He was three years old. Gigi was not sorry for nagging her sister until she got him an appointment with the itinerant pediatrician who visited the reservation IHS clinic about once a month. Frannie seemed to blame her for the diagnosis of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, but it hadn’t been Gigi drinking while she was pregnant. And come on, she could hardly have been surprised. Tyson’s was a mild case, with less severe physical features than some other children they knew, but there were other, more severe cases of FASDs on the reservation. Ever since the first white soldier had given whiskey to a Native to calm him down, alcoholism had been a plague on every reservation in North America, and all its attendant ills: Domestic violence. Liver disease. Drunk driving. Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders. To name a few. The Mackenzie family could pose for a clinic poster; they’d suffered them all.
She smiled at her sweet, silent little nephew, and he went back to staring at the screen.
The sofa was just as she’d left it when Reese had brought Frannie home. With only an hour or so of sleep before his truck had pulled in, and the emotional centrifuge she’d spent the rest of the night in, she was so tired she could hardly string a thought together. On the drive back home, that overloaded weariness had crashed down. Now she staggered to the sofa and let her body drop however it fell.
Her body ached, but those aches made her smile with wonderful new memories. Those aches eased her worries and dark thoughts.
She’d fallen into a doze when the sofa shook harshly. Frannie stood over her, dressed in her Lunch Box uniform, her hair in a single braid down her back. Tyson hung on her leg. If she was hung over, she didn’t look it. But she was definitely still pissed.
“I need my keys.”
Unable to remember where she’d left them, Gigi shrugged. “I brought them in.”
“I know. You’re sitting on them.”
“Huh?” Then she felt the sharp lump under her right cheek, and the numbness of her hand, which was also under her ass. “Oh. Here.”
She snatched the keys. “I don’t want to hear your crap about where I was last night. But I guess thank you for getting my car.”
“You’re welcome. You feel okay?”
“Were you with him? Reese? Is that where you still were when I got up?”
“Yeah.”
Frannie led her son back to his place on the floor before the television and kissed the top of his head. “Mama will be home soon. Be good for Grandma.”
He watched as she walked away and picked up her travel mug of coffee from the edge of the kitchen counter. At the door, Frannie turned and frowned at Gigi. “Don’t stir up more trouble, Geej. We all know you’re gonna take off again any second. Try not to leave so much destruction in your wake this time.”
She yanked the door open and let it slam as she stomped into the yard. Gigi stared at the closed door, feeling like shit.
Frannie was right. Last night, while she’d lain on the old sofa, the springs poking her back, she’d listened to her mother snore and very nearly decided it was time to pack up again and go. Since Frannie had taken Tyson to the pediatrician, this house had been a silent war zone, and it wasn’t much better anywhere else—not on the reservation or in town. Her old friends were pleasant enough, but she could feel the judgment behind their smiles. Reese hadn’t been speaking to her. His friends, who’d once also been her friends, were polite but cool. Everybody watched her, waiting for her to cause trouble, waiting for the day she hit the town limit and kept going again. Nobody trusted her. Nobody wanted her here.
She’d gotten a part-time job as a clerk at Idahoan Outfitters and was due for her first paycheck at the end of the week, and last night, lying here miserable, she’d gotten right up to the decision to go as soon as she cashed that check. Go where? Anywhere. Maybe just California first. That check wasn’t very big. She’d have to land somewhere she could work again right off the bat.
And then Reese had brought Frannie home.
And then he’d driven her back to town.
And they’d taken a detour, to their place.
The place of their first kiss, and their first time. The place they’d lain under the stars on many clear nights and learned to love each other. The place he’d proposed to her. The place she’d said yes.
And, last night, the place where they’d made a fresh start. Where she’d finally come home.
Now maybe everything was different. Because Reese still loved her. He still wanted her. And she wouldn’t find that feeling anywhere else in the world.
Her mom shuffled out of her bedroom and went straight to the coffeemaker. “Morning, Georgia.”
“Morning.”
“Mama!” Tyson clambered to his feet and ran to her, and she hoisted him up and settled him on her hip.
“You want some breakfast? Frosted Flakes?”
The boy nodded eagerly and clapped his hands. Mom looked across the room. “How about you, honey? Want something to eat?”
No. Gigi knew what she wanted, and it wasn’t here. She stood and grabbed her backpack from the floor beside the sofa. “I’m gonna head out.”
“So early? You don’t work till this afternoon, though, right?”
“One o’clock. I’ve just ... I’ve got ... I’ll see you, Mom, okay?”
Gigi could see it in her mother’s eyes: she was waiting for her to disappear.
“Okay, Georgia. Okay.”
“I’ll be back, Mom.”
“Okay.”
*****
The front door to Reese’s apartment was in back of the building that housed the Jack. Though the apartment had an access directly into the bar, he considered that the back door and used it only when he was going to or coming from work. He called that historic staircase his ‘commute.’ Otherwise, there was a tall redwood staircase leading to a nice deck at the second floor, and that was the real entrance to his private space.
He opened the door after her third knock, and she knew he’d been asleep. Well, of course he had; they’d parted ways in the parking lot more than an hour earlier. He stood there, in a pair of black sweats barely pulled up to his hips, his chest bare, his hair mussed. Sleep hung on his face and weighted down his eyes.
He was gorgeous. God, so gorgeous. His beautiful chest—almost hairless, fit and firm but not overly chiseled. Broad shoulders, strong arms. Slim hips, with just a hint of definition. He had the good body of a man who didn’t have to work at it, and that body hadn’t aged a day.
She wanted to feel all that hot skin on hers. What they’d shared at the stream had been amazing, a reunion that restored her soul, but it hadn’t been enough. Not nearly.
“Hey. You okay?” He rubbed at his beard and raked a hand through his hair. She noticed that light sprinkling of grey. Sexy.
Back in the day, they’d both gotten some flack for the difference in their ages—her friends had teased her about it, and her dad had worried she was getting in too deep with someone who had a lot more experience than she had, and some of Reese’s friends had given him shit about cradle-robbing—but it hadn’t mattered to her. He was almost ten years older, but so what? They’d both grown up in the same place, more or less. They’d gone to the same schools, knew the same people, shared a whole big portion of their lives. Gigi lived on the reservation, and Reese could never know what it was to be Indigenous in a white world, but he’d grown up around her people, called them friends, knew some as close as family. She was as known to him as it was possible to be, and vice versa. It mattered nothing that he was close to thirty when she wasn’t yet twenty. They’d fit together, just right.
“I don’t want to be away from you.” She said the words in a rush, overcome with memory, and loss, and renewal. Love. Completely overrun with love.
He smiled. It moved slowly, lifting one cheek and then the other, showing his white teeth, making his eyes twinkle. He reached for her hand and pulled her in. “Come to bed with me.”
That was just exactly what she wanted. What she needed.
As
he led her through his apartment, she glanced around. The place was huge; the second floor had been the town hotel for the first half of its existence, until Reese’s family converted it into a single home around the middle of the twentieth century. All the rooms were two or three times the size of the rooms in Gigi’s family’s trailer, there were almost twice as many rooms up here altogether, and Reese lived here alone.
He didn’t take up much of the space; that much hadn’t changed. And she recognized most of the furniture and décor, though it had moved around a little. A lot of it was holdover stuff from his parents, but the huge television on the wall was new, and a big leather chair and ottoman combo in front of it. Otherwise, it looked like Reese’s place: unfussily furnished, basically clean, slightly messy.
Not much changed in Jasper Ridge. Kind of ever.
Right now, as Reese held her hand and led her into his bedroom, she could not have been happier that her home had stayed almost exactly as she’d left it. It was why she had this chance. Reese hadn’t moved on without her.
His bed was new—a big queen-size with a leather headboard. In fact, all the furniture in here was different, and much more modern than the family-heirloom style that dominated the rest of the rooms.
She dropped her pack on the floor by his dresser—and saw, in the flat little ceramic dish he’d always kept his change in, a pair of gold earrings. Unable to help herself, she dropped his hand and picked one up—three little linked circles, dangling from a French hook.
He took it from her fingers and put it back in the dish.
“Am I helping you cheat on somebody?” She was thinking about Ellen, but didn’t want to say her name. Word around town was they’d split up, but rumors were often half fantasy.
“No. I was with somebody, but we broke up.”
“When?”
“Does it matter?”
It didn’t, so she shook her head.
“C’mon, Mac. Let’s go to bed.” He took her hand again and led her to his bed.
They didn’t take each other’s clothes off. Reese dropped his sweats and slid naked between his sheets. When Gigi was naked as well, leaving her clothes and shoes in a mound beside the bed, he held up the covers and she slid in beside him.
His arm hooked around her waist as the covers settled over them, and he pulled her close, her back against his chest. His hold of her was sensual, but chaste. This was comfort and ease, not sex. He was much bigger than she was, and his wonderful body was warm and strong and gentle. She felt protected and safe, like she’d not felt for a single second while she was away.
She hadn’t run from this; she would never run from this. Reese wasn’t what she’d been escaping; he was what she’d lost.
What a fool she’d been not to understand the depth of this loss.
He took a deep, slow breath, the kind that meant he was easing into sleep, and pressed his lips to her head. Everything about this moment was so right, so encompassing and fulfilling, Gigi felt the full impact of her mistake. The hurt she’d caused. The hurt she’d felt. Her foolishness and cowardice. Her immaturity.
Yes, her family was a mess. Back then, and still. The Mackenzies were so swamped in trouble and unhappiness they hardly even recognized it anymore. Losing her father, and the way it had happened, had torn Gigi loose and left her drifting. Uprooted, she’d turned and looked hard at the world that was her home, and all she’d seen was need and loss and pain. A constant cycle of it, extending back generations and forward as far as she could see. That was what she’d run from.
She’d run from the wedding because it had felt like that event, binding Reese’s life to hers, would be the moment that cemented her place in the cycle. All the preparations, all the expectations and demands, the quarrels over money, had highlighted the rigidity of her world, her life. All the remarks about how Reese could help the family out, once he was part of the family, the way Frannie, especially, had already been planning for how things would improve since Gigi was ‘marrying money’—she’d been sure that the opposite would happen. Not that Reese would help lift her family up—because of course he would try—but that her family would pull him down. Ruin him. Ruin her. Ruin everything. That was what they did. They ruined themselves and everything they brought close.
It wasn’t their fault. It was a cycle they were all trapped in from birth. And that was what she’d run from—that ruinous, eternal, inexorable cycle of pain and poverty, loss and lack, death and despair. Her family was fucking cursed.
That was what she’d thought. That was why she’d run.
She’d forgotten, or been too overwhelmed to remember, how strong Reese was. How safe he made her. He’d never be trapped, or let her be. If he stayed put, if he stayed constant, he did so by choice.
The tears started quietly. Her eyes filled, then spilled over. But the pain of her regret swelled, filling her chest, her throat, her mouth. Her face twisted, her mouth wrenched open, tears soaked the pillow. She tried not to disturb his rest, tried to be silent, but she couldn’t breathe. Soon she would have to breathe, and then she’d start bawling.
“Mac?” He lifted his head.
Only he had ever called her that. Before he’d ever kissed her, he’d started calling her Mac, and she didn’t remember the sound of her other names in his voice.
“Baby, you okay?”
She spun in his arms, threw her arms around him, slammed her face to his chest, and took a great, loud, squalling breath. “I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry!” she sobbed against his skin when she had the air to say anything at all. “I’m sorry.”
His arms folded her close, and she felt his lips in her hair. He didn’t tell her not to be sorry, or that it was okay. They both knew the truth. But he held her and gave her comfort, offered her his strength.
What a fool she’d been to lose one second of this man’s love.
*****
Gigi woke to the gentle scratch of Reese’s beard against her cheek. Before she opened her eyes, she lifted her hand and found his face. When she looked, he was smiling down at her, his denim-blue eyes bright and happy. He lay on his side, propped on an elbow to loom over her. His naked body warmed hers; she felt snug and content.
“Hey there. It’s about noon. I gotta get movin’ soon. You can sleep more, if you want.” His grin spanned his whole face. “Far’s I’m concerned, you never have to leave this bed.”
Her eyes still ached from the tears she’d fallen asleep to, but his happiness wrapped around her and eased the pain of her regret. This was why she’d come home,; this was the home she needed. Him. She lifted her head and kissed his chest. “I have to work at one. But I’ve got a change of clothes in my pack.” She’d hardly emptied her pack yet. She carried it around like a purse, but it still carried all her essentials.
“One, huh?” He tucked his face against her neck and nibbled on her skin. “We got some time, then. I got you naked in my bed, and I want to make some use of that.”
She giggled as he nipped her ear. “It’s noon?”
“Not quite. I figure we got a whole half hour before we need to jump in the shower.” He shifted onto her and began a trail of kisses from her ear downward. His erection pressed against her thigh, making promises.
“What about food?” she asked, but didn’t really care about the answer. This was all the sustenance she needed.
“I got all I need right here,” he answered, his thoughts aligned with hers. “But I also got about five different kinds of protein bars and a bunch of fruit. Lunch on the go—and I’ll feed you good when you come home tonight.”
He’d made his way to her collarbone, leaving kisses between his words. Now, with those last words lingering between them, his head came up. “I want to be clear straight up front, Mac. Come back tonight. Stay with me. We lost ten fucking years. I don’t want to give up even one more night. If you love me, then stay.”
“You want me to move in?”
She hadn’t done that even before; her father had asked her not to
. Shoshone custom was that the new husband moved in with his wife’s family, but when a woman from the tribe married a white man, she almost always moved into town. Her father knew she wouldn’t live at home after the wedding, and he didn’t want her to leave him before it. So she’d stayed. Even after he died. She’d lived at home until she’d run away.
“I want you to move in. As of now.” His smile was gone; he seemed vulnerable, anxious. She could hurt him again with a word.
Maybe she would have felt different about her life if she’d lived with Reese then. Maybe she would have seen that she could break the cycle. Maybe she would have stayed.
“What about the girl with the gold earrings?”
He rested on his elbows, giving up his trail of kisses for the moment. “Those are Ellen Emerson’s. I’ve been with her for the past few months, but we broke up. She walked away the day after you came home, because she knows—Mac, the whole fuckin’ town knows—I’m in love with you. I told you, I never stopped. I tried to move on, but there’s no movin’ on for me. So I’ll give Ellen her earrings back, and anything else she might have left here. Today, if you want. And we’ll go to your folks’ place and get your stuff. And we’ll be together. We don’t have to have a wedding or any of that crap. Just you and me, here.” He swallowed, and peered deeply into her eyes. “Please.”
He was the home she needed.
“Yes. Yes.”
His mouth claimed hers at once, and Gigi wrapped her arms around him and held on. When he turned away, she moaned and tried to keep him, but he ducked down, kissed her chin, her throat, brushed his beard over her skin, laved his tongue in the notch between her collarbones, scooted farther, rubbing his cock down her leg. His hands pushed under her back, pressed her close, and he kissed his way to a breast, leaving first the lightest kiss on her nipple, nuzzling his beard across that tender flesh until she moaned again and arched her back. When his open mouth sucked her in, she clung to his head and tipped her head back, giving herself up to anything he wanted to do, anything he wanted to make her feel.
Anywhere (Sawtooth Mountains Stories, #3) Page 11