Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
TUCKER
White puffy clouds rolled over a bright blue sky as a gentle but comfortable breeze whispered through the leaves around me.
It was a gorgeous spring day, everything green and vibrant after days of rain.
The grass under me was soft and pillowy, perfect for laying out under the sun to catch a few moments of relaxation.
With the brim of my hat tilted down, I couldn’t see who was approaching me, but I didn’t need to.
I knew the sound of those footsteps deep in my marrow, and a genuine smile spread over my lips as he settled down next to me.
“Workin’ hard or hardly workin’?” His familiar voice warmed a specific place in my heart as I shifted my hat out of the way.
“Both?” I tried, loving the way his responding low rumble of a laugh washed over him.
“It’s definitely one or the other, hun,” Raleigh said, propping himself onto an elbow to look at me. His chestnut curls caught the sunlight, and with the backdrop of the gorgeous sky behind him, he was fucking breathtaking.
“I think I could make a good case that when you love what you do, work hardly feels like workin’,” I quipped, knocking my boot against his as another breeze rolled over us.
“You might be right about that,” he agreed, his smile spreading slow across his lips.
I took a second to study his face—from the slightly flushed coloring to his cheeks, to the early onset crow’s feet at the corner of his eyes, and then to the gentle curve of his full upper lip.
Everything about him was perfect and all mine.
He seemed to be taking me in just as thoroughly.
As though the two of us were simultaneously memorizing every detail of this moment in time.
“Your hair’s getting long,” I commented into the comfortable silence between us, unable to stop myself from sitting up a little to twirl a wayward lock at the base of his neck with my fingers. “I’ll need to cut it soon.”
Raleigh gently took hold of my wrist, pulling my hand around so he could drop a kiss against it, and I let out a contented sigh.
“This is nice,” he said after a minute or two, moving to slot our fingers together.
“It is, isn’t it?” I hummed, looking out across the pasture.
There weren’t any horses out, which had me momentarily confused as I glanced around for them, but Raleigh’s warm touch against my cheek had me looking back into crystalline eyes, and all my worries melted away.
The rest of the guys must have brought them in for me.
“There’s been something I’ve been meaning to talk with you about, Tuck.” His thumb ran along the smooth skin of my jaw, and I tilted my head into the comforting embrace.
“Sure, what’s up?”
Raleigh’s eyes bounced between mine before he spoke again. “I know you’re not just mine anymore.”
The statement caught me off guard, and I let out a short chuckle despite the serious look on my husband’s face.
“What are you talking about?” I asked, a small stone of unease dropping into my gut at the way Raleigh continued to look at me.
“Of course I’m still yours, Storm Chaser. Who else would there be?”
Those copper curls of his bounced as he shook his head. “There’s another man in your life now.”
I blinked at him slowly, a hazy feeling settling over me as I tried to process what he was saying.
Little sparks pricked somewhere in my subconscious as a pair of green-brown eyes flicked in my memories.
Whose eyes were those? I opened my mouth to deny his statement, but a pressure built in my chest and the words wouldn’t come out my throat.
Maybe Raleigh realized my dilemma because he squeezed my hand reassuringly before he spoke again. “He’s good for you, Tuck. There’s a light in him that helps brighten all those dark places you’ve been holding onto.”
Something in the back of my brain glitched as another image of a single dimple popped up in my head.
The visual stirred up different emotions inside me that felt so close to the surface and tangible, but all that did was confuse me more.
Why did I feel like I knew those eyes and smile?
Why did Raleigh’s words feel like they rang with truth?
“You need to lean on him. You’re holding yourself out over a cliff, and eventually, you’re going to get tired.
Let him be the one who catches you when you fall.
” Raleigh’s voice was soft and soothing, a melodic sound that should have settled all the troubles determined to ravage my mind.
But instead, the alarm bells kept ringing.
“What about you? Won’t you catch me?” I croaked, fear splicing through my chest at the crestfallen look in his eyes.
“We’ve got to stop doing this,” he whispered. “You’ve held onto me so tightly that it’s twisted and distorted our time together. You have to let me go. When you do, I promise things will get better.”
“Let you go? How can I let you go, Raleigh? You’re my husband!” I pleaded, the desperate tone in my voice sparking a memory of another clear spring day. One where I was called back to the farmhouse unexpectedly. One where I met with two uniformed police officers.
“Where’s your ring, Tucker?”
I regret to inform you…
“On my finger where it’s always been since you put it there.”
… there’s been an accident…
“Is it?”
… drunk driver going eighty miles an hour…
“Of course it is.”
…. killed instantly on impact…
“Check again, my love.”
… so sorry for your loss…
My hand shook as I lifted it, struggling at first to even make out the appendage through my blurring vision. Where was my ring? But somehow, I knew. Slowly, my hand drifted to my chest, clutching at the band strung through a chain around my neck when my fingers brushed against it. Jackson’s chain.
Raleigh’s hand left my face to rest over mine holding my necklace, and when I looked up at him, his smile was small and sorrowful.
“How am I supposed to let you go when all I do is miss you?” I choked out, unable to stop the hot tears streaming down my cheeks.
“You’ll figure it out. I know you will because you have to, Tucker. We all need you to figure it out.”
“I don’t know how,” I sobbed, leaning into him to bury my face against his chest.
His strong arms wrapped around me, enveloping me in a cocoon of warmth as I cried out against every ounce of misery and heartache I had imprinted on my soul.
How the fuck could I ever let this man go?
He was my everything. A soft kiss was placed against my hair before Raleigh’s low timbre came again.
“I’m never far, and you’ll always have a piece of me.
But I have to go now. You’ve got to let me go. ”
“No!” My fingers dug into the fabric of his shirt, desperately trying to hold him here with me. “No!”
Then he was gone.
My body lurched forward, the wail tearing from my throat excruciating as it left me.
The hot tracks of tears were already coursing down my cheeks, and it took me a second to orient myself, the darkness surrounding me feeling like I’d landed in a pit of hell.
But slowly the fuzzy outlines of my bedroom furniture came into focus as my chest heaved.
Beside me, a body fumbled in the sheets as they struggled to right themselves after being woken from a dead sleep. For a split second, hope flared hot and bright in my chest that the man I lost was next to me. That he came back for me because he knew I wasn’t strong enough to ever let go.
But it was green-brown eyes that blinked wildly up at me instead of bright blue, and the voice scratchy from sleep sounded nothing like Raleigh’s.
“Fuck, Tucker, are you okay? Baby, what’s wrong?”
Another sob racked me, my body curling in on itself as I buried my face in my hands against the overwhelming emotions plowing through me.
I felt the bed dip as Jackson shifted himself toward me, and then he was rubbing my back and arms. Every brush of his hands felt wrong, and I pushed at him to stop.
“What’s going on?” he tried again, his tone soothing, but I could still hear the undercurrent of fear slipping into every syllable.
“He’s gone…” I managed around my stuttering breaths as my chest heaved.
“Who, baby? Who?”
“Raleigh!” My voice broke as I screamed his name, not sure if I was crying out for the man I buried or answering the man I had in bed with me.
There was a beat where all I could hear was the whoosh of the blood in my ears and the ragged sounds of my attempts to breathe between my full body sobs. But then his voice came again, low and maybe just as broken as I felt, “I know, baby.”
“You don’t!” I snapped, glaring up at Jackson. “He was here! I felt him! I heard him! He was here with me, and…” My throat burned as a fresh wave of emotion slammed into me at the words still floating in my head.
But I have to go now. You’ve got to let me go.
Jackson stared back at me like I was some wounded animal, and in a way, I felt like I was.
This wasn’t some particularly nasty Nighttime torture session—no, this had been different.
This felt real. I could still feel the warmth of his body wrapped around mine and the hardened callouses on his fingers as they brushed over my cheek.
My nostrils were full of that fucking cologne he always wore from when I’d buried my face into his chest.
But if he’d been here, what did that mean for the words he said? Were they real?
You’ll figure it out. I know you will because you have to, Tucker.
Why did I have to figure it out? I’d made it this far only because I’d clung to all the whispers of him in the wind.
I grabbed at every part of him I could get despite knowing they were vapors of smoke I’d never really get my hands on, but they’d sustained me!
How could I give up something that felt as vital as the blood pumping through my veins or the very air I breathed?
“Baby, I know what you think… But Raleigh’s gone. It was just a dream.” Jackson’s voice broke through my thoughts, bringing in rage that seared through my system like molten lava.
“Don’t talk to me like I’m a fucking child,” I sneered.
“You have no fucking idea what you’re talking about.
You want to know why I struggle so much with insomnia, Jackson?
Because I dream of Raleigh, all the goddamn time.
For the last three fucking years, I’ve put my head on this pillow and been forced to experience what my life could have been like if he hadn’t died.
And those are just the good dreams! Sometimes I get thrown back into these happy memories before the crash, but I know deep in my bones something bad is going to happen, and I can’t change it. ”
Jackson blinked at me, obviously taken aback by my outrage, but I barreled on, not willing to give him a moment to cut in.
“I’ve had nights where my dreams are nothing but a reel of what his last moments must have been like, and I’ve woken up screaming his name, so do not for one second think I can’t tell the difference between a dream and reality. I felt him. He was here.”
Jackson sucked in a slow breath through his nose, running a hand over his jaw as he tried to process what I was saying. “Okay… What did he want, then?”
“For me to let him go so I could be with you.” Venom laced my words, the anger of being expected to lose my husband all over again a rolling boil in my gut.
“I—” Green-brown eyes danced between mine. “I don’t understand.”
“You think it’s a fucking coincidence the night you sleep in his bed, he shows up to tell me to let him go?”
“Hold up…” Jackson raised both hands placatingly. “What are you getting pissed at me for? Isn’t this a good thing? If this really was Raleigh, isn’t that him giving you his blessing?”
“No!” I roared, moving from the bed to get more distance from the man who couldn’t even understand how much his presence had changed things.
“I can’t let him go, Jackson! I’ve told you this.
But it’s like ever since you showed up on this farm, all you’ve done is fuck things up.
You’ve opened wounds I was never ready to revisit, and you pushed me to pick you when I was never ready to choose.
Well, now I’m being forced to make a choice between you two, and I’ll be honest, I don’t know if I’d choose you. ”
Jackson reared back like I’d slapped him, and the hurt marring his face made my ribs feel like they were cracking wide open.
I knew I wasn’t being rational. Adrenaline still coursed through my body like a raging bull, but I couldn’t take back the words that had already spilled from my mouth.
I watched in real time as the shutters went down over Jackson’s heart, and if I’d been in a better frame of mind, I’d have been terrified of the blank look he gave me.
But I wasn’t. I was seething from the injustice of losing my husband so early and the hurt of what felt like losing him all over again, and all I wanted was for the world to burn right along with me.
Without another word, Jackson slipped from the bed, gathering up the clothes he’d shed when we came in earlier to sleep.
I watched him step into his jeans and throw on his shirt before picking up his boots and hat, the tension sitting heavy in the otherwise still room.
My breaths still sawed out of me in rapid succession, my broken heart throwing itself against my fractured ribs over and over.
Just before he walked out the room, he turned back to me, his features stoney but an anger burned in his eyes I’d never seen before.
“Just for the record, Tucker. I’d never ask you to choose.
I’ve been fine coming second to Raleigh up until now, but I’m not going to compete with a ghost. One of these days, you’re going to have to figure out if you want to stay in your past or start living for your future because you can’t do both. ”
And then he left, the slam of the back door behind him a few minutes later sounding like the sudden boom of thunder overhead.