Epilogue
EPILOGUE
Two years later
I ’m laying up in the hayloft, beside my wife. She’s on her back and has her arms flung over her head, naked and completely unashamed. Her eyes are closed. Looking at her without the sound turned on, you’d think she was asleep. But she’s actually humming. Her gentle song joins the rain on the barn roof; the mix nearly lulls me to sleep. If I wasn’t so eager to put some thoughts on paper, I’d curl up beside her and let my body sink into the bed of old quilts and hay and give in to the quiet call.
Bea is humming something I’ve never heard before. I’m not going to ask her about it—she always sings for me when it’s ready. Right now, she’s furrowing her brow, probably trying to work out some lyrics.
We’re here, in the hayloft, where this all began. And our hearts are spilling over the exact same way they always have. Music. Words. When we’re together, we sing a lot, write a lot. I’ve found there are infinite ways to express myself. But my favorite will always be this.
Pages.
These days, I find myself running to paper. But not for the reasons I used to. Years ago—another life it feels like—I found comfort in these pages because I spun stories, created realities I could dwell in and build a make-believe home on. I wrote lines of poetry because it gave my brain something to obsess over during the quiet alone hours. It was an outlet—a chance to take a quick breath at the surface before plunging into the depths again. The lines were filled with free therapy and mere fantasies.
That’s not why I write now.
Now, I’m spinning a new story, a real one. I rush to write down reality before I forget one single, glorious detail. I’m writing down the moments that heal me, the moments that bind us, the moments that—stacked together—redeem the darkest parts of my childhood.
One look, one touch, one word at a time.
Right now, I’m living one of those moments with my bride.
About two hours ago, I held the walkie talkie up to my lips and pressed the button. “Feel that?”
A pulse of static filled the beat before her response. “Feel what?”
I pressed it again. “Uh, hello. The rain?”
I leaned against the hayloft door frame, watching her unload boxes from the back of the truck. Her hips swayed as she carried a box up to the wraparound porch. I didn’t know what the hell she was doing. Didn’t care either. She dropped whatever it was and headed back to the truck bed. Raising a hand to shield her eyes from the rain shower, she picked up her pace.
Her hair was down, cascading like a waterfall over her shoulders. She had those blessed skinny jeans on, cowgirl boots, and a pink flannel shirt (She hasn’t started singing country music yet, but she’s well on her way. Ninety-nine percent sure she was humming along with George Strait last Friday.). As good as she looked, I knew she’d look a lot better after I got ahold of her.
I couldn’t see the smirk on her face or the challenge in her eyebrow, but I heard it—loud and clear. She spoke into the walkie as she went, playing coy. “No, I don’t feel a thing.”
I laughed. “I’m literally watchin’ you shield your eyes.”
That caused her to skitter to a stop and look around.
I hit the button again. “Up here, darlin’. ”
Her gaze traveled to the hayloft doors, and she leaned back with a laugh. She lifted the walkie. “What are you doing?”
“Get up here.”
“Hm. I’m busy.” Her tone said beg me.
Gladly .
“No you ain’t.”
She jumped up under the cover of the porch. Mirroring me, she leaned against a railing. The distance hid the details of her face, but the way her chin was tipping up proved she was looking right at me. She slowly lifted the walkie to her lips. “Why? What’s up in the hayloft besides boring old hay?”
“Come up here and you’ll find out.” Grinning like a fool, my fingers found the top button of my beige flannel shirt. I undid the first, the second, the third.
She was unimpressed. “Is that little routine supposed to sway me?”
“Oh, it’s already swayin’ you. Your voice hides nothin’.”
She didn’t laugh into the walkie, but her laughter carried over the sound of the rain picking up.
I continued, “By this point, we ought’a just make it tradition, don’t you think?”
The last two times it rained, we found ourselves in the hayloft together. The first time, it was happenstance—we truly needed hay and got sidetracked. The second time, we sneaked past the guys and slipped into the hayloft without anyone knowing.
But today, every last one of them were at the rodeo. The ranch was ours. She could’ve stripped down in the barnyard and no one would’ve been the wiser.
“Tradition, huh?”
“Yep.”
She confirmed my idea. “So every time it rains, you want to sneak into the hayloft together?”
“We’re in Texas—it’s not like it rains all the time.” I raised my hand to continue unbuttoning. “Productivity slows during showers anyway.”
She was silent, watching me open my shirt. Heat poured into my body by the bucketful. I moved my hand to my belt buckle and whispered into the walkie talkie, “Come help me.”
Suddenly, the sky opened. The shower morphed into a downpour.
A streak of pink, squealing in the cool water, darted across the open distance. In a few seconds, her feet hit the rungs of the wooden ladder with muted thuds. Her head popped through the opening, a wide smile stretched across her face.
Wordlessly, she approached me, her eyebrow arching when she saw the quilt I’d laid over the hay. She stopped one foot away, her chest still heaving from the rush of adrenaline. Rain water weighed down the pink material, her shirt draping over her curves in a way that had me itching to free her, one button at a time.
A breeze from the open doors hit us. She blinked against it then shivered.
“You cold?”
She nodded, and I lifted my arms to embrace her.
The experience of Bea tucked against my heart is pages and pages of words in its own right. Every time I hold her, another part of me is resurrected from the flood. Sexual desire aside, I didn’t realize how much my life needed touch. I had no idea how desperately I needed physical associations with people—hand-shaking, friendly hugging, pats and claps on the back. It’s a part of being with others.
The Thompsons got me used to all that in a hurry.
So did Bea.
After long moments, her chilly hands wiggled their way into my open shirt, causing me to suck in a breath. She looked up and tapped her fingers on my chest like she was waiting for something. “You said the hayloft wasn’t boring.” She wrinkled her nose. “Are we just going to stand here and hug?”
My hands captured the sides of her face, lifting her chin, as I chuckled. Her eyes fluttered closed when my lips briefly brushed over hers. Then I whispered, “We’re gonna do a hell of a lot more than hug, Strings.”
All pretense of playfulness fell away—shucked like clothes on the floor. Her voice was sultry and sweet—smoke and honey. “ I was hoping you’d say that.” Bea’s hands lifted to her top button, slipping it through the loop.
Greedy for my wife, I watched as her fingers quietly trailed down the line of buttons then moved to the waist of her jeans.
Her trust won’t ever get old. In moments like that, I’m floored by her quiet belief. I’ve spent the majority of my life afraid I’d never have this—the intimacy of being fully known, fully loved. It’s more than physical. Our oneness is built on a foundation we laid years ago when we gave our hearts away—one postage stamp at a time. The baring of our souls led us here—to the baring of our bodies.
I couldn’t pull my eyes away as she proved her trust in me.
By the time my hands slipped around her, we needed each other. The ensuing kiss was a sigh of relief. Our passion was unhurried, but building. I tasted her lips one at a time and her hands followed the lines and ridges of my chest then slipped into my hair. She pulled me down, hanging her weight against our kiss. My hands tread the known paths of her body, crushing her against me. Her mouth pleaded for more, her hum cueing me. Grabbing tiny fistfuls of my hair, she squeezed and I groaned. Bea arched against me, her hands falling to my belt.
I had to scramble for the hayloft doors, latching them so we didn’t get soaked by gusts of wind. In the dimly lit loft, I pulled Bea down onto the quilt and loved her. Our desire for each other, pure and good, intensified with the drum of the rain and the roll of thunder.
Our love wasn’t perfect, but it was practiced.
I’d be lying if I said that our union has always been easy. It hasn’t. I’ve had so many dark days, more backward steps than I can count…but, that’s the thing I’m learning about love…
It isn’t daunted.
Love exists in spite of the pain, just like Bea said.
They don’t just coexist. Pain calls something out of love that normal circumstances don’t. It takes big, dedicated love to stay, to weather storms, to hunker down and ride them out together. Bea and I have found that love, somehow, is stronger—more beautiful—in rain.
Every day my darkness rolls in, she brings her light.
Every time I can’t find my voice, she pours her words over me.
Anytime I feel like nothing, the music of her heart whispers my worth.
Now, my entire existence is about making sure I’m there for her. She’s had dark days the last few years, too. The Taggarts, the ranch, the Thompsons…we’ve all seen rain. We’ve all seen loss and tragedy.
A while later, the rain lost energy and the soft pitter-patter on the barn roof lulled us into satiated awe. I kissed the dark freckle on her chest, meandering my kisses up the graceful curve of her throat to the freckle below her lip—thoroughly adoring her.
She whispered, “Tag?”
I pushed up on my forearms, looking into her hazy dark eyes. They flitted open and closed, heavy with desire. Her chest heaved beneath mine. The dark wisps of hair around her ears were damp with rain and sweat. I gently tucked them off her face.
“Yeah?”
“I think coming up here when it rains…” She took a deep breath, pulling air all the way to her toes. She spoke on a happy sigh, “I think it’s a perfect idea.”
Once upon a time, I told Bea I didn’t believe in miracles. I thought the universe wouldn’t let someone like me access them. Now, I look back and I see the everyday miracles sprinkled into my story—the safe places, the heartbeats, the buoys amid the flood.
The greatest miracle of my life is Bea and her love that threw open my door.
A while back, she finally fell asleep. Her humming died off. When I covered her with a quilt, she didn’t move for a long time. But when I opened the loft doors to get some more light to finish this page, it woke her up. The rain is mostly gone, only a light shower. She flopped on my back and is reading over my shoulder now.
She wants to know if I’m writing about her.
I’m always writing about her.
She’s laughing at that.
I’m going to put this away because the sun just peeked out.
There’s a sun shower.
And we’re going to dance in it.