Chapter 33
LENNON
My muscles screamed in protest as I threw my right leg over Indigo’s rump and dismounted.
I wobbled on the landing and my knees buckled right out from under me, causing me to roll onto my back like a goddamn turtle.
I rolled back up on my feet again just as quickly, brushed my ass off, and peered around to make sure Jeremiah hadn’t noticed. Indigo gave me an unimpressed look.
“You good?” Jeremiah asked mildly. The brim of his cowboy hat obscured his face as he worked at the knots securing the packs to Ruby’s saddle.
Swear to god, that man had eyes in the back of his head. He didn’t miss a damn thing. “I’m good,” I chirped back brightly. “My legs forgot how to work, that’s all.”
It was hard to tell if that sound he made was a muffled laugh or a grunt of effort.
I decided I didn’t care. I was new to all this outdoorsy shit, but I didn’t mind looking like a fool while I figured it out.
There was a time I didn’t know how to pose for a camera or roast a chicken either, and look at me now: a master of both. I liked a challenge.
The moment I loosened Indigo’s girth, he let out a big sigh and bobbed his head. “You’re welcome,” I crooned, giving him a brisk pat on the neck. Then I started in on unpacking him.
“It doesn’t seem right that I’m sore but Indigo did all the work,” I said to Jeremiah as he unloaded the saddle bags and swapped Ruby’s bridle for a halter.
“Indigo has eight hundred pounds on you and two extra legs. Plus he’s half Arabian, so he was bred for long distances. He’s a good pack horse.”
Once we’d gotten Indigo and Ruby untacked, Jeremiah secured hobbles to their front legs so they could move around a bit but wouldn’t go far.
“Is that how we keep them from running away while we’re sleeping?” I asked.
“Nah.” He shook his head. “The hobbles slow them down, but they tend to adjust. If we left them like that overnight, we’d wake up to find them long gone. We use a highline. We’ll take care of that first and then get the tent set up.”
He showed me how to string the rope at chest height between two trees. Then we clipped lead ropes to Indigo and Ruby’s halters and tied them to the line, close enough that they could hang out together, but far enough apart that they couldn’t touch.
“It’s so beautiful here.” I had thought the ranch was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen, but that was only because I hadn’t seen this.
I pressed my hands into my lower back and arched backward, stretching out the kinks from sitting in a saddle for the last three hours, and took it all in.
A green river shimmered about two hundred feet away.
Everywhere I looked, jagged peaks met vivid blue sky.
Except that one on the far side of the lake that looked like its pointed peak had been lopped off.
“What’s the name of that mountain over there?” I asked.
Jeremiah looked where I was pointing. “Squaretop Mountain.”
“Fitting.”
He grinned. A laugh bubbled out of me. It was the damnedest thing. I should be scared right now, scared of what was waiting for us back at the ranch, but I wasn’t. I felt as light as the air rustling the pine needles.
I loved it here. I loved the mountains and the trees and the horses. I loved making breakfast and lunch for the ranch hands and guests.
And the cowboy who had promised to keep me safe…well, I wouldn’t let myself think the L-word where he was concerned.
But I couldn’t stop the feeling from taking root deep in my chest.
“Did you pack me a toothbrush?” I asked after we had cleaned up from dinner.
“Toothbrush, toothpaste, biodegradable wipes—but don’t bury them, we’ll pack them out when we leave—and your hairbrush are all in the red toiletries bag.”
I rummaged through the bag. Wipes, brush, condoms, toothpaste—aha, there was my toothbrush—
Condoms?
I blinked as my brain caught up with my eyeballs. Condoms. “Jeremiah,” I called out, still staring down at the three foil squares. “Why are there condoms in the toiletries bag?”
“Seemed like the obvious place for them,” he said in a matter-of-fact way, like we were discussing dental floss instead of the possibility of him losing his virginity, but he rubbed his palms on his jeans and there was a wash of color cresting his cheekbones.
“We don’t have to use them, though. I figured it would be better to have them than not. ”
I considered that, tilting my head. “I’ve always used condoms, but I’m on the pill.
Didn’t want to risk a faulty condom, but mostly I hate getting my period and sometimes I just want to opt out, you know?
Anyway, I was tested for everything at my last gyno appointment.
No diseases. And you’re a virgin, so…No, we don’t have to use them. ”
“I…” His voice trailed off and he huffed a laugh, spearing his fingers through his hair and tugging.
“Hell, Lennon. I meant, we don’t have to have sex if you don’t want to.
With everything going on right now, I’d understand if you wanted to slow things down.
I wasn’t trying to get out of wearing a condom. ”
“Oh.”
We stood there awkwardly, looking at each other peripherally without allowing a full-on collision. It was all I could do not to burst out of my skin. I could feel my heart beating in my throat, in my fingertips. My palms were starting to sweat.
I was nervous. Like I was the virgin here, not him.
Maybe because I had never done it with all these feelings swirling inside me. This was uncharted territory for me.
I needed to pull myself together. I wanted to make this good for him. Thirty-eight years he’d waited for this. He didn’t need his first time to be with a nervous wreck.
“Jeremiah.” My voice came out steadier than my heartbeat, much to my relief. “I want to, tonight, with you. And if you also want that, then I want your first time to be the full experience. If that’s what you want.” Christ. How many times could I say want?
He rubbed his bottom lip, finally looking at me. “I want that.”
“Good.” I crossed the four feet of dirt and grass that separated us and kissed him lightly on the lips. “Then that’s what you get.”
He swallowed hard. “Now?”
I chuckled softly. “Whenever you want.”
He glanced around like he was making sure we were alone. The sun had dipped behind the mountains, leaving a velvety purple twilight. Birdsong had been replaced by the hum of crickets.
“I want to watch the stars come out with you.” He pressed his forehead to mine. “Can we do that?”
“Yes. We can do that.”
We unzipped both sleeping bags, spread one out on the ground next to a fallen log we could use as a backrest, and pulled the other one over top of us. He draped an arm around my shoulder and I snuggled into him, resting my cheek on his chest.
“Do you know any constellations?” I asked.
His body shook with laughter. “You have no idea how glad I am that you asked that.”
I craned my neck to look at his face. “Why?”
“Because until a month ago, I could reliably find the Big Dipper, but that was about it. And then I saw a pretty girl standing outside in the tiniest pajamas, looking at the stars, and wouldn’t you know it, I found myself a new hobby.”
“You did not!” I pushed off him a little so I could see him better.
He grinned. “I did. I downloaded an app on my phone and practiced every night. Now I don’t even need the app. Are you impressed?”
“Impressed? Jeremiah. I am delighted.” I leaned in so my lips grazed his earlobe. “Tell me all about the constellations, so when I fuck you under the stars I know all their names.”
I heard the hitch in his breath, felt the flex of his hand on my thigh. It was the only warning I had before he hauled me into his lap. He kissed me, hot and desperate, like I was the oxygen he needed to breathe. I twisted so we faced each other, my thighs straddling his hips.
I couldn’t get enough of him. His slick tongue against mine. The scrape of his callused fingers on my ribs beneath my shirt. And then my shirt was gone, my bra was gone, and Jeremiah leaned back against the fallen log and stared at me with a look of pure awe.
“Fuck, Lennon.” He swallowed audibly. “Fuck.”
His eyes moved over me like he was trying to take in everything at once. I felt his gaze like a physical caress. The evening air chilled my skin and I craved the warmth of his hands.
“Touch me,” I whispered. “Please touch me.”
There was a tremor in his fingertips as he grazed my jaw. “I have to tell you something, Lennon.”
“Now? Can’t it wait until morning?” I didn’t want to talk. I wanted to take off his clothes.
“It has to be now. Before…” His breath shuddered as I covered his hands with mine and brought them to my breasts. “No unclean thing can enter the kingdom of heaven. You, Lennon…you’re my heaven.”
His words set off an earthquake inside me. Broke all my jagged pieces apart and fit them back together in a new shape. I was left rearranged from it. The way this man treated me…it altered everything I thought I knew.
I kissed his temple, his nose, his lips. “There is nothing you can say that will make me want you less.”
His eyes met mine. “I killed my uncle in cold blood.”
His words shocked the hell out of me. I sat back and looked at him. With anyone else, that might have given me pause. But I had never known anyone who felt the weight of his own soul as keenly as this man. “I’m sure he deserved it.”
He laughed hoarsely and lowered his forehead to my chest. “You can’t absolve me without hearing my whole confession.”
“Then tell me.”
“When they banished me, my uncle promised to watch over my sister. Ensure she found a husband who was godly and kind. I believed him. Trusted him. I sneaked into the compound to see her before I went to basic training. By then I’d been out for long enough that I understood it was a cult and had no interest in returning to that life.
I wanted Hannah to come back with me—my foster parents said they’d take her in.
But she refused. She was still just a kid, and this was all she’d ever known.
So I left her a sealed envelope with money and instructions for how to contact me. Two years later she used it.”
I held his hands between us, wanting to comfort him. “You went and got her.”
He nodded. “She was already married. Fourteen fucking years old, and my uncle made her his fourth wife.”
My stomach roiled. I couldn’t speak.
“I took her back with me. Got her settled in a new life. I wanted to be named her guardian, but with all the travel I did, it was better for her to stay with my foster parents. I stayed there with her when I was home. And then I heard he was taking a new wife. Thirteen years old.” His hands clenched around mine.
“Holly covered for me when I went AWOL. Rowed him out to the middle of the lake and pushed him in. Told him he could confess to the FBI, or he could keep swimming.” His shoulders rose on a deep breath. “He drowned.”
My heart ached for Jeremiah. He had carried the guilt for so long. “But he didn’t have to. Your uncle made a choice.”
“I’m not sorry,” he rasped.
“Neither am I.” I kissed his bowed head.
His gaze snapped to mine, seeking.
I wasn’t a religious person, but I’d seen enough bumper stickers proclaiming JESUS LOVES YOU! to understand the gist of it. We were born in sin and kept right on sinning until we drew our last breath. No one earned a place in heaven. It was given through grace.
I couldn’t give him absolution. Forgiveness wasn’t mine to give even if I wanted to. I wasn’t the judge and jury of his life. But I could give him something else. The words that had terrified me earlier bloomed in my chest.
I held his face in my hands. His heartbreakingly beautiful face. “Look at me.”
His eyelids fluttered open. He swallowed as our gazes locked.
“I love you, Jeremiah.” And then I said it again. “I love you.”