Chapter 14 #2
“Pretty much,” she muttered. “I’m just guessing, but I bet she dumped him and that’s why he made his visit.”
“He thought you’d take him back?” Idiot.
“Skyler got away with a lot. He must have thought that eventually I’d forgive him. That eventually I’d pick a wedding date. I don’t know. After my parents died, I pushed him away. He didn’t pull me back.”
Because he was a fucking idiot.
“It hurt,” she said, twirling the flowers between her fingers.
“We’d made a lot of promises together. Eight years is a long time to live your life around someone.
But then I realized that we lived around each other, not with each other.
I couldn’t count on him. The promises crumbled.
When I started peeling my life away, making it my own, there weren’t many threads to untangle.
The house is all that’s left and that’s simply paperwork. ”
At the moment, I was thinking of tangling her up so tight she’d never get free.
“It worked out the way it needed to,” she said. “I’m glad to be here in Quincy.”
“I’m glad you’re here too.” I stood, returning to the seat and the handlebars. The moment I was settled, Winn’s arms wrapped around me and the insides of her thighs pressed to the outsides of mine.
She fit me. Perfectly. In more ways than just riding on a four-wheeler.
“Keep going?” I asked over my shoulder. “Or head back to the house?”
“Keep going.”
I grinned, glad she was enjoying this, and started the engine.
Another hour later and the sun was beating down on us.
We’d worked our way past Indigo Ridge, crisscrossing through pastures and bouncing from one fence to the next.
The ridge was behind us and the only reason I’d come this far was to show her one more edge of the ranch so she could get a better idea of the size.
The backside of the ridge was a massive rise, the hill covered in evergreens. But on the flats, there wasn’t much shade. Without a hat, I worried she’d get sunburned, so I aimed the wheels for home.
I slowed at a gate, ready to get off and open it for us, when I glanced up to the forest and saw a plume of smoke rising from the treetops. It was in about the same spot as Briggs’s cabin. “What the hell?”
It was July. Fires in July were not only unnecessary but goddamn dangerous.
“What?” Winn asked, following my gaze. “Aren’t there fire restrictions right now?”
“Yeah.” I turned the four-wheeler around, and instead of heading home, we tore through the landscape toward my uncle’s cabin.
Winn clutched me tight as we wound through the trees and up the road. The scent of charred wood and campfire reached us as we crested the climb and pulled into the cabin’s clearing.
Briggs was standing beside a pile of burning pine limbs, smoke billowing from its center. The orange and red flicker of the flames tickled the open air, sending sparks on the breeze.
I parked and flew off the four-wheeler, racing over to my uncle. “Briggs, what the hell?”
He had a shovel in one hand. A hose in the other. “Harrison? What are you doing here? Didn’t even hear you pull up.”
Harrison? Fuck. I yanked the shovel from his hand, slammed the end into the dirt, stepped out a scoop and tossed it on the flames.
“Hey! I’m—”
“Trying to burn down the whole fucking mountain.”
“It’s a slash pile burn. It’s under control.”
I ignored him, shoveling as quickly as I could. Then I snatched the hose from his hand, dousing the fire. Steam hissed and popped as it broke through the pile.
A small cough made me turn to see Winn behind me. “What can I do?”
I handed her the hose.
“Who are you?” Briggs asked her. “Harrison, who is this? What the hell do you think you’re doing with another woman? Does Anne know?”
“I’m Griffin, Briggs. Griffin,” I barked. “This is Winslow, and you’re in her way. Move.”
He flinched at the volume in my voice and shied away.
Damn it. At my age, Dad and I would have looked nearly identical. I should be patient. I should take it easy. But a fire in July? We waited until the dead of winter when there were two feet of snow on the ground before we burned slash piles.
The rumble of a truck’s engine came from the road, and Dad’s pickup skidded to a stop beside the four-wheeler. He flew out the driver’s side, running our way. “What’s going on? I saw smoke.”
I waited until he was close enough to throw him the shovel, so pissed off I could barely see straight. “Talk to your brother. He thinks I’m you.”
Without another word, I grabbed Winn’s free hand and pulled her away from the hose. She followed, silently climbing on the back of the four-wheeler and holding on as I sped down the road and away from the cabin.
“Goddamn it.” I shook my head, my heart racing.
Winn’s hold tightened. She’d heard me.
We rode straight for home. I parked in the barn, letting the quiet settle after I killed the engine. Then I hung my head. “It’s getting worse. I didn’t want to believe it. Yesterday, he was so . . . normal. At the parade. At the rodeo.”
Briggs had seemed exactly like the man I’d known my entire life. He’d gone around town with Dad to help for a while. He’d been at the rodeo arena, talking to his buddies and drinking a beer.
“He was so normal that I thought maybe I was blowing this thing out of proportion. Maybe I’ve been taking it too far. But . . .”
“You weren’t.”
I shook my head. “Something has to change.”
And either my father would push for that change, or I’d have to do it myself.
“I’m sorry,” Winn whispered, dropping a kiss to my shoulder.
I twisted, taking her face in my hands. Those indigo eyes seared into mine. They saw the fears. The doubts. The frustration. They gave me a place to put it all. A place to just . . . be real.
She’d told me this morning that I carried burdens. I did. But right here, in this moment, she was there to help share the load.
I dropped a kiss to her lips, then helped her to her feet. “We smell like smoke.”
With her hand clasped in mine, I led her to the house and straight to the bathroom, where I turned on the shower.
We stripped out of our dirty clothes and stepped under the spray like two people who’d showered together a hundred times.
Easy. Comfortable. And as the soap cascaded over our bodies, the smell of the fire and the stress of my family disappeared down the drain.
My hands found Winn’s wet skin at the same time her lips found mine. The desire for her swirled with the steam, and when I lifted her into my arms, pressing her back against the tiled wall to slide into her silky heat, nothing else in the world mattered.
No drama. No family. No fire.
Just Winn.
We came together with shaking limbs and frenzied moans, lingering until the water ran cold.
She yawned as I handed her a fresh towel.
“Tired?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Want to try and sleep?” Because I could use a nap myself. Our conversation in the rocking chair felt like days ago, not hours.
“I don’t know.” She met my gaze in the mirror and the fear behind them was like a punch to the gut.
I stepped close and took her face in my hands, my fingers threading through the wet strands of hair at her temples. “I’ll hold you. If you have a nightmare, I won’t let go.”
Her body sagged and her forehead fell into my chest. “Okay.”
With a swift move, I picked her up, cradling her to my chest. Then I retreated to the bedroom, setting her in the unmade bed and drawing the blinds.
She fell asleep first. I wouldn’t let myself sleep until she was under. And as I listened to her breath even out, I sank in with her.
Deeper and deeper. She pulled. I followed.
It had happened so naturally, this fall into Winn. Like I was out for a short drive, and when I looked back to where I’d started, instead of traveling yards, I’d gone miles.
Deeper and deeper, until there was no turning back.
I was in it with this woman.
So fucking in it.