Daisy
twenty-two
The bed is empty when I wake, but the sheets are still warm and the memory of Beau’s arms lingers.
I roll over as the sound of Beau and Ollie making breakfast reaches me through the closed bedroom door, and I’m grateful for this moment alone.
I need a minute to process what feels different this morning, aside from the fact that I’m not in my own bed.
Something inside has shifted. A knot feels looser. A weight feels lighter. It isn’t gone, but with one more push, I might be rid of it forever.
I’m staring at the ceiling, feeling my way into the new space inside my chest, when the door creaks open. Beau pokes his head in, and when he sees that I’m awake, he comes all the way in. He’s got a cup of steaming coffee, and he closes the door behind him.
“Here,” he says, offering me the cup. “I thought you might need this.”
I sit up and accept the coffee. “Thank you.”
I take a sip as Beau hovers awkwardly at the end of the bed. He’s still in his boxer shorts and no shirt. The chain of daisies across his side is obvious, though now he knows I’ve seen it, there’s no use trying to hide it. And I can’t stop looking at it.
“How are you feeling?” he asks.
“I’m…” A thud sounds somewhere in the cabin, followed by the screech of a chair dragged across linoleum. “Is Ollie okay?”
Beau smiles with affection. “Yeah. He’s at the table eating while drawing.”
“That’s sweet. He’s a great kid.”
“He is.” Beau runs a nervous hand through his hair. “So, listen. I want to talk. We need to talk.” He glances at me uncertainly. “Right?”
I should be nervous, but I’m not. For the first time in my life, I’m ready to say the hard things. “Yeah. We do.”
He releases a breath. “Good. The thing is…” He gestures vaguely toward the bed. “I don’t know how to explain this to Ollie.”
Heat creeps into my cheeks. “I’ll go home.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I know, but you’re right.”
“I just don’t want to confuse him.”
“Beau? It’s okay. I get it.”
His shoulders relax slightly. “So I’ll take him out somewhere so you can sneak home. And then… I’ll call you?” He groans and shakes his head. “That sounds awful.”
I chuckle quietly. “I know what you mean, but, uh… I have another idea.”
“Yeah?”
“We both have the morning off, so what do you think about taking a ride with me? I’d like to show you around Silver Leaf, if you’re interested. Ollie can spend some time at the main house with Izzy, if that’s all right with you.”
Beau’s eyes light up, and the hint of a hopeful grin tugs at his mouth. “Really?”
I’m cautiously optimistic about what the morning may bring, but I don’t want to raise expectations too soon. His or mine.
“Yeah,” I say with less emotion than I feel. “Really.”
“I’d like that,” he says.
I text Poppy to ask for the favor while Beau helps Ollie get ready.
Once they’re out the door, I head home to shower and dress, butterflies beating against the hollow of my stomach.
My head isn’t too heavy, given the half jug of sangria I drank last night, but I take two painkillers and follow with a large glass of water, just in case.
By the time I walk over to the stable, Beau has Chardonneigh and Stallion Blanc tacked up and ready to go.
I swing up into my saddle and Beau mounts beside me. With the differences in height between us and our horses, he towers over me.
“Lead the way,” he says with a tip of his hat, and I forget we’re not supposed to be so easy with each other.
“Your hair’s different,” he says as we leave the stable behind and head toward the northern trails.
“It is?” I ask, then remember the way I used to dye the ends. “Oh, yeah. I cut off the color before I came home.”
“Why?”
I shrug. “It felt like a part of me I wanted to leave behind.”
“Like me?”
I cast him a sideways glance. He doesn’t say it with any judgment. If anything, he sounds curious, and I don’t feel the need to lie anymore.
“Like us,” I reply.
He’s quiet as he falls behind me on a narrow stretch of trail lined on one side by a thick row of redwoods and on the other by a sheer bluff.
I breathe deeply, soothing myself with the subtly spiced smell of the trees and the sweet, earthy fragrance of my family’s vineyards.
When the path broadens again, Beau moves his horse up beside mine.
“It’s beautiful here,” he says. “Is this where you’ve been this whole year?”
“Yep.” I look out onto the familiar landscape. The purple mountains and the green hills, the blue sky that I suppose looks the same no matter where you are in the world but somehow looks prettier here. “Getting to know the place again, I guess.”
“You spent so much time resisting even the idea of coming home,” he murmurs. “I’m kind of surprised you did.”
There’s a touch of accusation in his tone now, but I earned it. For all the questions Beau left unanswered by walking out on me, I wasn’t as open as I should’ve been either.
I keep my eyes focused ahead while I gather the courage I need to explain things, letting Chardonneigh lead us along a trail we’ve ridden together a hundred times before. I use her solid, steadfast gait to keep me grounded.
“Look,” Beau says, apparently unable to stand the silence. “About last night.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I behaved badly.”
He huffs a laugh. “Maybe, but I’m not sorry you did it.” He looks at me. “One of us had to break. If it hadn’t been you last night, it would’ve been me soon.”
A reluctant chuckle escapes me. “I doubt it.”
“I don’t,” he says. “You always were my weak spot, Darlin’.”
His smile is small and unsure, and mine is equally tentative. My God, he’s my weakness too. I want so badly to pretend everything between us can be, if not solved, then partially repaired with one kiss, but there’s too much he doesn’t know.
“I need to say some things,” I tell him. “But they’re things I never let myself think about, let alone say out loud. To anyone. Ever. So I’m probably going to be awkward about it. I need you to keep that in mind, okay?”
His energy shifts, and if it were possible for Beau to be tense on the back of a horse as placid as Stallion Blanc, this might be the time.
“Okay,” he says. “I’m listening.”
I stay quiet. I don’t know what I’m waiting for until we approach a curve in the trail, and just beyond it, a rise.
Sonoma Valley stretches on forever to our left, the forests and the vineyards and the fields and the river.
I slow Chardonneigh to a stop and turn her toward the view.
Beau does the same next to me. I needed to be here for this conversation, but I didn’t know it until we arrived.
“This was my mom’s favorite trail,” I say, looking outward as I reach inward, knowing Beau’s listening but almost saying this for myself.
“We rode it all the time, and I’m not sure if it was a little lie she told me to make it seem more special, but she used to say she never rode it with anyone else. Just me.”
“It’s breathtaking,” he murmurs, looking out with me onto the valley below.
“You see, the thing is…” I inhale and push through the invisible wall that keeps me on one side and my mom on the other.
“The thing is, I never told my family about you because you made me so happy. Our life made me so happy. I could hold you up to the light and there wasn’t a single blemish.
But here, where my family is and used to be, there’s an unavoidable dark spot.
My parents are gone, and I feel that loss here in a way I don’t when I’m out in the world.
Every minute is marked by heartbreak and grief. And rage. So much rage.”
I let myself look at him. His eyes are soft, and my throat tightens.
“Every single moment I’ve ever had or will ever have at Silver Leaf will always be a little bit sad.
Even the happy times. The happiest ones.
I wanted to keep you all to myself for as long as I could.
I wanted to keep pretending that I was okay, that I left all the pain behind me, and that as long as I never came back, I’d be able to build something that wasn’t tainted by my grief. ”
I scrub at my eyes, which have welled with tears despite my best efforts.
“I wanted you to be this precious thing that never knew that version of me,” I tell him, my voice a cracking whisper.
“Because if you didn’t know her, I wouldn’t have to deal with her.
How could I bring you home, Beau? Where they aren’t?
Where my mom isn’t? I wanted to delay that part for as long as possible. ”
I clear my throat and pat Chardonneigh like she’s the one who needs soothing.
“It was stupid, I know. And it was selfish. But the idea of my mother never meeting you, never knowing you, and you never hearing her laugh or watching her paint or seeing how natural she was around horses? It hurts. Knowing my dad would never shake your hand or hand you a drink or ask if you’ve seen the latest hockey scores?
It hurts. You never being able to tell him that you want to marry me, and him never walking me down the aisle? It hurts.”
Beau watches me with a hard jaw and the softest, sweetest brown eyes. It breaks something open inside me, the look of someone in pain because I’m in pain. To hide how raw this feels, I sniffle and laugh wetly.
“That sounds so old-fashioned,” I say. “If you’d asked me at sixteen how I wanted to get married, I’d have told you I wanted to elope.
Do it in Paris or Vegas. But then they died, and the idea of getting married at all made me want to cry.
My mom was my best friend, and Jacqui Davenport would have made the best mother of the bride. ”
I sob-laugh.