Chapter 26 – Kev
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
KEV
It was one of those days that made him wish he’d been born more poetic. The sky was so blue it glowed like neon. So clear he could see every rocky ledge climbing up the mountains on either side of the road to the barn, every needle on every pine tree, every pointed aspen leaf quaking in the breeze. Every round freckle dotting Davis’s nose.
“Beautiful day,” he said, breaking the silence they’d been sharing.
She smiled at him, but it was a strange one—too small, almost sad. “It’s gorgeous.”
He wanted to say something romantic. Something about how she was more gorgeous than any sky could ever be, any cloud or mountain or leaf, but his nerves were already near their breaking point. So he only took her hand in his and squeezed.
Looking up at him, she gave him another smile—this one with a heart-stopping host of emotions behind it. He didn’t know what to make of her smiles. Knew even less what to make of the deliberate way she watched him, like she was already trying to make this moment a memory. He couldn’t shake the way it all felt like goodbye. And with how little time they had left, with how long he’d waited to have this conversation with her, he knew it could easily be just that. He might not have done enough, said enough, been enough. It might be too late.
It would make sense, considering the one constant in his short life was his almost cosmically bad timing. But even if he was too late, it didn’t change anything. Even if he’d missed his chance with her. Even if the steps they’d taken back to one another weren’t big enough to survive only seeing each other on weekends and holidays. Even if she left him next week and they slowly drifted apart. Today was still important. It was still necessary. Because she deserved it. She deserved the whole story. She deserved to know every part of him. She deserved the truth.
“Here we are,” Kev said, pulling up to the barn and killing the engine.
Opening her door, Davis hopped out of the truck and looked around. “It’s so pretty here.” Kev’s chest grew tight, because the smile she gave him now was the one he recognized. The one he wanted. The full-on Davis smile that had knocked him on his ass from the first day he’d met her. “I can see why you love it.”
Through the loft in the main barn, Jen tossed a hay bale down to the ground and shouted, “Hey, Davis! Welcome to Strawberry Farms!”
“Hey, Jen!” Davis shouted back up. “Need help?”
Of course she would ask. Of course the first thing Davis would think about was helping someone else. Because that was just who she was. She worked the trails with the guys when she didn’t have to. She helped her mom and grandma with Bluebird seven days a week, always saying yes when they asked her to do anything. She helped the guys in the computer lab because nobody else had the time. And now she was going back to school to help cure cancer or something. She would literally save lives. The same way she’d already saved his.
He wondered if she had any idea how much he respected her, how in awe of her he was. He also wondered if she knew how bonkers hot she looked today in her emerald leggings that stopped mid-calf and a black tank top that barely covered her ass. Her hair up in a loose bun except for the few curls that refused to be tamed, trailing down to caress the graceful curve of her neck.
“Nah, I’m good,” Jen said, waving them off. “I think River’s been waiting to see her boyfriend, anyway. She’s been pacing the fence all day.”
“See?” Davis said, so low only he could hear her. “I told you I was the other woman.”
Shrugging, trying to play it cool, trying to ignore the way his heart rate accelerated, trying to keep himself together at least long enough to get through this, he said, “What can I say? Antisocial horses love me.” While Davis gave him an easy laugh, he called up, “See you later, Jen.”
“There’s mints in the office,” Jen shouted back as another hay bale fell to the ground.
After a string of sweltering days, it was a pleasantly cool afternoon as they walked down the road toward River’s pasture. Clouds filled the sky, the breeze lifted his curls from his forehead, and Davis slid her hand into his.
Even though they’d kissed, touched, pushed every clothes-on boundary within a country mile, they hadn’t really held hands since he’d come back. It felt important in a way, this bit of normalcy in a relationship that hadn’t felt normal in a very long time. Because of what he’d done. Because of his choices. Because of what he was about to tell her.
“I’m nervous.” Davis tucked one of those wild curls behind her ear. “What if she doesn’t like me?”
“Ah, she’ll love you,” he said, then amended it with “I mean, despite what Jen says, I think she really only tolerates me. So maybe love is a little strong.”
He felt her gaze settle on him, sensed the weight of her stare, but he kept his eyes on the road ahead. Considering the little he had of it was still mostly faked, his confidence wouldn’t survive much shaking today. He had to keep his shit together. He had to get through this.
As if in solidarity, River whinnied from her pasture.
“Is that her?” Davis asked, shielding her eyes from the sun’s bright glare.
“That’s her,” Kev said.
When River whinnied again, practically a holler, Davis laughed. “Does she always freak out like this when you show up?”
“It’s not me.” Digging into his pocket, he pulled out one of the mints he’d grabbed from Jen’s office. “It’s these. Here.”
Davis took the mint, then she pointed her chin toward the mare galloping toward them, dust flying up from her hooves. “I don’t know much about horses,” she said, breaking into laughter when River whinnied again. “But I think it’s more than just the mints.”
“Hey, girl,” Kev cooed when River slid to a stop at the fence. She leaned her head over the gate, sniffing his shirt, his pants, nudging him with her nose. “This is Davis. Davis,” he said, tilting his head to urge her closer to the fence, “this is River.”
“She’s stunning,” Davis said. Lowering her voice, making it sweet and soothing, she told River, “You are stunning.”
While Kev’s heart melted into a puddle, River’s nostrils flared, her attention homing in on Davis when she realized which one of them held the mint.
Out of the side of her mouth, Davis asked, “How do I give this to her without getting my hand bitten off?”
“Here. I’ll show you.” Kev took Davis’s hand and spread her fingers flat. Then he unwrapped the mint and placed it in the middle of her palm. “Just hold out your hand like this. She’ll do the rest.”
With her eyes locked on his, she asked, “She really won’t bite me?”
He shook his head, a half smile tugging at his lips. “No. She won’t bite you.” River snorted, pawing at the ground. “But she might break through the fence if you don’t give it to her soon. ”
Holding her breath, Davis closed her eyes, let out a tiny squeak, and extended her hand. Then she laughed when River snatched the mint in less than a second. While the mare crunched away, contented for the moment, Davis reached out carefully to run her fingers down the soft hair between River’s eyes. “This was the horse who wouldn’t let anyone near her before she met you? The same horse? You’re not messing with me?”
“It’s not like it was me specifically who turned her around,” Kev said, his cheeks heating under the spotlight she’d put on him. The spotlight he always tried to stay out of, even though it meant diminishing everything good he’d ever done in his life. “Nobody else was able to give her the time she needed.”
“You think so?” Davis asked while River dropped her head into Kev’s arms, pushing her nose against his belly while he scratched the spot under her chin that always made her lower lip droop.
Leaning into the warmth of the mare, letting her support him for the brief moment she allowed it, he asked, “Do you remember when I told you how she ended up here?” Because it was time. It was time to stand in the spotlight. Now or never.
“She was wild, right?” Davis said. “In Wyoming or something?”
Kev handed Davis another mint, and while River left his arms to nudge Davis’s shoulder until she got the mint unwrapped and fed it to her, he said, “Yeah. She lived in a herd. She probably had a big family. She might have even had children of her own. And then one day, humans came along and snatched her up, separated her from her family, took her from her home. Most likely ran her within an inch of her life.”
“That’s awful,” Davis said, running her palm carefully down River’s nose. “Is that what you were researching the other day? The ‘horse stuff’?”
Kev nodded, his fingers curling inward when he remembered some of the stories he’d read.
Davis said to River, “Poor thing. You must have been so scared.”
The sky was changing, the vibrant blue dome above them fading at the edges as the sun moved west toward the trees, lining the clouds in thin silver rings. “When I first saw her, I think I saw myself. She was like a mirror,” he said softly. Then he cleared his throat, letting himself take up space, letting himself be heard, be seen.
If what he told Davis made her not want him anymore, it would hurt like hell. But it would be okay. He would survive it. Because he had survived a lot in his life. He was stronger than he gave himself credit for.
“I looked at her that first day,” he continued, “hiding out in her pasture, trying to keep herself safe from a danger that didn’t really exist anymore. And I thought I do that too . I mean, I do it differently, I guess. I’m not holing up in my cabin or anything. But I don’t really let people in. I smile and I laugh and I crack jokes, but I don’t really trust anyone. I don’t trust people to see me for who I really am.”
Davis took a step toward him. Just a small step, but he felt it. He felt her listening. He felt her attention on him, warming him, like sitting closer to the firepit on a cold night. Knowing this might be his last chance to stand in her warmth didn’t make the sensation any less comforting.
“I think we do it, keep our guards up, protect ourselves, because we’re scared,” he said. “She’s scared of losing everything again. She’s scared of getting comfortable here and then having someone come out of nowhere and run her out of her home, shove her into a pen, into a trailer, take her somewhere she doesn’t want to go.”
Turning to look at him while River, realizing the mints had stopped appearing, walked off to drop her nose into a patch of green grass a few feet away, Davis said, “You said we . We’re scared . What are you scared of, Kev?”
His teeth sank hard into his cheek. It wasn’t something he’d done on purpose, just a reflex. Just his brain attempting to distract the rest of him from the words slicing like broken glass in his chest. As sharply as the words cut him up inside, he knew it would hurt even worse when he pushed them out. But then they’d be gone. Then he could heal .
“I know I’ve told you some things about my past,” he said while River grazed calmly in the shade of a puffy white cloud. “But there’s more. A lot more. And it’s not that I haven’t trusted you with knowing about my life,” he told her, in case she’d been wondering. In case she’d been worried. “It’s just, sometimes it feels like I don’t even want to hear it. Like I don’t want to admit that it actually happened to me. Like I really thought I could just process all of it myself, and then I could move on. Be done with it. Never have to talk about it again.”
“That makes so much sense,” she said softly. “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. You know that, right?”
“I know.” His chin tried to drop to his chest, but he held it up. “The thing is, I want to tell you this. I need to. Because it did happen.” He let his gaze travel over her face, over the earnest concern in her eyes, the tight set of her jaw. “And as much as I hate to admit it. As much as I wish I could just put it all behind me and leave it there, it’s affecting me now. It shaped who I am. It’s the weight on my shoulders. It’s the voice in my head. But because I didn’t realize it, because I’ve been refusing to accept it, because I’ve been in denial, I’ve allowed it to affect you too. I’ve let it hurt you too. And I will not let that happen again,” he said with a sudden severity. “Never again.”
“Okay,” she said, stepping even closer, not scared away by his intensity but leaning into it. “Okay. I’m here. I’m listening.”
She’s here. She’s listening. You can trust her.
“My mom was an addict too,” he said, that memory shard cutting so deeply he had to look away, dig his palm into his chest to soothe the pain. Because he never talked about his mom. Barely even let himself think about her. Almost never looked at the one picture he had left of her, standing in their backyard garden when they’d had one, wearing faded denim overalls, a floppy hat, the kind smile he’d grown up wishing he could see again but knowing he never would. “But from what I remember, she was a good mom. She loved me. The drugs took her when I was five, leaving me alone with my dad.”
River’s long white tail swished gently from side to side in the breeze, the motion lulling him like a metronome. “He started drinking after she died. Couldn’t cope without her. Left alone with this kid. And he was a mean drunk too. Hit me a lot. I learned pretty quickly to be quiet. I learned that being invisible meant I didn’t get hurt. I didn’t really talk in my house, barely came out of my room, never left the few toys I had lying around in case he accidentally stepped on one of my matchbox cars. Which happened once. I’ll spare you the details.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Davis’s hand curl around the fence rail and squeeze.
“Turned out, I was really good at being invisible.” He laughed, even though what he was about to say was miles away from funny. “Because, eventually, he forgot I was even there. He started leaving. He’d leave for days at a time, sometimes up to a week. And then, when I was twelve, he was just…gone.
“At first, I tried to pretend like everything was normal. Like even though he’d been gone for almost a month and hadn’t called once, that he’d still be coming back. So I kept going to school, walking four miles there and back every day. I ate whatever food we had in the house until all that was left was canned peaches. I lied to all my teachers, my friends. I told anyone who asked about him that my dad wasn’t feeling good and that’s why nobody had seen him around town. I thought it was working too, until one day, on my way to school, a couple of my friends stopped me outside the football field. They told me that Child Protective Services was inside looking for me.”
River raised her head, meeting his gaze with something almost encouraging in her sweet brown eyes. It was about to get harder, but he had to keep going. He couldn’t stop. Couldn’t even slow down.
“I guess I’d worn the same clothes too many days in a row or something,” he said, embarrassment trickling down his spine. “That’s what had finally tipped my teachers off. So I turned around. Went home. I stopped going to school. I hid from CPS for as long as I could. I never answered my door, never left the house. I hid, stayed quiet, kept the lights off, pretended nobody was home. Because I knew what happened to kids who didn’t have parents. I knew they went into the foster system. And I wasn’t one of those kids. I had a dad. I had a dad, and of course he was going to come back for me. I mean, who just abandons their kid? Who just leaves a twelve-year-old to fend for themselves? My dad was an asshole, but even he wasn’t that cold. He just got lost or his car broke down. Maybe he hit his head and was in a coma in a hospital somewhere, fighting to wake up. I made up all sorts of stories. But I knew he was coming back for me. I knew he’d show up before the canned peaches ran out.”
“Kev,” Davis said, her voice thick and wobbly. He didn’t have to look to know that she was crying. And that was okay. This was a sad story.
“Only, he didn’t,” Kev said, letting some of his anger loose so it could ride over his pain. “He never came back. The food ran out. And, Christ .” His stomach roiled. “I still fucking hate peaches.”
While River sliced her tail through the air, Davis pressed her forehead into his arm.
“I think it was the third day without food when the cops showed up with CPS. I was hungry and tired and really scared by that point, so I caved. I let them in, but I refused to say a single word to them. Except for maybe ‘fuck you.’ Until two older people walked in behind them. They were both crying, both looking around the house I’d been hiding out in by myself with these horrified expressions. I had no idea who they were. But then my grandmother knelt in front of me and introduced herself. That’s when I saw the resemblance. She had my mom’s eyes. My mom’s kind smile. That’s when I finally lost it.”
Davis pressed her lips into his biceps. A small kiss. Just to tell him I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. When she turned her cheek, he felt the dampness of her tears through his shirtsleeve.
“My grandparents had known about me, but my mom—probably because my dad had made her—had gone no-contact with them before I was born. They told me they wanted me to come and live with them on their ranch. I refused at first, still convinced my dad would come home. But they told me he was in jail in Florida. They told me they’d gotten custody. I had no choice. It was done. And, god , I hated them for it. I tried to run away at least five times.” He laughed at himself. “It’s amazing how much anger a kid can hold on to. And I was burning with it. I didn’t trust anyone, especially not these two happy people who were always nice to me and never yelled at me and got me clean clothes and made me good food I barely ate any of. It took me six months before I even unpacked my bag.”
Davis slid her hand up his arm, curling her fingers to press it close to her body.
“It was the horses who finally turned me around. My grandpa took me out every day after school and every weekend, teaching me how to feed them, how to check their pastures for holes, mend their broken fences, build new ones. My grandmother taught me how to groom them and tack them up. She taught me how to ride, how to move cattle, how to tend to a herd. The more time I spent with the horses, the more time I spent helping my grandparents, the more I felt like I was a part of something. Like I was important instead of an inconvenience. Like I was wanted. Like I was in a family.”
She gave him a tight squeeze, interlacing the fingers of her other hand through his, wrapping his entire right arm in her warmth.
“My father never came to get me, even though he was released from prison about a year later. By that point, I never wanted to see him again anyway. I was safe. I felt loved for the first time since my mom died. I felt like I had a home. And I was getting really good at riding. I’d imagined this whole cowboy life for myself. Out in the open. Free and happy.” His throat spasmed, forcing him to take a dry, painful swallow. “But my grandparents were getting older. And when I was fifteen, my grandmother cut herself on one of the fences. It got infected. She went septic, and then she was gone. It all happened so quickly it felt like a dream. Like it couldn’t possibly have been real. I guess it was too much for my grandpa. Three months after she died, he had a heart attack out in the back pasture.”
Davis’s strangled sob was a perfect echo of the sob he’d let loose that day. The one he held trapped inside his chest now.
“I was put in foster care after that. I never rode a horse again.” He could smile at this part, at least. “Not until I came here, anyway. My foster parents weren’t bad, all things considered. But I think I’d just lost too much by that point. I got in trouble a lot, spent some time in juvie, fell in with the wrong crowd, moved in with Thom and Trish. I started using. And, well, you know the rest.”
She pulled her forehead away from his shoulder, but only so she could look up at him.
“All that stuff, my past, it’s part of me. It lives inside me.” Pointing his chin at River, he said, “Just like her past lives inside her. We both have these scars nobody else can see. I try not to think about mine. But they’re here.” He tapped on his chest. “Right here, all the time. These wounds that make me feel like I’m never good enough. Like I’m still that kid hiding alone in my house waiting for someone to come back, even when I know they never will. Like I’m still so terrified of getting close to someone, so terrified they’ll just leave me, that I find a way to make sure I leave them first.”
He wanted to look down at her. He wanted to see her face, to dry her tears, to pull her into his arms and hold her while he told her this next part. But he couldn’t move. He could barely breathe. There was too much at stake.
“Do you remember that night?” he asked, not giving his resolve a chance to waver. “In your car? The night we almost?—”
“I remember.” She said it quietly, but fast enough to cut him off. And there was something in her voice he couldn’t decipher. Something cold and stiff.
Hoping the something in her voice wasn’t regret, he said, “All through rehab, through all my group sessions, all my appointments with Rick, even when it was happening, I had no idea why I’d relapsed. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t figure it out. I couldn’t remember. Everything was so good with you, with this place. My life was amazing, and then…it wasn’t. It scared the shit out of me, Davis. Because I kept thinking that if I never figured out why I’d failed, how could I keep it from happening again? So I’ve kept trying. I’ve kept searching, going over those weeks before I left in my mind. Trying to find a reason. Trying to find a single clue to explain how everything had gone so wrong so quickly. And then Madigan started talking about shame last night, and it hit me. Seriously,” he said, pounding his fist into his chest. “Like a brick. It was that night in your car. That was when it all started.”
She didn’t let go of his arm, but he felt her grip loosen, felt the tremble in her fingers.
“That night, I’d wanted to be with you more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life. I didn’t care about anything else. I didn’t care about taking my next breath. Or at least I thought I didn’t. But when things got heated, when you reached for me, when you reached for my jeans, the voice in my head reminded me they were the only pair I owned. When you slid your hands under the shirt I’d been wearing, the voice reminded me that it wasn’t even mine, that it was a Little Timber shirt. That a bunch of men had worn it before me and a bunch more would probably wear it after. And I felt it then. Shame. So much fucking shame. I was drowning in it. I had this beautiful, perfect woman in my arms, and I didn’t deserve her. I was a man without money. Without a real job. Without a high school education. A man with a record. A man with a past that would haunt him forever. A man whose dad didn’t even care enough about him to stick around. A man with no family, no home, nothing. A man who would only bring her down. And that was it. That was the moment. Something inside me just broke. That was when all my scars opened back up.”
The breeze died down. Even River stopped chewing, adding to the sudden, profound silence of the moment.
“I knew you loved me,” he said softly, because anything louder would have felt like shouting. “I knew you’d told me you didn’t care that I was poor or uneducated or had nothing to offer you. But I didn’t believe you. I couldn’t. Because I didn’t believe it myself. The only thing I knew for sure was that you’d find someone much better than me if I wasn’t around anymore. So I said we had to stop. I blamed it on the rules. And I was going to end it. The next day, I promised myself I’d let you go. But I even fucked that up because I couldn’t. I was too weak. I loved you too much. So I stayed with you, but only halfway. Like a ghost. I knew I was hurting you. I knew it. I could feel it,” he said, more glass scraping out of him. “And I still couldn’t walk away.”
He paused, waiting for the sharp pain to pass. Then he said, “I made a lot of mistakes, Davis. But the biggest mistake I ever made was when I started struggling, instead of telling you about it, or even telling Madigan or the guys about it, I just did what I did best. I hid. I hid behind the same shame and fear I’d hid behind since my mom died and my dad left. I locked myself up in that house again, refusing to answer the door, refusing to accept help. I didn’t realize it then, but I was as good as gone the second I made that choice.”
He filled his lungs with as much air as they’d take in, and then he let it all out. “I wish I’d seen it sooner. I wish I’d recognized what was happening inside me. It still scares me that I didn’t, and I hate that I hurt you. But Madigan told me that each one of his relapses taught him something about his addiction. That each slip made him understand himself better. So I’m trying really hard to learn from this one. I’m trying to understand. I’m trying not to be ashamed.”
Through some miracle, he’d kept himself together through all of this. But he was crumbling now, breaking apart, every one of the flood gates he’d built around his heart failing at once. “Because how can I be ashamed of my past?” he asked, fighting to keep his voice steady, blinking through the mist clouding his vision. “How can I be ashamed of my parents? My one pair of jeans and my borrowed shirts? My drug use? Even my relapse? When those are all things that brought you into my life. If someone came along right now and gave me the chance to start over, to have all the things I grew up without, to have a happy, normal childhood, I wouldn’t take it. I wouldn’t fucking take it. I’d go through my same life again, over and over a thousand times. As long as it meant I got to meet you at the end.”
Her hands were on his shoulders, his face, turning him, making him look at her.
“I used to think that only the bad things in our lives left scars,” he said while she tried to dry his tears, while hers flowed in rivers down her cheeks. “But I don’t believe that anymore. I think good things can leave scars too.” Taking her hand in his, he kissed her palm, then placed it flat over his heart. “I have permanent marks here. Some are from terrible things. But not all of them. Because some of them are from you. Marks you’ve given me. Little Davis lines traveling over all my old scars, reminding me that I have felt love. That I have been loved. That even the worst kinds of pain can lead to something beautiful.”
He covered her hand with his and pressed down. “I won’t stop trying to figure myself out. I won’t hide anymore. And I know you’re leaving soon. I know it’s the thing we don’t talk about. I hope you don’t think that I haven’t brought it up because I don’t care. Because I do. I care so much. I only want you to be happy. But I’ve been too much of a coward to tell you how I feel. I’ve been too scared to ask if you’ll let me wait for you while you’re gone. If you want us to be together even though you aren’t here. But I need you to know that I want to. I’m ready to. I need you to know that I’ll wait for you for as long as you need. Even if I’m waiting forever. Because you’re it for me. You’re everything. Because I love you, Davis. I love you so fucking much.”
Silently weeping, she stepped into him, wrapped her arms around his waist, and pressed her tear-soaked cheek against his chest. “I love you too, Kev,” she said through her tears, cracking him open, splitting him right down the middle. “I love your one pair of jeans and your borrowed shirts. I love the man your life has shaped you into. I love your mistakes. I love how hard you’re working not to make the same ones again. I love your scars. I love the marks I’ve made on your heart. I love the marks you’ve left on mine.”
Just when he thought he couldn’t take another word without falling to his knees before her, she made the world stop turning, made everything inside him grind to a ground-trembling halt when she said, “And I love that you’d be willing to wait for me. But you don’t have to. Because I’m not leaving.”