Anywhere (Sawtooth Mountains Stories, #3)

by Susan Fanetti

  He pulled a fleece throw off a nearby chair and drew her to settle between his legs as he wrapped the blanket around them. She leaned back, resting on his bare chest. He set his chin on her head, and they stared up at the first tree that was theirs.

  They were quiet for a long time, curled together looking at the tree. Outside, the wind kicked up and threw snow at the windows, making it patter lightly on the glass. They’d had about eight inches of fresh fall when she’d last checked. Tomorrow would be a quiet day in town.

  Reese shifted behind her and picked up her hand, sliding his fingers between hers. “You’re gettin’ tangled up, Mac. I can tell. I know fall is hard for you, but you haven’t shaken it off yet. Remember the promise you made me.”

  “I’m not thinking of running. I love you. I love being with you. I don’t want to go.”

  “Then what’s goin’ on?”

  “Will you be mad if I say I don’t know?”

  “I don’t like it, but I’m not mad. Can you talk it out with me?”

  She told him the only thing she knew to say, the metaphor she’d found for herself. “I feel like I can’t fill my lungs.”

  “You mean you feel sick?”

  “No, not physically. I feel fine. I just ... I guess I’m depressed. I don’t know why.”

  He was quiet for a bit; Gigi could nearly hear the wheels in his head turning.

  “Would talking to somebody help, you think?”

  “I’m talking to you.”

  “You can always talk to me. But that’s not what I mean, Mac.”

  “You mean, like a shrink? No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m not crazy.”

  “You don’t have to be crazy to need some help. A therapist is just a specialist like any other. You go to a foot doctor if your feet hurt, you go to a mind doctor if your mind hurts.”

  Gigi didn’t need a therapist. What would she say? What problem could a therapist possibly help her fix? Would it bring Daddy or Maw back? Would it keep Mom and Frannie from drinking? Make Tyson well? Help them all live better? Unlikely. And what problems did she have of her own? None of consequence, not anymore. There was no dark trauma lurking in her shadows. It was all right up front. So what would she talk to a therapist about?

  “My mom was depressed,” Reese said when she didn’t offer a response. “Her whole life, I think. Not because anything was wrong. She was just wired to be sad.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “I didn’t know it either for a long time. She covered it up well. I always sort of knew, in the background of my head, that she was different when she thought she was alone, but it didn’t register as something to worry about. But after my dad died, she started to fade. Real slow, but in a way I saw. She never really came back from her grief.”

  Gigi remembered his mom as a sweet, quiet woman. She’d been a widow the whole time Gigi knew her, but she hadn’t seemed depressed. She always had a smile ready, and she kept herself up really well.

  Gigi had been away when Reese’s mother died. She hadn’t been here for him.

  “I think maybe she killed herself,” he whispered.

  At that, Gigi sat upright and turned to face him. “What?”

  “I don’t know, and I’ve never said this out loud before. But she went to bed and died in her sleep. Doc Gerald said her heart stopped, and people around town say she died of a broken heart. Maybe my memory got twisted up in the shock of it all, and I’m wrong. But I remember getting her Valium refilled two days before, and that bottle wasn’t anywhere around after the doc and the ambulance left. It’s like he took it so she wouldn’t be known as a suicide. I don’t know. But I think maybe.”

  She tucked herself close and wrapped herself around him. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry you went through that alone.”

  He pulled her even closer and kissed her temple. “I didn’t. I had my friends. I got through it okay.”

  “I’m still sorry. I’ll always be sorry.”

  “You’re here now. That’s all I care about.” He leaned back to look in her eyes. “But Mac, I don’t want to miss seeing what you need again. I should’ve slowed things down before, let you mourn for your dad. I was tryin’ to take care of you, tryin’ to get you someplace safe, and I pushed too hard. If I had it to over again ...”

  He didn’t finish, and he didn’t need to. Was that why she’d felt so frantic and desperate? Had he been pushing her? Gigi let her mind go back to those days—getting the news about her dad. Being the one to identify his body, because everyone else was too scared to go. Reese had gone with her, and stood with her, held her when she saw it was her daddy, what was left of him.

  The wedding had already been scheduled; they’d been deep in the planning of it. He hadn’t pushed her; it had already been on the calendar, and she didn’t remember ever thinking to change it or cancel it—not until those last couple days, that last night, when she just couldn’t. When she had to go.

  But if he’d said they should postpone, if it had occurred to him, she would have been okay with that. Or maybe not—maybe that would have made her panic, too. She’d been clinging to the craggy edge of a tall cliff, every day; from the night the sheriff showed up on tribal land to collect her and bring her to the morgue, to the night she’d walked away from Reese at the airport, she’d been nothing but buzz and hum. If she’d had any coherent thought about anything, she couldn’t remember it. Just the need to run.

  “You didn’t do anything wrong, Reese. It was me.”

  “I wanted to make everything better. I wanted to take care of you.”

  She hugged him closer. “You’ve always taken care of me. You took care of me that night, too.”

  “I should’ve gone with you. I should’ve dropped everything and just gone with you.”

  That had never occurred to her before, either. Would she have wanted that, to have Reese run, too?

  She hadn’t been running from him. It had broken her heart to leave him behind, the only calm thing in her life, the eye of her storm. If he’d gone with her, if they’d eloped, or just traveled, away from all that was wrong in her life, in her world, how would things have changed?

  Who could say? But yes, she would have wanted that. To share it with him, the person she loved most in the world? Of course she would have wanted that.

  And maybe sharing those experiences would have made them more real in her mind, something indelible, memories that could be relived in the sharing. Maybe then all the things she’d seen and done would have had a true impact on her, would have helped her learn, made her grow, when now all that was left was illustrations in a stranger’s story.

  “I wish we’d thought of that then,” she said now, trying to give a light heart to the words. “You had the Jack, though. And your mom. You couldn’t have left.”

  “I don’t know. You’re probably right. But I’m still sorry.”

  Under the quietly festive glow of their first Christmas tree, while snow swirled against the big paned windows, Gigi curled into Reese’s embrace and held on.

  She took a deep breath and tried to fill her lungs.

  *****

  December 23rd was another big night at the Jack. Like Halloween, it wasn’t a planned event, but it had become a tradition long ago that everybody showed up there the night before family celebrations got started and shared a drink together. Lots of people popped in for a beer, just to make sure they got their face time in, and others parked their butts for the night. The saloon was festooned with festive decorations, and Reese changed out half the jukebox to Christmas carols, and everybody had a good time. In addition to the usual libations, just for that one night, he served mulled cider and eggnog specials, and a turkey and cranberry sauce sandwich on hard rolls.

  Though of course there were those who went too far, for the most part, people stayed pretty sober that night. They were in a family frame of mind and didn’t want to face the next day hung over. They were also in a friendly, neig
hborly frame of mind. Everyone got along on that one night of the year. Christmas spirit was high.

  Gigi didn’t mind helping out at the Jack on the 23rd. She didn’t even mind seeing her sister come in with a couple of friends from the Lunch Box. She brought their table some free food—but not free booze—and even sat for a while and chatted. Frannie and she had been getting along better since she’d moved in with Reese and had started paying some of their bills. She went right to the source and paid the bills rather than giving them the money, and that had been a fight, but their mom had come down on her side.

  When Frannie and her friends left, Gigi and Reese spent some off time sitting with his friends. They were still his friends, and not really hers, but they included her. Honor and Gabe, the only other women in the group, who hadn’t been around when she’d broken Reese’s heart, seemed to be honestly interested in her, and not in the ‘don’t you fuck with our friend again’ way.

  They’d just brought up her travels, and that felt like a weird thing to talk about with anybody in Jasper Ridge. Not even Reese asked about many specifics. But she kept a smile on her face and thought about how to keep the topic safe.

  “Yeah, Logan said you went all around the world,” Honor said, sipping on her vodka.

  “No, not all around. I saw a lot of things, but I had to work to keep money flowing, so I tended to move pretty slowly through most areas, staying a few weeks or months here and there.”

  “What’s your favorite place you saw?”

  “Yeah,’ Gabe cut in. “Honor’s traveled a lot. I bet you’ve been to some of the same places.”

  “I kinda don’t have one favorite place. Everything’s so different, there’s good and bad about it all, and it’s hard to compare. But when I saw the Eiffel Tower, I cried. I guess it’s a cliché, but it was the first faraway place I ever I wanted to see, when I was a little girl and saw a picture of it in a book. I always thought it was a fantasy, something I’d never do, so I was pretty emotional when I stood right underneath it and was really there.”

  “My dad is French!” Honor said, grinning broadly. “I spent a lot of summers there, and we still have family there. I want to take Logan to France someday, so he can meet the rest of the Babinots and see how beautiful it is. Did you get to Avignon?”

  “The lavender fields? Oh my God, they’re amazing.”

  “Aren’t they? And the town is just ...” Honor set her hand on her chest and lifted her eyes to the ceiling.

  Gigi grinned. Since she’d been back, her travels had felt like the most dangerous thing she could talk about. Nobody wanted to know where she’d gone when she’d abandoned her family and her fiancé. Her memories had taken on a haze of shame as they’d been fading. This, right now, was the first time in three months she’d openly spoken, and in detail, of the places she’d been, and she had an interested, accepting audience. In fact, the guys had stopped yammering about whatever sports thing they’d been yammering about and were listening, too. Reese was listening. And it was okay. Maybe she’d finally been forgiven.

  Maybe she was finally home.

  She took a deep breath and told them some more.

  *****

  That night, after she washed the saloon off with a hot shower, Gigi came out of the bathroom and found Reese in bed already, sitting against the headboard, entering totals on his laptop.

  “Your glasses make you look like a hot professor. All you need is a tweed jacket and a turtleneck.”

  He grinned and looked up. “You like?”

  “I do. But I’m glad you’re not wearing tweed. I like you naked.”

  Closing his MacBook and setting it aside, he held out his arms. She climbed onto the bed and straddled his thighs.

  “Mmm,” he purred as she let her weight rest on him. “I like you naked, too.”

  He clasped her hips and shifted under her, pressing the growing bulge beneath the covers between her legs. They both groaned, and she rocked a little, rubbing him right where she wanted to feel him.

  “It seemed like you had a good time tonight,” he said, tossing his glasses aside so he could lean in and kiss her shoulder.

  As he worked his way to her neck, she looped her arms around his head. “I did. It was nice to talk about the places I’ve been.”

  “You don’t do it much.” His lips moved along her jaw.

  “Usually, it feels weird even to think about it. It’s the worst thing I ever did.”

  He stopped and looked up at her. “Don’t say that.”

  “Reese. You of all people should know it’s true.”

  “No, baby. Almost a third of your life cannot be all bad. You saw the world. That’s something to be proud of. Yeah, the way you did it was hard for me and your family. But don’t erase all that time because it started off wrong.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  He grinned and cradled her face in his hands. “Just tell me you love me.”

  “That’s easy. I’ve loved you almost half my life. Loving you is the best thing I will ever do.”

  His smile faded, and he licked his lips. “God, I love you,” he whispered. He brought her head down and covered her mouth with his.

  As they kissed, their lips and tongues and teeth moving together in a deep, sensuous choreography they both knew by heart, Gigi eased her weight up and worked the covers from between them. She’d gone on the Pill earlier in the month, and they’d been fucking freestyle for a week, but she didn’t know if she’d ever get used to the difference, the shocking heat of his bare skin moving into her, the slower, more vivid slide of his entry, with her natural wet as their only lubricant, the way every nerve at her core sparked to wildfire as he filled her, reaching her as deep as she could take him, staying inside her all the way to his finish.

  And God, the way it took him over, too—the reverent groan that came from such a deep place inside him she could feel it reverberate through his whole body. Even his legs and arms shook with it. Always, he gave her everything when he loved her with his body, but when they joined like this, skin to skin, only them, he looked at her with such awed devotion that it nearly broke her heart.

  As she began to rock on his lap, picking up their perfect rhythm, Reese’s hand let go of a hip and slid up her side, slowly, sensuously, feeling each inch, each millimeter, of her he passed, until he reached a breast and filled his hand. Still his eyes were locked with hers, and it was like peering into a dawn sky and being rewarded with a glimpse of God. She held him with her whole self, coiling arms and legs around his strong body, gripping him as tightly as she could inside her.

  He let her keep their pace, but his hands never slowed. They filled themselves with every part of her they could reach, left long lashes of fiery pleasure everywhere they touched. His breath grew heavy, turning into needy growls, but still he let her move them, let her fuck him, and when her pleasure approached its apex, and she sped up to chase her own needs, he held her and watched her and nurtured his release with hers.

  She topped over, clinging to him, her body going perfectly rigid and her mind entirely blank, and he held her, until her spasms abated and she could pull away and see his face again. Flushed and damp with sweat, panting heavily, thick and hard inside her with his own unassuaged need, he smiled at her. “I love to watch you come.”

  Gigi smiled back and began to move again. “I love to watch you, too.”

  Groaning, Reese filled his hands with her breasts. When his eyes fixed on her mouth, she bent to him and gave him what they wanted. When he came, she held him close and swallowed his frantic groans.

  And after it was over, they stayed like that, twined together, sweaty and sated, until Reese lay back again and pulled Gigi down with him. They fell asleep in that knot, still connected, perfectly in sync.

  *****

  They spent Christmas Eve at the Twisted C Ranch, the Cahills’ place, where they threw a big party for friends and family and exchanged gifts. Gigi had fun. Once the Cahills had decided she was okay
again, the rest of the town would fall in line, so the next year was looking pretty promising, actually.

  There were still a lot of things wrong in her life, or more particularly, in her family’s life, but ever since that night under the new Christmas tree, when she’d tried to tell Reese what she was feeling, things had seemed better. She almost wondered if he hadn’t gone around and told people to be nicer to her, or something. Or maybe she just felt better because she’d said her worries out loud.

  Anyway, Christmas was turning out to be pretty nice. While she was away, the holiday generally hadn’t been a big deal. Sometimes, she’d had friends who’d invited her to spend the day, and other times, she’d been alone. Sometimes, she’d been somewhere that Christmas wasn’t really celebrated anyway. Always, she’d figured out something to do that kept her mind busy, because always, she’d been homesick at the holidays.

  They were going to spend Christmas Day on the reservation, with her family, and Reese had been enthusiastically helpful in making the holiday a good one this year. They’d gone into Boise twice for big shopping trips, and they had enough gifts to fill his truck. They’d be like Santa rolling up in a Dodge Ram.

  Despite what Frannie thought, Reese wasn’t actually rich. He was nowhere close to the wealth of the Cahills, for instance. But he was comfortable. The bar had been in his family for decades, so the building was long paid off. He’d taken a mortgage out on it a few years after owning it himself, to do some big repairs and improvements on the historic building, but that loan was paid off now, too. He did okay. Gigi thought he’d gotten more enjoyment out of doing up a nice Christmas for her family than even she had.

  First thing that morning, though, Gigi woke alone in bed. That was really unusual, and she was bummed. It was Christmas morning, and she’d hoped to start the day off with some mattress-based exercise. And then they’d share their gifts for each other. She was pretty stoked about hers—she’d found a cool vintage saloon sign online, from around the time his grandfather had bought the Jack.