10. Hannah
10
HANNAH
Essie:
Did you visit Zack’s Eiffel Tower, Hannah?
James:
Ignore her. But seriously, is everything okay? No one has seen you in an hour. Where are you guys?
Essie:
Don’t ignore me! It’s for SCIENCE. Also, Ted wants to know if you’re staying for dinner.
“ Y ou want something to drink?” Zack asked as he tucked his dick back in his jeans. “A glass of water? Beer? Ginger ale? That’s all I’ve got.”
I blinked at him. Zack, aside from a slight flush on his tanned cheeks, looked perfectly respectable, while I had the feeling I looked wrecked. My legs were still spread wide, my glasses askew, and locks of hair that belonged in my bun hung in my face.
“Um, water?” I suggested.
He smiled, righted my glasses, and reached over my shoulder to the cabinet behind me for a glass. I refused to melt into a bewildered puddle of gooeyness, but it was a struggle . Sex had always been fraught for me, in part because of my determination that it not be fraught. I wanted so badly for sex to be easy, and with every new relationship, I had tried so hard to prove that this normal, human experience hadn’t been stolen from me. That I could give and receive pleasure on my own terms.
And I could…to an extent. Sex was enjoyable. But orgasming with another person remained right out of reach. And eventually, my inability to get there tore my relationships apart.
It was different with Zack. I still felt tendrils of fear curling around my limbs like ivy strangling a tree, but somehow the sound of his voice helped me hold on to reality. That I was here, with him, and I was safe.
Not safe enough to let him make me come, but safe enough to get there myself if I was already teetering on the edge.
And that was a freaking miracle.
Zack handed me a glass of water, then filled a second one for himself. His phone buzzed and he pulled it out of his pocket, side-eyed the message as he gulped his water, then sighed and wiped his mouth. “You hungry? Dad says you should stay for dinner.”
I was hungry, but I hesitated. “Is that okay with you?”
He looked surprised. “Sure. Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Because they might think…” I looked down at myself, made a face, and shook my skirt out over my knees.
“That you’re my girlfriend?” he supplied. He hooted with laughter. “Duchess, ain’t nobody going to think that.”
“Because wild cowboys don’t date mousy librarians?” I knew his reputation, after all.
“Because you’re too smart to date a broke-down cowboy like me, and they know it.” He laughed again. “I suppose I should count myself lucky that I’m not a horse. At least they can’t ship me to Canada or Mexico and ground me up for dog food.”
Like Hurricane Red. He didn’t say it, but I knew that’s what he was thinking about. What he was feeling about. This man made everything a joke, but I didn’t believe his act for one second. He had laughed when Will had told him about Hurricane Red, too, but I had seen the anguish in his face for that brief second when he turned away. He cared .
And I wasn’t going to laugh at his stupid joke.
“That’s not funny,” I said. When his lips parted, I had an awful feeling he was about to laugh again or tell another joke, and I clapped a hand over his stupid smirking mouth. “Say something real, or don’t say anything at all.”
His eyes twitched as I stared him down, and somehow I knew he wasn’t smirking anymore. Slowly I lowered my hand.
“I hate that Hurricane Red did his job, and now it’s going to cost him his life. I hate feeling helpless to stop it. It makes me want to hit something.” He stepped back, crossed his arms over his broad chest, and glared at me. “Is that real enough for you?”
I tilted my head, studying him. “Is that why you picked a fight with your brothers? Because of a horse?”
He turned his head like he was more concerned with the view outside the kitchen window than our conversation. His throat moved as he swallowed. “It wasn’t only the horse. Lots of shit makes me angry these days. In my defense, if my brothers don’t want to get hit, then they shouldn’t be assholes.” When he looked at me again, that smirk was back on his face.
This time I let him keep it. “All right. Let’s go save your horse, then.”
He shook his head. “If it were that easy, I would have done it already. But there are dozens of auction pens west of the Mississippi, and they could have dumped him at any one of them. If he’s not already in Canada or Mexico, that is.”
I already had my phone out and Jeremiah’s text conversation open. “My brother is great at finding things. Alive or dead.”
Zack grasped my waist right above my hip bones, lifted me off the counter, and set me back on my feet. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do for me, but don’t get your hopes up. Looking for a horse in an auction pen is like looking for a needle in a haystack.”
Now it was my turn to smirk. “You don’t know my brother. He’ll find him.”
Hopefully alive . I had the feeling Hurricane Red’s death would hurt Zack more than his stomping had.
“Hope you like tacos,” Ted Hale said as Zack led me into the kitchen.
“I love them,” I said. The smell was making my mouth water.
“Good.” Ted’s blue eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled at me. “Because that’s what we’re having.”
Ted’s way of saying ordinary things that made you feel like it was an inside joke just between the two of you that reminded me of Zack. He looked like Zack, too, or what I imagined Zack would look like in another thirty-five years. His hair was thinner and a whole lot grayer, and he was a little thicker in the middle, but he was still tall and leanly muscled, and his smile was open and easy. We had met a few times before, but this was the first time I’d seen him standing next to Zack, and the similarities were astounding.
“Wow, you really said copy paste with your sons, didn’t you?” I said. “Zack is your spitting image.”
Ted chuckled softly. “You haven’t seen Jenny. All our boys look a little like me, but Zack takes after her in ways I can’t put my finger on.”
“I’ll show you her picture after dinner,” Ben, Zack’s nephew, piped up. “We’ve got lots of photos. There’s some of Uncle Zack, too.”
“Hannah doesn’t want to look at our photos, bud,” Zack said. “She doesn’t know any of those people.”
“I do want to look at your photos,” I said. “I absolutely do.”
“Yes!” Ben shouted, with more enthusiasm than I expected.
“Ben’s been looking through the family photo books for a project for his history class,” Adam explained. “Now he’s obsessed with the history of Aspen Springs and the Gold Rush.”
“Really?” I said. “We’ve got tons of resources at the library. Stop by sometime, and I’ll show you some old newspaper articles I found.”
Ben’s face lit up. I had the feeling he was going to show up sooner rather than later.
“Did you get the drain figured out, Zack?” Ted asked as we gathered around the dinner table.
I froze halfway in my seat and my gaze skittered to Zack. Do not start World War Three , I silently compelled him with my eyes.
But Zack just grinned. “Had a minor setback, but I’ll take care of it right after dinner.”
Apparently the thing that had brought the Hale brothers to blows not even two hours ago was no longer a big deal. I glanced around the table to James and Essie, then Adam and Brax, but no one seemed to think anything was amiss. Maybe this was just how things were with the three brothers. They fought it out and then got over it.
Maybe.
Zack was his usual self through dinner. Charming, mischievous, always ready with a teasing smile or joke. But I had seen through the cracks in the humor he wore like a shield. Maybe he didn’t care about that stupid drain anymore. Maybe he really was over it.
But…
Every horse. Every ride.
There were some things Zack never got over at all.
True to his word, after dinner Ben pulled me to the couch and settled next to me with a big stack of leather photo albums. Zack also kept his word, disappearing with a big black garbage bag to go take care of the drain. Adam and Brax, I noted, slipped out after him.
“Should we go chronologically?” Ben asked. I had the feeling that even though he had lured me here with photos of Zack’s mother, he was most interested in the photo album on top labeled “1800-Something.”
“Sure,” I agreed. I pulled the photo album into my lap. “We’ll start in the past and work toward the present.”
“The oldest one is from 1859 or so, best we can figure,” Ben explained. He pointed to the first photo, a sepia-toned black-and-white photograph of a group of old men with bushy mustaches standing in front of a mine entrance. “That’s when Thomas Hale came west to Colorado from Vermont looking for gold. He’s my great-great-great”—Ben paused, his eyes darting sideways as he counted up the generations in his head—“great grandfather. I’m not allowed to touch those photos, because they’re so old.”
I nodded. “That makes sense. Paper is fragile, and the oils from our fingers could make them disintegrate even faster.”
Forty minutes later, when Zack and his brothers returned from cleaning out the drain, we had made it through the great-grandparents and had just started in on Ted and Jenny. I glanced from the photo of his mom smirking at Ted, her golden hair blowing in the wind, and then at Zack.
“You were right, Ted,” I said. “Zack looks so much like her.” I leaned over the pages, peering closer, then up at Zack again. “It’s not so much your features. It’s your expressions.”
Ted smiled, looking a little wistful. “That’s exactly it.”
“Scooch, duchess.” Zack swatted my thigh. I wiggled closer to Ben, and Zack sat down next to me. He looked over my shoulder, then pointed at their wedding photo. “You know that rose garden out front? That’s where they got married. It looks different now, because they built up the house and added a driveway, but that’s the spot.”
“It’s beautiful,” I said.
“The next few pages are pretty boring,” Zack said. “Just baby pictures of Adam and Brax, mostly. Skip ahead to where I come in. That’s when it gets good.”
“Uncle Zack! We have to go in order!” Ben protested.
“Hannah lives all the way in town, bud. If we keep her out too late, she’ll have to sleep here.”
“Are you offering to take the couch, Zack?” Essie’s wide blue eyes were the picture of innocence. “Brax and I are staying at Lodestar tonight, so his cabin isn’t available. Hannah will have to stay with you.”
Zack draped an arm along the back of the couch. His fingertips grazed my ear and I broke out in goosebumps. “Of course I’m offering Hannah the bed. I’m a gentleman, darlin’.”
He did not, I noticed, say he would be taking the couch.
I also took note of the endearment. Darlin’ . He used that a lot. Sugar, too. Me, Essie, random acquaintances. If a woman wasn’t his relation, she was his darlin’, sugar, or honey.
Duchess, though. That one was new. And, so far as I could tell, reserved for me alone.
I wasn’t sure how to take that. Was it a compliment or an insult? Maybe he thought I was an uppity snob.
“Skip ahead, Ben,” Adam urged. “Show her the photos of my baby sister.”
My head jerked up in surprise. “Sister?”
Adam, Brax, James, and Essie burst into laughter.
“What?” I asked, looking between them. “What am I missing?”
“The story of how Zack got his name,” Brax said, smirking. “Do you want to tell it, little sis, or should I?”
“ I’ll tell it,” Ted said. “You tell it wrong.”
I looked at Zack to see how he was taking the teasing, but he didn’t seem at all perturbed. “Go for it, Dad.”
“It’s like this,” Ted said. “Jenny always wanted a big family. We settled on the idea of five kids, if we were blessed. Jenny had this idea in her head that we’d go down the alphabet, A through E. All through her first pregnancy, she insisted she didn’t care if we started with a boy or a girl, but deep down she had strong feelings about it. She wanted a boy first so we could name him Adam, and our fifth baby would be a girl named Eve.” He paused, staring into space, remembering. “It’s funny, isn’t it? She was rational about everything else, but she dreamed about this the way most folks dream of winning the lottery.”
“Everyone has a little crazy in them,” I said. “That’s what makes us interesting.”
Ted chuckled. “That we do, Hannah. That we do. Anyway, Brax was next. Another boy. Jenny loved our boys more than anything on this earth, but they were also a handful. Not enough to scare us off adding a third baby to the mix, but enough to hope that we’d be blessed with a girl. Jenny prayed for her every night. Had a name picked out and everything. Charlotte. She was so sure the baby would be a girl that she refused to let the doctor tell us the gender. She just went right on ahead and bought girl clothes.”
Zack nudged my arm. “Turn the page, duchess. See for yourself.”
I turned the page. And there he was, baby Zack, wearing a pink onesie embroidered with rainbows and ruffled pink socks on his tiny feet. It was just about the sweetest thing I’d ever seen. My ovaries ached.
“Oh, my gosh,” I breathed. “You were adorable .”
Zack grinned. “I’ve always thought so. Mom did, too, and I promise, there wasn’t a single moment I felt unloved. But the day I came out of her womb a boy, it crushed her. She saw the writing on the wall and had no intention of being a mom to five rowdy boys. She put a stop to it right then and there. Skipped C and went straight to Z.”
“And that’s how Zack got his name,” Ted said with aplomb.
I smiled and kept turning the pages, watching the boys grow from toddlers to big kids. The pink onesies disappeared after the first three months and Zack wore regular boy clothes. And then, when Zack was about seven, there was a picture of him and his mom on the couch, a blanket over their laps, fuzzy pink bunny slippers on their feet.
Fuzzy pink bunny slippers .
Next to me, Zack drew in a sharp breath, then let it out on a quick laugh. “That’s the year Adam and Brax found the old photos of me as a baby and realized I was supposed to be a girl. So for Christmas they got me pink bunny slippers. The card said, to our sister, Charlotte .”
Adam and Brax grinned at each other.
“Charlotte was so sweet,” Brax said. “I miss her.”
Zack rolled his eyes. “Anyway, joke was on them, because I fu—” With a quick glance at Ben, he cleared his throat. “I freaking loved them. When Mom got sick the first time, I used my allowance to buy her a matching pair. We would wear them while we watched movies together when she felt bad from chemo.” He ran his thumb over the photograph like he was stroking his mother’s hair. “She always complained her feet were cold.”
The room fell silent for a moment.
And then Zack’s warm laugh permeated the sudden sadness that hung over his family at the memory of Jenny’s cancer, scattering the dark clouds with his sunshine. “Dang, I was cute.”
His shield was back up.
No, not a shield. It was more like a force field. Because it wasn’t about protecting only himself. It was about protecting his family, too. He laughed to make them feel better. And it worked.
“We love you no matter what, Zack, but anytime Charlotte wants to pay us a visit, we’d be happy to have her.” Adam grinned. “And take pictures.”
The slippers were a Christmas present . That’s what he’d told me, the morning I’d found him naked and eating ramen. But there was no way they were the same pair his brothers had given him. The slippers he’d worn as an adolescent wouldn’t fit his feet now.
His mother had given him those slippers.
I shifted the photo album so it lay across both our laps, half on him and half on me. Underneath the spine, in the narrow valley between our thighs, I found his hand and squeezed.
Because I knew he didn’t find anything funny about those slippers.