Of course, thanks to that gossip mill, now she knew Heath’s story and understood that she’d been little more than an excuse for him to hurt the man who’d let his family die. Yet the people who had told her his story, who should have known best of all that what had happened at the Jack hadn’t been about her, were the same people who were most fascinated by the idea of Gabe and Heath.
She’d been going completely nuts. Everybody around here knew everything about everybody, and if they didn’t, they filled in the blanks with their imagination and called it truth. It was maddening.
She’d come north to get away from her past, to start over, to control her memories and keep her life her own. Within days of landing by accident in Jasper Ridge, the entire town had known who she was and what had happened—and what they’d decided had happened.
The fact that she’d been stabbed trying to get between her father and her mother had become a ‘truth’ that she had fought a mighty battle with him—when, in fact, she’d simply jumped between them and been stabbed by the thrust meant for her mother, then had crumpled to the floor, choking on her own blood. She’d barely fought him at all, and her mother was dead because she’d tried to save her instead of running away.
She’d lain, sure she was dying, and watched all that he’d done to her family. Then, seeing that she was still alive, her father had dragged her nearly incapacitated body up and pressed a knife to her throat.
People in Jasper Ridge thought she was some kind of warrior, but she was only a girl who’d been stabbed by her father and gotten her mother killed.
She wondered how much of what she’d been told of Heath’s story was really his. Lying with her head on his sleeping chest, Gabe looked up at his face. In the morning, she would ask. They should know each other’s real truths, not what was cooked up for them by people who couldn’t know.
Right now, though, she had to figure out what to do about Britnee.
She and Heath hadn’t talked about whether he would spend the night, but he was sleeping deeply, and she wasn’t willing to give up the feeling of resting in his strong arms. Frankly, she wasn’t sure how she’d ever sleep alone again in her life. But there was only one bathroom, and her roommate walked between her bedroom and that bathroom in nothing but her underwear all the time. The chances of Heath and Britnee coming upon each other in an embarrassing situation were high.
Now the television went on. Okay. Gabe had to do something. She eased up from the bed. Heath stirred and sighed deeply, and she froze, watching, but he settled back into sleep, the hand that had been resting on her hip now on his belly. His ridged, firm belly.
Damn, he was gorgeous. A big, hard, chiseled statue of a man.
Rooting around on the dark floor, she found his shirt and pulled it on, buttoning enough buttons for decency, then tiptoed out of the room and closed the door again.
Britnee looked over the back of the sofa at her. Her legs were stretched out on the flimsy coffee table—they were bare; she’d taken off her jeans and boots and left them on the floor where they’d apparently fallen. So already they were in possibly embarrassing territory.
“Hey. You have a good day off—wait.” She scooted around so that she could better face Gabe over the sofa. “Whose shirt is that—OH MY GOD! Is your cowboy here?”
“Shut up, Britnee. I’m four feet away from you. You don’t have to yell.” She herself was barely more than whispering. Ideally, Heath would stay asleep while she negotiated whatever deal Britnee would demand to be a decent human being for a few hours.
Gabe actually liked Britnee more often than not, but they were very different people. Opposites, even. Britnee was…big. Physically, she was tiny, a little blonde, blue-eyed sprite, but everything she did was outsized. She talked loud, laughed big, moved through the world like a dervish, and reacted to absolutely everything without restraint. When she was angry, she shouted and threw things; when she was happy, she literally skipped. When she was sad, she wailed like a two-year-old.
They’d been living together for ten days, and Gabe had seen each emotional iteration more than once. It was exhausting.
But it was interesting.
Britnee modulated her voice about a hundredth of a decimal. “You have to tell me! Did you bang the horseshoe guy? Oh my god, he’s SO HOT! Was it good? Did you get off? Does he have a big dick? I bet he has a HUGE dick—those hands! And the way his jeans…Holy shit! Come on! Spill!”
“For all that is good and holy, please please please hold it down, Brit. Please.” When Britnee grinned and made the locking-her-lips gesture, Gabe sighed. “Yes. He’s here. I want him to stay the night, if that’s okay.”
The door opened behind her, and Gabe lost her roommate’s attention completely. Britnee looked past Gabe and grinned. “Well, hey there, cowboy. Hah! I’ve always wanted to say that!”
Gabe thought the Moondancer Ranch and Jasper Ridge, Idaho should have already given her ample time to say it—not that she thought it was such an inspired witticism.
Standing behind her, Heath put his hand on her hip. She looked back; he was dressed only in his jeans. His belt was loose, and he hadn’t fastened all the buttons of his fly. There was a trail of brown hair that ran into that open space and made Gabe swallow hard.
His hair was standing at all ends—she’d dragged her hands through it repeatedly.
“I’d’ve put my shirt on, but…” He grinned and nodded at her. Then he looked over at her roommate. “Hey. I’m Heath.”
“I’m Britnee. Don’t put a shirt on on my account,” said Britnee. “Far as I’m concerned, you should never, ever wear a shirt.” She bounced up; her embroidered work shirt, still with her nametag pinned to it, was open, and all she wore besides it was her lacy, matched underwear set. She put her hands on her hips, spreading her shirt even more widely, and grinned. Her little belly-button charm sparkled on her tanned, toned belly.
Gabe felt a violent stab of insecurity and jealousy.
But Heath cleared his throat uncomfortably and tightened his fingers at her hip, and Gabe looked back again to see that his eyes were firmly on her. “I was going to ask if you wanted me to go, but I heard you say you wanted me to stay. Yeah?”
She turned and faced him, setting her hands on his broad, beautiful chest. “Yeah.”
“Of course you can stay! She so needed to get laid! It’s like a public service!” piped up the exhibitionist Gabe lived with.
“Come on, then.” He took her hand and led her back into her room. With a courtly nod to Britnee, he said, “Nice to meet you,” and closed the door. He switched the light on.
He’d just rescued her in her own home.
“I’m so sorry,” she said as soon as they were alone. “She’s pretty obnoxious. And fuck her for putting all her lacy bits on display like that.”
Heath smirked and drew her close. “There is nothing sexier in the known world than you in my shirt. I barely noticed your roommate’s bits, lacy or otherwise.”
The way Heath made her feel—hopeful and happy and full—had come on so quickly that Gabe worried that it couldn’t be real. He was the first person in two years to really come close to her; maybe what she felt was simply that. Maybe anyone who treated her like he was treating her would have made her feel the same way.
But it wasn’t like she’d been living in a cave for the past two years. Nobody else around her had even tried to be close to her. Not that she would have wanted it.
Even when Heath had been ignoring her, he’d felt strangely close—like he’d already known her before he’d met her. Like he could see her in a way no one else could. And vice versa.
Was it only that he had a story, too? Or was that something so rare, so special—two people whose pasts made them incomprehensible to everyone around them finding each other and being understood—that they were spectacularly lucky? Had it been fate? Had she stopped here because there had been one person in the world, living in Jasper Ridge, Idaho, who could see beyond her scars?
As if to pro
ve the point of her wondering, as if he had heard her thoughts, Heath curled his hand around Gabe’s neck, around the choker she hadn’t taken off. “Does this cover up something you don’t want people to see?”
With a nod, she pulled away from his hand and reached back to unfasten the leather. “It’s not bad, but if I don’t hide it, people ask.” She dropped her hands, and the choker with them, and Heath’s eyes focused on the faint, straight line over her carotid artery. When he traced his finger lightly over the mark, she said, “In some ways, it’s the worst, even though I don’t think it would’ve killed me. The other scar, I don’t think he meant to do. This one, he did.”
She reached behind her and set the choker on the chest of drawers. “I don’t know why I still wear it—everybody around here knows what happened. I can’t believe how fast the story got out.”
“Catherine’s an Olympic-level gossip.”
“Yeah, I know that now. But like you said, there’s no running away from it, whether other people know or not.”
“No, there’s not. But what people say and what’s real—that’s usually two different things.”
She’d been thinking the exact same thing not long before. Though it was the middle of the night, and she had work in the morning, and he did, too, Gabe took his hand from her neck and held it in both of hers. “You’re right. The stories that get spread, those are myths. I want us to know each other’s truths.”
A cascade of emotions spilled through his pale green eyes, and Gabe knew a second of regret for causing him that turmoil. But then he nodded and led her to sit with him on her bed.
“I’ve never talked about it,” he said, and Gabe realized that he was going to tell his truth first, that he was offering her his own raw vulnerability without hesitation. “Since I stopped having to tell the story officially, I haven’t talked about it. I think about it every day, and other people talk about it to this day. I know the story people tell’s changed, but I’ve never given a shit what they say. Until now.” He sighed. “It would help if you told me what you’ve heard.”
Feeling guilty and intrusive, like she’d been gossiping, even though she hadn’t been able to avoid the story, Gabe squeezed his hands. Each of their stories was traumatic, awful in their own particular ways. But Heath had lost his own child. “I know that your wife crashed her car into that ravine on the side of the road that leads to the school compound.” In Jasper Ridge, the grade school and the high school were on the same campus, and the grade school went to grade eight.
He smiled a little. “Old School Road. Yeah.”
“I know that your little girl was with her, and they both died.” Gabe refrained from saying she was sorry, though she felt that odd impulse people felt to fill space with the empty phrase.
“You know more than that.”
She shook her head—yes, she had been told a lot of things, but she wasn’t sure what could be trusted. “Well, I’ve been told more than that, but I think those are the facts I know. The rest…I’m not sure. I’d rather you tell me.”
At that, he smiled fully, his dimples deepening. She couldn’t help but draw her finger down the crease of one. The smile wasn’t happy, but it was appreciative, and he said, “Thank you.”
Heath shifted on the bed, resting his back against the low, plain headboard and stretching his legs out. He pulled Gabe’s arm, and she moved as well, settling herself in snugly at his side. His arm went around her, and she felt safe. She nestled on his chest and let him talk, the rumble of his voice against her ear giving her peace even as his words gave him pain.
“Sybil—my wife—we knew each other all our lives. We were related a little—her mom is full Shoshone, and my maternal grandfather was, too, and her mom and my granddad were fourth cousins twice removed or some such. My mom had the whole family tree worked out. It was too far distant to matter, anyway. We were together from the time I was in tenth grade and she was in ninth. We were one of those couples that were all over the yearbook. The whole cliché—I was football, she was cheer, Homecoming, Prom, all of it. I went to college, and she didn’t, she worked in town at Wild West Impressions—that old-timey photo studio—but she waited for me. Anyway, it was good, I thought.
“She was a drinker, but hell, everybody around here is. A lot of people drink hard. While I was away at school, I guess it started to get out of control for her, but I didn’t see it until I’d graduated and come back home. Then I wanted to train as a blacksmith, and my dad and I were at each other over that the whole time I was training, and I guess I just didn’t see that she was in trouble. Like I said, around here, a lot of people drink, and a lot of those are drunks, but nobody makes a fuss.”
Gabe thought about how much she’d seen Heath drink—a lot—but she didn’t interrupt the flow of his story to mention it. Except for that one night at the Jack, she couldn’t say she’d seen him obviously drunk.
“Anyway,” he continued, “the way people tell the story now, Syb comes off like a monster. And I hate her, no question. What she did…I dream about Ruthie, about her dying, but I’ve never once dreamt about Sybil. Far as I’m concerned she brought that on herself. But she wasn’t a monster. She was just a woman with trouble. And I didn’t see it. But she loved Ruthie. I’d’ve said she’d never do anything to hurt her. I thought she was a good mom.”
He took a deep breath. “Shit, this is getting long and involved. I didn’t expect—”
Gabe rose up and put a finger over his lips. “It’s okay. Tell your truth. Right?”
His eyes studied hers deeply. “You are so young and so old, both at the same time. It’s mesmerizing.”
Taking that as a compliment, Gabe smiled and kissed him, then settled back on his chest.
After a moment, with his fingers combing through her hair, he went on. “All of that is just to say that Sybil had her demons, and I was not paying attention. I think she drank to get through her days and she just seemed normal that way, and when she got really sloppy, I just dried her out and took care of her. She stayed dry while she was pregnant. We had our baby girl, and I had the job I wanted. My dad and I worked our shit out, more than not, and I rebuilt a bunkhouse into a home for my family. I was happy. I loved my wife, and God, I loved my little girl. There is nothing like the way your own child looks at you. You know you have worth when you see that.”
His voice broke, and he went quiet. Gabe, feeling a swell of emotion for him, stroked her hand over his chest, and they were silent together until he could speak again.
“About two months before the crash, I found out that Sybil and Brandon Black had been fucking behind my back for at least a year. Ruthie told me. She didn’t mean to, but Syb had started bringing her out to see Uncle Brandon while I was at work, and she’d seen them kissing, and she asked about it. She was only five, and she was just trying to understand, since I’d told her that mommies and daddies kissed that way.
“I’d known Black as long as I’d known Sybil—we all grow up together around here—and he was a good friend. I thought so, anyway. Until Ruthie said what she said, and I took it to Syb and she just crumbled right away, I thought I had a good life. I thought I knew what was going on in my own life.”
He sighed and went quiet again. Gabe waited, her hand still stroking him, now making light circles around his belly button. Of all the things he was telling her, she had heard almost none of it before. All she’d heard was that Sybil was a drunk who’d been cheating on Heath with Brandon Black, that they’d both been drunk in the car with Ruthie, that Sybil had been driving, and that Brandon had run away from the car, before the flames, without trying to save Ruthie or Sybil.
“I lost my shit. I threw her out and kept Ruthie from her. If I’d’ve gotten her to court, I might’ve won custody, if only because I had money and she didn’t. But everybody leaned on me about taking a child from her mother, and Ruthie missed her, and I just felt like shit. I didn’t know what to do. I ended up letting her take our girl on weekends. The crash happened o
n the second weekend visit.”
Under Gabe’s hand, Heath’s belly went rock hard. His whole body had tensed.
“She was out in the open with Black after we split. Everybody knew about them. That night, they were both drinking. They’d started at the Jack, but when Reese cut them off and told them to take Ruthie out of there before it got too rowdy, they went back to Black’s trailer. According to what he told the sheriff later, they were on their way to the playground so Ruthie could play. It was after midnight. Sybil was driving because Black’s license was suspended for DUI. She missed a turn, went through the rail and into the ravine. It’s wide there, and full of scrubby trees. One of them went through the gas tank. The engine didn’t die in the crash. The combination of the engine still running and the gas leaking from the tank started a fire. And then an explosion.”
He was clutching her hip so tightly now that Gabe could feel the bruise forming under his fingertips.
“Black got out of that car and ran. It was two days before they figured out he’d been there at all. He said he was drunk and hurt, and he didn’t realize he was leaving my wife and child behind to die in a fire, but it doesn’t matter. He killed Ruthie just as much as Sybil did.”
His words had gotten thick, and Gabe rose up again, thinking that he was crying. He wasn’t, but he was all but. His face was a melting mask of grief.
She stroked his cheek. “You don’t have to go on.”
He shook his head. “I’ve come this far. Logan and I were out with a couple of buddies, winding up the night. He was trying to keep me busy on weekends without Ruthie. We were at the Jack, but nobody said anything about Syb and Black being there earlier. Back then, everybody was just watching and talking behind our backs, but ‘trying to stay out of it,’ as they said.”
The sarcastic quotation marks were audible.
“We were driving Victor back to his place. He lives out past the school on Old School Road, where it crosses into the rez. If Victor hadn’t stopped to take a piss before we set out, maybe we’d’ve gotten there before the fire started. If somebody had said something about Syb and Black having Ruthie at the Jack, I’d’ve called and chewed her out, and maybe that would’ve changed something. Instead, we pulled off and got out to help whoever it was, and I saw the back end of my wife’s Ford in that gulch, fire already filling it, and my little girl flailing in her car seat. She was screaming for me, and she didn’t even know I was there. She’d just thought that her daddy was the one who would save her.”
Somewhere (Sawtooth Mountains Stories Book 1) Page 11