by Joanna Sims
Savannah didn’t have an immediate answer for the doctor, so she remained silent.
“Your body has healed from the accident. You’ve been cleared to ride horses again, and the neurologist has released you from his care. You have made great strides with both physical and speech therapy, and your marriage is also moving forward. The one place you are refusing to heal is your psychological and emotional health. Don’t build your new life on a weak foundation, Savannah. Face what you need to face so you can truly move forward in your life and in your marriage.”
* * *
“Hey.” Bruce found Savannah in her garden at the end of the day. This little piece of ground had always been her salvation and her sanity. If she was having a bad day, if she was having a good day, it was always a day for getting her hands in the earth.
Savannah sat back on her haunches with a smile. “Hi!”
His wife had dirt on the tip of her nose and dirt on her chin. To him, it was adorable.
“Did you have a good day?”
“Uh-huh.” She nodded. “I had a good session with Dr. Kind.”
“Good.”
Savannah stood up, brushed her hands off on her jeans and walked over to give him a hug. “I’m glad to see you.”
He gave her a kiss. “I’m glad to see you.”
Together, arm in arm, they went into the house, followed by the dogs, to get ready for dinner.
“I’m going to jump into the shower.” Bruce shut the back door behind them. “Care to join me?”
Savannah laughed. “It’s tempting. But no. I want to wash the veggies and get dinner started. Rain check?”
Bruce smiled at her with a wink. He was happy that the intimacy in their relationship was back and better than ever. They knew each other’s bodies; they knew how to please each other. And that had been a big part of their connection as a couple—great lovemaking with your best friend. What could be better than that?
In the bedroom, Bruce picked up some of Savannah’s discarded clothes and put them in the hamper along with his work clothes.
“You gonna hang with me, Hound Dog?” He scratched the dog around the scruff and kissed him on the head before he jumped in the shower.
After his shower, Bruce got dressed and was looking forward to a night at home with his wife. He was on the way out of the bedroom when something on the top of Savannah’s dresser caught his eye. Something that made him stop in his tracks.
The rancher stared at the Matchbox fire truck—rusted in places, but still recognizable as the truck he had purchased what seemed like a lifetime ago. Bruce picked up the fire truck, memories, unwanted memories, flooding his mind. He clutched the truck in his hand, his eyes closed to push back the tears. It took him several minutes to gather his emotions; with the truck still in hand, Bruce went to find his wife in the kitchen.
“Could you watch this and stir it when it starts to bubble? I seriously need a shower before we sit down to eat. I stink.”
“Yeah. Sure.” Bruce nodded, dropping a kiss on her lips as she walked by.
“Hey...”
Savannah spun around. “Huh?”
“Where did you find this?” He opened the palm of his hand to show her the fire truck.
“Oh!” She seemed to have forgotten all about it. “It was buried in the garden. It must’ve been Cole’s, don’t you think?”
The fact that Savannah had assumed that the truck had once belonged to Liam’s son, his nephew Cole, told him everything he wanted to know. The truck hadn’t triggered any memories for her.
He gave her a noncommittal nod, then tucked the toy into his pocket, and wondered how he was going to get through the night pretending that nothing was wrong.
“Damn.” Bruce pinched the corners of his eyes to stop tears from forming. He would have thought that he had already cried out all of those tears years ago.
* * *
The night Bruce found the toy truck on Savannah’s dresser, he didn’t sleep. He tossed and turned, and only managed to drop off just before dawn. He awakened feeling hungover from lack of sleep and emotionally shell-shocked. Everything he had spent years suppressing, years avoiding, years ignoring, had suddenly bubbled up to the surface. Like Savannah, he was enjoying their marriage revival; he had his lover back—he had his best friend back. And the idea of rocking the boat by dredging up their past was something he didn’t mind putting off.
That morning, Bruce kissed Savannah goodbye and headed off to meet his crew of ranch hands; that morning, he left with that toy fire truck in the front pocket of his jeans.
“I’ve got some things I’ve got to take care of in town,” Bruce said to his brother Colton. “You good to keep the boys on track today?”
Colton was a die-hard Montana rancher like himself—Sugar Creek was his life.
“Not a problem.” Colton gave him a nod.
Bruce climbed into his truck, shut the door and rolled down the window. Almost as an afterthought, he called out to Colton, who was striding toward the day’s work.
“Hey, Colt.”
Colton turned back to him.
“Go easy on Savannah tomorrow at breakfast. The two of you used to be real tight.”
His younger brother’s smile dropped. “She did you real wrong, brother. I’m just waitin’ to see if she’s gonna do it again. That’s how I feel. That’s how it’s gonna be.”
“She’s still my wife,” Bruce reminded him, before he shifted into Drive and drove through the field to pick up one of the many gravel roads that crisscrossed the ranch.
Colton was a carbon copy of Jock—he was passionate, demanding, driven to a fault, and could be unforgiving. While the rest of the family had found a way to make peace with Savannah’s return to the ranch, Colt was a noticeable holdout.
Halfway down the main gravel road, Bruce turned onto a dirt road that was overgrown with tall grass. This was truly a road less traveled on the ranch. His heart started to pound hard in his chest the farther down the road he drove; he felt nauseous as the family cemetery came into view. In Montana, families could still bury their kin on their land, as long as that land was outside of city limits and not near a water source. Jock’s first wife, his mother, was the first person to be buried on Sugar Creek Ranch. Jock had already stipulated in his will that, when he was pushing up daisies, he wanted to be pushing up daisies on Sugar Creek.
Bruce shifted into Park and shut off the engine. He leaned his arms on the steering wheel, staring hard at the four headstones in the Brand plot. It took him some time to muster up the determination to get out of the truck and pick his way through the brush to where the unadorned headstones lined up in a row—one large headstone and three smaller headstones.
A wrought-iron fence surrounded the family plot; the stiff gate squeaked loudly as the rancher pushed it open. Slowly, reverently, Bruce walked over to the headstones and stared at the names and the dates carved into the granite markers. He silently acknowledged his mother, wishing now that he had come more often to clean the leaves and the debris off the headstones. The two little headstones next to his mother were his older twin brothers. His mother had nearly died when she miscarried twin boys before she carried him to term. But the headstone he was here to see was the third small marker.
Bruce knelt down next to the headstone—a headstone Savannah had picked out—and brushed dew-damp leaves and dirt off the granite marker. The name carved into the stone, along with the date of death, came into focus. Bruce dropped onto his knees; tears that refused to be ignored poured out of his eyes.
Samuel Jackson Brand.
Beloved Son.
A torrent of memories of the day that Savannah had watched him, along with his brothers, lower their two-year-old son into the ground, memories he had fought to forget, overwhelmed him.
“I’m so sorry, Sa
mmy,” Bruce said in a strangled voice.
This was why he had avoided this place—it was too hard. This was too hard.
Bruce took the toy truck out of his pocket and placed it on the top of the headstone. This had been one of his son’s favorite toys; he deserved to have it returned to him.
The rancher rubbed the tears out of his eyes, then stood up. How could he even begin to tell Savannah about her son? How could he even begin to tell her that he was responsible for his death?
He left the place that had haunted him—stalked him in his waking moments as well as his dreams. Bruce didn’t often feel like he needed advice; he usually knew his own mind. But when he needed counsel, there was one person he sought out, and that was his adoptive mother, Lilly.
He took his time driving back to the main house—he wanted to give himself time to get his emotions under control. When he reached the home he shared with Savannah, he noted that her truck was gone, which meant that she had already gone into town for physical therapy. He parked his truck at their cabin, let the dogs out of the house so they could join him on his walk to the main house.
Bruce found his mother, Lilly, in the sewing loft Jock had built for her. Lilly loved to watch the sun rise and set, so her loft was strategically placed to give her a year-round view of the sun rising in the east and setting in the west.
“Good morning, Mom.”
His mother, a Scottish-born woman, had died when he was young; when Lilly came into his life and accepted him so completely as her own, over time, it had been natural for him to refer to his stepmother simply as Mom.
“Son.” Lilly reached out her arms for a hug and gave him her usual kiss on the cheek.
Bruce pulled up a chair next to Lilly’s workstation, which was stacked high with little plastic boxes of different colors and types of beads.
“What are you working on now?” he asked.
Lilly had always been devoted to her Chippewa-Cree heritage—she was proud of her lineage and was active with her tribe in the preservation of the language, ceremonies and traditions.
“Bracelets.” His stepmom held up a bangle that she was hand beading with artistic patterns traditional to her tribe.
“You make beautiful things.”
She smiled gently at the compliment. Lilly was a lovely woman who had aged gracefully; her skin, the color of dark golden honey, was finely lined on her forehead and around her eyes, but still held a youthful glow that defied her age. The only giveaways to her real age were the increasingly present strands of silver, which she refused to cover, that stood out in stark contrast to her raven-black hair.
“You’re troubled,” his mother observed, reading him so easily with her velvety brown eyes.
Lilly was an astute woman, sensitive, kind and insightful. Bruce often marveled at the match between her and Jock.
“I am,” he admitted.
“I’m listening.” Lilly put the partially beaded bracelet down and turned her body toward him.
Much like the day he had unloaded on Dr. Kind unexpectedly, Bruce unloaded on his mother. He didn’t know how to move forward with Savannah without reopening a scabbed-over wound; he couldn’t see a way forward in his marriage unless he went back first.
“Isn’t it time for you to forgive yourself?” his mother asked him quietly, her eyes full of empathy.
Bruce swallowed hard to keep fresh tears at bay. “I don’t even know where to begin.”
And if he couldn’t forgive himself, how could he expect Savannah to forgive him? She hadn’t been able to forgive him the first time around—what would be different now?
“Yes, you do,” she disagreed. “You have always known.”
These words were followed by a moment of silence. Then, his mother said, “What was once broken has healed back stronger for the breaking.”
His mother often spoke in riddles, and he wished she could just talk in a straight line sometimes.
“You are stronger now as a couple. I see you together. This time will be different.” She elaborated. “Trust what you feel. Trust that you can weather this storm—together this time—instead of letting it rip you apart.
“It’s time, son.” Lilly put both of her hands over his. “It’s time to tell Savannah what her mind has forgotten.”
* * *
After Sunday breakfast at the main house with the family, Savannah couldn’t wait to go to the barn and saddle up. Now that she was cleared to ride again, trail riding up to one of the mountain peaks that abutted Sugar Creek was top on her list for their Sunday date. Even Colton’s surly mood toward her when she bumped into him in the tack room didn’t dampen her happiness.
They saddled two of the ranch’s quarter horses and set out together. Up the narrow trail, she took the lead, loving the scent of the wildflowers growing unbidden along the path, and reveling in the feel of the light breeze cooling her face. This was what she had been missing so much; she was so grateful to spend this beautiful day, on horseback, with her husband.
“There’s a good spot to dismount up ahead,” she called over her shoulder to Bruce.
They were going to have to lead the horses on foot at the narrowest part of the trail just before they reached the peak. At a safe area for her and her horse, Savannah swung her leg over the animal’s back and dropped down to the ground. She slipped the reins over her mount’s head and gave the horse an affectionate pat on the neck while she waited for Bruce to follow suit.
“We couldn’t have a better day for this.” Her husband joined her.
She beamed up at him. “I know. It’s the most beautiful day we’ve had all summer.”
Bruce looked at her with so much love, so much appreciation, that it warmed her on the inside of her body just as the sun was warming the outside.
“It makes me happy to see you so happy,” he said before he leaned down to kiss her lips.
“Being here with you. That makes me happy.”
They led the horses single file along the narrow trail; on either side of the path, dangerous, rocky slopes made Savannah cautious with every step.
“I think this is as far as the horses should go.” Bruce had taken the lead on this leg of the journey.
They tied the horses with breakaway knots and then carefully climbed their way to the peak of the mountain. There was a favorite spot—their spot—where they would sit together and take in the view spread out before them. On a clear day, they could see for miles.
At the top, a large boulder jutted out from the side of the mountain. This was the target. Savannah loved to sit on that boulder and dangle her legs over the edge. It was like a natural diving board thousands of feet in the air.
“Careful.” Bruce held on to her hand as she sat down.
Her husband sat next to her, thigh to thigh, arms intertwined.
“Just look at this, Bruce.” Savannah sighed. “It’s heaven on earth.”
“Yes, it is.”
Savannah rested her head on her husband’s shoulder, feeling happier in this moment than she could remember.
“I love you.” She looked at his strong, hawkish profile.
Bruce leaned over and kissed her lightly on the lips. “I love you more.”
Chapter Nine
Their Sunday ended with a quiet dinner that they prepared together, and a movie at home. They didn’t see the end of the movie—instead, they let the dogs take over the couch while they went into the bedroom to make love. Sometimes, their lovemaking was hot and aggressive, and other times, Bruce liked to love her slowly, sensually. Either way, it was always passionate.
Naked in the moonlight, Savannah waited for her husband to join her. An unclothed Bruce Brand was a thing of beauty—so muscular and masculine.
“I wish I could take your picture right now.” Bruce stopped at the
edge of the bed. “You look so sexy.”
She smiled at him. “I’m glad you think so.”
Bruce started at her feet, dropping butterfly kisses on her ankles, her calves, the inside of her thighs. Savannah moaned with pleasure when he began to kiss that most sensitive spot between her thighs. She threaded her fingers into his hair, and her head dropped back onto the pillow. It didn’t take long for her body to want more—to be closer to Bruce, to feel his naked skin against hers, to feel his body fill hers so completely, so perfectly.
With a frustrated little noise in the back of her throat, Savannah let her husband know that she was ready for him. Always responsive to her needs, Bruce dropped a last kiss on her mound before he covered her body with his. She gasped as he slipped inside her, joining their bodies together; he pushed himself up, locking his elbows so he could watch her as he loved her. Savannah held on to his arms, loving the feel of the hard muscles beneath her fingertips, just as she loved the feel of his rock-hard erection moving inside of her.
Every move Bruce made was slow and deliberate—he wanted to have the control, and she was happy to let him. Savannah gasped again, lifted her knees so he could go deeper, take longer strokes as her fingernails dug into his arm.
“Open your eyes,” he said in a lover’s tender voice.
Savannah opened her eyes for a split second, before she had to close them again as an orgasm forced her to arch her back and lift her hips to take him ever deeper still inside of her.
As she shuddered beneath him, her eyes still closed, her lips parted, Bruce kissed her breasts, her neck, before he wrapped his arms around her and rolled them both to their sides. Her legs were enfolded around his body; she opened her eyes to find him staring at her face.
“How was that?” he asked with a pleased smile.
“Incredible.” She took his face in her hands and kissed his lips. “Absolutely incredible.”