Chapter 23
STEVIE
An hour later, Stevie was sitting cross-legged on an Adirondack chair on the front porch, dressed in her panties and T-shirt, absently picking the strings of her guitar as she watched the setting sun mist the distant mountains in hazy purple hues.
She wasn’t playing anything in particular, just strumming as she took in the breathtaking spectacle, her mind drifting in that space where her creativity swirled.
Clay had fallen asleep shortly after they’d collapsed back against the mattress, but she’d felt too mentally wired to sleep despite the post-climax stupor pulling at her body.
Riding Clay like that had been wild. Dragging his hand to her throat, the feel of it cuffing her, the brace of it, had been even wilder.
She didn’t feel like the same woman any more. Not the same Stephanie obviously – that boat had sailed a couple of weeks ago – but she didn’t feel like the same Stevie, either. Clay had loosened something in her and given her the freedom to go after it.
Look at me, Stevie girl. You can have whatever you want.
Those words had cracked open a door. They’d made her feel seen.
Not just as the good daughter or the quieter sister or the introverted half of a duo, but as herself.
Clay’s acceptance of her and what she needed had made her feel wanted.
More wanted than she’d ever felt before. Wanted in the way a man wants a woman.
And the fact that was perfectly okay? Well… that felt wild.
‘What are you humming?’
Stevie startled. Glancing over her shoulder, she found Clay watching her from the doorway in a pair of boxer briefs, his body tanned and honed beneath the dusting of body hair.
Lordy, but the man was beautiful.
‘You’re awake,’ she said with a smile.
He returned the smile as he pushed off the door frame. ‘You should have woken me.’
‘You looked too peaceful.’
Crossing to her side, he dropped a kiss on her mouth. It was just one of those casual hey, there kisses they’d shared a lot this past week but it squeezed at her heart because it wasn’t about sex, it was about caring.
‘Watching the sun set?’ he asked as he chose to lower his ass to the deck in front of her rather than take the chair next to hers.
Stevie’s legs unfolded and she slid one either side of his body, her toes touching the boards as she stood her guitar between the two chairs. Her hands skimmed onto his wide shoulders, his skin warm and supple beneath her palms.
‘It is so beautiful here,’ she murmured, her hands smoothing along his traps, to his nape, pushing into his hair, luxuriating in the soft fall of it against her fingers.
‘Mmm.’ His voice was warm and low, his neck angling as her fingers delved and sifted. ‘It’s special, isn’t it?’
Yes. It was. Really special. She drew in a breath of pure, sweet air, holding it in her lungs for a moment before slowly letting it out. ‘If I lived here I would never leave.’
How could he have stayed away from all this for ten years?
Suddenly, though, she realised that her statement could be misconstrued. Like she was looking for an invitation. ‘Oh God, sorry,’ she said quickly, her hands falling to his shoulders. ‘I didn’t mean… That wasn’t some kind of—’
His laughter cut her off. ‘Relax, Stevie, it’s fine. I know what you mean.’
She sagged a little – thank God. She might not know much about relationships but she knew guys tended to freak out when women started dropping hints about a future after just one week. And she certainly hadn’t been doing that.
‘So…’ He half turned, looking over his shoulder at her, his expression pensive. ‘You can… picture yourself in a place like this?’
Stevie blinked. Was he kidding? ‘Of course.’ Her eyes met his. ‘This place is… incredible. Even if everyone does get up at the crack of dawn.’
Clay gave a wry chuckle. ‘Wouldn’t you miss the city? Airports and Ubers and a hundred different places to eat?’
It took Stevie about ten seconds to realise that she wouldn’t miss any of that. But being in a big city was the most advantageous for her music career. There were so many things between her and a place like this it was almost laughable.
‘I guess I’d miss some things,’ she murmured. ‘There’s this great café that serves the best Boston cream pie. And the studio where I do my recording is not far from where we live.’
‘Right,’ he said, before he turned back to face the view.
‘What about you? Could you see yourself in a city?’ She didn’t know why she was asking but it seemed like the next most logical question after his.
He shook his head. ‘Too damn loud. A lot of the circuit stops are in big cities and while that was fun for a while for a kid from Redemption, Wyoming, it wasn’t till I came back that I realised how loud cities were.
And how much of a hurry everyone always seemed to be in.
I’d grown used to all of it – the traffic, the crowds, the hustle and bustle – but once I was home I didn’t miss it for a second. ’
Looking out at the pastures below, the evening hush cloaking everything, Stevie understood that profoundly. She wasn’t thinking about Boston now. She hadn’t thought about Boston since she’d been on the ranch.
Her fingers slid from his hair to stroke his nape, massaging lightly, and he sighed deeply, as they worked down the notches of his neck bones. Bending his legs up, Clay leaned onto his knees, angling forward to give her better access to the broad expanse of his back.
Stevie’s fingers followed, rubbing and stroking, running over the bumps of his spine, tracing several raised white railway track scars beneath which lay the metal fixations that now scaffolded his spine in several places.
Yeah, she’d googled X-ray images of spinal surgery, curious to see how they might have fixed Clay’s back.
‘Do they hurt?’ She hadn’t asked him before because she hadn’t been sure he’d want to talk about them, and she still wasn’t. But the more they saw of each other the more comfortable she was with delving into his life. As he had delved into hers.
‘No. Not any more.’
‘I’m so sorry this happened to you,’ she murmured as she slid her hands up again, looping her arms around his neck, resting her chin on the cushion of muscle that sloped down to his shoulder as the first star appeared in the sky. ‘I’m sorry your career got cut short.’
She’d apologised before but his scars were a constant visible reminder of what he’d lost. Of course, she’d probably have never met him if he’d still been on the circuit, but those pictures on the wall at The Corral told a thousand words.
Clay had been very good and, as he’d said to her when they’d discussed this prior, how would she feel if she couldn’t write songs any more?
‘It’s fine.’
Stevie blinked at his mild dismissal, so different from the last time they’d talked about this topic, ‘That sounds very chill of you.’
He laughed and it vibrated through her chin to her cheeks. ‘That’s your fault.’
Stevie smiled at the humour resonating in his voice. ‘How come?’
‘After we talked about Yolanda, I realised that, yeah, I lost my career and that was devastating, but you… you lost your sister. And that’s degrees of awfulness worse. And you don’t even get to have a physical scar for people to know how much you’re hurting. You have to carry yours on the inside.’
A sudden surge of hot tears scalded the backs of Stevie’s eyes at his insight, surprising her by how much it mattered.
‘So I decided it was time to stop feeling sorry for myself and wishing for a redo. Stop hoping for some miracle that the insurance company changes its mind and lets me back on the circuit. It’s never going to happen and I honestly don’t think I’d take it now if it was offered to me.’
Stevie blinked. Okay, wow. That was big. Letting go of a dream was huge. ‘You’re really ready to let go of the challenge and the adrenaline?’
‘Yes.’
‘What about the limelight?’
‘Especially that,’ he confirmed. ‘I used to think I wanted the fame and the glory but since it’s been snatched away I’ve had a lot of time to think and I realise that I don’t like the person I was back then very much.
Yes, being an egotistical, self-centred asshole was part of the act but there were times I embodied it a little too much.
And it turns out’ – he glanced sideways at her and smiled – ‘I like my privacy.’
Stevie smiled then leaned in and kissed him, a soft lingering kiss that snuck right in between her ribs and settled like a sigh. ‘So,’ she murmured, breaking away, ‘you’re happy to stay on the ranch and do your thing?’
‘Yes. But also Mags has been talking about us going into business since I got back. She thinks we should get into breeding and raising rodeo-ready stock horses, maybe eventually open up some kind of academy for rodeo wannabes here on the ranch, and it’s actually appealing more and more.’
‘Really?’ Stevie sat back a little, surprised. ‘It sounds perfect for you two.’
Her certainty was heartening and he kissed her again, but briefly this time before he unlocked her arms. ‘Need to move,’ he muttered as he pushed to his feet and lowered himself into the chair next to hers.
‘You know what I still haven’t heard?’ Picking up her guitar he passed it over. ‘The song you wrote about me.’
Yeah… because they’d been too busy doing other stuff with their time.
Stevie took the guitar, strumming absently as she settled it against her, suddenly nervous.
Not her usual stage fright nervous because it was just him but because it was different to her usual country-lite backlist. ‘Cowboy Kisses’ leaned all the way in, as had the three other songs she’d written while she’d been here, steeped in the country air and the ranching lifestyle.
‘This is obviously the stripped-back acoustic version. It’ll sound a little different with other instruments mixed in.’
He nodded. ‘Okay.’