26. Mel
— ? —
Mel
The feed store in Marigold smells like alfalfa and diesel and the particular kind of dust that settles into everything within a fifty-mile radius of livestock.
I love it.
“We need forty pounds of layer feed,” I tell Santino, consulting Hattie’s list. “Twenty pounds of goat pellets - don’t ask why Gerald has a separate brand, he just does - and a product called ‘hoof conditioner’ that I’m choosing to believe is for the horses and not some kind of rural spa treatment. ”
Santino is already loading feed bags onto a cart with an ease that still catches me off guard.
Two months ago, this man wore suits that cost more than most cars.
Now he’s hauling fifty-pound sacks in worn jeans and a t-shirt that’s doing truly criminal things to his shoulders, and he looks happier than I’ve ever seen him.
“Gerald has a separate brand,” he repeats, deadpan, hefting a sack of the offending pellets like it personally offends him too.
“Gerald has opinions,” I say. “You of all people should respect that.”
He considers this while he stacks it. “Gerald tried to end my life on three separate occasions.”
“Gerald is family. Family’s complicated.”
He snorts, but he’s smiling, and when he catches me watching him, his eyes crinkle at the corners in a way that makes my stomach flip.
“What?” he asks.
“Nothing.” I consult the list again, hiding my face. “Just admiring the view.”
“The feed store has a view?”
“It does now.”
His laugh is low and warm, and he abandons the cart to crowd me against a shelf of horse brushes. “You’re flirting with me. In a feed store. In Marigold, Texas.”
“I’m observing. There’s a difference.”
“There really isn’t.”
He kisses me, quick and soft, just a brush of lips, and I’m about to deepen it when someone clears their throat behind us.
“Mel Jordan, I know you’re not making out in the alfalfa aisle.”
I spin around so fast I knock over a display of fly spray.
Bree Salazar stands at the end of the aisle, one hand on her hip and the other holding onto a little girl who’s currently trying to feed a fistful of dirt to a pig.
An actual pig, potbellied, self-important, wearing an expression of deep grievance.
Bree’s brown hair is pulled back in a messy ponytail, her green eyes are bright with mischief, her boots are covered in mud, and she’s grinning at me like Christmas came early.
“Bree!” I abandon the fly spray carnage and throw my arms around her. “Oh my god, look at you! And is this Rosie? She got so big!”
“Butterbean, leave it,” Bree says to the pig, who ignores her completely. Rosie giggles.
“Look at me? Look at you!” She pulls back, holding me at arm’s length.
“Last I heard, you were hiding from some Italian billionaire and swearing off men forever. Now you’re canoodling in feed stores with-” She stops.
Looks past me. Takes in Santino, who has frozen mid-reach for another feed bag like a man caught in a searchlight.
“Wait.” Bree’s eyes narrow. “Is that-”
“Bree, this is Santino. My, um.” I flounder. What are we? Husband, ex-husband, boyfriend? The love of my life who broke my heart and then put it back together with his bare hands?
“Husband,” Santino supplies, stepping forward to offer his hand. “Soon to be again, if I have anything to say about it.”
Bree ignores the hand. She’s too busy staring at him with the expression of a woman performing complex mental calculations.
“The Italian billionaire,” she says flatly.
“Former CEO,” Santino corrects. “Current orchard hand.”
“The one you ran from.”
“The one who spent two years trying to find her, yes.”
“The one whose family-”
“Tried to destroy everything she loves, and who I’ve since removed from all positions of power and cut off entirely.” Santino’s voice is mild, but there’s steel underneath. “I’m aware of my family’s sins. I’m attempting to atone for them.”
Bree considers this, head tilted.
Then she looks at me.
“Is he groveling,” she asks, “or is he always like that?”
I glance at Santino, at his earnest expression, his work-roughened hands, the way he’s standing slightly behind me like a golden retriever waiting for permission to approach.
“Both,” I say.
Bree snorts. “Fair enough.” She turns back to him, pointing one finger at his chest. “You hurt her again and I know people who know people. Understood?”
“Understood.”
“Good.” She hugs me one more time, quick and fierce, then scoops Rosie up onto her hip before the girl can follow the pig under a shelving unit. “Gotta run - Rafael’s waiting in the truck, and if I leave Butterbean out there one more minute he’ll figure out how to open the tailgate. Again.”
“Again?”
“Long story. Call me!” She’s already herding child and pig toward the exit. “And bring these two by the farm - Rosie needs someone new to boss around!”
The feed store goes very quiet after she leaves.
“I like her,” Santino says eventually.
“Everyone likes Bree.”
“She threatened me with people who know people.”
“That’s how you know she likes you.”
***
The flat tire happens forty minutes outside Marigold, on a stretch of county road that’s more potholes than pavement.
I hear the pop first, sharp and sudden, and then the truck is listing hard to the right and Santino is wrestling the wheel to bring us to a stop on the shoulder.
“Stay here,” he says, already climbing out.
I don’t stay. Of course I don’t stay. I circle around to find him crouched by the rear passenger tire, which isn’t just flat but shredded, a gaping wound in the rubber that no amount of patching will fix.
“Okay,” I say. “Spare?”
“Already checked. Rusted through.”
I pull out my phone. No signal. Not even a single bar, just that mocking little “No Service” message that might as well say “Good luck, city girl.”
“When’s the last time Hattie had this truck serviced?” Santino asks.
“I’m choosing not to answer that question.”
He laughs despite himself, standing and wiping his hands on his jeans.
The sun is setting behind him, painting the sky in shades of orange and pink, and for a moment I just…
look at him. The strong line of his jaw.
The way his t-shirt pulls across his shoulders.
The ease in his body that wasn’t there two years ago, when he was wound so tight I was afraid he’d shatter.
“There’s a motel,” he says. “About two miles back. I saw the sign.”
“You want to walk two miles?”
“I want to call a tow truck that can actually get a signal, and I want to not sleep in this truck.” He holds out his hand. “Come on. It’ll be an adventure.”
“I’ve had enough adventures.”
“One more.” His eyes crinkle. “For me.”
I take his hand.
***
The Marigold Motor Lodge is exactly as charming as its name suggests.
Which is to say: not at all. The sign is missing three letters, the vacancy light flickers ominously, and the woman at the front desk looks like she’s seen enough to write a true-crime memoir.
“One room,” Santino says, sliding cash across the counter. “One night.”
The woman doesn’t blink. “King or two queens?”
“King.”
Her eyes flick to me, then back to him. “Honeymoon suite’s available. Same price, bigger tub.”
“We’ll take it.”
I elbow him. “Did you just upgrade us to the honeymoon suite at a roadside motel?”
“I absolutely did.”
The honeymoon suite, it turns out, features a heart-shaped bed, red velvet curtains, and a jacuzzi tub that takes up half the bathroom.
The decor is aggressive, cherubs on the wallpaper, silk roses on every surface, a painting of a sunset that’s either romantic or deeply unsettling depending on the light.
“This is horrifying,” I say.
“This is perfect.”
Santino is already shrugging off his jacket, toeing off his boots, moving through the room with a looseness that makes my pulse spike.
He stops at the window, pulling the curtains open just enough to let in the last of the sunset, and the light catches the planes of his face in a way that makes my mouth go dry.
“Stop looking at me like that,” he says without turning around.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re trying to decide whether to devour me or take notes.”
“Can’t it be both?”
He turns. His eyes are dark in the fading light, and there’s a smile playing at the corner of his mouth that I remember, that I’ve dreamed about, cataloged in the hours between midnight and dawn when missing him felt like drowning.
“Come here,” he says.
I go.
His hands find my waist as I reach him, sliding under the hem of my shirt to rest on bare skin. His thumbs trace slow circles on my hipbones while I work at the buttons of his shirt, one, two, three, revealing inch after inch of golden skin and black ink.
“I used to imagine this,” I admit, pushing the shirt off his shoulders. “After I left. I’d lie in bed and try to remember exactly what you looked like. What you felt like.”
“Did you remember correctly?”
“No.” I trace the tattoo over his heart, the lake, my name woven into the water. “You’re different now. More.”
“More?”
I flatten my palm against his chest, feeling his heartbeat thunder beneath my hand. “More muscle, more ink, more of everything.”
He catches my wrist, brings my hand to his mouth, presses a kiss to the center of my palm. “I needed a place to put the grief. The gym helped. The tattoos helped. Nothing helped as much as finding you.”
“Santi-”
“Let me worship you.” His voice drops, low and rough. “Let me show you what two years of missing you looks like.”
He doesn’t wait for an answer. He just sinks to his knees, and his hands are reverent as they work my jeans open, slow, deliberate, like he’s unwrapping a gift he’s waited years to open.
He peels the denim down my thighs, presses a kiss to my hipbone, and looks up at me with an expression that makes my knees go weak.
“Hold onto the windowsill,” he murmurs. “You’re going to need it.”
I grab the sill behind me just as his mouth finds me through the thin cotton of my underwear.
“Oh-” My hips jerk. “That’s-”
“Mm.” He mouths at me, hot and wet, and I can feel him smile against my skin. “I remember you being louder.”
“We’re in a motel. There are neighbors.”