20. Scarlett
— ? —
Scarlett
The motel has two beds and a roof that’s leaking in the corner.
“This is your fault,” I say, watching Beck try to position the trash can under the drip. “If you hadn’t insisted on the scenic route-”
“The scenic route had better cell service. I was trying to check the weather.”
“And how did that work out?”
“The weather is wet, obviously.” He finally gets the trash can positioned and steps back. A drop of water immediately misses it by six inches and hits the carpet. “Very wet.”
The highway is closed in both directions.
Flash flooding, the radio said, which is apparently what happens when a month’s worth of rain falls in two hours on ground that hasn’t seen moisture since spring.
The nice hotel ten miles up is sold out.
This place, the kind of motel that charges by the hour and doesn’t ask questions, had exactly one room left.
Two beds. Floral comforters that have seen better decades. A television that gets four channels, three of which are static.
And Beck Cooper, standing in the middle of the room with water dripping from his hair, his shirt plastered to his chest from the run between the truck and the door.
I shouldn’t be looking at his chest. I definitely shouldn’t be noticing the way his wet shirt clings to the muscles underneath, or the way his jeans sit low on his hips, or the way he pushes his damp hair back from his forehead with one hand.
“I can sleep in the truck,” he says.
“It’s flooding.”
“So the hallway.”
“That’s sadder than the truck.” I sit on the edge of the far bed and pull off my boots, keeping my eyes on the floor instead of on him. “We’re adults. We can share a room.”
“Can we?”
There’s something in his voice that makes me look up. He’s watching me with a careful expression, but underneath it, something that looks like hunger.
My stomach flips but I ignore it.
“Sit down,” I say. “You’re making me nervous hovering like that.”
He sits on the edge of his bed. Six feet of ugly carpet between us.
I could cross that distance in three steps. Could close the gap and-
No. Stop it.
I pull my legs up onto the bed and wrap my arms around my knees. The rain pounds against the window. The trash can plinks with water.
Beck is still wet. He should change his shirt. He should definitely change his shirt, because the way the fabric is sticking to him is distracting, and I need to focus.
“Tell me about Salt Fork,” I say instead.
He goes still. I watch his jaw tighten, watch him take a breath.
“My mother bought it last summer,” he says.
“I didn’t ask her to. She just… did it. Said I needed something of my own, something away from the main operation.
And then she reached out to Camille to apply as manager, and I…
” He trails off. “I took it. Both of them. The ranch and the manager. Because it was easier than saying no.”
“Easier than coming home.”
“Yes.” The word sounds like it costs him something. “She handed me an escape and I took it.”
He leans forward, elbows on his knees, and I can see the line of his shoulders through the wet shirt, the way the muscles in his back shift when he moves.
I remember what those shoulders feel like under my hands.
Remember the way he used to hold himself above me, arms braced, watching my face while he-
Focus. Focus.
“And the barn?” I ask.
“I found your drawings. The ones you did for Lone Elm, the ones I told you were too ambitious.” He’s not looking at me. He’s staring at the ugly carpet like it holds answers. “I thought I’d build it there. As a surprise. Something I could give you that would make up for… I don’t know. Everything.”
“So you built my barn to a place where I’d never see it.”
“I started to. And then I realized I was never going to finish it. The surprise turned into a reason for me to escape from my problems.” He forces himself to meet my eyes, and the rawness there makes my breath catch.
“And finishing it meant explaining. Meant coming home and saying here’s this thing I’ve been building in secret with the woman I’ve been talking to instead of you.
And I couldn’t figure out how to make that sound like a gift. ”
“Because it wasn’t one.”
“No.” He takes a breath. “The surprise wasn’t a gift, Scarlett. It was me hiding. My mother gave me a place to disappear to, and I took it, and I stayed gone because staying gone was easier than being here.”
The rain keeps falling. The light in the room is gray and dim, and Beck’s eyes are dark, and I’m suddenly very aware of how small this room is. How easy it would be to stand up and cross those six feet and-
“And Camille?”
“Nothing happened. Not once.” He says it firmly, holding my gaze, and I believe him.
That’s the terrible part. I believe him completely.
“But I talked to her about everything. About you, about Josie, about the things I couldn’t say across our own kitchen table.
I made her the person I confided in because she wasn’t asking me for anything.
Because being honest with her didn’t cost me anything. ”
“You gave her the parts of you I was begging for.” My voice comes out rougher than I mean it to. “The real parts. The scared parts. And you gave me-”
“Easy keeper.” He doesn’t flinch from it. “I know what I gave you.”
The words hang in the air between us. I think about all the nights I lay awake next to him, wanting him to talk to me, wanting him to tell me what was going on behind those dark eyes. All the times I reached for him in the dark and he turned away, said he was tired, said he had an early meeting.
He wasn’t tired. He was saving it for someone else.
“I felt plenty,” Beck says, and his voice breaks slightly.
“I need you to know that. I felt everything. Love, guilt, fear, longing. I felt it all. But I stopped looking at it because looking meant dealing with it. Meant coming home and being present and doing the work of being married.” He pauses.
“I’ve been running from you, Scarlett. For two years. Running in the wrong direction.”
I don’t say anything.
He’s sitting there in his wet shirt, his hair drying in messy waves, his hands clasped between his knees. He looks wrecked. He looks like a man who’s finally stopped running and doesn’t know what to do with himself now that he’s still.
I want to hate him and hold onto the anger that’s been keeping me upright for months. But he’s looking at me like I’m the only thing in the world that matters, and the anger is slipping through my fingers like water.
“I’m not asking you to forgive me,” he says. “I’m not asking for anything. I just needed you to hear it. All of it. The truth I should have told you.”
The rain is louder now. Or maybe it’s just the blood in my ears, the pulse pounding through me as I sit here looking at the man I married, the man I left.
“You should change your shirt,” I say. “You’re going to get sick.”
He blinks like he’d forgotten he was wet. “Yeah. Okay.”
He stands up and turns his back to me, and I should look away. I should definitely look away. But I don’t.
He peels the wet shirt over his head, and I watch the muscles in his back flex, watch the way his shoulder blades move under his skin. He’s thinner than he was. I can see his ribs more than I used to. He hasn’t been taking care of himself.
Part of me is glad. The part where I want to see him suffer.
But another part wants to cross the room and put my hands on him. Wants to feel his skin under my palms.
He pulls a dry shirt from his bag and tugs it on, and I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.
“Better?” he asks, turning around.
“Fine.”
He sits back down on his bed. Six feet that feel like nothing.
“We should sleep,” I say.
“Yeah.”
Neither of us moves.
Lightning flashes outside the window, and for a moment his face is illuminated. The sharp line of his jaw, the hollow of his cheeks, the way he’s looking at me like I’m water in a desert.
I reach over and turn off my lamp. “Goodnight, Beck.”
He turns off his. “Goodnight, Scarlett.”
The room goes dark except for the occasional flash of lightning through the thin curtains.
I can hear him breathing. Can hear every shift of the mattress when he moves. Can hear him turn onto his side, then his back, then his side again.
We’re both awake. And the darkness is full of everything we’re not saying.
I think about the dance hall. His thumb on my bare skin. The way we moved together like we’d never been apart.
Then my memory shifts to the sale barn. The way he told that stranger the truth. The way he looked when he said I just took the credit.
I think about his hands. His mouth. The sounds he used to make when we were together, the groan when he first pushed inside me, the ragged breathing against my neck, the way he’d say there she is like I was something precious.
My body aches. It actually aches, wanting him, and I hate myself for it.
I could cross the carpet in three steps, climb into his bed and let him hold me and pretend that nothing is broken between us.
But everything is broken. And one night won’t fix it. If I go to him now, I’ll hate myself in the morning.
So I stay where I am and I listen to him breathe. I count the seconds between lightning flashes, and I don’t sleep, and I want him so much it feels like dying.
At some point, the rain slows, the lightning stops. His breathing evens out and I realize he’s finally fallen asleep.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll know what to do.