Chapter 16
Moonlight spills in through my opened bedroom window.
The muted silver light casts shadows where there usually aren’t any and turns my ceiling into a map.
I feel like a palm reader, tracking the lines and cracks above me, dissecting where they branch off as if they tell the story of the house.
As if they are the key to knowing the love that’s happened here, the lives that have been lived, and the stories still unfolding.
My story.
I hoped when I turned thirty, I’d have my entire life figured out, and in a way, I did.
I had a great apartment in the ideal part of town, doing a job I absolutely adored.
I had accomplished what everyone told me I needed to do in order to be considered a successful, mostly together adult.
If everything kept going according to plan, it was going to pay off soon.
It’s too bad life never seems to stick to the plan.
Looking back, I can’t believe I didn’t see the signs until it was too late, but sometimes it’s hardest to see the thing that’s right in front of you. Hindsight really is a bitch.
My mom might not have ever had it all together, but things always seemed to work out.
I knew she loved her wine, but she was always quick to remind anyone who questioned her that drinking was “a pleasure, not a requirement.” She could hold a job when she needed to—which, now that I’m an adult who sees things clearly, should have been all the time, not sporadically—and always put in a valiant, though ultimately unsuccessful, effort to make it to all my school and sporting events.
But despite her flaky tendencies, I knew she meant well, and that knowledge was cemented the moment Grandma’s health started declining.
It was like something inside of her clicked.
She jumped in with both feet to help and was on top of everything in a way I’d never seen before.
She scheduled all the doctor’s appointments, laid out the pills, and even though she was an awful cook, she’d still attempt to make dinner on the nights I couldn’t make it over.
She was responsible and steadfast, dependable when we really needed her to be.
It was like she finally stepped into the person who had been hiding below the surface my entire life.
Then my grandma died.
At first I attributed it to the grief.
My grandma was the best person in the world, and with her gone, there was a gaping hole where she used to be.
Without her smile, every day felt darker, and joy was an elusive commodity.
My mom could barely manage to get out of bed; there was no chance she could make it to work.
She was there for her mom, and now it was my turn to be there for mine.
Only now I know there’s a fine line between helping and enabling, and that once you’ve crossed it, it feels impossible to go back.
Her drinking stretched earlier into the days and turned into vodka as night came.
What started with small loans turned into paying her bills.
Bringing dinner turned into providing all the groceries.
Being a shoulder to cry on turned into being expected to run to her the second she called.
When I dared to tell her no, tearful pleas turned into weeklong guilt trips and manipulation.
And because I was the only person she had, I would always go back and repeat the cycle all over again, hopeful that maybe that time would be the time she changed.
But the thing with addiction is that you can’t love someone enough to make them sober. You can’t make them change. All you can do is stand by, ready to put the pieces of the wreckage back together when things finally implode.
It’s just that so often, there’s no coming back from rock bottom. It’s a lesson I should’ve learned from my dad—the lesson he died learning.
The sound of an engine and kicked-up gravel through my window pulls me from the thoughts I try to never lose myself in. I’m all too happy to jump out of bed to see who in their right mind would show up at my house this late at night.
I tiptoe down the stairs and lean into the living room, listening closely with my hand on my phone—just in case—when I catch a glimpse of the familiar shadow outside my front window.
I hurry across the living room, flip on the porch light, and when I pull open the front door, an expectant Tate Jacobs is waiting on the other side.
“What are you doing here?” My voice is too loud after sitting in silence all night. “Do you know what time it is?”
I look over his shoulder, trying to see if the woman he was with tonight is waiting for him, but the lights are off and I can’t see into the cab of his truck.
“A little after midnight,” he says. “But I had a feeling you’d be awake and probably hungry considering how fast you ran out of my parents’ house.”
“Not as fast as you were when you darted out of here the other night.”
“I know,” he says. “I really am sorry about how I acted.” He holds up a glass container stuffed full of food that looks light-years better than the bowl of cereal I had before I tried to force myself to sleep. “Truce?”
“The way you left was pretty fucked-up.” My stomach growls, but I need answers, not a half-assed apology, before I’m willing to call a truce.
“I didn’t ask for you to work on my laundry room.
You ghosted me with my washer and dryer sitting in my kitchen.
And I’m not sure if you’re aware of this or not, but they don’t tend to work well that way. ”
Not that I’m dying to do laundry, but that’s not the point!
“You’re right.” He has the decency to look ashamed. “It was fucked-up and you didn’t deserve that.”
I eye him and the glass Tupperware with suspicion. “That’s a little better.”
“I have a proposition,” he says when I don’t move to take the food from him. “Why don’t you go put on shoes while I put your washer and dryer back, then I’ll explain what happened.”
“What about your friend? I wouldn’t want you to keep her waiting.” I reach for the food, hating the way the jealousy I have no right to feel makes my stomach curdle.
“Oh no.” He pulls the food away before I can grab it.
“What are you—”
“Nope.” He turns me around and walks me back into my house. “First shoes, then you’ll come with me and get the food.”
“But what about—” I try again, to no avail.
“Go get some shoes on”—he looks down at my bare legs and his voice gets a little husky as he finishes—“and some pants. Then we’ll talk.”
Sheesh.
“Fine.” I roll my eyes. “Bossy.”
I kind of like it.
But only because he’s going to feed me and not because I’m imagining all the ways he could boss me around in the bedroom. Absolutely not.
“I’m a football coach. It’s my job to be bossy. Now go get dressed.” He walks into the kitchen still holding my food hostage. “I’ll be finished in five, so hurry. I know you can stay up all night, but the rest of us mere mortals need sleep.”
Mere mortal? This guy? More like an infuriating Greek god.
But I keep that to myself and instead do as I’m told.
Just this once.
—
I tighten my grip on the glass container as Tate’s truck bounces across the bumpy grass field on Starlight Ridge Ranch. The windows are down, and warm night air hits me in the face, whipping around the strands of curls that fell out of my bun as I hurriedly got dressed to join Tate.
“Where are we going?” I look out into the darkness, but nothing is around.
“We’re almost there,” he says. “Just a little longer.”
Patience is definitely a virtue I don’t have, but I bite my tongue and pretend until the truck slows to a stop a couple of minutes later.
He turns off the engine, and darkness stretches around us for miles and miles. “We’re here,” he says.
“You know”—I look outside, trying to spot anything that gives me the slightest clue to where we are—“if you brought me all the way out here to murder me, I’m going to be super bummed.”
Cereal cannot be my final meal.
“I would never murder you here.” He opens his door and looks at me through the bright lights in the car. “My murder spot is somewhere else.”
He winks before hopping out of the truck, and even though I was taught to know better, I open my door and follow after him.
“That wasn’t very reassuring, you know,” I say, but really, I never feel safer than I do with him at my side. “Maybe fewer murder jokes and more telling me why you brought me out here.”
He unlatches the back of his truck and pulls out a folded blanket, tucking it and two pillows underneath his arm.
“This”—he pushes the tailgate closed with his hip—“is my favorite spot on the ranch. It’s where I come to think and figure out game plans or where I come for space when I need to be alone.
It’s the one place in this world where I know I can set my mind at ease and just be.
I thought you might need a place like that too. ”
My lungs freeze and my heart forgets how to beat, but the second it remembers, I fear it will only beat for him.
“Tate.” I struggle to find words. “I don’t…Thank you.”
He either doesn’t hear me or he ignores me—likely the latter—as he drapes the blanket on the ground and tosses the pillows on top of it.
He plops down, and even in the dark I can feel his expectant gaze on me. “Come on.” He pats the spot beside him. “Eat, look at the stars, then we’ll talk.”
It’s all the encouragement I need. I cross the space separating us and take off my shoes before sitting down. The worn, wool blanket is feather soft, and the thick grass feels like a cushion beneath us. I take off the lid to the food he packed for me, and he hands me a fork I didn’t know he had.
“Thank you,” I say again.
“You can stop saying that,” he says. “I’m not sure if you figured this out about me or not, but I don’t do things I don’t want to do. You never have to thank me for doing something I want to do.”
A million questions race through my head, but the moment between us feels too nice. I don’t want to do anything that might ruin it.