15. Dismissed
FIFTEEN
Dismissed
AUTUMN
Married life came with two clocks. The first one ran on baby time.
Stetson hollered “Dada! Mama! UP!”—his new favorite sentence.
My kind husband got up, and retrieved our son from the crib, and dumped him giggling into the bed between us.
For ten minutes the whole world was warm skin and snuggles and baby feet and nowhere to be just yet.
Then Jake’s alarm went off. He made coffee, and got Stetson fed. I smiled to myself under the blankets, their voices carrying throughout the cozy cabin. Eventually, he delivered a cup of coffee and kissed my bare shoulder.
“I gotta get to work, pumpkin.” Lately, Ash had him and Cash clearing more forest, creating wood to build more structures on the ranch. In their spare time, they also cleared land at the Double M for our own custom build someday.
“Have a nice day.”
“You, too. Any plans today?”
“Helping your mother at the Double M.” With my new life, came a new job, leaving the Sapphire Saloon behind.
Most of my days were spent learning about goats and honey and soap-making, always with Stetson in tow.
He loved the McCall place where he could chase chickens and goats and help Mimi—as Dot liked to be called instead of Grandma—in the garden or the kitchen.
Jake chewed his bottom lip and eagerly watched as I got up and pulled my favorite flannel shirt of his over my body.
“Or we could both stay home and work on each other, wifey.”
I circled my arms around his neck. “I’d like that. But I suppose in our marital bliss, we need to accept the reality that there is life beyond this cabin,” I teased. I finally had a life I’d been afraid to dream about over a year ago.
At least on the surface. Because underneath it, the second clock ran.
It ticked in our heads over a Motion to Dismiss filing our shark of a lawyer Katherine Dunn had submitted to the court.
It ticked every time Jake checked the rearview mirror or did a slow scan of the grocery store parking lot before letting us out of the truck, making sure it was safe.
It ticked at night, after we’d loved on each other soft and quiet so as not to wake the baby, when I’d catch Jake lying awake, watching the window, worried without telling me he was.
The Eatons hadn’t gone anywhere. They’d just gone quiet, letting the legal system do its job.
Katherine's motion to the court stated in about forty pages, that the grandparents didn't get to sue just because they're grandparents and rich. The way she’d explained it to me? They'd need me dead, or Stetson having lived under their roof for a year, and neither of those things were true.
The dead part I didn’t like hearing, and neither did Jake. That was why I kept my phone on me at all times, location shared with him, and what kept him on constant alert.
“Be safe. Tell Mom and Jamie hi from me. See you at dinner.” Jake kissed me, hugged Stetson one more time, and left the cabin; his commute to work was less than a five minute walk to the bunkhouse.
“Dada-bye.” I picked up my little guy and we watched him go from the cabin window, same every day, standing there until the road curved to the barns and we couldn’t see him anymore.
How dared the Eatons claim I wasn’t a fit mother. The Constitution itself gave me the right to decide who was in my son's life. Which definitely would not be them.
Katherine had detailed in her dismissal motion about my new, married life here.
About escaping Brantley’s abuse to be here.
She had every confidence the judge would rule in our favor and this whole mess would simply go away.
In her exact words: 'The Eatons don't have a case. They have a grudge with a filing fee.'
The wait time for the court’s decision was pure agony. There were whole hours I lost now and then playing out the negatives and what could happen if the motion to dismiss got denied.
In the kitchen, I went through yesterday’s mail, and grinned at a bit of good news. The insurance cards arrived, one for me and one for Stetson. I stared at mine in my hand.
“Autumn McCall,” I read it off. “Now that has a ring to it.” McCALL, AUTUMN, spouse—it thrilled me to no end.
I may have looked at it more times than any human being has ever looked at an insurance card.
I immediately called and made Stetson a pediatrician appointment on the books for his eighteen-month checkup in December and cried when I got off the phone.
Nobody warns you that safety, when it finally shows up, hits harder than fear ever did.
About eleven days later, while I was elbow-deep in a sink of dishes, Jake was home for lunch, sharing a peanut butter sandwich with Stetson—one bite for the boy, one for the man, both of them entirely solemn about the ritual.
My phone buzzed against the counter. Katherine Dunn’s name appeared there. My stomach dropped through the cabin floor and I wiped my hands and answered on speaker so Jake could hear.
“Mrs. McCall, I have the news we’ve been waiting for. Are you seated?” I couldn’t tell if this was good or bad news. That woman only had one speed for her voice: calm and always professional.
“Go ahead. And I’m here with Jake, too.” He came into the kitchen and we held hands, staring into each other’s eyes, bracing for the news.
“Judge Hollis granted our motion this morning. The petition is dismissed for the Eatons failure to state sufficient grounds. There is no case. No trial. Barring new facts—which do not exist—the Eatons of Sheridan have no legal path to your son.”
The kitchen blurred in my vision. “Did I hear you right?”
“It’s over, Autumn.” First time she’d ever used my first name. “You beat them. Go hug your family. It has been a genuine pleasure to see you through this.
We hung up, and I don’t know which of us moved first. He picked me up clean off the floor, and I was laughing and sobbing at the same time into his neck.
“Mama! Dada!” Stetson—having no idea on earth what was happening but committed to the spirit of the thing—banged both hands on the high chair tray and shrieked like it was his birthday.
“It’s over.” I whispered it into Jake’s neck, testing it at first to see if it was real. Then louder, at the ceiling, at Wyoming, at every mile between here and the horrible Eatons: “It’s OVER.”
“I knew it. Well, I didn’t know for sure, but I hoped everything would work out for us.” Jake pressed the hair back from my face, happy, but with an edge. “We married partly to battle them together. But now this dismissal came rather easily. Any regrets about our union?”
“No. Absolutely not, Jake. If anything… The custody petition served as the shot that got us both to realize we were meant to be more than friends. I have no regrets, Mr. McCall.” I leaned fully into him with a kiss to prove it.
After that, we called everyone. Dot screamed so loud Jake held the phone at arm’s length.
Jamie cried. Nanette made me repeat the words “failure to state sufficient grounds” three times so she could write them down.
Trig’s call wouldn’t come until Sunday, so I wrote him a letter on the spot with tears dripping onto the ink, and Jake drove it to the post office like it was a rescue mission.
And Dot—God bless that woman’s radar—called back with one more thing.
“You know what? I haven’t had my grandbaby overnight since the wedding, and tomorrow’s Saturday. I’m coming for him at four. Don’t argue with me, honey. You two can have a nice time tonight alone.”
By quarter past four, Stetson was bundled up in her truck, with Mr. McCall driving, and off they went.
For only the second time ever, my son wasn’t with me tonight.
I’d be okay, sad, but I dealt with this better than I had our wedding night.
I blew kisses, and the cabin went quiet without the pitter-patter of his feet and all his new vocabulary.
Jake stood inside with his coffee, watching them go, my big steady calm of a man, and it all came up at once, winning the dismissal, feeling safe, the two weeks of being loved right by a good man.
For a year, I’d waited for bad news the way you wait for weather.
Today the news came and it was sunny skies.
I was done spending one more minute of this day on anybody named Eaton.
I crossed the cabin, took the coffee cup out of his hand, and set it on the window sill.
“Mrs. McCall has a thought, Mr. McCall,” I said, my arms threaded around him. I pressed forward and backed him toward the bedroom.
“Hm. Paint the bathroom? It really needs it.” He winked.
I cocked my head, and unbuttoned my shirt as I went.
The calm burned off him like fog off a field when the sun heated up over the peaks. His hazel eyes darkened, one eyebrow climbing—and then he lifted me straight up, boots off the floor, my back finding the log wall while his mouth covered mine.
“We won. Time to celebrate,” he stated against my lips.
“We won.” I tore his top snap open, then quit being patient and pulled—the pearl snaps giving way down his chest in one long ripping purr, which was, I’d discovered these past two weeks, the single most satisfying feature of men’s western wear.
“So take me to bed, cowboy. Or the wall’s fine. Your choice.”
“Both. Everywhere. All night long.” Jake moved us strategically, ever the tactician in every mission.
There was nothing careful about it, and that was the point—no crying to soothe, no first-time nerves, no clocks running anywhere in the world.
No baby to be quiet around. Just my husband laughing into my mouth as we crossed into the bedroom, shedding what clothes were left.
He yanked the quilt sideways. I pushed him down and climbed over him and took my time the way he’d once inventoried me while undoing thirty-five buttons, with caresses and slow, open-mouthed kisses.
When his breath went ragged and his hands clamped my hips, I leaned down to his ear.
“First time,” I whispered, wickedly, rolling my hips over his hard cock, “that we’ve celebrated a legal victory.”
“Christ, pumpkin—gonna need a lifetime of more first times with you.”
"Mm-hmm. You will," I laughed.
Forget the condoms. I didn't even know where any were in this cabin—or maybe he'd hidden them all, given his penchant for seeing me pregnant. I wanted that, too. The thought of his seed buried deep inside of me got me wet every single time we were together, and today was no different.
His cowboy hat hung from the bedpost. I reached over and put it on.
"Fuck, look at you," Jake breathed, watching me from below, hands flexing on my hips.
I rose up, positioned him at my entrance, and slid down on his cock, arching my back with a long moan—and then remembered there were no little ears around, and let the next moan out at full volume. “Mm. Yes!”
"That's it. Ride me wet and hard, cowgirl." His hands caressed up the front of me, pinching and palming my nipples pink, and then back down. His thumbs found and strummed my clit.
My ride escalated into moans and shouts and burning thighs, at a galloping pace. “I’m almost there, Jake. Almost.”
“Hands on the headboard,” he growled and flipped around behind me, re-entering me slick, capturing a handful of my hair. “Come on this sweet ride of yours like a good girl. Use me to get what you want. And then I’ll reward you with my seed so deep.”
His other hand reached around and applied pressure to my clit right where I needed it.
“Yes! Yes, a baby, yes!” It was the last coherent thing I said for a good long while as my body shook the bed and broke apart for him.
After he followed me over, the promised seed sown, we collapsed, laughter and shallow breaths and all. I sprawled across his chest in the wreck of the quilt, his heartbeat slowing under my ear, his fingers trailing up and down my spine, he pressed a kiss into my hair.
“Autumn McCall, you are an amazing woman,” he said, like a man counting his lucky stars.
“That’s me.” I traced his abs, lazy-like. “You know what’s strange? Everyday gets better and better with you. But I keep waiting, worried that it’s too good.”
“You don’t want things to be too good between us? Just good?” He cocked a bemused eyebrow.
“No case. No trial.” I propped my chin on his chest and studied him, and let myself say the reckless, love-drunk, brand-new thing I’d never once in my life believed: “Happy looks good on us. We’re keeping it."
“Let’s enjoy every moment we have.” He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, but I saw it—one small seam of watchfulness that never fully closed, the sentry always on the lookout that the SEALs had built into him.
We ordered pizza from the one place in town that delivered this far out, and ate it in bed like heathens, and talked about the house he wanted to build for us at the Meadows, which way the front porch swing should face, and I fell asleep at nine-thirty like a woman with no clocks left at all.
Saturday evening, we were due at the farmhouse for a victory dinner—Dot insisted—and I was pulling on my boots when Jake’s phone buzzed on the counter. Then buzzed again. Then began to buzz without stopping, like the sound of an angry hornet.
Mine started a half second later. Harper. Willow. A number I didn’t know. Another.
Jake and I glanced across the cabin. He answered. I heard Jamie’s voice come through, shouting.
“Jake. Turn on Channel five. Right now.”
The old TV took a few seconds to wake up, and only ever got two channels out here in the country. It felt like a year.
When he tuned it, the reporter out of Lewistown said “Allegations surfaced tonight about a decorated Navy SEAL from Forest Grove.” Behind her, on the screen, in a graphic box, was a photograph of my husband—younger, leaner, showing a courthouse in the background, his face half-turned from the camera—under a headline in tall red letters:
LOCAL ‘HERO’? SEAL’S VIOLENT PAST. KNIFE FIGHT RECORDS LEAKED
I didn’t hear the rest over the roar in my ears.
Jake stared intently at the screen, jaw gone to granite, phone still open in his hand with his sister’s voice still coming out of it.
I zeroed in on the scar along his jaw hidden beneath a beard—the one I’d touched once, the one he’d promised me someday to tell me about.
The scar that made him perfectly imperfect, the flaw on his otherwise handsome face.
So blinded by the newness of a good life, I never once pushed or questioned it.
Perhaps I should have.
“Tell me everything. Now,” I demanded. Who did I just marry? Who was this man living under the same roof as me and my son?