Texas on My Mind

by Delores Fossen

  Parts of their dinner, too.

  It took him a few seconds to get back to earth, and when he did, he licked the key lime from her hand.

  “Hungry?” she asked when she finally caught her breath.

  “Yeah, but not for that yet.” Riley scooped her up and headed for the bedroom.

  * * *

  “HOW’S YOUR SHOULDER?” Claire asked. She leaned in to have a look for herself.

  Riley wasn’t exactly comfortable having her examine the scar. It was still raw and ugly. Maybe it always would be. But thankfully Claire didn’t have the same horrified expression as she had the first time she’d seen it.

  “It’s fine.” No lie this time. The muscles still twinged and pulled when he moved it, but sex hadn’t aggravated it, and even if it had, Riley doubted he would have noticed.

  He wasn’t noticing now, either.

  He was admiring the view. Riley was sure he’d never had dinner in bed and certainly not while he was naked. While Claire was naked, too. And while they were still wearing some of that food.

  “I could heat up the roast,” Claire offered, kissing him.

  Riley shook his head. That would only require her to get up again, and while he’d have a good show of her coming and going, it really wasn’t necessary. The food was just to stave off starvation.

  In addition to the key lime pie that Claire had gotten on her hands, Riley had somehow managed to get potatoes on him. That was probably why sex should never happen on the dinner table, but at the time it’d seemed like his only option. He’d had to have Claire right then, right there. And he had managed to do just that. However, with the heat temporarily sated and his stomach getting there, as well, he had to wonder.

  What now?

  She smiled at him around a forkful of key lime. A smile that seemed genuine, maybe even a little giddy, but he knew Claire well enough to know that there could be nerves behind it, too.

  Yeah, Claire had offered him no-strings-attached sex, but he wondered if she’d even thought it through. He certainly hadn’t, but Riley was certain he’d be doing a lot of thinking about it in the days to come.

  There was a crashing sound, and Claire practically tossed the rest of her pie on the nightstand, flung back the covers and was out of the bed before Riley could get up. He seriously doubted it was a burglar. And it wasn’t.

  It was the kitten.

  It had somehow managed to topple a basket filled with Ethan’s toy cars. Riley certainly hadn’t forgotten about the gift from his brother. A gift he’d discuss with Lucky first chance he got. Lucky had something up his sleeve.

  Claire scooped up the kitten, redirected it to its own toys. No doubt gifts from Lucky, too, and she dumped some of the kitten food into the bowl. While she was doing that, Riley set up the litter box. All while they were stark naked. She noticed him naked, too. He noticed her naked. And all that noticing began to feel a little like foreplay. He wasn’t sure he was up for another round so soon.

  Yes, he was.

  He was always ready for Claire even if his shoulder disagreed.

  But Claire no longer seemed ready. That’s because her attention landed on that damn journal again.

  Riley huffed. “I wish you’d let me burn that thing for you.”

  She made a sound that could have meant anything, and she kept looking at it. Not as if it were a coiled rattler ready to strike but as if it were a new pie that she wasn’t sure she’d like or even wanted to try.

  “I think I should read it,” she said.

  “Shit. Sugar,” he automatically corrected even though Ethan wasn’t around. “Why would you want to do that?”

  Claire looked at him, and he knew why. Because it was there. It was from her sorry excuse for a mother, and Claire needed to know what the woman had written.

  Part of Riley got that. If he were in her shoes—or in this case, her naked body—he would want to read it, too. But he also wanted to protect Claire from the woman’s venom.

  “Tomorrow,” she said. “I can read it when Ethan’s napping.”

  “No way. If you’re going to read it, do it while I’m here.” Riley didn’t have to think about that.

  She shook her head. “It’s not fair to you. You came over for a night of dinner and sex. You don’t need to have a course of old baggage to go with all that.”

  Actually, he’d come over just for dinner. Hadn’t had a clue about the sex course. And while old baggage wouldn’t be nearly as tasty a dessert as Claire or the key lime pie, if those long-ago written words caused her to fall apart, and they almost certainly would, Riley wanted to be there to pick up the pieces.

  And despite the fact there would be pieces, Riley didn’t stop her when she went to the mantel and picked up the journal.

  * * *

  FOR SOME STUPID reason it didn’t feel right reading the journal while she was naked. Maybe because she already felt exposed just by holding it in her hands. Claire grabbed a T-shirt and put it on despite Riley grumbling something about losing a great view. That caused her to smile.

  Which was probably why he’d said it.

  He put on his shirt and boxers, and after losing that view, Claire was rethinking her decision. This wouldn’t just put a damper on the evening; it could ruin it. But the wounds inside her seemed to keep festering with each passing minute that the journal stayed around. She needed to think of it as a bandage that should be ripped off so the old wounds could finally heal.

  Not that she expected to find anything healing on those pages.

  No, she had no hopes of that whatsoever. But if she dealt with them all at once, the pain wouldn’t be piecemeal.

  “You want me to read it first?” Riley offered.

  It was such a sweet gesture that Claire paused to kiss him. Of course, she hadn’t needed a sweet gesture as an excuse. She planned to kiss him a lot throughout the night in case this was the last chance she got to do that. For now, they were still basking in the aftermath of the sex glow, but in the morning light, Riley might decide to turn down any future sessions of casual sex.

  But she’d deal with that later, too.

  Claire took the journal back to bed. Riley joined her, of course, not sitting so close that he was reading over her shoulder but close enough to be there if she needed him. Then, he handed her the fork that he’d used to eat the roast beef.

  “I want you to use it to stab the page whenever you read something hurtful,” he instructed. “That probably means multiple stabs on every page.”

  She smiled, took the fork and yes, kissed him again. “Do you remember ever seeing her?”

  He shook his head. “But I remember a picture of her. Your grandmother used to have it on the mantel.”

  Claire remembered that picture, as well, but wasn’t sure where it was. Maybe with the mystery letter that she hadn’t been able to find.

  “Deep breath,” Riley coached. “And get the fork ready.”

  She did. Claire leaned her back against the headboard and flipped past the first couple of pages that she’d already read. Still, she took a moment to stab them. It felt surprisingly good even if it did leave a little au jus on the old pages.

  When she got to an unread page, the first thing that jumped out at her was the profanity. She had so few memories of her mom, but she hadn’t remembered her using profanity every other word. Claire could almost feel the anger jumping off the page.

  So she stabbed it.

  “How bad?” Riley asked.

  Claire shrugged. “More bitching about being pregnant and Rocky leaving her. I don’t think she ever figured out she was better off without a man who ran out on her.”

  Even though Riley hadn’t moved, she thought maybe he went still. No doubt because he thought Ethan’s father had done the same to her. He hadn’t. But she di
dn’t want to get into that, not with the emotional powder keg in her hands.

  The next pages were filled with comments about doctor’s appointments, gaining weight, swollen ankles and the boring homework she’d been given by the school so she could graduate. Claire wasn’t sure if her mother had ostracized herself or if the school had had a policy back then of not allowing pregnant students to attend.

  “Remember, you can stop at any time,” Riley reminded her.

  She nodded, thanked him for his concern and kept turning the pages. Thankfully, after a while the profanity-laced entries became numbing, and it occurred to Claire that she had done plenty of whining in her own diary. But she’d had the good sense to destroy it before she headed off for college so that no one would ever see it.

  The next date was one she instantly recognized because it was Claire’s birthday. One word took up half the first page.

  Hell.

  That was just the beginning of her mother’s profanity. Since Claire had gone through childbirth, as well, she knew it was painful. However, so were the words her mother had put in bold block letters:

  I thought that fucking kid would never come out. My poor body won’t ever be the same. Neither will my fucking life.

  Claire stabbed the page twice with a fork and nearly bolted from the room. She needed to hold Ethan. She needed to tell him that she loved him.

  She needed to breathe.

  But Riley caught on to her and pulled her back into his arms. It was the right thing to do. Claire didn’t bolt but stayed put in his arms. “Why couldn’t I find the letter instead of this?” she mumbled.

  Did Riley go still again? No. He was probably just trying not to remind her that she’d been wrong to read this.

  “My question is why didn’t your grandmother just throw away the journal?” he asked.

  “I know the answer to that one. Gran didn’t throw away much of anything. The proof is in all the boxes and drawers. There were over a hundred twisty ties from bread bags. It was as if she was prepping for doomsday and a twisty-tie shortage.”

  Riley chuckled, kissed her head again. “Now can you throw the journal away? With those fork marks on it, the next page would be hard to read anyway.”

  True. She’d stabbed it so hard, the tines had gone straight through the paper. Still... “There isn’t much more of it.”

  He grunted, and it had a hint of disapproval to it, but Claire turned the page. The date was the day after she was born.

  Mom put Claire Marie on the kid’s birth certificate. The nurses kept bugging me about a name so I said Clover Lane, but Mom said she was going to put Claire Marie, and I told her I didn’t give a shit, that she could name the kid whatever she wanted. The nurses are giving me shit about not holding the kid, too. I told them they’re getting paid to hold her, I’m not.

  That hurt, too, so she stabbed it. Clover Lane? That sounded like a 1960s rock band or a stripper. “I spent months picking out Ethan’s name. Months decorating his nursery. I held Ethan the moment he was born and didn’t want to let go of him. She didn’t do any of those things.”

  “But your grandmother did,” Riley pointed out.

  She nodded. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t felt loved. She had. However, Claire could never understand why her mother had felt this way, especially after seeing or holding her child. Of course, she hadn’t held Claire, so maybe that was at the core of this latest page filled with bile.

  “Gran didn’t talk much about it, but my mom left Spring Hill with me when I was four and a half. But there aren’t enough pages left in the journal for her to get into that.”

  “You don’t have any memories of those six months or so you were away from here?” he asked.

  “Some. I remember a man, but I don’t know his name. I guess he was her boyfriend because they slept in the same bed. They yelled a lot.” Thankfully, there were only bits and pieces of that, like the car accident that’d taken Riley’s parents.

  “Did either of them ever hurt you?” A muscle flickered in his jaw.

  “No. No physical abuse.” But her mother had indeed hurt her.

  He paused a long time. “You think it’ll help if you know the reason your mother left town with you and then came back?”

  She nodded. “I think it would.”

  Another long pause, and Claire could practically see the debate he was having with himself. “Lucky remembers Della and Stella talking about it. Your mother met some man in San Antonio, took you and ran off with him. Take this with a grain of salt, but they say he was wanted by the law.”

  Well, that would explain why her mother had left. Of course, it was just as likely that six months of motherhood had been more than enough. So, her mother had come running back to Spring Hill in order to dump Claire and take off again.

  She reached to turn the page, the last one, she realized, but Riley put his hand over hers. “Let me read it to you.”

  Claire was instantly suspicious. “I don’t want you to sugarcoat it. After the other pages, I can take one more.” She hoped.

  “No sugarcoating.”

  She believed him, but it still took Claire a couple of long moments to let go. Riley took it. And the fork.

  “Last page,” he verified. “It was two days after you were born.” He took a deep breath. “‘Finally got out of that hellhole hospital and am home. It sucks but not as much as the hospital. Those nurse bitches! They made me hold the kid before I could leave. Blackmail! So, I held her—Claire—not a bad name, I guess. It suits her.’”

  He stopped, looked at her. “Are you okay?”

  Dang it. There were tears in her eyes and all because her mother called her by her name. Such a simple thing. But she held on to the half compliment as if it were a lifeline.

  “I’m fine,” Claire insisted. “Keep going.”

  Riley read ahead, silently, and she saw some sort of emotion in his eyes. What exactly, she wasn’t sure, but he didn’t look ready to stab the page. Instead, he handed it to her.

  “You should finish this,” he said.

  All right, so it must not be too bad for him to offer that. Still, her heart was racing. Her mind, too. And while Claire wanted to finish it and put it behind her once and for all, finishing it also meant they’d come to the last link she had with her mother. After learning that her mother had considered ending the pregnancy and then wishing her dead, she only hoped there wasn’t anything else so painful.

  Claire did take the journal, but she also took the fork back, just in case. Not much was left at all, just a few sentences, and before she read them, she had a horrible thought. This was literally the last page in this particular journal, but what if there were others? That was a stomach-churning thought.

  “Deep breath,” Riley reminded her.

  She took two of them and started reading.

  Claire doesn’t look like Rocky. She looks like Mom and me. That’s good. Looking at her won’t remind me of him. I don’t want to think about him ever again. I just want to get on with my life. That means getting on with my life with Claire. God, she’ll never know how scared I am. I’m so going to screw this up.

  There it was. The end. Ironic, since it had been the beginning. And her mother hadn’t sounded bitter but rather scared. Claire had felt the same way about Ethan. She’d desperately wanted and loved him, but she’d been terrified, too. It was strange to know her mother had felt the same way.

  Riley slipped his arm around her, pulled her close. “What do you want to do with the journal now?” he asked.

  That required more deep breaths. Ninety-nine percent of the journal was filled with anger and profanity—most of it directed at Claire and Rocky. There was no way Claire wanted to go back through that again.

  But she tore out the last page.

  This one she’d keep.

&
nbsp; She got up and took the rest of it to the fireplace. It was a good night to put some things in her past to rest.

  * * *

  RILEY COULD SMELL the fire in his dream. But it wasn’t an ordinary fire. It was from the explosion. From the IED. He’d heard IEDs go off before. Never this close, though.

  Never.

  Get the hell out now!

  He had to get out of there. Sixty-forty. That had been the kid’s odds. Good odds. But that was before the last IED. Before Riley had felt the blood and the pain. Before the extraction had become a kid in his arms.

  The kid moaned. Still alive. Riley held him even tighter, hoping the pressure would stop the bleeding—both his and the kid’s. Hoping he’d get back in time to the Pave Hawk. Hell, hoping he’d find the damn thing and that it hadn’t been blown to bits.

  The fire and smoke were all around him now. Blobs of fiery debris left over from the IED. God, he couldn’t hear. The blast was still ringing in his ears.

  Couldn’t see, either, because of the sand.

  But he could think, and he went through all the things he’d learned in his training. Hadn’t it been about this anyway? Needing to take evasive measures. Doing whatever it took to finish the mission.

  Sixty-forty.

  Get the hell out now!

  Riley forced himself to move, one foot ahead of the other, and he made the mistake of looking down. He was leaving a trail of blood on the sand. His own blood.

  There was too much of it.

  But since he was moving, his odds were better than the kid’s. Riley’s blood type was on his name tag. If the medic was still alive, he’d see it and would be able to give him whatever he needed to stay alive.

  The kid was a different matter.

  Kids didn’t wear their blood types on their clothes. Sure as fuck-hell shouldn’t have been in this place, and Riley couldn’t let him die here, either.

  Sixty-forty.

  One step ahead of the other.

  He thought of his brothers. Of Claire. Why had she popped into his mind? He wasn’t sure, but it was a welcome memory. Of Claire in the marching band on the football field of Spring Hill High School. Her stiff blue uniform that made her look like a soldier. The memory of her, the sound of the clarinet she was playing was weaving in and out of the sand so Riley marched with her.