Rebel
SLADE
The puppy is the size of my fist.
Lucky is sprawled in her bed with the other three pups climbing over her like she’s a jungle gym, which she’s tolerating the way only a mother could. She’s been easy about all of it from the start. Fed them, cleaned them, watched over them them. She’s a good mama.
The runt of the litter is mine to deal with. He came out small, got pushed off early, and needed supplementing from the first hour. So now it’s me and a warm blanket and a bottle every two hours. Somewhere in the last four days I’ve developed what I can only call a soft spot.
Lila keeps suggesting names. I keep finding reasons to reject them. Because I know what happens when I name him. I name this puppy, I’m keeping this puppy. Same way I kept his mother.
I’m in the process of figuring out how to keep the girl who brought them both through my door.
The one currently sitting on the mudroom floor in my flannel shirt at six in the morning, sipping from a cup of fresh-brewed coffee as she smiles at me, sleepy-eyed as she watches me carefully.
“What is it?” I ask.
“You just look really cute feeding that puppy, that’s all. You’re a natural.”
“Not my first rodeo, so to speak. Grew up doing it for lambs that got rejected by their mamas. Baby goats and foals too.”
She leans forward, eyes sparkling. “Seriously? Is there photographic evidence of this anywhere?”
“Probably somewhere in the family albums at Rosemont. Mom was always taking pictures.”
“This I have to see. Although maybe I shouldn’t, considering watching you right now I can feel my birth control failing,” she jokes.
I gently swaddle the now-sleeping puppy in the blanket and tuck him against his brothers. Then I reach for my wife.
She comes into my lap without argument, folding herself against me, her coffee-warm hands finding my jaw, her forehead dropping to mine.
I kiss her slow. No rush. Nowhere to be.
My hand finds the hem of the flannel and slides underneath, up the warm skin of her back, and I feel her exhale against my mouth.
“Trying to tell me something, Mrs. Rhodes?” I murmur. “You ready for me to put a baby in you?”
The flush starts at her cheeks and moves down her throat and I track every inch of it.
“I’m just saying,” she continues on a blush. “It’s a very potent thing, watching a strong handsome cowboy be so gentle with something so little.”
“Sure, sure.” I press my lips behind her ear, to the soft skin just below it, and feel her shiver all the way down.
My hand slides around to the front and cups her breast, warm and soft and bare under the flannel.
“Because the way I see it, you coming in here, no bra, wearing my shirt, you’re just asking for me to fuck you.
And we got a long winter ahead of us, sweetheart.
Ain’t gonna be doing much else but keeping warm together.
” I slide my hand down her stomach, dipping beneath her jeans.
She swats lightly at my wrist. “Slade. Not in front of the children.”
I look over at the puppies. Lucky is flat on her side in a long rectangle of morning sun, one paw twitching in her sleep.
All four pups are piled in a heap against her belly, boneless and oblivious.
Outside the window the last of the autumn grass moves in a cold wind off the mountains.
First frost on the ground this morning. I saw it when I came out to the barn before six, the fields turned silver in the pale light.
Winter is coming. Everything is going cold and quiet.
Except this. This is warm.
“They’re asleep,” I say.
“They’re impressionable.”
I look at my wife. Pink-cheeked, bright-eyed, sitting in my lap in my flannel, rose gold hair messy and soft.
And I feel it surge up in me: my love for her.
It feels as deep and inexorable as the tides.
I could no sooner cut myself off from her than tear the earth from the moon. I was a fool to ever pretend I could.
I stand up with her in my arms.
She grabs my shoulders with a laugh. “Slade—”
“Impressionable,” I agree, and carry her down the hall. “Which means we need to go back to bed.”
Our bedroom smells like the candle she lit this morning, like bergamot and something sweet I don’t know the name of, just know it’s hers now. The sheets are soft linen, rumpled from where we lay together an hour ago, and the light through the curtains is thin and silver-white.
“You were right. There’s something to it,” I murmur between kisses. “Lazing around in bed in the mornings.”
“I’ve turned you to the soft side, huh?” she teases. “Made you slow and lazy.”
I set her down on the edge of the bed and she reaches for my shirt buttons immediately, her fingers quick and sure, and I pull the flannel off her shoulders and let it fall and take a moment just to look at her.
She lets me. And I’m glad because I intend to spend a significant portion of the rest of my life just gazing at my wife.
“Slow, sure,” I agree. “But I’ll show you lazy.”
I press her back into the sheets. The linen is cool and soft and she sinks into it and pulls me down with her, her hands moving from my shirt to my shoulders to my hair. I kiss her mouth, her jaw, the soft skin below her ear that makes her breath catch every time.
I’ve learned her by now. Learned exactly where to linger, exactly what makes her fingers tighten in my hair, exactly what makes her hips shift up against me.
I use all of it.
I drag my mouth back up to her ear. “I think you want me to fuck a baby into you,” I murmur, low and unhurried, feeling her whole body respond to it. “Don’t be shy, sweetheart.” I press my lips to the soft skin just below her jaw and feel her pulse hammering there. “You never have been before.”
The smile she gives me then is beautiful and entirely too sad, like I’m saying something bittersweet, like this conversation is ironic instead of completely sincere.
I want to tell her what’s been going through my head, to tell her what I’ve done. But I have bigger plans than just blurting it out like I did my first proposal.
I want to do it right this time.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand.
I ignore it. Lila’s fingers are in my hair and the candle is still burning and the sheets are warm and I am not a man who checks his phone in the middle of this.
It buzzes again.
I lift my head. My father’s name on the screen.
That’s not right. Dad doesn’t call during my time off unless something’s wrong.
“It’s my dad,” I tell Lila, pressing my lips to her forehead and reaching for the phone. “Hold on.”
She nods, pulling the sheet up, her hair spread across the pillow, cheeks still flushed. I let myself look at her for one more second.
Then I answer.
“Hey, Dad.”
“Son. Got a Mr. and Mrs. Sherwood at the gate. Peter and Celia Sherwood too. Say they want to talk to you and Lila.”
The moment Lila hears her family’s name through the speaker, the color drains from her face.
“I’ll send them away,” I say immediately.
“No.” Her voice is quiet but certain. She sits up, sheet pooling at her waist. “Whatever they’re here for, better to face it head on.”
I hold her gaze for a beat. Then I put the phone back to my ear.
“Send them up, Dad.”
I hang up.
Neither of us moves for a moment. The candle flickers on the nightstand. Outside the wind is picking up off the mountains, moving through the frost-silvered grass, the clouds low and iron-grey.
We get dressed without talking. I watch her pull on her jeans and reach for a sweater and twist her hair back, and I think about what her family is going to see when they pull up: this woman who left their world and built her own. Something settles in my chest.
She’s not going back to whatever she came from. Not today. Not ever.
When she’s dressed I cross to her and pull her in before she can reach for the door, hugging her tightly.
“You’re not facing them alone,” I tell her. My lips against the top of her head. “You’ll never have to face them alone again.”
She pulls back just enough to look up at me. The question is right there in her eyes: Denver, the plan, the version of the future that still has me leaving.
I have plans for that.
Plans I need to tell her about, but now, with her family bearing down on our doorstep, is not that time.
But soon.
“I promise you, baby,” I tell her. “I’ll take care of you.”
She presses up onto her toes and kisses me soft and quick, her hands fisted in my shirt.
Then she steps back, straightens her spine, and lifts her chin.
I take her hand.
We walk out to the porch and stand in the cold morning air, hand in hand, watching the dust rise on the drive as the car comes toward the house.
The gleaming black SUV pulls to a stop. Then four immaculately dressed Sherwoods get out of the car with disapproving looks. All of them look like they’re on their way to or from a yacht club.
I take the baseball cap off my head and put it backwards on Lila’s head. We exchange a small, warm smile.
She’s in her muddy rain boots and my flannel, hair loose in the wind beneath the hat, the enormous diamond on her left hand catching what little light is coming through the clouds and throwing it back.
Those eyes of hers aren’t soft and doe-like the way they get when she looks at something she loves, but fierce and battle-ready, the way she gets when she looks at something she wants to change.
She looks exactly like what she is. A rebel. An independent spirit. A true-blue—or pink, as it were—Montana cowgirl.
That’s my fucking wife, right there.