Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
TUCKER
Ever since Raleigh died, it felt like there was a hole in my chest. It was perfectly his size, and it would never heal.
Day after day, my body tried to close the gaping wound left in my heart, but there was no way.
In the beginning, I’d coped by holding onto anything and everything that held any sense of him—no matter how small.
His clothes, the pillow that still smelled like him, every birthday card, and mundane feeding schedule he’d ever written.
I’d pack all of them into the cavity inside me, hoping to staunch the bleeding. To hopefully ease the pain.
But then I learned it never went away.
Time healed all wounds was a bullshit sentiment spoon-fed to those looking for hope in a sea of agony. It wasn’t based in reality. Time made the weight of your loss easier to carry because your muscles became accustomed to it. Time dulled the ache because your nerves were desensitized.
But the hurt? The pain? It was still there. Encapsulated and forever memorialized.
Nothing made it go away. You just learned to live with it.
Normally when I spoke about Raleigh, especially with people who never knew him, it tugged at the edges of my wound and reminded me how raw I still was.
Any tentative scabs I had would crack open, and they’d bleed and ooze while I struggled to hold myself together.
After, I’d slink away to slowly mend the damage that’d been done knowing it’d never fix the problem.
But talking with Jackson hadn’t felt that way.
Maybe it was because he’d so thoroughly mangled my heart earlier, or maybe it was because I’d still been numb to the pain after my outburst on the kitchen floor.
Either way, the trickle of nostalgia had felt welcome for the first time.
It hadn’t been buried under layers of anguish and devastation, which allowed for me to finally bask in the warmth of those early memories once again.
To feel them with something other than the jagged edges of grief.
And even when Jackson hadn’t said anything at all, he’d spoken volumes.
I learned early on that my loss was a burden to more than just myself.
It was insidious and grew roots that traveled.
I watched the way it sucked the life from the people around me until they finally tore the weeds of my misery out.
When they were able to move on, I was left alone, planted in a never-ending nightmare.
But Jackson? He’d sat with me. He’d held space for Raleigh and me.
Sure, he’d fumbled at the beginning, trying to soothe it over with social niceties, but in the end, he’d treated those memories with the same care you would a newborn animal—gentle and reverent, knowing they meant something to someone else.
Cradled to your chest to protect them from the world they now found themselves in.
His hands were kind, and they’d been an anchor.
At first, I’d expected that hand on my shoulder to drag me down into the depths of my sorrow.
But instead, its heat had seeped into me and settled somewhere in the spaces between my ribs.
It fed a tinder in my mind that slowly burned at the marred edges of those once pleasant memories, and what was left behind was a feeling closer to what they’d been originally.
Not quite the same, but close.
When we’d separated, it felt like maybe my burden was just a little lighter than before.
Like whatever muscles were holding up my heart were just a little stronger, and that took some pressure off my lungs.
I could finally take a breath without feeling every ounce of the weight three years put on me.
So when it started to pile back on from the distance he held, I almost wanted to cry. When Jackson held me at arm’s length after learning of Raleigh’s death, it was the first time I worried how it affected someone else.
Was he uncomfortable? Did he look at me differently now that he knew?
He’d asked questions, but was he just trying to be polite? Had I shared too much?
Uncertainty wasn’t a feeling I was used to having when it came to Raleigh.
It swirled thick in my gut, making bile rise high, and all that kept going through my head as I drove him back to the bunkhouse was I needed to apologize—to ask for forgiveness for the way my loss made him feel. But that was crap.
When we pulled up, I just wanted relief—from the constant battering to my heart, from the numbness and grief, and from my own thoughts—and I’d been on the verge of begging Jackson for it.
Then those eyes the color of a steady oak coated in moss locked onto mine, and it was like everything inside me quieted down to one thing.
Will you ever look at me the way you did before you found out my husband was six feet under?
It was a tortuous thought with thorns. I couldn’t tear it from me without doing tremendous damage but leaving it to fester inside me would surely lead to more pain later. Even still I almost asked it.
But somehow the same two hazel hues that’d already become my undoing were also the very thing to save me, because while I found myself sinking further into their endless depths, I couldn’t formulate any words.
Even though the expression within them was hesitant and tentative, just having his attention felt like a heated blanket, warming me from the inside out.
So when Jackson opened the door to the truck, it was as if my cord had been cut, and I plunged back into our icy reality.
Watching him climb from the cab was like scratching at a healing wound.
The initial contact burned and stung, but the satisfaction of relieving the itch kept you going back for more.
It was why my eyes found their way to the rearview mirror as I pulled away. Why I held his stare for as long as I could, even if I was sure he didn’t know I was watching him back. Why the rest of the drive back to my cabin, my stomach was on the verge of purging what little I had in it.
It was why, even now, as I stood under a scalding stream, I couldn’t shake the sensation from under my skin.
The torrent of water from my showerhead pounded against the achy muscles of my back, and I let out a small groan as the knots slowly unraveled.
The day wasn’t even over yet, and I felt like I’d aged ten years.
Something was different about Jackson Arness. It wasn’t just the inevitable change his arrival to Juniper Grove signified—there was something more. I couldn’t be sure what it was, but I knew it like I knew the sky was blue.
The feeling of his eyes on me still lingered like something foreign inside my body.
It was wrong. But I didn’t want it to go away, either, and that didn’t sit right.
Squirting body wash into a rag, I ran it up and over my arms, trying to focus on the sensation of anything else.
It scraped along my frayed nerves, sending chills up my spine and causing goosebumps to scatter themselves over my skin.
It was the first feeling I’d had all day that wasn't directly correlated to Jackson, and it pulled a soft gasp from my lips.
I continued to scrub the cloth over my skin, closing my eyes as I let myself fall deeper into the static lighting up my insides.
The more I ran the material over my upper body, the faster my chest rose and fell.
My brain was going fuzzy, so when I dragged the rag over one of my pebbled nipples, the electricity that shot straight to my groin nearly bowled me over.
The groan I let out was strained, and the familiar pressure building low in my gut made me want to scream.
After everything I’d gone through today, this was the slap across the face that hurt the worst, but still, I opened my eyes.
I stared at my cock that hadn’t so much as twitched in years with only one sensation settling in my chest.
It wasn’t relief that the concern for erectile dysfunction was swirling down the drain along with the suds of my body wash. It wasn’t the desire to rub one out and ride the much-needed endorphins of my orgasm through the rest of the day. And it sure as shit wasn’t confusion.
Whirling around, I flipped the shower handle to blast myself with frigid water, sucking in lungfuls of air as the icy pricks of water overrode everything else in my brain. But not the guilt.
I almost decided to skip dinner. The dirty sensation lingering on my soul made me feel like I had a scarlet letter plastered to my forehead. Like I would walk into the main house, and everyone would know I got an erection that had nothing to do with my husband.
But my only other option to make this day go by any quicker was to sleep.
So, I found myself pulling in beside Granger’s blue pickup in the circular drive of the farmhouse.
Stepping into the foyer, I made my way toward the dining room and braced myself for the onslaught of emotions I knew would come the moment I locked gazes with an increasingly familiar pair of green-brown hues.
When I made it into the room, I realized my hemming and hawing over choosing to come had caused me to arrive a little late.
Everyone had already settled into their seats, and the side dishes were already being rotated around the table.
All eyes landed on me, and despite myself, I found myself focusing on the one set I wished I wasn’t drawn to.
Jackson had changed into a dark button-down that accentuated every muscle in his chest like it was its job.
He’d rolled up the sleeves a little haphazardly, and the little flaps of his cuffs poking out from the rolls was surprisingly endearing.
I could have been holding his gaze for ten seconds, ten minutes, or ten years, and I wouldn’t have noticed the room around me because the hesitancy staring back at me completely overrode everything else.
I was right back to practically begging to know how I could fix things. To wishing he’d stop looking at me like he was on the verge of tears because I was already starting to miss the dimple.
“We missed you at lunch,” my father said by way of greeting, pulling my attention to him at the head of the table.
“I heard it was chili,” I murmured, placing a kiss on my mother’s offered cheek as I approached her chair to the right of my father. “Sorry to have missed it.”
“Tallie was worried.” She lowered her voice so only I could hear, ever aware the woman in question was seated at the other end of our table. “Make sure you speak with her before you turn in. I’m sure she’ll sleep better after setting eyes on you.”
“I will, Ma,” I assured her.
Her warm brown eyes, not so different from my own, shimmered with understanding, and she gave me a soft smile. “Take your seat, Tucker. She made your favorite.”
Sure enough, Dudd was currently spooning out a large helping of Tallie’s famous mac-and-cheese onto his plate.
Beside him, Elliot held a basket of her flakey butter biscuits and was offering one to Lane on his other side.
My lips tilted up, knowing how hard Tallie must have labored to get these dishes out on top of making chili.
Food was healing, and for our no-nonsense cook, this was her way of showing she knew how hard today was going to be for me.
I gave a nod to my parents, turning to take my place at the table, when I caught sight of Jackson. For whatever reason, my brain chose that moment to finally register where he was sitting. I should have expected it, but out of all the seats, what were the chances he would pick that one?
Intuitively, I knew everyone had their preferred places, and after the many years this crew had been together, it only made sense that Jackson would be shuffled into an open spot that wasn’t the foot of the table.
And there weren’t many of them. Sucking a slow breath, I tried to steel myself as I walked to my chair and sat down beside our newest farmhand.