Chapter Fifteen #2
“There’s nothing embarrassing about sex, Leigh. Why do you bring this up?” he said, in what he called mountain pose, looking at me with one brow raised.
My heart hammered and heat rushed up my cheeks. “Oh, you know, just wondering if it could be connected to all the…stretching, the yoga?” The excuse landed clunkily between us, but thankfully Tibb didn’t call me on it.
“Yoga can sexually charge a person in many ways. You’re getting stronger and stronger every day. You are coming into your own. This doesn’t surprise me.”
My hair had come loose from its bun, and curls hung in my eyes. “Well…it surprised me.”
“Your body knows what it wants. It’s partly circulation and relaxation. But it’s also acceptance. Allowing your body, your mind, to be, to feel, to do what it can without judgment or hesitation is kind of like sexual freedom, without sex.”
“I didn’t know that dreaming like that was going to be a side effect.”
Tibb laughed. “Having a sex dream is not a side effect of yoga. Dreams can be repressed desires.” We moved through the routine again. “They’re often things we yearn for but don’t allow ourselves to acknowledge in the light of day. What did you do after the dream? When you woke up?”
“Nothing. I came here.”
“You know it’s okay to explore that.”
“Explore what?”
“Masturbation.”
“I am not talking about this with you.”
“Your body wants it; you should listen to it. Allow yourself to explore these feelings.”
“We’re not talking about this,” I said again, standing.
“You brought it up.”
“Please don’t tell them. I can’t sit at that table and know that they know that I’m…you know.”
“What we discuss here, I don’t share with them.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Really?”
Tibb crossed his heart. “You have my word.”
“I’ve been numb for so long. I didn’t know I was capable of feeling anything. Then I came here, and I feel as if I’m waking up.”
“How did the dream make you feel?” Tibb’s voice quieted.
“Alive,” I whispered. It was the strangest word for me, yet I’d said it before I knew I was going to.
I don’t know why it took me so long to realize it but, in that moment, I understood that the farm was beginning to change me in ways I hadn’t even noticed. The farm and all its players were working their magic.
Like all sessions, Tibb ended with meditation.
I hesitated. Every time, I saw Deacon Ridley, felt that familiar spark of fire.
But it wasn’t as sharp anymore. Less jarring.
Still, I had to keep trying. Lila could be there.
She was worth reaching for. But this time, something shifted.
I saw Mama’s and Daddy’s faces. Younger versions, frozen in time, back when Mama had lived for Daddy, when she unspooled her life for him.
Back when his absences were less frequent and everything was still whole.
They just stood there, silent. Watching.
No warmth in their eyes, just a steady distant gaze.
I reached out to touch them, but they flinched as if my presence burned them.
I tried again, and they turned and walked away, their backs cold and final.
I was still reeling from the vision when, for the second time that morning, I found a visitor waiting on the porch of my cabin. As I approached after yoga, I saw Carly pacing the small distance of the porch, a bag at her feet.
“Carly?” I asked. “Can I help you?”
“I wanted to bring you these clothes.” She eyed me warily. “I know you need them.”
“Oh.” I walked up the steps. “You didn’t have to. I could have walked over and gotten them.”
“Well…I was coming over anyway. I need to talk to Jack.” She paused. “Where are you coming from, dressed like that?”
I looked down at my sweatpants and long-sleeve shirt. “Yoga with Tibb.” As soon as I said it, I wondered if what she’d seen in my yoga clothes was pajamas, as though I were walking from having spent the night somewhere else.
Her relived laugh told me I was probably right. “He does pretend to be a yogi. I see he’s roped you in too, huh?”
“He’s helped me quite a bit.”
“A criminal turned farmer turned yogi. You couldn’t make that up if you tried.”
“Tibb’s not a criminal.”
“Oh…they didn’t tell you that?”
“Well…it’s none of my business. And I don’t care if he was.”
“You should make it your business; you’re living out here with them. You should know who they are.”
“Carly…”
“He almost killed his foster father. He jumped on him and kept punching and punching him. Then he ran away. It took them two weeks to find him. Then Jack brings him here to live with that other hothead, Luke. Jack loves taking in strays.” She rolled her eyes.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I’m starting to wonder who you are, Leigh. This place does attract a type. What’s your story? Where did you come from?”
A cold prickling ran down my spine at the challenge in her tone. It was here I knew I needed to walk a fine line with Carly. She saw me as competition, and animals attack when backed into a corner. I didn’t need her to be curious about me and start digging into who I was.
“I’m just passing through. I’ll be moving on after this initial extra work Jackson needs.”
Her perfectly trimmed eyebrows lifted. “Oh…I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah…you can rest easy, Carly. I’m not staying, and I’m not a threat to you.”
I’d heard this before. Lila had become a threat, and Mama couldn’t bear to lose Deacon Ridley’s attention, no matter the cost.
It didn’t take long for the tension to snap. One night, Mama cut Lila’s hair. She said it was an accident, that she’d just intended to give it a trim. But Lila’s once-long hair was hacked unevenly, strands hanging like broken threads. But I knew better. The look in Mama’s eyes said it all.
Lila couldn’t understand the sudden shift in Mama’s behavior, how Mama could dote on her most of her life and then throw her aside with such ease.
Especially since she had listened to Mama, allowed that bastard to touch her.
But she dismissed it as one of her ever-changing moods.
But this was different. I just didn’t have the word for it back then.
Things eased up between them when Lila met and fell in love with Robert.
She was too young for such a serious relationship, but Mama encouraged it, often inviting Robert to the trailer and allowing him to spend the night in our room.
I wanted Lila to be happy. Like me, she was a simple girl who knew of nothing else but the world around our trailer and who craved the sweetness of love.
At first, I didn’t see the harm in it for her.
Until she missed her period. Until Daddy came home for good.
Carly laughed again. “You think I think you’re a threat? I don’t. But I saw the way you were looking at him at Bonfire. The hug.”
My cheeks warmed, but I kept my voice steady. “It was my birthday, and I hugged all of them for my cake. Jackson is a nice guy, but he’s also my boss, and we were winding down after a long week. That’s all you saw.”
“Good. I just want to make sure you know how important Jack is to us, to this community. This project will help put Wilcox County on the map. He doesn’t need any distractions.”
“I’m not a distraction.”
“You’re leaving…when the expansion is completed?”
Looking at her, I realized she was holding her breath. “I’ll tell you what: I’ll let you drive me to the next town with a Greyhound bus stop.”
Carly’s chest lowered, a breath exhaled. “Deal.”
I picked up the bag and opened the door. “But I don’t think Jackson will take too kindly to you calling his brothers strays.”
“Brothers?” She spit the word out as if it were lint on her tongue.
“Do you know why they don’t like you? Why they call you Peanut? Because of this. You of all people should know just how important Luke and Tibb are to Jackson. Because if you did, you would have never called them strays.”
I closed the door and pressed my back against it.
Carly’s footsteps descended the porch and walked away.
Only then did I start breathing again. It was the first threat since I’d gotten here that my cracks were showing.
No one else seemed to care who I had been—not really.
But Carly did. More importantly, she believed she had reason to care.
And I knew she would do anything to protect Jackson. From me.