Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
Bea
The next fifteen days passed like a whirlwind.
I spent the nights with Bax in his bed, like it had always been that way, and I spent the days working, watching the cabin crew toil away and the house crews finish their builds.
I felt pride seeing them find completion.
I hadn’t designed the structures. I’d barely lifted my own hammer to craft them, but I’d guided them to the end, and that felt just as good.
Abey and Devo had already come to check out their new digs, and they’d screeched and hollered, and I found myself jumping up and down right along with them in the middle of their new living room, helping them plan their move in.
I was ecstatic for them, and my cheeks had cramped and hurt for all the grinning.
A little part of me was envious though. I wanted what they had.
I wanted the life they had, one filled with work they loved but with family and friends they loved even more.
I had the work part down, and it felt like the rest could be mine. All I had to do was reach out and take hold of it.
Athena and I were in a serious, long-standing discussion about how she should wear her hair to the dance, which was less than a week away now.
After the fifth time we’d brought it up at dinner around Bax’s table, he suggested shaving it all off.
Athena rolled her eyes so hard, I thought her eye sockets might be sore in the morning.
She thought she should wear her hair up, but I insisted down and free and flowing.
She really had no idea just how beautiful she was.
Her awkward, early teenage phase seemed to be passing right before my eyes, and I had no doubt that by the same time next year, she’d have a whole line of boys asking her to dances.
She and I had gone on trail rides with Presley leading the pack.
Once, we even saw a bear far off in the distance, rooting around at the base of a tree.
Thankfully, he wasn’t on Lee property when we spotted him, but that didn’t do much to assure me he wouldn’t wander over there.
Presley said he probably wouldn’t, but I still had my doubts.
I wouldn’t even have noticed him if Athena and Presley hadn’t pointed him out, and I’d had to use Presley’s binoculars to get a good look, but sure enough, it was a flipping grizzly bear!
We’d also seen my bison. Of course, there was no sure way for me to know it was really Wooly Wally, but I felt it was him.
And when he lifted his big ol’ head and stared me down, I knew it.
He stood at the center of a small herd grazing in a field a football field away from our little trail-riding group, and there’d been two calves jumping and playing around him and the smaller females. Wally had a family.
Trail riding was like getting a brain massage, with warm sunshine sifting through the boughs of the trees above us while we listened to birds sing and fallen branches and leaves snap and crunch beneath the horses’ hooves as they carried us over mountain paths.
And then when we returned to the barn, the cool-down tasks of rinsing the horses with cold hose water, feeding, and brushing them relaxed me even more.
I’d started wondering how much horses cost. Maybe I could buy one for myself, keep it at the ranch with Bax and Athena, and come back to visit and ride.
But if I did that, what would that mean for Bax? If I left and went back to Sheridan like I had planned, he’d move on. It wouldn’t be fair of me to ask him not to, but the thought of him with another woman brought that pinch right back to my chest and made it rage.
Bax and I were good together, but it hadn’t even been a month. It wasn’t like we were in lo?—
Or were we?
Was I?
It was crazy that I’d spent years in a marriage that had about as much intimacy as a rock garden, but I’d only been around Bax for three short weeks, and he already knew me down to my soul.
And it was bonkers to me that Bax’s ranch felt like home even though it was two-thousand miles away from the graves of the only people I’d ever really loved.
But it was the truth, and it didn’t feel too fast or scary or weird.
It felt right.
Bax was everything I’d ever wanted: steady, supportive, loving, trustworthy.
The way he cared for Athena showed me not all fathers failed their kids.
I’d known it in the pit of my stomach, but until I spent time with Bax and Athena and saw it for myself, I couldn’t admit my dad had failed me.
I wasn’t mad at him anymore. I knew now that his grief had robbed us both of his love, and there was a freedom in admitting it to myself.
Bax had lit some kind of fire inside me, and when he smiled at me and crooked his finger? Hoo boy, I had to take note of which side of the sky was up when he kissed me ’cause the man could knock good sense right out of me.
How did he do that? No one ever had before.
But there was something missing. It felt like Bax had tried many times to say something to me, to tell me something important, confide in me. But it never came.
We’d talked about everything under the sun: his wife, his loss, our dreams, and even the future.
He knew that I was a marathon belcher and that I had an excessive new-tool problem—if DeWalt made one, I had to have it.
I’d told him about the day my dad overdosed, and he told me about his youngest brother, Dixon, and how he’d been bullied by their dad, and how that had helped lead Dixon to alcohol and drugs too.
Maybe it was me. Maybe thinking Bax was hiding something from me was just my tendency to see the cup half-empty. Or maybe it was my own self-preservation trying to give me a reason to leave when my job was done, so I wouldn’t get hurt. So I couldn’t hurt Athena or Bax.
The job would be done soon. Maybe I needed to figure out how I felt about Bax sooner rather than later.
Clay waved and flashed me a bushy lipped smile when I parked in front of the cabin Monday morning and climbed out of my truck.
I was dragging ass because Bax and I had stayed up way too late playing strip checkers, and I was a sore loser, so I’d made him play again and again until I’d won.
But I knew he was the real champion, so I’d rewarded him with the longest and sexiest blow job in the history of ever, and it had gotten so heated that my jaw was still sore, and he was nursing some deep fingernail divots in his ass cheeks this morning.
“Mornin’, Clay. How you doin’? You know, you’ve never said and I’ve never asked, but are you married?”
“Naw. I was married once upon a time, but you know how that goes. Didn’t last.” He shrugged.
Oh yeah, I’m quite aware of “how that goes.”
“Oh, before I forget,” he said, “I have to take off Friday.”
“Sure, everything alright?”
“Yeah, damn doctor wants me to have an angiogram or an EKG or some bullshit. He says my old ticker’s not doin’ its job the way it should. I can come Friday mornin’ but I’ll have to leave around ten.”
“No, don’t worry about work. Take the day. Sleep in and rest up before your tests.”
He tipped his hard hat like it was a cowboy hat. “Thanks. And I’ve got some good news for you. Final checks will be done for houses two and three today.”
“That’s great. Thank you. That makes me feel so much better about our deadline.”
My eyes rose to the flurry-free sky, hoping hard that winter would keep her distance for one more week. Two if I was lucky, but I wouldn’t hold my breath because the tip-tops of the mountains got snowier every day.
“Looks like things are movin’ along nicely here too,” Clay said.
“Yeah.” I looked around at the cabins, noticing things I hadn’t really thought about in the last two weeks. All the cabins’ siding and roofs were done. I was surprised I’d missed that really important detail, but I’d been so preoccupied with Bax that I’d been slacking.
That wouldn’t do. Brand hadn’t sent me here to screw up my job just so I could sleep with his brother. Shit. Just what the hell did I think I was doing? Had I put my job in jeopardy because I’d fallen in love with?—
“Ohh no.”
Yep. You are totally and completely in love with your boss’s brother.
“What?” Clay asked, his eyebrows lowering in concern. Thank God I hadn’t said that last thing out loud.
“I-I, uh…” I looked around the build site, trying to figure out what to do.
Suddenly, I had no answers. All my la-di-da musings about relaxing trail rides, soul-deep love connections, and naked games of checkers seemed silly when I compared them to the pride and love I had for the job Brand had given me.
“I forgot somethin’ inside,” I told Clay. “I’ll be right back.”
Jogging to my cabin, fear finally kicked in and my heart felt like it might beat right out of my body.
My job was important. It was all I had, and I’d clung to it the last two years like it was the last little pocket of air in a car sinking under a lake.
I excelled at my job. It was what made me feel special and necessary, but five minutes ago, I’d been all lovey-dovey about Bax and ready to give it up, and now I couldn’t get inside the cabin fast enough so I could scream into a pillow or something. I felt like I had whiplash.
And now that I’d admitted to myself that I was, indeed, very much in love with Bax, Athena’s wellbeing smacked me upside my head.
I had no clue how to be her mom. Or mom adjacent.
Athena had been playing matchmaker, but if Bax and I did get together officially, she probably wouldn’t really even want that.
No one could ever replace her mama. How foolish was I that I’d even considered trying to fit into Athena’s life like that?
She and Candy had years of history together, years of laughter and skinned knees with smiley-face Band-Aids and kisses and melting popsicles on the front porch.
All I had was one trip to a dress shop.