytail. My back hit the cool hardness of the trunk and I let my denim-clad arse scrape down the bark as I slid. Honey blinked and jolted slightly when she spotted me out the corner of her eye.

‘You shouldn’t be here.’ Her voice didn’t hold its usual sweetness. Her words came out grated and tortured. I knew she would be blaming herself for everything, that those relentless thoughts would be dizzying in her mind.

‘If we want to get into the nitty-gritty, this spot was mine first and you’re trespassing on Double Q property.’ I offered a smirk to try and break the tension, but she barely looked at me.

‘You saw me here. You should’ve stayed away.’ Her eyes were fixated on the distant view again. I didn’t miss the slight tremble of her lips.

‘Someone needs to make sure you’re okay, too,’ I said solemnly.

Finally, she looked to me, and I anchored myself to the ground as not to touch her. Tears were brimming at the edges of her eyes, eyes which showed embarrassment and self-inflicted torment. ‘I don’t deserve to be okay, Colton. Look at the mess I’ve made. Look at what I’ve done to you and Beau—your family.’

‘Our family dynamic has been fucked from the moment I jetted off to the States. You know that. You’re just the collateral in all of this.’ I removed my hat and ran a hand through my hair. I was agitated. Not at Honey, or Beau. But at myself. Because I truly was the instigator for this complete shit show. Now Honey, the girl I loved and would never stop loving, was taking the brunt for my mistakes.

‘Why didn’t you stay away from me all those years ago? Why were you nice to me? Why didn’t you just have the same view as everyone else in town?’ She was becoming erratic, her hands flying around in gestures and her voice fuelled by frustration.

I frowned. ‘Because they were all fucking wrong, Honey. I saw you for more than what you came from.’

She gave a bitter scoff and folded her arms against herself tightly. I watched as her mouth opened and closed, the way she’d suck in a breath to release a rant before blowing it out in defeat. Like a deflating balloon, the anger left her body. ‘I’d finally shaken those rumours. I’d finally, finally got people to stop looking at me as the junkie’s child. Now I have a whole new identity—the whore.’

‘I’m pretty sure a whore is someone who has sex with a lot of people. The last time I checked, you aren’t doing that.’ I gave her a gentle bump with my shoulder, my heart lifting when the corners of her mouth quirked with the battle of a smile.

‘I could be a virgin and the town would still see me as one. Remember, it’s about appearances for some people here and not the facts.’ Honey shook her head. ‘You and Beau are brothers . You’re family who has to look at each other knowing the facts of what I did.’

‘I don’t have to look at them when I’m on the other side of the world,’ I countered.

Honey let out a frustrated groan. ‘Can you stop doing that?’

‘Making jokes? Deflecting?’

‘Well, yes, but no.’ Honey closed her eyes and inhaled a deep breath before looking at me directly. ‘Stop downplaying things to make me feel better about myself.’

I shuffled closer. ‘I’m not downplaying things. I’m saying things how they are.’ I dropped my voice an octave, noticing her soften. ‘The thing about family is that we forgive each other.’

Honey chewed at her bottom lip. I wished that I could take it between my own teeth and taste it. ‘And the town? Even if Beau forgives you and me … they won’t.’

I sat up straighter, taking the time to place my arms on top of my bent legs as I rolled my words around in my mind. I knew the topic of leaving Gumtree Valley was always a sensitive subject for Honey. I’d never been to the outer-city suburbs Honey’s first six years of life had been spent in. But from what she’d told me, it wasn’t a suburb featuring on tourism campaigns any time soon. Gumtree Valley, as boring and small as it could be to some of us, would’ve been like a Hallmark town to her. The type of town which usually featured in the bullshit cliché movies they play in the middle of the day. I knew this because I’d had the shit luck of having nothing to do but watch a few while Dad recovered. There was always a bakery and a bloke with a chiselled jawline whose acting was subpar.

I gave Honey’s boot a gentle tap with mine. ‘I’m not saying you have to move halfway around the world like some of us, but don’t you want to start somewhere fresh? On the coast, or another small town where no one knows your name? You could say that you’re a retired secret agent and they’d have to believe you.’

The sound of Honey’s laugh always brought a grin to my face. My heart felt like it was flying through mid-air, pirouetting and somersaulting before sticking a perfect landing. Not only because it was light, and sweet and perfect, but because I’d done it. I’d made her laugh and smile and forget about her problems for just a split second. It still felt as good as when I’d pulled a smile from the shy and withdrawn new girl.

‘I think I could come up with a backstory a little more believable than a secret agent.’ She gave a good-natured roll of her eyes before shrugging. ‘I know it sounds strange, but sometimes knowing what Gumtree Valley thinks of me—even if it’s bad—is easier than wondering what people could be thinking of me. When I went away for uni, I experienced what it was like to be someone else. Being in a town with new people, making connections all over again makes my stomach churn.’ She blew out a heavy breath, making a raspberry with her lips. ‘Dealing with people tomorrow night, though, isn’t exactly calming either.’

‘Oh, yes. The famous Rodeo Festival.’

‘You going?’ I gave Honey a flat look, making her poke at my side. ‘Oh, come on, you have nothing to worry about. You could blow up the bank and people would still kiss that bull riding arse of yours.’

I smirked, my ego stroked like a pet cat. ‘I didn’t know you paid such close attention to my arse.’

Colour burst into Honey’s cheeks like fireworks. ‘It’s … it’s a very common figure of speech! You’re just twisting it into something it’s not to feed that insanely big egotistical head of yours.’

I grinned. ‘Don’t be embarrassed. A lot of girls became obsessed with my arse after the Ebr photoshoot.’

Honey let out a squawk of laughter before smacking a hand over her mouth. ‘You did a nude photoshoot?’

‘It was for charity!’

Honey continued laughing— really laughing; with a smile so wide it showed her gums, her cheeks pushed up into her eyes, which watered with tears, and her breaths wheezed. In a moment of darkness for her, I’d made her laugh like that. My ego didn’t need to be any bigger, yet I couldn’t resist the elation I felt. ‘Now that makes sense. You would never have to pay a group of big-headed bull riders to take their clothes off.’

My laughter joined hers, and for a moment, the drama of the past month evaporated. It was just Honey and I under the big gum tree, smiling and laughing like old times. No kissing this time. Although the traitorous side of me was dying to know how her mouth would feel against mine after so long. I gulped, willing the thought away. So I did what was necessary. I asked a burning question, one which would be the perfect killjoy and detour for my thoughts.

‘Why did you fight so hard? I know you knew you and Beau were wrong for each other, so why did you want things to work out so badly?’

Honey looked at me like I’d slapped her in the face. I suppose I had—metaphorically, of course. A second ago, we were laughing about me being nude and now I was asking her about the one thing she was trying to forget. Maybe I should’ve kept my mouth shut. I braced myself for her to get to her feet and tear away on Misty. But I was never one to tread cautiously. Maybe what I really wanted to know, what I really wanted to hear Honey say was,

‘Because I’m still in love with you, Colton.’

But Honey didn’t say those words. Instead, she blinked a few times and stared out into the distance. Thinking. She was always thinking. Tiptoeing around the right words. Protecting herself. I wish she would be messy for once. I wish she would just blurt whatever was on her mind without caring about how she’d come across.

She licked her lips and sucked in a sharp breath. ‘Remember when you and your dad saw me at the hospital? And I told you I was there about my PCOS?’

I puckered my brow, but nodded anyway. ‘Yeah. Poly … Something syndrome.’

Honey breathed a laugh. ‘Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome.’ She glanced down to her fiddling hands. ‘I told you I can struggle to fall pregnant. It varies so much between each woman, it’s hard for doctors to give an accurate estimation about infertility but the general rule is that once a woman is in her thirties, it can become even more difficult.’

‘So Beau was your safety net,’ I murmured.

Honey pinched her eyes closed and I could see the fresh waves of self-hatred pouring from her. I didn’t want her to hate herself any more though. I just wanted to understand. ‘I’m not proud of it. It doesn’t make sense, does it? Usually people with messed up childhoods don’t want kids of their own, worried that shitty parenting continues down the line. And the modern women of today would be horrified to learn that all I want is to be someone’s wife and a child’s mother but I can’t help it. I think that maybe after my start to life I want to give a baby the love and affection I never got. It’s like I learnt so much of what not to do, I just have so much love to give inside of me, I swear I’m going to burst.’ She swallowed thickly. ‘Then I fell pregnant and I lost it … and I always wonder if that was my one chance.’

My heart cracked, bled and then cracked some more. I glanced down to her stomach, where the teeny life we’d created had died inside of her. The grainy image of that little blob, now covered in dirt beneath the tree we’d planted.

‘Fuck,’ I swore softly.

I lifted my hat, raked my hand through my hair and planted it back on roughly. Did it again. I didn’t know what to do, what to say. No, I did know what I wanted to do. I wanted to go back in time and not leave Honey and my unborn baby. Because if I hadn’t left, even if Honey and I didn’t work out as a couple, she might’ve still carried to term. She might’ve had the child she’d always wanted. What if that had been her one chance, and I’d robbed her of it?

‘I know what you’re thinking. Don’t.’ Honey’s voice was stern but her eyes sympathetic when I looked to her. ‘What happened, happened. I can’t have you drag me back onto that vicious merry-go-round, Colton.’

‘Okay.’ My voice was hoarse.

She sighed. ‘Beau did all the right things. He proposed, although maybe not for the right reasons. But he does want a family. And so do I, but some common-sense part of me kept holding me back. Because I knew it wasn’t right. But there’s not a lot of fatherly options in Gumtree Valley and I didn’t want my child to wonder who their dad was if I used a sperm donor. I feel like I’ve got this ticking time bomb inside of me. Every birthday that rolls around is another strike against the possible years I have left. I guess it made me kind of crazy and stupid.’

‘You’re not crazy, Honey.’

‘Desperate?’

I rolled my eyes. ‘No. And you’re not stupid either. A stupid person would marry someone they don’t love, have a baby together and then put the kid through divorce knowing it was going to end that way. You tried with Beau. Better to end up with a broken heart than a broken family.’

Honey pursed her lips. ‘I told you to stop doing that.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Saying things in a way to make me feel better about myself.’

‘It’s the truth though.’ I cleared my throat. ‘You’ll find someone that’s going to give you that family.’

I wish it was me , is what I wanted to add. But I’d had the chance and I’d blown it. Honey looked at me in a way that made me wonder if I’d said the words out loud. But how my jaw was still clenched told me I hadn’t. Then that gaze in her eyes tore away and she was dusting the dirt off her jeans.

My heart may as well have been in my boots as I followed Honey to where she was untying Misty from the fence. I stroked the mare’s face as a distraction when Honey bent over, showing me her perfect jean-clad globe of an arse. I could almost hear the universe laughing in my face when she swung up into the saddle. With a hat now planted on her head, wispy bits of hair dancing around her face, the gorge of her breasts exposed by her tank top and fitted jeans, she was every country boy’s daydream. She’d been my very own real life dream girl.

‘Colton …’

I frowned when she jumped down from the saddle. My heart hammered against my ribcage when her body crashed against mine in a hug. It wasn’t the most comfortable hug, with the strains of wire between us, but I didn’t hesitate in wrapping her up like she was going to disappear into thin air.

‘Thank you,’ she whispered from against my chest. ‘After all this time, you still make sure I’m okay.’

My body, the area in my pants specifically, had noticed how she’d matured from a nineteen-year-old. How her womanly curves were more accentuated. How her butt poked out from her back perfectly in the strange position we were in. How the swell of her breasts seemed more prominent pushed against my chest. But at the risk of the strained crotch of my jeans being caught in the line of barbed wire, I stomped on those feelings like a teenager who’d been busted smoking.

I closed my eyes, breathing deeply. The smell of her wasn’t cliché and floral. It wasn’t one of apples, berries or coconuts. It was just … her . Paper and ink from the books she constantly escaped into, the unmistakable doggy scent from cuddles with Duke, leather from the saddle, dust from brushing Misty. That, mixed with the wide-open spaces, was euphoria. I wanted it bottled. I wanted this moment frozen in time and put into a keepsake so I could take it back to the US with me. So that when I thought of leaving her and this place again, I could bring myself back to it and all would be right again.

When we stepped away from each other, I felt cold beneath the warm sun. I felt like I’d lost a layer of myself. The layer of Honey which always kept me loved, supported and warm. She gave a small smile as she made her way back to Misty, hoisting her foot into the stirrup.

‘Honey!’

Her face whipped to face me. I wanted to blurt it all out, to say aloud the things my heart had been feeling since I first laid eyes on her again. That I should never have let her go, that I want that engagement ring back on her finger, that we can try for more babies if that’s what she wanted. That I would ring Glenn at this very second and tell him to fuck off, that I wasn’t boarding that plane because I was going to give Honey back the life I’d ripped away from her. But I didn’t. Because the timing was wrong. It seemed that for Honey and me, the timing was always wrong, and I didn’t know when it would be right.

‘Don’t let them small-minded people get to you.’

Honey gave a small smile before swinging up into the saddle. Then with a timid wave, she steered Misty for home and disappeared behind the hill.