15. Hannah
15
HANNAH
James:
The quarantine stall is all ready for Hurricane Red. He’ll have a small paddock to himself, too.
Janie:
I’m already a registered volunteer at the library, so I offered to help out with the after-school programs while you’re gone. We’ve got you covered.
Essie:
All 5(!) cats are alive and accounted for. Brax is cuddling the little one and it’s so ridiculously cute I’ve decided to let him put a baby in me.
Chloe:
You know, as long as you’re out there saving one horse, you might as well ride a cowboy and save a few more.
T he plan was to get in as many hours today as we could tolerate, eight hours being the minimum, and having a shorter drive tomorrow. Missing Hurricane Red by a mere half-hour had made Zack furious and determined to not let it happen again. Zack took the first shift. We’d switch when we needed gas.
We hadn’t been on the highway for more than fifteen minutes when my brother called. Dang it. I swallowed a groan. I should have called him already. “Do you mind if I answer it? Jeremiah gets worried if I don’t pick up.” Worried was an understatement.
“Nah, go ahead.”
My phone was plugged into the dashboard so we could use the map, so I hit accept on the screen and before I could get a single word out, Jeremiah’s voice boomed through the speakers.
“Where are you headed, Hannah?”
I rolled my eyes. “Hello to you, too, Jay.”
He sighed heavily and I had the feeling he was raking his hand through his hair and pulling on it. He tended to do that a lot in our conversations. “Hello, Hannah. Where are you headed?”
“Well…remember how I told you I’d be taking a road trip today to pick up that horse I told you about? It turns out, our road trip is going to take a little longer than I thought.”
“What happened?”
“He was gone when we got here. People say Reliable Trucking is taking him to Canada.”
For a moment, Jeremiah didn’t say anything, but I could hear him typing. Then he said, “Got him. He just left the weigh station on the border of Utah. You going after him?”
I glanced at Zack, who was looking back at me with raised eyebrows. “Yeah, we’re going after him.”
“I’ll see what I can hear on the CB radio, but my guess is he’s headed to Shelby, Montana.”
“That’s what I figured, too,” I said. “We should make it there tomorrow, early afternoon.”
There was another pause. “We meaning yourself and Mr. Zachary William Hale?” He said it pleasantly enough, but there was no mistaking the underlying threat. I cringed. I had never told Jeremiah Zack’s full name. I hadn’t known it myself.
Apparently Zack heard it, too, because his eyes narrowed on my phone. “That’s right. Hannah’s with me.” His voice was every bit as pleasant as Jeremiah’s, and every bit as dangerous.
I rolled my eyes so hard they nearly fell out the back of my head. Men . Honestly.
“You’re taking U.S. 191?” Jeremiah asked, like he hadn’t heard him.
“Yes,” I sighed, because he already knew that. “One ninety-one to I-15 North. It will take us through Utah and Idaho, then up into Montana. Fourteen hours, if everything goes all right.”
There was more typing. “Take MT-3 back to Aspen Springs. It’s the same mileage, give or take twenty. You’ll go through Wyoming. Stop at Mercy River, spend the night here at the ranch. I’ll see you then.”
He disconnected before I could agree…or argue.
I sighed and looked at Zack. “Do you mind? My brother’s place is in Wyoming. Mercy River Ranch.”
“I don’t have a problem with that. If you want to stop and visit your brother, that’s what we’ll do.”
I chewed my lip. “I do want to see my brother. But he’s…protective.”
Zack’s mouth quirked. “So I gathered. When did he run the background check on me?”
“Argh.” I covered my face with my hands and groaned into them. I should have known Jeremiah would look into Zack when I told him he was helping me with rodeo. “Probably when I asked him to help us find Hurricane Red. I’m sorry. I should have warned you. He has a tendency to run checks on anyone I spend a lot of time with.”
He pondered that for a moment, then shrugged. “I’m not proud of everything I’ve done, but I’ve got nothing to hide.”
I stared out the window. “He has a tracker on my phone. That’s why he called. He expected me to be heading east back to Aspen Springs, but instead I was going north.”
“He might be taking his big brother duties a little too far. Then again, if I was responsible for something precious, I might take it too far, too,” Zack said.
Heat suffused my entire body. He thought I was precious? Or maybe he didn’t mean me . He meant sisters. Family. That made more sense.
“You can turn off the tracker, you know,” he said.
“If I turned it off, he’d find another way.” I shrugged. “It doesn’t really bother me. I’m used to it. Sometimes I even like it. It makes me feel safe. And he’s never crossed a line of telling me where I can and can’t go, even when he doesn’t like it.”
“He’s the one who came and got you? From…the compound?”
I nodded. “Honestly, I don’t think he’s ever recovered from that. He hadn’t thought they’d marry me off so young. He was almost fifteen when he was sent away, and I was only seven. He managed to get me a letter a couple years after that, when I was twelve, telling me where he’d settled and how to reach him if I needed anything. But it never occurred to me to leave until they told me I had to marry. Most women didn’t marry until they were seventeen or eighteen.”
Zack’s jaw clenched so tight a muscle popped. “That’s still too young. Teenagers have no business getting married and having babies. Why did they marry you at fourteen?”
I pulled my embroidery out of my bag. My hands shook slightly as I took up my needle and pushed it through the resisting linen. “My uncle told me I was tempting other boys into sin. I was too pretty, he said. My hair attracted too much attention. I needed a husband to keep me from leading other boys to hell.”
The silence was deafening. I chanced a look at him and found him glaring out the windshield, both hands on the steering wheel with a white-knuckled grip.
“Hannah,” he said at last. “That’s bullshit. You know that’s bullshit, right?”
“I know.” I stabbed another stitch. “Or at least I try to. Some days are harder than others.”
Five hours into our drive, we stopped for provisions at a small town in northern Utah just shy of the Idaho border. It had dawned on us that we were embarking on a four-or-five-day trip with nothing but the clothes on our backs and the snacks in my purse. Zack kept an overnight bag in his truck with an extra pair of clothes and a toothbrush, but I had nothing. At the very least, I would need clean underwear and a toothbrush.
We pulled up to a store that would have everything we needed. I told him I’d meet him at the register so we could both find our personal items without the other looking over our shoulder. I was already feeling scraped raw from the events and conversations of the day, and we still had to make it through the night together. It was too much. I had never been alone for more than ten minutes growing up. After I left the compound, Jeremiah gave me plenty of space while he worked, and I often found myself alone for hours at a time. I grew to relish the time to myself.
Right now, I needed a moment without Zack’s outsized presence taking up all the oxygen in my brain.
I started in the beauty aisle and grabbed a travel set of a toothbrush and toothpaste, travel-sized bottles of hair products and body wash, and deodorant. Even though it was stupid, I threw a disposable razor in the basket, too. No one was going to see my unshaved legs, but then again, that was true almost every night of the week. I shaved because I liked the feeling of smooth skin, not because a man was going to touch me.
And then it suddenly occurred to me that in all probability, a man was going to touch me, actually.
Zack.
I had never gone on vacation with a boyfriend or spent a weekend away. I had never even spent two nights in a row with him. That was my choice; I liked my personal space, and towards the end of those relationships, I tended to need even more of it.
And now I was going to spend three nights in a row with a man who was not my boyfriend but probably did expect sex since I had very deliberately propositioned him. What was the protocol here? Would we share a hotel room? Was I supposed to buy condoms? What about sexy underwear?
I stared at the rows of condoms. I couldn’t possibly be expected to handle that. There were too many variations.
“Hannah, what are you doing?” Zack asked behind me.
I didn’t turn around, just kept staring at those darn condoms. “Having a nervous breakdown, obviously.”
“Obviously.” The inside of his bicep grazed my cheek as he reached over my shoulder and grabbed a box. “Size large. The regular size tends to break for me. Can’t have mini Zacks and Hannahs running around, can we?”
My brain short circuited. I had seen his baby pictures. I knew exactly how cute little Zacks would be. “Um…no?”
His soft laugh gusted against the crown of my head. He dropped the box in his own basket and turned me around to face him. “What’s got you nervous, duchess?”
I frowned at my basket. “I don’t know the rules. In most romantic relationships, going away for the weekend is a big step. But you and I…this isn’t that kind of relationship, and we’re not going away together on purpose . It’s for a horse. So, what are the rules? Do we share a room? Do we…” My gaze fell on the condoms in his basket. “Well, I guess you already answered that question.”
“Hannah, listen to me.” He tilted my chin up with his index finger. “There’s only one rule. You say yes when you want to say yes, and no when you want to say no. That’s it. As for sharing a room, I’m in favor of the option that keeps your body as close to mine as possible, but if you want a door between us, then I’ll accept that without much fuss.”
I flushed, thinking about long hours with our bodies close together. “It would be cheaper to share a room.”
“Don’t worry about that. You’re not paying for a damn thing on this trip, Hannah, and I don’t want to hear any arguments about that. Now, what else do you need? We should get back on the road.”
I peered into his basket. “You’re done already?”
“I’ve got a t-shirt, some underwear, a razor, and condoms. I’m good to go.”
“I haven’t gotten clothes yet,” I admitted. I’d been too busy freaking out over the condoms, which was ridiculous. I’d never bought condoms before, but I’d always insisted on using them, so it wasn’t like it was anything new to me. There was no reason to treat this trip as anything but what it was. It didn’t have to mean something just because we were sharing a hotel room and having sex.
“Then let’s go do that.” He nudged my shoulders in the direction of women’s clothing.
With a sigh, I turned my attention to the arduous process of finding something to wear. Everything here was so far out of my comfort zone. Jeans, short skirts, tops meant to entice rather than hide. The winter sweaters had been banished, and it was all summer clothes now.
I tossed a five-pack of black cotton underwear and a six-pack of socks into my basket and then scooped up two pairs of jeans in different sizes to see what would fit.
“I’m going to try these on,” I said, holding up the jeans. “Can you watch my basket?”
With a nod, he took my basket from me, and I disappeared into the dressing room. Both pairs fit well enough. The smaller size clung to my thighs and butt. The larger size didn’t cling so much, but the waist was loose enough that they rode lower on my hips. I tried to imagine myself walking around, wearing one or the other, and realized I wasn’t going to feel comfortable in either, so I eenie-meenie-minie-mo’ed it and left the loser behind in the dressing room.
Zack was waiting for me, but he wasn’t waiting alone. A woman was with him, looking up at him with surprised delight like she had discovered the Hope Diamond in the clearance bin. He smiled down at her, no doubt noticing the ample cleavage being served up by her low-cut tank top. I couldn’t blame her for serving and I couldn’t blame him for looking. Her breasts were fabulous, and, unlike me, she seemed to be perfectly comfortable in her own skin.
Feeling bad about myself—and feeling bad about feeling bad, because I thought I’d made peace with all this a long time ago—I pretended I didn’t see them and turned toward the t-shirts. Two should be enough. How dirty could I really get sitting in a truck all day?
“Hannah.” Zack’s voice boomed across the women’s section. “Over here.”
Rats. Now I was going to have to stand next to her. Like my self-esteem hadn’t suffered enough already.
Heaving a sigh, I added a plain black t-shirt and a plain pink t-shirt to the jeans, then turned to face my doom. The woman watched me approach with a perplexed expression.
“This is the woman you’re shopping with?” she asked.
“That’s right,” Zack confirmed, his eyes crinkling as he looped an arm around my waist and pulled me into his side. “Toss your stuff in, duchess. Let’s get this show on the road.”
The woman eyed me head to toe, her bafflement only increasing, then gave a small shake of her head. “Lucky.”
Zack squeezed my hip. “Don’t I know it,” he said, like he had no idea she meant I was the lucky one. He tipped the brim of his hat to her. “Thanks for your help.”
Oh, I just bet she was helpful. Not that I blamed her.
I saw her take one last lingering, wistful look at him as he steered me toward the registers. I didn’t blame her for that, either.