Chapter 47
FORTY-SEVEN
CALDER
I sit on the tailgate of Dad’s old pickup and stare at the sky. Frogs are going crazy around me, and in the distance, there are tiny flares randomly lighting a few feet off the ground. Fireflies.
Today could’ve been perfect. I was on horseback for a large chunk of the day. I got to see cattle trek happily into pastures full of food, and then we ended with a barbecue and Horseshoes. Days like this fill the happiest of my memories, which I suppressed for twenty years.
Instead, today was filled with longing, and then the lid crashed down over any remaining good mood.
I’ll agree to sell.
Meredith’s announcement kicked me right in the teeth.
I’m returning to Denver alone and won’t be planning trips back.
We all agreed to pay Carlos to work with the companies we’ll hire to clean out the shop, the house, and the barn if he’s willing.
If not, we’ll hire someone else. Sawyer and Meredith will be in town long enough to help.
They’ll work the booth at the fair, and then everything will get officially set into motion.
I didn’t go after Meredith last night, nursing my own hurt pride and confused feelings.
She’d been with her friend planning her departure from Scandal—and my life.
I asked her to leave, and she asked me to stay.
I couldn’t even consider it for more than a moment, yet I expected her to upend her entire life, even when I knew it terrified her.
She’s told me over and over again how much all this means to her, yet I couldn’t give her more than two minutes of consideration.
I’m the reason she’ll no longer have it.
Goddammit.
My chest aches so bad that if I get one twinge in my left arm, I’ll need to call 911.
Then they’d send my ass home, telling me the heartbreak is my fault and I’m a pussy for not admitting what I really want.
But my brothers… All my obligations… For once, I can understand why Dad did what he did.
He lost a large chunk of his world, and he was willing to obliterate the rest to claw a scrap of it back.
I grip the end of the tailgate. I have to leave in a few hours to get the guys to the airport, and then I’ll finish my trip… home. I smack my lips like I taste something sour. In the distance, coyotes howl, their cries giving the night an otherworldliness.
Light steps scrape across the cement slab in front of the shop and get closer. It’s not my brothers. Much as I’d like it to be Meredith, it’s probably Sawyer telling me the fire’s out and they left the house unlocked for me.
“Calder?” Meredith’s soft voice reaches me.
Surprise mixes with pleasure. I can only see her shadowy outline. I’d sell this truck and the Escalade to get a glimpse of her legs in that dress again.
“Yeah?”
“Sawyer’s taking off, and your brothers have gone inside.”
“You going in?” It’s not an invite, but I’m afraid to scare her off. I might only have hours left with this woman.
“I should.” She approaches the end of the pickup where I’m sitting. I scoot over, and to my relief and delight, she climbs up to sit beside me. “I’m sorry. About everything.”
“It’s not your fault. None of this is.” It’s been twenty-four hours since she told me off, but it’s felt like I’ve had weeks to think about what she said. “You’re right.”
She bows her head, and I can’t see her shadowed face around her curtain of dark hair. “It’s just time, I guess.” She leans against the tailgate. “I thought it would be too hard to say goodbye, but there’s so much to do that now the decision’s made, it’s… it’s okay.”
Fuck that. It’s not okay. After tonight, I won’t get to feel the velvet of her skin or hear her needy moans. I won’t have her falling apart in my arms as I plunge inside of her. Never again. But we still have tonight.
I lift her onto my lap. I need to hold her.
“What are you doing?” she whispers, but she doesn’t fight me. She straddles me and settles her sweet ass on my thighs. The gates of my desire crash down, and blood floods my dick.
I tangle my fingers in her hair, my mouth millimeters from hers. “I don’t like letting you go.”
“It’s all right,” she whispers. She doesn’t tell me that I don’t have to.
She doesn’t tell me I’m in charge of my own damn life.
And she doesn’t point out that even if I stayed, I’d be hindering her ability to claim whatever life offers.
She’d still be splitting ownership and living someone else’s life. She tells me it’s fucking all right.
I will not be all right without her.
She takes my cowboy hat off, sets it on her head, and pushes her fingers through my hair. “You know what they say about the cowboy hat?”
Something about riding the cowboy, but I lift the hat off her head and set it behind me. “I’m doing it wrong if you gotta put on my hat to ride me, rosy. I’m too old to be playing those games with my woman.”
I feel her smile more than I see it. I give in and claim her mouth.
She grips my head in both her hands and grinds against me.
One night without her and I’m tied up in knots and suffering.
Then she wipes it away with one swipe of her tongue against mine.
I palm my hand over her ass and drag the skirt of her dress up.
My fingertips swipe nothing but satiny skin.
Fuuuuck.
“Tell me.” I drag my mouth down her neck. She tips her head back and groans. I massage the globes of her butt cheeks. “Did you forget your underwear?”
She taunts me with a wiggle. “I didn’t forget.”
I’m gutted. She carved everything out of me and made a space for just her. I won’t ever go on another date. Meredith can travel the world and make award-winning beer, and I’ll be alone in my bed, jacking off in my hand while thinking about her in a sundress with a bare pussy.
I plunder her mouth, my cock hammering a steady, demanding beat.
She’s in my arms, and I don’t know what’ll happen, but I’m starting to understand I won’t survive if it doesn’t.
I prided myself on not being a selfish man.
I’m a hard worker, like I was raised to be, but I’m not selfish when it counts.
Yet I’m greedy when it comes to Meredith, and it feels right.
My fingers find her wet heat, and her kisses slow as I make my way to her swollen clit.
“You need this?” I ask gruffly.
“Yes,” she breathes. “I need you. Just one more time.”
Ah, fuck. She’s feeling the same, and if I peer too hard at that, I’ll fall right down the rabbit hole that is Meredith Winslow. I won’t come up for air, and I won’t want to. I rip my jeans open with my free hand, fumbling through the material of her dress.
She automatically positions over me, grazing the tip of my straining erection. The intensity of that little stroke has me hissing out a breath.
“Meredith.” I grip her hips. “I’ve gotta get a condom.”
In the dark, the brush of her gaze is soft. “Do you?”
“Meredith…” I groan, “I’d rather throw all the condoms in the campfire and sink into you with nothing between us.”
She rolls her hips, and my fingers dig into her sweet flesh. Fuck. Heaven is right there, but I’m trying to be a good man.
“It’s just once,” she whispers. “I need this.”
“Goddammit, Meredith,” I say hoarsely. My brain’s screaming “yes,” but much as I want to be selfish and sink into her, I can’t.
Not yet. I dig a condom out, and her disappointed exhale gusts over me.
“Trust me, okay?” I rip it open and spit out the wrapper.
“I want to do this right. I never want to put you in a position where you don’t have a choice about your life. ”
She nods. Energy vibrates through her like it’s all she can do to hold herself poised over my dick and not slam down. It’s all I can do not to let her. I roll the condom on and guide her inch by inch down my shaft. Her smoldering heat swallows me.
“Fuck me, Meredith. There’s nothing better than you taking all of me.”
“When you fill me, I finally feel whole.”
There I am, gutted again. She continues to chisel away at all the control I’ve carefully developed in my life.
I’ve kept personal attachments at bay, probably out of fear of being thrown out like I meant nothing all along.
Only, I was the one who left and never returned.
Thinking about doing the same to Meredith is a slow torture.
Being a guy she lets leave is way fucking harder.
She moans when I fill her to the hilt. So fucking perfect. Sweet and understanding.
Maybe I should be the type of guy she’d never have to let go.
“You’re made for me.” I twitch inside her. “Do you feel that? How much I want you.”
Her “yes” comes out as a whine, and she lifts herself all the way to my crown before sensually sinking down again.
“Fuck,” I moan. “Ride me. Take everything you want.”
“I want all of you,” she whispers.
I’m hers. Hopelessly. Irrevocably. I just have to find a way she can keep me.
My fingers tangle in her dress, but I forge ahead to hug her to me.
I tug on her braid, pulling her head back to expose her neck.
I drag my mouth across the sensitive skin at the base of her throat.
Full-body shivers travel through her, but she keeps riding me.
Her breaths are coming faster, her walls gripping me tighter.
A storm gathers at the base of my spine, nothing but electricity waiting to be unleashed, demanding it.
“Calder.” Her voice shakes. I’m holding her so tight she can barely move, but it’s creating friction for her in all the right places. She’s tight, and her fingers dig into my shoulders.
“Come for me, Meredith. Let yourself go. I’ve got you.”
She barks out a cry and cuts it off. My brothers are probably in the house and can’t hear, but this is between us. It’s all about us. Consuming us.
“Calder! Oh my god, Calder.”
My heart shatters at the same time she detonates. I’m nothing but a seething mass of emotions inside and out. The only outlet is my climax, hitting hard and fast, like lightning, right to my balls. I spill into her and wish this fucking condom weren’t there so we could be as close as possible.
Meredith’s face is buried in the crook of my neck. She’s draped against me, and I’m still holding her tighter than ever. Several minutes go by as we hold each other.
Finally, she stirs, stray hairs tickling my chin.
I don’t want this to end. I might never recover from the goodbye, but I can make it last longer. “Can I stay with you tonight? Until I leave?”
If she’s smart, she’ll tell me no.
She trails her fingers along the hem of my sleeve. A second ticks by. Two.
“Yes.”