Chapter Eleven
CHAPTER ELEVEN
H E NEEDED TO get his head on straight. He was feeling off-kilter after last night. He hadn’t cared at all what any of those women had said. All he could think about was how beautiful Rory had looked.
The way she felt when he touched her. When they danced. The way she made him feel.
It wasn’t the dress—though it had been enough to bring a man to his knees. It was something about her. Something about her that was pushing up against a wall he’d built up inside himself a long time ago.
And she’d been pushing at it since the moment he’d seen her in the woods.
She was... She was getting to him. And he really couldn’t have that. Because there was a whole host of good reasons why he had built up that wall. And it wasn’t just about keeping out affection. It wasn’t just about keeping another person out.
It was about keeping them safe .
He didn’t know quite what made him decide to go buy the rope. He already had a set of weights, but they’d been left behind back in Georgia, and he really didn’t have the urge to go collect them, not given the circumstances he’d left under.
So yesterday he’d bought another set, to go with the ropes. And at that point, he’d figured why stop there? He talked to the owner of his family ranch about setting up an obstacle course early, and he’d agreed, seeing as he never left the main house to go on to the rest of the property.
He was in the process of moving out anyway and would be gone for the week, coming back in between visiting his new property in Northern California and coming back to this one.
And Gideon had an idea.
It wasn’t just an excuse to spend more time with Rory.
He gritted his teeth and drove the truck down to the Sullivans’ house.
The Sullivans’ house was much like he remembered it. Except there was something a little different. It was brighter. There was a clothesline out on the lawn filled with frilly dresses, and chickens running around underneath. There was a big weeping willow and some fruit trees. A large barn stood not too far away, along with some gardens that had high fences around the perimeter, no doubt to keep out deer.
It was neater, more orderly, and also somehow a bit more whimsical.
There was a large chandelier hanging from one of the trees in the front yard. It seemed silly. There was no reason for that. Yet, it looked beautiful.
Normally, he wouldn’t think of anything like that. Normally, he wouldn’t pause and look at all these details.
But there was something strange about part of him feeling like he was back in the past, while he absolutely couldn’t deny he was also in the present.
There were memories here, and they weren’t terrible. They made him feel good. Comforted in a way.
“Just as long as Fia doesn’t skin me alive,” he muttered as he walked up to the door.
He opened it and was surprised to see not just Fia, but Rory and two other sisters he didn’t know in this present time. He knew one of them had to be Alaina, and the other was Quinn. He just didn’t know who was who.
“Good morning,” he said.
“Good morning,” said the four redheads staring back at him.
“I was wondering if Rory was up for a little field trip.”
“Oh,” said Rory. “Well. We’re eating pancakes.”
“So you are.”
He looked into the room, which was cheery and brightly painted, and the dishes on the table were mismatched, orange and teal and cockatiel-yellow.
They had coffee mugs that had probably originally been intended for tea. Bright pink and green, ornately shaped.
They were an explosion of color, the Sullivans were.
They were gloriously put back together, he could see. Trying their very best to take control of this life they had been left by their parents.
He didn’t know the details.
He just knew that they weren’t here anymore.
And he knew what it was like to try and piece something back together when an essential ingredient was gone.
They had done it cheerfully, so there was that.
“Come have some pancakes,” said the youngest-looking of the group.
“Uh... I don’t know about that.”
“Come on,” said Fia. “If you’re going to kidnap our sister for the day, we might as well get to break bread with you.”
“I’m Quinn,” said the smallest one.
“Gideon. Gideon Payne.”
“Oh, we know who you are,” said the other one, who had to be Alaina, he figured, by process of elimination.
Alaina and Quinn had rings on their left hands; Quinn’s was just an engagement ring, while Alaina had a wedding band as well.
Rory was looking muted, and a bit stubborn.
“So, you and Rory went out last night,” said Fia.
“No,” said Rory. “Not like that. We went out as friends. Because I am trying to leave Pyrite Falls a little bit better than I have been living in it these past few years. I’m trying to make a splash.”
He nodded. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was doing with his face.
He looked over at Rory. She mouthed, Snowy plover .
He smiled.
The other three women blinked. He had a feeling his smile wasn’t overly successful. Damn. For a second there, he’d thought he’d actually managed.
“So you’re moving back,” said Fia, trying to transition things, clearly.
“Yes. And I am taking over my family ranch. Though doing something a bit different with it.”
“Always good to know that we don’t have more competition coming into town,” said Alaina cheerfully.
“I’m not sure that anybody is a real competitive force against Four Corners.”
“Levi is,” said Quinn, smiling. “He is my fiancé.”
“And he’s...a rancher?”
“Beef. But it’s wagyu . Very specialized.”
“Well, I’m not that attached to beef. My land is going to be turned into an outdoor recreation facility. That’s what I wanted Rory to help with today.”
All eyes swiveled to Rory. “I was not consulted about this beforehand. Don’t you want pancakes?”
“Right.”
He went into the kitchen, grabbed his own plate and put three pancakes on it. The butter and syrup were on the table, and he was liberal with both before he picked up the rest of the conversation.
“Right. So... I’m going to start setting up an obstacle course. I think eventually there’s going to be some zip-lining, I’m going to lead hikes, there’s going to be cabins and campgrounds and things like that.”
“I think that’s a great idea,” said Alaina. “The only thing similar to that is the equine therapy facility my husband runs, but that’s more specialized.”
“Equine therapy?”
“Yeah. It’s really successful with people who have experienced trauma.”
She was looking at him a little bit more meaningfully than he might’ve liked. Or maybe he was imagining it.
“Is that right?” he asked, his tone neutral.
“Yes. We’ve had great successes. With people who have been in abusive relationships, kids who have come out of foster care, veterans.”
Yeah. She had been looking at him with meaning. And the truth was he wasn’t wholly disinterested in the thought.
“Interesting,” he said.
“It’s great work. But you know, it’s not a holiday place. So I think it would be really great to have something like that in Pyrite Falls. Good for all of us. We are not a tourist town the way that Copper Ridge or even Mapleton are. People just don’t think of us for that because it’s so small. But a rustic getaway, that’s a great idea. Something that makes use of the natural beauty.”
“Well, necessity is the mother of invention and all that.” He realized that there was no context for that statement. “I’m starting over.” He regretted saying that.
“Oh,” said Quinn. “Why?”
Rory looked taken aback by Quinn’s direct question. Though Gideon realized he didn’t actually mind answering.
“My military career is over, marriage ended, so it was time to do something else.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Quinn, who did look slightly embarrassed.
He realized it didn’t embarrass him. Which was interesting. He wondered if that part of him was broken.
“I’m going to have you consult on the obstacle course,” he said to Rory. “Because I thought given your newfound stance on risk-taking and bravery...”
“I never said I wanted to do an obstacle course.”
He looked at her. Just her. “I have a rope climb.”
“I didn’t end up adding that to my list.”
“It’s never too late to alter your list, Rory.”
“What list?” Fia asked.
It was the oddest thing. In that four-line exchange, he’d forgotten anyone else was there.
“Nothing,” said Rory. “Anyway.” She took the last sip of her drink and stood up. “Are you ready?”
He was only halfway through his stack of pancakes.
“Sure,” he said.
Then she all but hustled him out the door.
“You should’ve called first.”
“I don’t have your number.”
“They’re going to think this is weird.”
“Why is it weird?” he asked.
“Nothing. Well, no, something. Because, of course, people don’t think men and women just hang out.”
“You’re Lydia’s friend.”
Something that looked vaguely like hurt filled her eyes. He frowned. “I didn’t say that to hurt your feelings.”
“No. It didn’t hurt my feelings... No. It’s fine. Why would that hurt my feelings?”
“You look hurt.”
She looked at him for a long moment. “I don’t think anyone has ever cared if I look hurt or not.”
“Surely your sisters do.”
She closed her eyes. “Yeah. I have a bad habit of acting like they don’t count. I tend to focus on all the people I don’t even like that much, anyway.”
“I think we all do that.”
They walked toward his truck. “I do understand if you’re busy today,” he said. “If you don’t have time to do this, you don’t have to.”
“My job is pretty free-flowing. I have rental stuff to check on, but not every day, and I’ve been phasing that out because I’m leaving.”
“That’s understandable. So what you’re telling me is you have a lot of free time.”
“Yeah. So sure, I’ll come and check out this obstacle course thing.”
“Oh,” he said. “It’s not up. I thought you might want to help with that.”
“I didn’t say I wanted to become a builder. I said I wanted to become a legend.”
“You want to climb the mountain, right, Rory? If you want to climb a mountain, you gotta build some strength first.”
“Oh, my gosh.”
“You know I was in the military. I can be your personal drill sergeant.”
“And what do you get in return?”
He looked at her. And the first thing that echoed inside him was more time with you .
He couldn’t explain that.
Not even to himself.
But there was something easy about Rory when people were so rarely easy for him anymore.
“I find it hard to believe that people were ever mean to you,” he said as they drove out to the main highway.
“Why?”
“Because you’re so easy to talk to.”
“I’m not, historically. I’ve gotten very good at it in the context of being the manager of these different cabins and rentals. I don’t know, it was sort of my attempt at fixing myself, I think. But I don’t have a lot of close friends.”
“I liked you when you were a kid. You were always telling me about something interesting. You talked a ton on those car rides. I just don’t understand why people didn’t like you at school.”
“I couldn’t talk like that there. Lydia has always made it easy. You always made it easy. I never felt like I had to adjust myself to talk to you. Either of you. I get excited about something and I want to talk about it endlessly, and you just never thought that was silly.”
“I don’t understand, isn’t that most people? They like to talk about what they like. Especially when you’re thirteen.”
“I think the problem was I was never interested in the thing that everybody else was. Maybe the problem was just me. I was the perfect person to pick on. Skinny and a brace face and usually wearing a dress that would look better on a prairie than on a middle schooler.”
“I feel like I see people wearing those all the time these days.”
“Well, I was wearing them before they were cool, let me tell you that.”
“Do you ever wonder if maybe people just pick someone they know they can hurt?” She thought it was her, and in some ways it was, but he’d been in the military. He knew about bullies. What he wanted her to know was that the flaw was in those people, not in her.
She blinked rapidly. “I don’t know. Do you really think people do?”
“I’ll tell you something about being an officer in the military. I had to identify early who was going to break. And in basic, I would break them quickly. And mercilessly, because you had to. Either they were going to be able to recover from that, or they weren’t, and then you had to figure out what to do with them. You couldn’t send somebody fragile out on the front lines. So, the sooner you broke them, the bigger favor you were doing for them. Now, middle school is not the military. But yeah, I do think some people know exactly who they can break. They didn’t break you, though, did they?”
“Sometimes I feel a little like they did.”
“You seem whole to me.”
They pulled onto the property, and this time he felt calmer. Maybe because he wasn’t just coming off a phone call with his ex-wife.
They drove past the main house, out to the spot where the trail ran through the trees.
This, he thought, would be a great place for the course.
He went to the bed of the truck and started to get the different things he needed out.
Rory hung back, watching him unload items, including the set of weights.
“What’s that for?”
“Personal training,” he said. “I’m not gonna send you up a rope without doing some reps.”
“No way,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“I thought maybe it was a good idea. At least, maybe it’s a good idea for me.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Your muscles are huge.”
He did not tell her that was because when you had addictive behaviors, sometimes you replaced unhealthy ones with healthy ones. At least then you weren’t in a gutter.
“I have a pretty fixed routine,” he said. “It includes a lot of lifting things.”
Sometimes running until the edges of his vision got black because that’s what happened to him now, and sometimes running till he wanted to vomit because no matter how far he ran, it still felt like something was chasing him. But he wasn’t going to say that.
“Do you roll tires around the backyard?”
“Sometimes,” he said gravely.
He grabbed the rope, and the mounting equipment, and looked up at one of the big pine trees in front of him. It would be as good as any.
He pressed the edge of his foot against the tree, and launched himself upward, getting a firm grip on the trunk with his thighs, one arm wrapped around the base.
“What are you doing?”
“Hanging the rope.”
He started working his way up the mostly branchless trunk.
“I thought you were injured .” She sounded worried. He didn’t hate that.
“Just in here,” he said, tapping the side of his head with the rope.
She smacked her hands down at her sides and made a literal squawking sound. “That’s not funny .”
“It’s funny to me.”
It was also not true, but scars on his skin didn’t limit his mobility.
She wrinkled her nose and shaded her eyes with her hand. “What exactly... What are the exact injuries?”
“I am a moody son of a bitch,” he said. “I didn’t used to be. They say traumatic brain injuries can change your personality. Which I think we can both agree it did.”
“Not that much.”
He stopped. He looked down at her and saw her staring up at him. He noticed he could still see her freckles from this vantage point. The wind ruffled her red hair, and he was suddenly very aware of the way her T-shirt molded to her breasts.
They were small and perfect. Beautiful.
So was she.
He had no idea why he was thinking about her breasts in the middle of this conversation. That could be the head injury. Quite possibly.
“You don’t think so?”
He remembered keenly how it had felt to hold her in his arms as they danced last night.
He just hadn’t been able to muster up much enthusiasm for the women he’d been talking to.
That in and of itself didn’t surprise him. He’d been celibate for going on two years, and sex wasn’t more than a faint memory.
And he just hadn’t cared.
Hadn’t missed it. Hadn’t minded.
He had wondered if it was one of the things that had broken in him.
Chemical castration or something. Not that he was impotent; he just didn’t give a shit.
But when he looked at her...
Yeah. When he looked at her.
And he wasn’t exactly sure what it was. If she was this breath of fresh air from the past that made him feel more connected with a part of his life when he had been in control, or if it was her. Now.
Past Rory had nothing to do with sex.
Present Rory shouldn’t have anything to do with sex, either, and yet, when he looked at her, his body didn’t seem to get that memo.
She was appealing to him, but it was about more than looks. There were a lot of beautiful women out there.
But none of them were Rory. She was captivating.
And there was something about the vulnerability in her. The way she shared it with him.
It allowed him to share different things with her.
Not everything. There were some things he didn’t want to share with anybody.
But he just felt more rested around her than he did around most other people.
She didn’t act like she expected him to perform. Like she expected him to behave a certain way.
She just seemed to be okay with him.
There was a weight he could put down when he was around her, that otherwise he only ever let down when he was alone.
It seemed natural. But he knew the secret was in the way she shared herself.
“I have a few short-term memory issues, but not as many as I used to. That’s improved. I also have difficulty concentrating when things are too chaotic. Like if it gets too loud around me, and I’m trying to look at something, everything gets blurry. That’s why I like things quieter now. I like to give myself a lot of time. Going to get all this stuff for the obstacle course is a good example. I have to give myself time. To choose things, to think about things. I wouldn’t want to be climbing this tree right now if there was an entire crowd of people here, as an example.”
“I’m fine?”
“Yeah,” he said.
He continued on up the tree and got to the part where there were some big sturdy branches for him to begin to use as stepping stones. Roy let out a strangled sound, and when he looked down again, she was covering her eyes.
“Rory, I spent a collective six years in war zones. I only got blown up the one time. If the pine tree takes me out, then I had it coming.”
“I don’t want it to take you out while I’m right here.”
“You can catch me, right?”
“You want me to be your flirting coach, you want me to catch you... Some gentleman you are.”
“I never said that I was a gentleman.”
Even though he was up in the tree, he decided to flash her what he was fairly certain was a wolfish grin.
She made an exaggerated hand gesture from down below, and that made him grin even more.
“So you’re going to manage an apartment building in Boston,” he said, looping the rope up over a branch and beginning to attach the hardware.
“Yes,” she said. “It lets me live in a way nicer place than I would be able to otherwise. And it’s what I have job experience with. And it’s really amazing that I got hired at this building because I don’t have any experience with apartments. But the woman who managed it before me just really liked me, and she thought I had the right countenance to deal with the residents. So... I got the job.”
“Have you ever been to Boston?”
“No.”
The rope looked secure, and he grabbed hold of it and let go of the tree branch, swinging himself out away from the tree.
Rory shrieked. And then he slowly climbed down the rope.
Things like this made him feel alive. Because he was still great at this.
This physical stuff.
His brain didn’t fail him here. And his body hadn’t let him down at all.
He thought about the kid that had lost both legs and his arm in the explosion.
Nineteen years old.
And his stomach felt a little sour.
Well. It would be ridiculous of him to not use his arms and legs in light of all that.
With three feet left to go, he jumped down to the ground, his boots making satisfying contact with the dirt.
“That was dangerous,” she huffed.
“By the end of the week, you’re going to climb that.”
“Don’t set such lofty goals for me.”
“It’s not a lofty goal. You can do it before you go on your date.”
“You are drinking your bathwater.”
“I’m not.”
“You said yourself, you’re damaged up here.” She tapped her forehead once, then moved her hand away quickly, looking vaguely sheepish, but like she was testing out that level of teasing.
He smiled. “Yeah, but I think you’ll be fine. You can lift weights while you look at some of the other things that I bought.”
“Okay. So what am I going to do for you?”
“Nobody said you had to do anything for me.”
“But I should,” she insisted. “Because if I need help with my list, then you need help with...”
“Did I scowl today?”
She looked at him. “No.”
“You’re helping me.”