Chapter 16
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
“Is there somewhere we can sit down and eat?” Reeves asked.
“Not until you give me two sentences about what he was talking about,” Bailey spoke in a slow, clipped tone, one Reeves had never heard her use before. She was mad, and Reeves couldn’t really blame her. He exhaled slowly, working very hard not to make it sound like a sigh.
“You were right,” he said. He supposed that could count as a whole sentence. “I’m a farmer, but I do a lot more than that. I make online videos about wilderness survival, camping hacks, tips and tricks, farm life, and more. It’s called Teton Mountain Man, and OJ was partially right.”
“What was he wrong about?” Bailey asked, her face a perfect storm of anger.
Reeves amended his assessment, because he didn’t think Bailey was angry. The defiance on her face suggested more hurt than anything.
“I had four million followers once upon a time,” he said, the words scratching his throat. “I’m up to twelve now, and I make quite a lot of money from my channel and the accompanying merchandise.”
Bailey’s breath shot out of her mouth like a bullet, making a sharp hissing sound as it did. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I like my anonymity,” he said. “I don’t want to be recognized everywhere I go.” He took a tiny step closer to her, desperate for her to understand.
“I told you everything about OJ,” she said. “And Bryce, and my awful, awful past, and you couldn’t tell me this?” She backed up, putting the distance between them again. “This isn’t even bad, Reeves. This is good.”
“I’ve got plenty of bad to go with it,” he said.
Another scoff filled the air, and she tilted her head, her eyes vibrant and blazing but not in a good way.
“And then you said you wanted a slow, country, small-town life. Nothing big, nothing celebrity…and I swear I was seconds away from telling you.” He hadn’t been in that moment, but he’d been stewing over how to tell Bailey way before she’d even told him about her small town life dreams. He took another step closer. “Please, can we go eat in your office?”
“Fine,” she clicked out. “Yes. Let’s go.”
She strode past him, and Reeves did sigh then, because this was the worst way for Bailey to find out about his online persona, videos, and channel. The door to the livestock shed slammed closed, and Reeves looked up into the rafters of it.
“Really, Lord?” he asked, his voice heavy with disdain. “She is the most interesting woman I’ve ever met, and I’ve already started to fall in love with her, and You couldn’t have helped me orchestrate something better than this?”
God had never been particularly loud for Reeves, and he certainly didn’t get any booming directions or guidance now.
Reeves couldn’t stand out in the livestock shed by himself, so he followed Bailey at a slower pace and re-entered the veterinary clinic through the back door Marina had used to bring him outside.
He didn’t quite know how to get to Bailey’s office from here, but he turned right and went down a hallway that was clearly meant for staff.
He passed the doggy daycare room, which had a large outdoor area as well, and then the cat center.
He turned the corner and found a doorplate that said Dr. McAllister.
His step slowed, and he wasn’t sure how he could eat greasy, saucy Chinese food with so much between him and Bailey. He told himself something he’d thought earlier this week: you don’t have to explain thirty-five years of your life in a single day.
So he entered her office, and he set the brown paper bag of Chinese food on the middle of her desk before he took a seat across from it. She kept her focus steadfastly on her desktop computer monitor, clicking so fast that she surely wasn’t doing anything of importance.
“I’ve wanted to tell you for weeks,” he said. “Since the moment you asked me what I really did.”
She turned her icy blue gaze on him. “You could have at any time.”
“It’s a secret I’ve guarded for years,” he said. “And maybe it’s a stupid career choice to be online when you don’t want to be found by your abuser.”
Bailey blinked slowly at first, and then rapidly. All of her bravado fell away as what he’d said truly sank in. “What do you mean?”
“I bought that farm here in Coral Canyon for anonymity,” he said, using the word for a second time. “It took me a couple of years to figure out the best way to hide from my dad. I changed my name, got a new ID, and left everything I owned in Montana to have this life I have now.”
He leaned forward, hoping not to have to get into every nitty-gritty detail today.
“He abused me every day of my life, starting when I was nine years old,” he said.
“With my first paycheck from working in the bitter Montana cold, shoveling driveways and sidewalks for little old ladies, I bought a pair of steel-toed boots.”
Bailey seemed riveted to him, and Reeves couldn’t look away from her either.
“I bought them, so that I could kick him when he came into my bedroom at night, drunk and angry over God knows what. I wore them to bed every night, and he finally left me alone when I kicked him in the teeth and broke his jaw.”
Reeves’s heartbeat thundered through his whole body, and he felt a bit outside himself as pieces of him seemed to be moving at a million miles an hour, and yet he spoke in a steady, calm rhythm.
He leaned back in his chair, wrung out. “He never spoke another word to me after that. He didn’t feed me. He didn’t buy me clothing, school supplies, sports or camping equipment, nothing. He didn’t come to any of my high school events, including my graduation.”
Reeves only paused to breathe, which he did quickly. “I went to Alaska for a couple of years with a buddy of mine after I first left home. And everything I’ve done since then has been to protect myself and also build the serene, quiet, small town life I also want.”
He sat back, utterly spent, though he’d been hoping for a fun, light-hearted surprise lunch for his girlfriend. He’d really liked the way she’d introduced him to OJ as her boyfriend, and he hoped that he hadn’t put that status in jeopardy now that she knew about his channel.
All the emotion on Bailey’s face smoothed over, and she pushed herself back from her desk and stood up. She walked around the back corner of it, and Reeves watched, thinking she would walk out of her office and leave him there with their Chinese food. He certainly had no stomach for it now.
To his great surprise, she continued around the front corner of the desk toward him, and he barely had enough time to open his arms to receive her as she slid onto his lap and wrapped her arms around his shoulders.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered as his cowboy hat fell to the ground behind him.
He didn’t care one whit about that, for he was holding the beautiful Bailey McAllister in his lap, and the warmth and weight of her was everything he’d ever wanted.
He pressed his face into the hollow of her neck and breathed in the scent of her skin, getting some hay and a bit of antiseptic, and maybe some fabric softener from her veterinary coat.
“You’re apologizing to me?” he whispered.
“Yes,” she said back. “I didn’t know about your daddy.”
“How would you? I didn’t tell you about him.”
She pulled back and searched his eyes, and Reeves had no idea what she was looking for.
He simply let her look, and he hoped that she would find what she needed, because he didn’t want to keep anything from her ever again.
She carefully stroked the tips of her fingers down the side of his face and then leaned down and kissed him.
Another round of surprise doused him, because whatever Reeves had been expecting to happen inside her office, this wasn’t anywhere near it. He certainly wouldn’t complain, and he kissed her back, and then ducked his head.
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
“No,” Bailey said. “You wanted to tell me, and I think that counts for something. I also know how hard it is to start really hard conversations when you’re not sure how the person you’re confessing to will take the news.”
He nodded and swallowed the lump in his throat. She nodded like this situation was handled, and she slid from his lap as easily as she’d arrived there. She turned her back on him and opened the paper bag noisily, getting out the two Chinese meals he had brought.
“This looks like beef,” she said as she turned back to him and perched on the edge of her desk, only a foot in front of him. “It must be yours.”
He nodded, his voice stuck somewhere down in his stomach.
She went around the desk before she pulled out her shrimp, and then she turned over the bag to get to the utensils and napkins.
He leaned forward and picked up a packaged knife and fork, his eyes catching hers.
They held there for a moment, and then Reeves did something unexpected. He smiled.
Bailey returned it, and while it wasn’t her usual full-wattage grin, it was enough to assure him that she wasn’t going to end everything between them in the next five minutes.
He honestly wouldn’t blame her if she did, and he sent up a silent prayer of thanksgiving that the worst of his secrets had finally come out.
Later that evening, Reeves had just punched down the pizza dough for the final time and set it to rest when his phone started chiming.
Bailey: I’m three minutes into one of your winter camping videos and I have questions.
Also Bailey: Question one: why do you look so calm while explaining how not to freeze to death?
Question two: why did you say “minor weather event” when there was clearly a blizzard trying to erase your existence?
Question three: do you own a normal coat, or only coats rated for surviving the next ice age?
Reeves grinned at his phone, though his stomach vibrated in a strange way just knowing she’d queued up his videos.
Bailey: Also, your comment section is full of women calling you “Mountain Man Hottie,” and I need you to know I’m handling this with maturity and grace.