Page 73 of Roads Behind Us
Presley grumbled something but stopped talking.
“Y’all are lucky I don’t have big boobs!”
Athena and Aubrey chuckled on either side of me, nodding in solidarity.
The bouncy up-and-down of the trot had worked the messy bun off the top of Bea’s head. Her hair slipped out, the elastic fabric she’d wrapped it with fell to the dirt, and her dark brown locks flowed down her back, licking at the wind as she squeezed Blue again and he increased his speed and eased into a canter.
Bea was a natural; she and Blue had found some kind of communion. She pushed up in the stirrups and leaned forward a bit, like she was ready to fire out the gate at the Kentucky Derby, and then Blue really took off. Everybody on the sidelines whooped it up, and the smile on Bea’s face was one for the books.
She’d never been more beautiful, and that was saying something since every single time I looked at her my heart tried to lurch right out of my chest.
“Athena! We’re goin’ ridin’ together,” Bea hollered back to Athena as she passed us. “This is so fun!”
Athena laughed. “It’s a date!”
“Beatrice Baker,” I called back, shaking my head in wonder as Bea passed us again at the gate. “If Athena’s a road trip, you’re a goddamn runaway train!”
She heard me, and she threw her head back, laughing. “Oh yeah? Well this train’s leavin’ the station. Choo-fuckin’-choo!”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Bea
The next fifteen days passed like a whirlwind.
I spent the nights with Bax in his bed, like it had always been that way, and I spent the days working, watching the cabin crew toil away and the house crews finish their builds. I felt pride seeing them find completion. I hadn’t designed the structures. I’d barely lifted my own hammer to craft them, but I’d guided them to the end, and that felt just as good.
Abey and Devo had already come to check out their new digs, and they’d screeched and hollered, and I found myself jumping up and down right along with them in the middle of their new living room, helping them plan their move in. I was ecstatic for them, and my cheeks had cramped and hurt for all the grinning. A little part of me was envious though. I wanted what they had. I wanted the life they had, one filled with work they loved but with family and friends they loved even more.
I had the work part down, and it felt like the rest could be mine. All I had to do was reach out and take hold of it.
Athena and I were in a serious, long-standing discussion about how she should wear her hair to the dance, which was less than a week away now. After the fifth time we’d brought it up at dinner around Bax’s table, he suggested shaving it all off. Athena rolled her eyes so hard, I thought her eye sockets might be sore in the morning. She thought she should wear her hair up, but I insisted down and free and flowing. She really had no idea just how beautiful she was. Her awkward, early teenage phase seemed to be passing right before my eyes, and I had no doubt that by the same time next year, she’d have a whole line of boys asking her to dances.
She and I had gone on trail rides with Presley leading the pack. Once, we even saw a bear far off in the distance, rooting around at the base of a tree. Thankfully, he wasn’t on Lee property when we spotted him, but that didn’t do much to assure me he wouldn’t wander over there. Presley said he probably wouldn’t, but I still had my doubts. I wouldn’t even have noticed him if Athena and Presley hadn’t pointed him out, and I’d had to use Presley’s binoculars to get a good look, but sure enough, it was a flipping grizzly bear!
We’d also seen my bison. Of course, there was no sure way for me to know it was really Wooly Wally, but I felt it was him. And when he lifted his big ol’ head and stared me down, I knew it. He stood at the center of a small herd grazing in a field a football field away from our little trail-riding group, and there’d been two calves jumping and playing around him and the smaller females. Wally had a family.
Trail riding was like getting a brain massage, with warm sunshine sifting through the boughs of the trees above us while we listened to birds sing and fallen branches and leaves snap and crunch beneath the horses’ hooves as they carried us over mountain paths.
And then when we returned to the barn, the cool-down tasks of rinsing the horses with cold hose water, feeding, and brushing them relaxed me even more. I’d started wondering how much horses cost. Maybe I could buy one for myself, keep it at the ranch with Bax and Athena, and come back to visit and ride.
But if I did that, what would that mean for Bax? If I left and went back to Sheridan like I had planned, he’d move on. It wouldn’t be fair of me to ask him not to, but the thought of him with another woman brought that pinch right back to my chest and made it rage.
Bax and I were good together, but it hadn’t even been a month. It wasn’t like we were in lo?—
Or were we?
Was I?
It was crazy that I’d spent years in a marriage that had about as much intimacy as a rock garden, but I’d only been around Bax for three short weeks, and he already knew me down to my soul. And it was bonkers to me that Bax’s ranch felt like home even though it was two-thousand miles away from the graves of the only people I’d ever really loved.
But it was the truth, and it didn’t feel too fast or scary or weird.
It felt right.
Bax was everything I’d ever wanted: steady, supportive, loving, trustworthy. The way he cared for Athena showed me not all fathers failed their kids. I’d known it in the pit of my stomach, but until I spent time with Bax and Athena and saw it for myself, I couldn’t admit my dad had failed me. I wasn’t mad at him anymore. I knew now that his grief had robbed us both of his love, and there was a freedom in admitting it to myself.
Bax had lit some kind of fire inside me, and when he smiled at me and crooked his finger? Hoo boy, I had to take note of which side of the sky was up when he kissed me ’cause the man could knock good sense right out of me.
