by Cara McKenna
“Ready?” Miah asked, tugging the pages free.
“Yeah, let’s get the hell out of here before they decide to suck any more blood out of me.”
The doors parted for them and Miah peered into the lot, finding his truck. He unlocked it with the key fob and helped his dad into the passenger seat. As Miah started the engine he said, “Bet you Mom’s got something good warming in the oven.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me. You talk to her?”
Miah turned them onto the road. “Yeah. Called her after we talked to the doc, told her not to worry and to go to bed.”
“I told her not to worry about my measly little fever, but that sure didn’t stop her . . . I’d figured you must’ve been talking to Raina,” his dad added. “That was some shit-eating grin I saw on your face before you hung up.”
Miah drummed his fingers on the wheel, nodded grudgingly. “I may have called her, too, now that you mention it.”
“She have anything to do with you demanding tomorrow afternoon off?”
“She might.” He merged them onto I-80. “And you’re as bad as Mom.”
“Impossible. Besides, she’s the one who told me to grill you about it on the drive.”
“Well, you tell her it’s all going fine. Slow and steady.”
Slow and steady, and heading toward what, exactly? Miah couldn’t say, but there was one thing he knew for certain. Raina Harper wouldn’t tell a man she loved him unless she thought this was something real. Something worth appearing vulnerable over. Exactly what kind of a coup that was, he couldn’t say yet. But it was something—really something. He’d half expected her to run away or break up with him when he’d shown up that morning. He bet she had no clue how hard his heart had been pounding as he’d stood there in her back hall. So hard he’d felt faint.
And man, had the gamble paid off.
“Your mother’s been waiting for you to bring Raina to dinner,” his dad said.
“You mean she told you to tell me to invite her.”
He laughed. “Just about.”
“I would,” Miah said, “except she works every damn night.” And this coming evening he wanted her all to himself. Just the two of them, out in the middle of nowhere, discovering how different everything might feel now, with those words exchanged.
“I told her that’s why,” his dad said. “But she’s starting to think Raina doesn’t like us.”
“That’s ridiculous. She’s just busy. I’ll invite her to the end-of-summer cookout, though. I’m sure she could make it for the first couple hours. Would that shut Mom up?”
“Likely.”
“Good. I’ll ask her.” If he remembered, that was. If they escaped the spell of the sex long enough for him to remember.
Man, tomorrow afternoon couldn’t come soon enough.
Chapter Eleven
“This is just about the most goddamn perfect day I can imagine,” Miah declared, laying back with his hands under his head. “Nice long ride, just for the fun of it, good food, cold beer . . .” Impending sex. What else could a person want?
They were sprawled on a couple of ancient quilts, way out on the range. The horses were tied up in the shade of an old tree beside a bend in Dead Creek, the river’s flow little more than a crystal ribbon this deep into summer. It was nearly six and the sun was dipping, the blazing temps finally ebbing, promising relief. Miah’s mom had gotten wind of his plans for the evening and packed them a picnic supper to be reckoned with. They’d eaten the sandwiches already and nursed a beer apiece, saving dessert for later.
“Whole night with you all to myself,” Miah said, “and we’re even out of cell range.”
“Satellite phone?”
“Left it behind.”
“Smart boy.”
He got to his feet. “I better build us a fire before the chill really kicks in.”
“Roll your sleeves up while you’re at it. Lemme see those forearms.”
“Control yourself, woman. We’ve got all night, remember?” Miah headed to the horses to give them some dinner, check their tack, and drape them in blankets. He returned with a hand axe, plus his rifle hung about his back on its strap.
“This just gets butcher and butcher,” Raina teased, assuming a lounging posture. Miah shot her a look and pushed his sleeves up pointedly, then set the rifle near the blankets.
“Do I even want to know what that’s for?”
“Contingencies. Don’t worry your pretty head.”
He set to work dicing up the remains of a dead tree for kindling. The brittle, gnarled old wood took the match like a dream, and he chopped a pile of branches big enough to last them until dawn.
He rinsed his hands with a canteen and his handkerchief then settled beside her on the blankets. “I know you think you’re too modern and enlightened for the old caveman treatment, but you have to admit, there’s nothing wrong with a man who can build his woman a fire.”
She smirked, watching the now lapping flames. “I suppose not. Though don’t pretend you’re not without your own little feminist streak.”
“How’s that?”
Her smile deepened. “I do always seem to come first, for one.”
“Well now, that’s just good manners.”
“The way you give head deserves some kind of award from the National Organization for Women.”
He laughed aloud, blushing on the inside, warmed all the way through. He took in her face, her skin, the shape of her breasts in her tank top, her bare arms. “Was that a request?”
“I’d never say no.”
He stripped her slowly, laid her down, gave her his mouth like this was their last day on earth together. She begged for his fingers and he gave those, too, spoiled her until his hair was fisted in her grip, his senses full up with her, his name ringing in the cooling air all around them.
When her body stilled and she let him go, he took his turn. Loved her hard and deep and fast, for as long as he could hold on, told her he loved her as the pleasure dragged him under, flipped him inside-out. Afterward he lay beside her and pulled a blanket over their naked bodies. The world became lazy kisses, the scent of smoke and the pop of splitting wood.
In time they dressed and opened fresh beers and sat huddled together, attention on the flames. This ritual was already growing so familiar. So essential. They drank in easy silence, and he hoped that somehow this day could go on for a year.
He spoke after half an hour or more, his voice sounding at once huge and miniscule way out here. “There’s still dessert, if you’re hungry. Some kind of cobbler thing.”
“I have something I need to say to you.” Her gaze was on her hands, her tone far-off, like she’d been thinking intensely all the time Miah had been spacing out to the fire.
“Shoot.”
“It’s not something I expect you’ll want to hear right now. It’s not polite or pleasant or romantic, but it’s important.”
Miah waited until she met his eyes before he replied. “All right.”
“If something happened, and I wound up getting pregnant . . . What would you want us to do about it?”
For a long moment he could only stare, those words leaving him cold, and eerie-still, caught between two breaths. Disembodied. “What would I want to do?”
“Wait, don’t even answer that . . . I mean, it wouldn’t matter, anyway. It’d be my choice.”
He blinked, feeling struck, but he was smart enough not to contradict her.
“Look,” she said, sounding flustered, “you’re the absolute best man I’ve ever been with, but that’s not enough to change who I am, and what I want for myself.”
He could only laugh, the sound limp and incredulous. Who the fuck even brought something like this up? And on a night like this?
Someone who knows me too well not to. But the logic didn’t make it hurt any less. “You wanna go on and slap me in the face for real?” he asked. “Because that sure is what this is feeling like.” He kept his tone teasing and light, but the
bitterness still shone through.
Her shoulders dropped, posture and face falling at once. “I know this isn’t what you planned for tonight to be about, but we’re at that point where this stuff needs to be said.”
This stuff? “It sounds like I wouldn’t get much say.”
“No, you wouldn’t.”
He felt his face burn at that, but when it came down to it, what could he really do? The entire topic felt like a glaring light shined on the massive fault line running through the center of this affair.
“What’s brought all this on?”
“Everything just feels so goddamn good, I was afraid of losing perspective, I guess.”
“How do you mean?”
“Yesterday morning changed things, and I wanted to put everything out on the table. To remind you how I am. And what I want.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You sound an awful lot like Vince.” When he’d told his friend he thought he might be falling in love with Raina, Vince had taken a big old crap all over the moment and asked him if he really saw a future there.
Fuck yes, he did. He and Raina might be on different pages on some pretty major fronts, but loved changed shit. Love rearranged priorities, even possibilities. He’d blown the warning off when it had come from Vince, but he couldn’t ignore the ones Raina was voicing.
“What’re you thinking?” he asked her.
“I just know that what I want isn’t compatible with what you want, ultimately—what you deserve, for that matter. And sooner or later we’re going to have to face that. But I love being with you.” She leaned into him, her hair brushing his shoulder. “I’m in this, precisely as deep as we’ve gotten, for as long as you want to continue it. Just know that I’m never going to give you a family.”
And what was he meant to do with that? The question must have been written across his face as she turned to touch his forearm. A consolation, clearly.
Miah sighed. “I dunno what to say, except maybe thanks. For being straight about it. Though I won’t pretend it’s putting me in the mood.”
“I know it’s not romantic, but I wouldn’t have been able to relax and enjoy all this if I didn’t get that out of the way. And I can’t imagine it’s news, not when we’ve been friends for almost twenty years.”
“No, maybe not. The way things’ve been between us, maybe I have gotten stars in my eyes a little.”
“Me too, and I think that’s okay. I can’t remember ever wanting someone the way I want you. It makes it scary-easy to ignore shit like this.”
He nodded. “So what do we do about it? About us?”
“For now? For as long as what I can offer you feels like enough . . . ? I hope we can carry on like we have been. But I know I’m not going to be it for you. What you want is too much for me to give. So I guess it’s up to you. How much time is too much to waste just having fun before you need to start looking for something real?”
“This is real to me,” he said. “And not a second of it’s been a waste.”
“No, not to me, either.”
“But?” He could sense some caveat lurking just behind her lips.
“But no matter how far we take this, no matter how long we stick it out for, we’re never going to reach the destination I know you want to get to. And I don’t know if dragging things out will only make it harder in the end, or—”
“Dragging things out?” He laughed, shocked. “Is that what this feels like to you? Some monumental trial?”
She huffed a breath, shook her head. “Of course not.”
“You think I’m just wasting my time with you, then? If it’s not leading anyplace beyond where we already are with each other?”
“That’s for you to decide. I’ll understand if you think so.”
“How gracious of you.”
She glared at that, but spoke softly. “As for me, I don’t think it’s a waste at all. But I’m also getting exactly what I want—your body, and your attention, and this connection we have. I’m not the one who might have to step away from it, thinking, fuck, now I’m two years older or whatever, and no closer to starting the family I want.”
“Guess you’re just looking out for me,” Miah said, voice edgier than he’d like it to sound.
“I’m trying to. Kinda making shit salad out of the effort, but that was my intention, anyhow. Things have gotten intense between us—more intense than I’d ever have expected they would. It felt like a reality check might be smart.”
“I need to think a minute.” To think, and to cool himself off before he said something he’d regret.
Raina nodded, resting her arms on her knees and staring back toward town, where the sun was flirting with the tip of the tallest mountain.
How had this gone so wrong so quick?
Had it gone wrong, though? He couldn’t even say that what she’d told him came as a surprise, not any of it. And maybe he had needed reminding. He’d gotten caught up in the exhilaration of it all, how perfect everything was, everything except the fact that it couldn’t last. She was giving him now, but not forever—not on the terms he wanted it.
And is this enough? If this continued through the fall, through next year, into their forties, fifties, sixties, beyond? No kids, but a woman who lit him up like Raina did, who knew him so well, who excited him, mind and body and soul?
This felt too right not to work. They could make it work, if one of them could see their way to a compromise. The foundation was too perfect not to try.
A lot to ask, though, he realized. A lot to ask on both sides.
For Raina, compromise would mean changing her mind about motherhood—hell of a thing to flip-flop on, and she seemed adamant. For Miah, it meant giving up his hopes of starting a family . . . and by proxy, his parents’ hopes. The Church name would die with him—their branch of it, anyway, and although that wasn’t compelling enough a reason to have children when one didn’t want them, Miah did want them, and his name meant something to him. “Church” was the first C in Three C, and his family had a lot of history in this county and this state. It did matter to him. As for Raina, if she ever might be convinced to marry him . . . Well, whatever it said about Miah—whether it made him a romantic or a Neanderthal—he wanted his wife to share that name.
“And you really think you’d never change your mind?” he asked, hating the plea he heard in his own voice. “About marriage? Or motherhood?”
“Marriage? I’m not sure. But motherhood, no. I don’t want that for myself, and I can say with certainty I never will.”
“Do you think you’d be bad at it?”
“How the heck would I even know? All I know is that my own mom stuck around for two whole days before she’d had enough, and she’s never bothered to find me since. And I live in the same fucking place where she dumped me, so the search really wouldn’t have been such a hardship.”
Miah held his breath. She was talking fast, way faster than usual, and her cheeks were flushed. He’d seen her angry before, but this was different. Charged, and rattled. Not like Raina at all.
“I didn’t mean to—”
“You didn’t,” she cut in, and her next words were slower, measured. “But all my shit with my mom aside, my answer’s still no. I don’t want kids. I never have, and I won’t change my mind.”
“Right.”
So where did that leave them? She wasn’t going to have her mind changed, and even if she did somehow, it meant she’d spend her life miserable and resentful, probably. Staying with her, forsaking his own hopes, Miah would likely wind up much the same—regretful, if not resentful. And he’d give that up for what? For this incendiary sexual connection? For friendship fused with thousand-degree chemistry; but was that enough?
He felt frustrated and mixed up, lost, and he let her hear it in his sigh.
“I don’t get how you can talk about family the way you do sometimes. Like motherhood is some disease or something. Some people hope their whole lives to start families, have kids.”
&
nbsp; “That’s great for them, but it’s not for me.”
“How do you even know?”
“Because I know myself. Maybe I don’t know exactly what I want, but I know what I don’t want. And I don’t know how to say it so you’ll just believe me.”
“I only want to be sure that you’re sure.” I want to know if there’s any chance, any chance whatsoever.
“You know, if I was some bachelor declaring that I didn’t ever want kids, this wouldn’t even be open to anybody’s cross-examination. I bet nobody has ever once asked Vince when he plans on settling down and making babies.”
Miah opened his mouth, closed it. No point getting into arguments about feminism with Raina—he didn’t stand a chance.
They fell silent for two minutes or more, tempers cooling in the brisk evening breeze, collective breath slowing.
“I know you’re just trying to be straight with me,” Miah said at length.
“Good. I hope you also know that I don’t want this to end. The last couple months have been the happiest I’ve felt in a really long time. Like, years.”
He nodded. “Same.” And he’d been happy enough before. Fulfilled, just not . . . electrified. Charged up and awake, excited about something other than the ranch. And yeah, excited about what the future might bring. He heaved a weary breath. Like it or not, she was right. He needed to hear what she’d said. Really hear it. Really accept it.
“Just because this won’t last forever,” she said, “doesn’t have to mean it’s not worth our time.”
“No, of course not.”
“Can we please set it aside for now, and try to get back to what we’re good at? What we came out here to be?”
Lovers, she meant. And it was true, they were good at that—damn good. Better than they seemed to be at being boyfriend and girlfriend, to be sure. And that was when Miah had started losing track of his head, right when he’d begun thinking of her as his girlfriend.
Girlfriend was a step, a rung on a progressive ladder. Crush, date, lover, girlfriend, fiancée, wife, mother, widow. Between lover and girlfriend, a woman changed in a man’s eyes. Four rungs up, feet well off the ground, a trajectory established. Expectations intruded. He had to get back to thinking of her as his lover, that much was obvious. And no doubt she preferred lingering down there, escape no more drastic than a simple hop back to the dirt.