Cleo
. . .
After the Rain Sneak Peek
“We’re getting a divorce. Thomas is staying in Montana with his brother, or at least that’s what he told me. I don’t know, and I don’t care. He can rot in hell.”
Memories of last night hadn’t stopped haunting me since I retreated to my childhood bedroom in the early hours of the morning and cried. Announcing my divorce at the dinner table might have seemed out of left field to my entire family, but it’d been a long time coming.
I wanted to say it lifted a weight off my shoulders, but that wasn’t true. If anything, I felt heavier—like the truth only added to the burden of shame I constantly carried around. It was one more thing I’d failed at. One more thing for people to pity me for when they passed me on the street.
Ashwood, Texas was your quintessential small town—complete with a picturesque town square filled with local businesses, two barely passable dive bars, and a population of busybody gossips who made it their mission to stick their nose in everyone’s personal lives.
I’d been back in town for six months, and I was still pelted with questions in the produce aisle.
The interrogators fell into one of two categories—catty mean girls I went to high school with or little old ladies who’d known me since I was born.
It was why I never went shopping alone anymore if I could help it.
Getting asked why I moved home or when my soon-to-be ex husband would be joining me wasn’t my favorite topic of conversation.
I thought if I kept my answers simple, people would ignore me and move on, but it only added to the intrigue.
It was why, after months of near silence about my unexpected return, I decided to blurt it out at the dinner table.
I think on some level, my sisters, Josie and Lennox, already knew something had happened between Thomas and me.
Other than a random question here or there, they knew I was a private person and respected that.
Even my dad had bitten his tongue when it came to the whole surprise return thing.
My mom, bless her, was the opposite. The moment she smelled something sour, she was determined to find the source. I had a bit of a reprieve at the beginning of summer when she’d gone out of town for a month. Ever since she’d been back, she’d subjected me to an inquisition nearly every week.
“How long are you staying?”
“When is Thomas joining you?”
“Why hasn’t he called or come to visit?”
I don’t know, Mom. Maybe because he is an abusive piece of shit who gambled away his inheritance and drained our savings before taking out his frustrations on me?
“This isn’t working,” I said through gritted teeth. “It feels like I can’t squeeze hard enough to take the edge off.”
I could hear Rachel, my saint of a therapist and best friend, rustling papers on her desk. “Then throw it at something.”
“What?” I stopped mid-squeeze, cracking open an eye. “Throw it at something?”
She shrugged. “Why not?”
“What if I break something?”
I looked around my room at my parents’ house.
It hadn’t changed much over the past eighteen years, but it never really had to.
Other than the cheesy boy band posters that’d been promptly removed the first summer after college, my style hadn’t evolved much.
The walls had always been a pale shade of powder blue—still one of my favorite colors—and I’d bought a white linen comforter set when I’d moved back in.
There were two bookcases on the wall opposite my bed, filled to the brim with shelf trophies of my favorite books.
“What if you do?” Rachel asked, bringing my focus back to the computer. “What would happen?”
“You know, sometimes I feel like you don’t know me at all,” I said, dropping the stress ball onto the table with a sigh.
Her laugh was soft, like tinkling bells. “You and I both know that isn’t true. Perhaps it upsets you that I know you better than most.”
Rachel and I had known each other since college.
Our dorm rooms were right across from one another, and we’d often found ourselves locked out on the weekends when our roommates brought “friends” over to spend the night.
After the first few weeks of camping in the hallway, we decided to form a two-person study group in the common area instead, and the rest was history.
After we graduated, we went our separate ways like most do. We’d checked in on one another through social media from time to time, but never stayed in touch past that. It wasn’t until I saw she’d opened her own practice that I decided to reach out.
Making that first call had been one of the most difficult things I’d ever done.
I wasn’t used to asking for help of any kind.
In fact, it was the first time I’d done something just for me in years.
The thought of adding my issues to someone else’s plate nearly broke me out in hives, but I did it anyway.
It turned out to be the best thing I’d ever done.
There were a lot of things I needed to work through, but my progress had been great.
Looking back, I knew I wasn’t the same person I was when I started.
But just because I could admit the therapy was working didn’t mean I always liked it.
In fact, sometimes I ended the session hating Rachel just a little and wished I’d never reached out.
It was almost comical how processing trauma in a healthy way could be more painful than locking up the vault of memories and throwing away the key.
Almost .
“What’re you scared of, Cleo?” she asked, gently prodding me. “Talk to me. That’s the point of these sessions.”
I rubbed my temple. “I don’t want to break something.”
Rachel nodded, urging me to get to the point. “And why is that?”
I grabbed the daisy, staring at it in the palm of my hand. There’d be no fixing it. No amount of cleaning could undo the damage I’d done to it. It’d be easier to get a new one. Maybe I should. Maybe it didn’t work anymore because it was broken and?—
“Cleo.”
I forced myself to meet Rachel’s gaze. “Sometimes broken things can’t be fixed,” I admitted quietly, looking back down at the stress ball. “Sometimes they stay broken.”
That was how I’d felt lately.
Broken .
I loved being home, but sometimes it brought out a side of me I didn’t care for. The moment I crossed the property line of Black Springs Ranch, my dad’s pride and joy, I reverted to my role as the eldest daughter just as I’d always done.
It scared me how easily I fell into the swing of things again.
Even though I’d been gone for years, it was almost like I’d never left.
I loved spending time with my family, especially my sisters.
There’d been too much of an age gap between us to bond when we were growing up, but it’d been different as adults.
Watching Josie and Lennox grow into themselves was strangely rewarding.
I wasn’t their parent, but the seven and nine-year age gap between us meant that I sometimes struggled to balance the relationship between sister and caregiver.
We’d fought about it so many times. It was always the same.
I tried, in my own way, to make them understand things about life I wished I’d known when I was their age, but it always turned into someone screaming at me that I wasn’t their mother and couldn’t tell them what to do.
I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t feel a little pride at the strong young women they turned into, even if it meant I wasn’t as close as they were.
Knowing we were going to be together again as adults had been a bright spot in my otherwise gloomy life, but the one thing I wasn’t prepared for was the reality that their lives were more on track than my own right now.
Josie had recently fallen back in step with her five-night summer fling from last year.
They were inseparable. Where one went, the other followed.
Before they’d got together a few months ago, Josie had been dating the king of the douchebags.
No one liked Ellis, and for good reasons, but Lincoln Carter was different.
Even though it hadn’t been long, anyone with eyes could tell the man was helplessly in love with her. It bordered on obsessive, but Josie had deserved someone who would put her first every single time.
And Lennox? Oh, my baby sister hadn’t so much as uttered a word about her love life, but I had a sneaking suspicion that she and our ranch foreman weren’t too far behind.
Lennox and Bishop were always fighting and bickering, but there was this electrifying tension, too.
They were probably the only two people who didn’t clock it, choosing instead to live in oblivion.
And then there was me. Going through a messy divorce at thirty-five and living in my childhood bedroom. Clearly, I was thriving.
No matter where I looked, I was surrounded by people maddeningly in love, chasing the rush of euphoria they seemed to be consumed by.
When it was only my mom and dad’s over-the-top public displays of affection, it was easy to shrug off.
They were my parents; in a perfect world, that was how it was supposed to be, wasn’t it?
They were the best role models I could’ve asked for. Kind, patient, and loving. More importantly, though, they showed us what a healthy relationship looked like. And not just the good parts, either.
As we grew up, they made sure we knew life and love wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows.
Sometimes, it was going to be hard to put one foot in front of the other.
Relationships of any kind were hard without proper nurturing, but it didn’t matter because at the end of the day, the thought of living without your person was too much to bear.
Seeing my parents’ devotion to one another filled me with the hope that maybe I could have that one day, too, but it wasn’t their fault that I let myself be duped by love.