Chapter Twenty-Nine
The adobe was dark and quiet as Hannah and Garrett walked through the front door.
The ride home had been full of pensive silence, as if they both knew that once they were back home, so much more was going to be made clear.
Hannah lit one of the small brass oil lamps as Garrett shut and locked the door behind them, the subtle flicking of her match and deft sound of the wooden block sliding into place on the front door filling the space.
“I’m going to go check on the children, then we should talk,” she said quietly, turning just enough to speak over her shoulder.
“I’ll go with you,” Garrett answered just as she was about to ask him to take a seat at the table.
Hannah didn’t argue. In fact, his willingness to be by her side only further quieted that festering feeling that had settled into her heart.
Grace had been so different at the party.
She had been kind, friendly, even up until the moment she’d revealed Garrett’s secret; and Hannah could not determine if it had all been an act, or if Grace had truly been trying, and had just assumed that Garrett had shared that moment in his life with her.
Then there was Dean. He had been nicer as well, right up until her and Garrett’s argument.
She winced at the memory. He had looked so ready, so determined that he had been right all along.
Yet when she declared that Garrett was her husband, he had looked shocked. Even a little comforted by her words.
It was all so twisted and complicated, and one day, she would figure out how to deal with the Walkers’ distrust of her. Tonight, though, was about Garrett.
With him following close behind her, they checked in on the children, finding them all slumbering quietly.
Maria and Rebecca in their room. Isaac and Louis in theirs.
Jacob in what was supposed to be Garrett’s room.
Guilt twinged through Hannah as she saw her second youngest brother taking up the entire room to himself, but she couldn’t help but feel relieved that he was actually there.
He’d been disappearing so much lately, and he refused to tell any of them where he had gone once he would return home.
It was in Jacob’s doorway that Hannah paused, her gaze fixed on her always angry younger brother. Would he ever be happy? Would he ever forgive her for almost leaving without him?
Maybe this isn’t God’s punishment for me, she silently thought as she took in her little brother’s face. Even in his sleep, he wore a scowl. But perhaps it is Jacob’s.
He’d always been a little hot-headed, but it wasn’t until Hannah announced that she was leaving Michigan that he’d become so lost in his anger.
She drew in a shuddered breath, wondering what her life would look like in that particular moment if she had just planned on bringing all five of them right from the beginning.
Dean couldn’t have accused her of lying. Jacob would have never felt abandoned. Garrett would have never been surprised. It could have all been so much better. Wincing at the guilt that slammed so harshly in her chest, Hannah turned away from her little brother and left Garrett to close his door.
“I was talking to Dean at the party,” Garrett whispered as Hannah began to chew anxiously at her bottom lip.
“Before the…” his words drifted off for a second and Hannah glanced up at him, wondering what he was going to call what had happened between them. An explosion? A fight?
He didn’t call it anything.
“Anyway,” he pushed on after a pause, “Dean told me that Jacob’s been showing up to his ranch.”
Shock exploded through Hannah.
“Why on earth would he go over there?” She whispered, her eyes darting back to Jacob’s door.
“I don’t know,” Garrett replied, “But at least we know where he’s taking off to now. And I know Dean isn’t your favorite person, but he’s been keeping an eye on Jacob, and keeping him busy. He’ll stay out of trouble there.”
Hannah expelled a sigh as a dozen more questions popped into her mind.
“I’m going to have a talk with him,” she stated.
“We are going to have a talk with him,” Garrett gently corrected her as he leaned down to meet her gaze. “And we will do it soon. For now, it’s me that owes you an explanation.”
Relieved to know that he still wanted to speak with her, Hannah nodded and started heading for the kitchen. Just as she passed the door to her room, however, Garrett gently grabbed her arm and stopped her; using his other hand to open her door.
She turned back to him with a raised brow, and he silently beckoned her with the nod of his head to follow him into her room.
A blush stole over Hannah’s cheeks as she let Garrett lead her inside and shut the door behind them.
Aside from that brief moment where he’d carried her to bed as she was mostly asleep; she’d never shared the intimate space with him before.
“What are you doing?” She whispered as Garrett lit the two brass oil lamps on her bureau.
“I need to show you something,” he replied, turning back to her.
To her surprise, Garrett’s fingers were tugging up the hem of his white shirt and exposing the golden, firm muscled flesh of his abdomen.
The blush in her cheeks grew hotter as he slowly raised that hem up until his entire chest was exposed, and he was drawing the shirt up over his head.
She glanced at the garment as he dropped it to the floor; not at all sure why her entire body was suddenly warm and filled with static.
Her heart began to flutter as he took a quiet step toward her and reached for her hand, and she remained silent and shocked as he brought her fingertips up to his left shoulder and pressed them to the small scar that rested there.
Her breath hitched as she felt how warm, how firm his bare body felt, and she looked up at him with questioning eyes as that static inside of her turned into a steady hum of energy she couldn’t quite explain.
“I need you to feel how small, how inconsequential this scar is,” he told her, his gaze seeking hers, “I need you to see for yourself how much it doesn’t matter.”
Hannah swallowed, her mind slowly starting to work again.
“If it doesn’t matter, why does it still hurt you?” She rasped, trying her best not to let her gaze drop to the masculine beauty of Garrett’s muscled form.
Garrett huffed out a breath, scowling a little as his gaze dropped to the side.
“It doesn’t hurt enough to make me stop going after the life I want,” he replied after a moment; smoothing his thumb over the top of her hand he still held pressed to his scar. The little caress sent another jolt through her body, and she almost lost her focus all over again.
“That is what matters,” he went on, his tone gentle but insistent. “I work through the pain because I want to. Because God allows me to, and I will always be grateful for that.”
Hannah nodded, starting to understand why he didn’t tell her. It truly didn’t matter to him. It was something that just… happened. Something that he refused to let stop him.
“Will you please tell me what happened?” She implored, her gaze dropping the cords of veins in his throat, to the Adam’s apple that bobbed there, and then down to where Garrett held her hand to the old wound.
When Garrett began to speak again, she felt the vibration of his deep voice travel through his shoulder and into her fingertips.
“It was about ten years ago,” he began to explain, “A stretch of Dean’s father’s ranch and Mr. Dawson’s brushes right up against one another near the Chihuahuan Desert.
It’s vast out there. Hundreds of acres impossible to fence in.
We had an agreement not to worry about the borders as long as both men had cowboys out there to watch over the herds that wandered out there.
One night it was Dean's and my turn. Our schedules didn’t always match up, so we were excited to have a chance to talk and play some cards, so we set up our camp together instead of going to our individual posts. ”
Hannah watched as happiness flittered through Garrett’s gaze, as if the memory was a fond one.
“We were cookin’ our beans, talkin’ up a storm,” he went on, the happiness quickly fading from his eyes, “You see the older we got the more responsibilities were given, so even though we used to be able to steal away at least once a week to visit with Logan and Cain, at that point we hadn’t seen each other in about a month.
We let ourselves get distracted. A gang of rustlers got the jump on us.
They were going to kill us and steal the cattle; cut out the brands and sell them for their own.
Logan, though, he was just a deputy at the time and he’d heard that the two of us had been working together that night from a cowboy he had to walk out of the saloon, so he’d ridden out to surprise and join us after his shift. ”
To her surprise, Garrett let out a wry chuckle, his lips pulling toward a smirk.
“The rustlers might have gotten a jump on Dean and I, but Logan got the jump on them, and the moment they were distracted, we got the upper hand. For a while it looked like it was just going to be a fist fight we were for sure going to win. We got four of them knocked out cold within minutes, but the fifth rustler pulled a pistol and aimed it square at my chest as I was coming for him. Logan had slammed into him from the side just as he fired, and instead of going into my heart, the bullet went into my shoulder.”
He shook his head, as if still in disbelief from the memory.