Page 2 of Not Our First Rodeo
Maybe it should frighten me, but it doesn’t. This is Beau, myhusband, and even if we’ve been apart for the last few months, there’s still no one I trust more.
I hate that I’ve hurt him again, that after all this time, I don’t know how to stop. It feels like another piece of my soul shrivels and dies. Even to my own ears, my voice sounds dull, lifeless. “I just told you I wasn’t leaving with him. What else do you want from me?”
The words and my tone only seem to anger him more. “I want you to use your head, Elsie,” he says, voice low, breath puffing in the cold air around us. He’s practically pleading, and something about it stokes a fire deep in my belly, in a place that has gone unnoticed for much too long. The feeling sustains me, makes me want to keep standing here forever in the freezing night air, with snow dancing all around us.
“I can take care of myself, Beau.” I say.
His jaw tenses further, hard enough to crack a tooth. “Of course you can,” he says with a tired laugh, looking into the black sky above us as if he’s asking God for patience.
His disbelief pulls my spine straighter. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Concern edges past the anger in his eyes. “You couldn’t even sit up straight in your chair. How were you supposed to drive yourself home? You didn’t even notice when I walked in.”
My gaze narrows on his. There are snowflakes in his eyelashes. I’m not sure how they’re not burning up on contact with the angry heat pouring off him. His hair is tousled by the night air, and his skin looks flushed from the cold, the tips of his ears and nose red beneath the streetlight. He’s always had stubble, but sometime in the last two months, he’s grown a mustache too, and it looks good on him. I don’t want to notice these things about him, but I’ve never been able to ignore him. Even when we were in high school, my eyes would somehow always find him in a crowd, like he was a homing device made just for me.
It’s why I notice exactly the way his nostrils flare and his shoulders straighten when I say, “So that’s what this is about, then?”
“What?” he asks, breath puffing in the cold.
“You’re mad I didn’t notice you,” I say. It’s the truth. I feel it deep in my bones. It makes that ache inside me yawn a little wider.
His jaw ticks, drawing my attention. I want to put my thumb there, feel it flicker against my skin. It’s been so long since I’ve touched him, and suddenly, I need to do it again. To banish the aching guilt bubbling beneath my skin. I want him to take that anger and turn it into passion. Direct it right at me.
I don’t expect his honesty, not when I haven’t been with him, so the words feel like a slap. “What if I am?”
Then he steps closer, and I instinctively step back, my back bumping into the cold brick wall behind me. He doesn’t stop until there’s only a breath between us. “You asked for space, and I gave it to you.” His jaw, still tight, dips as he nods toward thedoor to the bar. Hurt flashes behind his eyes again, and I feel it deep inside my chest. “I didn’t agree tothat.”
“Didn’t agree to what?” I have to know what he thinks I was doing, if he really thinks I’d betray him in this way too.
He leans impossibly closer, his breath tickling my neck, his lips brushing against the shell of my ear. “I’ll give you all the space you want, Elsie, but if anyone is taking you home tonight, or any night, it’s me.”
His words slice through me, cleaving my heart in two. I want—no, I need—him to know that despite everything, he’s the only person I’ve ever wanted. That there’s not enough space in the world that could make me consider someone else.
It’s not a good idea, I know that, but right now, it feels like the best idea I’ve ever had. “Take me home, then.”
The truck smells just like it always has, like Beau and sunbaked interior. The seats feel the same. Soft, supple leather cracked with age. This truck is as familiar to me as its owner. Unconsciously, my eyes flit to the back seat. I’ve had sex in this truck. With myhusband, who is sliding into the driver’s seat beside me. My husband, who I’ve hardly seen in months, who, using all the strength I had left in my heart, I asked to leave, to give me space, to give me time.
I guess the clock has run out.
I can’t make myself feel upset about it. Not when he looks this good, his cheeks flushed from anger and cold. Not when he smells like home, like all my favorite memories. Not when Iknow that he’s going to stay when I ask him too. That we will both feel good for the first time in so long.
We’re silent the entire way home.Myhome, I guess I should say. He’s lived in a cabin at his parents’ ranch since Thanksgiving, and I’ve lived alone in our house. He hasn’t stepped over our threshold since then, but I hope he will tonight.
I may have been the one to ask for space. I might not be any closer to knowing how to fix our future. But I know what I want right now.
And it’s Beau.
The truck comes to a stop at the end of the driveway, and a thick silence hangs heavy between us. Electricity crackles in the air, steel to flint, waiting to catch fire.
My eyes slide over to him. His hands are still tight on the wheel, knuckles white. The sight of it makes my mouth dry. I don’t know that he’s ever looked this raw to me, barely hanging on to his sanity, or maybe his self-control. I want to press it and see what happens when it snaps.
He clears his throat, loosening his grip. “I’ll walk you to the door.”
I should say I’m fine, that it’s just a few feet away, that the snowfall is thick enough that I won’t slip, even if I’m still a little tipsy. But I don’t, and his relieved sigh rends the still air in the cab between us.
We’re quiet as we climb out of the truck and walk the short distance to the door, the silence hanging heavy between us. The porch light has died since he left, and I’ve been too lazy to replace it, so we’re bathed in darkness. It makes the moment feel more intimate, the air between us more electric, the reasons I asked him to leave more hazy.
It’s too dark to see him, but I feel his stare all the same. We’ve always been opposing magnets, drawn to each other in a way that feels instinctual. Twelve years together, and I know himmore than myself. I know that he won’t ask to come inside. He’ll wait for my decision, test that patience he’s been hanging on to by a thread while I’ve been trying to figure things out these past few months.
