Chapter 29
Chapter twenty-nine
Ruth
ROO
guess where I am
Everett
not in my bed
ROO
yet
I’m on a plane
I’m a couple of hours away from Austin
Everett
are you for real right now
don’t tease me baby girl
tell me you’re for real
ROO
I am so for fucking real
Everett
fuck baby girl I can’t wait to see you
ROO
you can’t wait to fuck me
Everett
I can’t wait to hold you.
Kiss you.
Look in those beautiful blue eyes and tell you how much I’ve missed you
ROO
…
I have brown eyes, Ev
Everett
oops ;) ;) ;) must be color blind or something
ROO
you’re an asshole
Everett
you WISH I was in your asshole
ROO
maybe just a little
Everett
point is. I can’t wait to see you ruth. Gonna kiss the shit outta you
and THEN I’ll fuck you
first with my mouth
and then I’ll fuck YOUR mouth
and then
finally
like the best fucking prize
like lifting the fucking Lombardi or something
then I’m gonna fuck you
I can’t wait to sink my cock into that sweet little cunt of yours, baby girl
it’s gonna feel like fucking heaven
ROO
Everett I am on a fucking plane
Everett
I know baby girl I’m on my way
already in my truck
my cock is primed and ready for you
ROO
Everett
the nosy asshole next to me is reading over my shoulder
Everett
dude
you’re not invited
she’s all mine
“Talk to me, baby girl.” They’re the first words either of us have spoken since we met at arrivals.
We’re ten minutes out of the airport now, and one of Everett’s hands is clutching mine as he drives.
I let go of my suitcase and flung my arms around him, clinging to him when I came through the customs corridor out into the arrivals hall, but neither of us spoke.
He just held me until I let go, then took my hand and led me all the way through the building and out to his truck.
“Everything is falling apart,” I whisper. Beside me, Everett sucks in a breath and exhales shakily, and his fingers flex softly around mine.
“No it’s not, honey. Things are changing. But I promise you, nothing is falling apart.”
“I don’t want to lose Jay. Or Katy. But I’m so fucking mad at them both, and I feel like I’ve lost them already. Like I’m the one who pushed them away.”
“So, fight for them. Walk in there and take them back, baby girl.”
“And I don’t want to say goodbye to Mum and Dad’s shops.”
“They’re selling them, right?”
“They’re as much home to me as the house we lived in.
I grew up in the back rooms of that place.
” I can still smell the unique blend of raw meat from the butcher’s shop mixed with the warm smell of baking bread.
I can still feel the edge of the wooden chair biting into my thighs as I’d swing my feet, carefully writing out my homework.
“Will you tell me about it?”
Everett’s voice is so soft and gentle, I could almost miss it, if it weren’t so quiet. For once, the radio is off, and even though we’re on the road, there’s no traffic. It’s just the tyres on the asphalt, Everett, and me.
“It’s a double storefront. Someone had already knocked it through, but ran out of money before they could renovate and use it, so the bank foreclosed. Mum and Dad bought it at auction, built their businesses, and had Jay all in the same year.”
“They sound pretty amazing.”
“They are.” I smile wistfully. “It just feels like they’re letting all their hard work go.”
“They’re not letting it go, honey,” Everett says. “They’ve worked their whole lives. Now they’re ready to retire and enjoy themselves. Enjoy everything they’ve worked for.”
Amie said the same thing, and I knew then that she was right. Everett is right. But I can’t help but draw parallels between what my parents are doing and what I’m fighting the urge to do, and projecting all my self-loathing onto them. I need to change the subject.
“Is Bethany still hanging around?”
“Is that something that worries you, honey?” Everett turns his head to face me just for a second before looking back at the road ahead.
I hum quietly. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t spent an inappropriate amount of time thinking about Bethany swooping in and stealing my man.
I hate admitting it. It makes me feel weak and pathetic to admit that Everett’s ex-girlfriend bothers me, after he’s shown me a million times in a million different ways how much I mean to him.
After he’s told me I’m the only one he wants. His fingers tighten around mine again.
“Bethany Tate has meant nothing to me since the end of the summer after senior year. When I found out the reason she didn’t want to have sex with me anymore is because she was getting it from someone else instead.
Until I bumped into her a few months ago, I hadn’t even thought about her for years.
” Everett moves his hand to my knee and squeezes.
“Honey, listen to me,” he continues. “Trust me, baby girl. Please, trust me when I say this. Bethany Tate is nothing to me. Bethany Tate could parade in front of me in nothing but hot pink nipple tassels, and I wouldn’t even care. You are my woman, Ruth. You’re it for me.”
I exhale slowly, one of many weights lifting just a little off my shoulders.
“I wanna take you somewhere,” Everett says after a moment. “I need to go see someone, and I want you to come with me. Will you?”
He’s not saying who, or where, but all of my neuroses aside, I know I’d go just about anywhere for this man.
“Okay,” I whisper. “I’ll go. Anywhere you need me, I’ll go.”
I’m pretty sure I hear him whisper everywhere.
It’s almost an hour before I start seeing signs for Skillett, and the sun is dipping lower, casting the outskirts of town in a pretty golden hue.
I close my eyes against the setting sun, and it’s not long before Everett is easing the truck to a stop.
I don’t open my eyes again until he’s already hopped out, and he opens the door beside me, offering a hand to help me out, too.
“Where are we?”
“This is where we laid Grandaddy Smith to rest,” Everett says quietly.
I don’t miss the way he’s breathing slowly and evenly, carefully.
He doesn’t say anything else, just tangles his fingers between mine and leads me to the small building at the other end of the open, almost-empty car park.
My trainers and his boots crunching on the gravel is the only sound.
“You don’t have to go in,” I say when he hesitates outside the wooden door.
“No, I do. I want to. I need to,” he says. “Will you come in with me?”
“Of course.”
He maintains his grip on my hand as he pushes the door open, and side by side, we take slow steps towards a wall covered in small plaques. It takes a moment or two of scanning the names before Ev drops my hand and lifts his to trace a finger over an engraved name.
Franklin Evanson Smith.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been by,” he whispers, then clears his throat. “It’s, uh. It’s been hard to come back here. The last place your soul was with us. But we’re gettin’ by, without you. It’s tough. I’m lookin’ after Mom, and Ash, and the ranch. We’re all gettin’ by.
“And I brought someone to meet you. I went to an airport, and I fell in love with the most beautiful girl. Her name is Ruth. She’s a lawyer, Grandaddy, she’s so goddamn smart.
Pardon my language. And she’s so damn beautiful.
You’d love her, I just know. Anyway, I wish you could meet her for real, but I guess—” His voice cracks, and he sniffs loudly. “I guess this will have to do.”
My heart splinters and then cracks, and it’s not until I notice my vision is fuzzy that I realise I’m crying.
Everett is, too, one hand on the wall beside his grandfather’s name, and the other swiping at his eyes.
I rest a hand on his back, and he turns into me, gathering me in his arms. I let him take all of my strength, everything I have; I pour it into him, and he inhales deeply, lips pressing into my hair.
We’re quiet for another long moment, holding each other in the dim light.
“Thank you,” he whispers. “For being here. For being you.”
“I’ll always be here,” I answer. My heart will always be here, it will always be his. And lately, I’ve been wondering more and more if my body could be here, too. If I could move from London to Texas, leave my family and everything I’ve ever known, to be with the man who is everything I want.
We hold each other until the light outside fades, and there’s just the dim glow of dusk filtering in through the half-open door.
“Take me home, Ev,” I whisper. He releases his hold on me and takes my hand, all without ever losing contact with my skin. It’s like that single touch point is powering him.
“Come here,” he whispers as we reach his truck.
He positions me so my back is to the passenger door, and he pushes me against it as he captures my lips in what is simultaneously the sweetest and dirtiest kiss I’ve ever experienced.
One of his hands tangles in the hair at the back of my head, holding my mouth to his, and the other settles on my lower back, right over the letters I had inked there a decade ago.
He pulls me into him, impossibly close, and it’s still not enough.
It wouldn’t be enough if he were inside my skin.
“I love you, Ruth,” he whispers as he breaks the kiss for air.
“Always and forever, it’s you.” He kisses me one more time before opening the door for me, and I hop into the truck, lips tingling.
Just the simple act of touching my lips to his has my skin tightening, light and colour erupting behind my eyes.
Fireworks exploding up and down the length of my spine.
I feel like I might burst out of my skin just from this man’s kiss.
And now, his hand on my thigh—rubbing lazy circles with his thumb as he steers the truck with just one hand hooked over the wheel—isn’t helping the throbbing between my legs.
Fuck, I want this man. I want him with everything in me.
I want him in spite of everything on the negative side of my pros and cons list. I want him in spite of how much it hurts to be apart from him.
I want him in a way I’ve never wanted anyone, or anything.
In a way I never knew I could. And it’s terrifying.
And then he looks over and smiles at me.
“Eyes on the road, Cowboy.”
“Can’t help myself,” he says, ducking his chin as he turns back to the long, straight, empty road ahead. “You’re too beautiful. I gotta look.”
I fall in deep, all over again when he smiles at me like that. That boyish grin, the one that says he’s never seen anything like me before. That he’s awestruck. That he’s totally and completely one hundred percent mine.
And in spite of every feminist rally I attended in university, in spite of every fuck the patriarchy shouted in the mirror of a morning, I am one hundred percent his.