Somewhere (Sawtooth Mountains Stories Book 1)

by Susan Fanetti

  “I never could just go along to get along, either. Whatever she said I couldn’t do, that’s what I wanted most to do. The harder she made it, the harder I tried. We fought every single day. She was a slapper—whenever I said something that pissed her off, wham across the face—and I would say shit just to make her head explode. It was pretty bad. I guess my first truth is that: I loved my mom, and I know she loved me, but at least once a day, almost every day for as long as I can remember, I thought to myself that I hated her. The day it happened, when my dad came in, we’d been standing in the kitchen screaming at each other. I’d just told her to fuck off, because I knew how much it hurt her when I spoke to her like that. It’s hard to live with that being the last thing she knew of me.”

  She was leaning on her hand on the blanket; Heath laid his hand over hers. “If I know the story right, the last thing she knew of you was you fighting your dad. Trying to save her. She knew you loved her.”

  Gabe shook that idea away. “No. All I did was get between them. I didn’t fight. I jumped in his way, and he stabbed me instead. Then I just laid there, trying to breathe, while everything happened. My mom could’ve gotten away, but she tried to pull me out with her. If she’d left me, she’d’ve lived.”

  Heath wanted to argue with her, she could tell, but then he realized what he was doing—interfering in her truth—and he relaxed and just listened while she told him about the hospital, and her friends drifting quickly away, and living in that rented house alone, going to the courthouse for every single hearing, every single day of evidence, waiting, waiting, waiting for it to be over.

  “Everybody wants it to be a story about a heroic girl trying to save her beloved family, and I guess it’s close enough. But really we were fucked up. My grandparents were wonderful to me, but they treated my dad like crap and they talked shit about him to my mom so that she stopped seeing the good in him. They hated him for being white, they hated him for knocking my mom up, they hated him for not providing for us well enough, and they hated him for all the crap he actually did wrong. He really did love my mom and me, but all those years of people telling him he was crap…and then she threw him out, and he went nuts.”

  She sighed and looked down the hill at the burbling water. “I guess my truth is like yours in that way. I hate my father for what he did, but he’s not a monster. In a way, though, that’s worse.”

  Heath caught her chin in his fingers and turned her to look at him. “It’s worse because if they were monsters, there wouldn’t have been anything we could do to prevent what happened. They were just screwed-up people, and that means maybe we could have helped. I’ve got four years of combing through the past trying to see where I could have saved Ruthie and her mom. I could name hundreds of things that maybe if I’d done them differently, noticed something I missed, turned a different direction, maybe they’d be alive. It doesn’t matter. We can’t undo what happened, and no matter what we did or didn’t do, we didn’t make their choices for them. We are not at fault.”

  His eyes flared wide, and he looked away.

  “Heath?”

  “That’s the first time I said that and believed it.” When he met her eyes again, they gleamed with emotion. “I guess I needed to believe it for somebody else before I could believe it for me.”

  *****

  Back at the barn late that afternoon, Gabe whimpered when she brought her leg over Phoebe’s back, and for a second, she just stayed right where she was, one foot in the stirrup, trying to prepare herself for the impact when she hopped to the ground. Every muscle in her body sang out its aches. Horseback riding was freaking hard work.

  Before she’d worked up the nerve to kick her foot free of the stirrup, she felt Heath’s hands on her hips. “Let go, little one. I got you.”

  She did, and he set her gently on the ground. Another whimper escaped when her legs were expected to hold her up.

  Heath frowned. “You’re really hurting.”

  For half a second, she considered laughing it off—but she honestly didn’t know how she was going to take even a step, so she nodded. “Yeah, I’m pretty sore.”

  “Steve!” he shouted, startling her, and a man about her age trotted out from the stable.

  “Yeah, Heath?”

  “Put up our horses, will ya?”

  Steve nodded and came over to take the reins of both Maggie and Phoebe. He tipped his head cordially at Gabe, who gave him a little wave, but Heath didn’t introduce them.

  When Steve led the horses away, Heath took Gabe’s hand. “You think you can make it to my truck?”

  She nodded and eased her way carefully the few steps to his truck. He opened the door and lifted her in, and she didn’t mind at all.

  When she got back to the Moondancer, she was going to try to stand in a hot shower as long as she could, and then she was going to lie perfectly still in her narrow bed until she had to get up for work the next afternoon.

  But Heath didn’t drive her to the Moondancer. He drove for about one minute and then parked again, still on the ranch and in sight of the stable and the big house, in front of a low, grey clapboard house: one story with a long porch across the front and a dark red door. It looked a lot like the bunkhouse she lived in, but bigger.

  Confused, she turned and made a face to show him that she was.

  “This is my house. If it’s okay with you, I thought I’d take you in and draw you a bath. There’s a good tub. Maybe a massage after, if you’d like that.”

  “Really?”

  “Sound good?”

  “It sounds too good to be true.”

  “And yet it’s true.” He got out and came around to her side. She let him lift her from the truck, her legs complaining even about that, and when he hipped the door closed and didn’t set her on the ground, she hooked her sore arms—how had her arms gotten sore?—around his neck and let him carry her into his house.

  *****

  His house was clean and uncluttered. Near the front door was a large, black metal chest that seemed to be work-related, and there was a saddle on a stand nearby. Neither of these things seemed particularly decorative choices for a living room, but they didn’t seem wildly out of place here, either. A low shelf against the wall inside the door held three pairs of cowboy boots in various states of wear, and a pair of heavy-duty rubber boots as well.

  He set her down on a round, red braided rug and toed his boots off, pushing them to the shelf with his socked foot. When he asked, “You need my help?” Gabe understood that she was to take her boots off, too. There was a little red stool close by, so she shook her head, groaned her way down to the stool, and worked her boots off.

  Smiling, he helped her stand. “I’ll get that bath going. You want a drink?”

  “No, thanks.” She’d barely thought to answer. At the other end of the living room was a wall full of photos, and she wanted to get over there.

  He saw her interest. Kissing her cheek, he said, “Go ahead and look around. I’ll come get you when I’m ready for you.”

  Then he was gone, through a doorway, and Gabe was alone in his living room.

  She walked stiffly past a plain but comfortable-looking brown tweed sofa with small matched tables on either side, and a large television on the wall facing it. Filling the far wall from side to side and about three feet up from the floor was a bookcase crammed with books. Those interested her, too, but the photos had her in thrall. Wall to wall above the books, almost to the ceiling, in identical frames and perfect symmetry: Heath’s whole history.

  She saw him as an adorable little boy on a pony. The same boy in his mother’s arms—she’d been a beautiful woman. Heath, now recognizable as a teen, standing with Logan, who looked dramatically different without a beard. Heath riding. Heath graduating. The whole family all mounted up and looking rancher-like. Emma with Wes and the kids. Morgan and his wife.

  Also Heath with an exotically beautiful woman with long, straight black hair and dark, dark eyes. He’d told Gabe that
Sybil was half Shoshone, and she’d looked it more than Gabe looked half Mexican. Only one photo of her, and she was obviously pregnant. He had his hand on her round, bare belly.

  All the rest of the photos, at least a dozen, were of a little girl. She alone, or with her daddy or her aunt or uncle or grandpa. Ruthie. She’d been a pretty, delicate little girl, with long hair the same color as Heath’s—medium brown with hints of auburn and blonde—and eyes as dark as her mother’s. There was a little gleam in those eyes that spoke of a quick wit and a mischievous spirit.

  Two photos in particular grabbed her attention again and again. In one, Ruthie sat alone on the weathered boards of a porch—maybe the one on this very house. She wore a filmy, pale pink dress and small brown cowboy boots. Her elbow was on her knee, and that hand propped her chin coquettishly. The boots were on the wrong feet. She seemed about five years old in that photo—not long before she’d died.

  The other was an arty shot. Heath and Ruthie, their faces only, in profile and almost entirely in silhouette, with the sundown centered behind them. They were kissing; Ruthie had her hands on her daddy’s cheeks, and her little face was screwed up in an exaggerated pucker. She was a toddler in that one.

  Gabe’s throat swelled. To lose a child. To lose a child as Heath had lost Ruthie. Her own loss felt insignificant in contrast.

  “That’s my girl.” Coming up behind her, he set his hands on her hips.

  She turned to him. He’d taken off his shirt and stood before her now gloriously bare-chested. Her fingers were drawn to the arcing scar where he’d been kicked and had hoped not to wake up. “She was beautiful.” The word ‘beautiful’ broke in half, and she cleared her throat.

  “Yeah. Bath’s ready.” He took her hand and led her away from his past.

  *****

  The bathroom was nice—nicer than Gabe had expected, in white and grey, modern but old-fashioned, with a wide, deep, clawfoot tub and an elaborate new faucet fixture and a separate shower. The steam from the bath he’d drawn had made the room humid, and her mouth nearly watered in anticipation of that hot water on her sore body.

  “I don’t have bubbles or anything like that, but I’ve got Epsom salts, if you want.”

  “What are Ep—whatever?”

  “Epsom salts. You put them in the bath to relieve aches.”

  “Okay. I’ll try.”

  As she stripped, he went to a cupboard in the wall and brought out a clear jar of white crystals. Removing her bra, she watched him open the jar and shake some crystals out, letting them fall like snow over the surface of the water. He swirled his hand around in the tub.

  “Ready.”

  He helped her into the tub, going so far as to sweep up her legs and set her in the water when the idea of bending that far down proved too much for Gabe to contemplate.

  After she was settled in the water—the perfect temperature, hot enough to need a moment to adapt but not so hot that it hurt—he was crouched at the side of the tub, smiling pensively. She’d bound her hair up high on her head with the elastic band she always wore for occasions when her mop was too much. He brushed a stray lock from her brow and tucked it behind her ear.

  “Take your time. Towels are there.” He nodded toward a little table stacked with thick, white towels.

  But when he moved to stand, Gabe grabbed his hand on the side of the tub. She didn’t want to be away from him.

  He cocked his head but didn’t speak—or move.

  “Stay with me?”

  “Sure. What do you want, little one?”

  Not sure she wanted sex, but positive that she wanted closeness, Gabe sat forward, making a space in the tub behind her. “Get in with me?”

  Everything was a question. She hated when she did that, so she repeated herself more firmly. “I want you to get in with me.”

  “Not too sore?”

  She didn’t know, but she shook her head. His body on hers would feel good, no matter how her muscles felt.

  He stood and dropped his jeans and boxer briefs, kicking them to the side. His cock was at full attention, and Gabe couldn’t help but stare. It was an excellent cock. Uncircumcised, and her first like that, it was long and thick and perfect.

  Heath’s legs were long and muscular, covered with dark hair that converged around that cock and then tapered off into a trail to his belly button. His forearms were hairy, too, but his chest, back, and upper arms were not. She thought he looked all the more chiseled because his abs and pecs, his delts and lats, and all the other muscles she didn’t know the names of—especially those wedges over his hips—were free of hair.

  Scars were scattered randomly over his body. Nothing like her own, but simply the accumulation of marks from a life lived outdoors, at hard work. His hands were especially rough and seemed older than the rest of him.

  She had come to understand that the Cahills were very wealthy, maybe the richest people in Jasper Ridge, and certainly the most important, but their kind of rich was different from the wealth she’d always imagined—men in suits, and women in gowns, riding in limousines and having fabulous parties. The Cahills didn’t seem all that different from the rest of the people in this town.

  He eased into the water behind her. As he sat, stretching out his legs and lifting her up so that she could rest on him, the water lapped over the sides and splashed on the tile floor.

  “Is this what you want?” He pulled lightly on her shoulders until she lay back, relaxed on his chest.

  “Yes. God, yes.” His erection dug into her ass and lower back, and she squirmed, trying both to find a more comfortable place for it and to rub on him.

  He grunted. “Sorry ‘bout that. I can’t help it. I’m hard most of the time I’m around you.”

  She squirmed again. “Don’t be sorry. I like it.” She’d been right—having him touching her like this was totally distracting her from her aches and pains.

  He picked up a washcloth and soaked it in the water. Bringing it up, he let it drip over her chest, focusing especially on her nipples. She gasped as the water struck her sensitive flesh, and knew that this bath was now about much more than her soreness.

  “This okay?” His voice was little more than a growl at her ear, and she nodded.

  With her permission granted, Heath let his hands move all over her. Those large, work-roughened hands skimmed over her whole wet body, at first simply stroking her from shoulder to knee and back up. Every now and then, he’d soak the cloth and wet her cooling body with fresh warm water, and then he’d begin his travels again. Each time his fingers and palms slid over her nipples, she arched up, hoping he’d pause there, but he didn’t. Each time he slid up the insides of her thighs, she spread them, hoping he’d come to rest at her pussy, but he didn’t. He stroked her and wet her and stroked her until every sore muscle quivered and she couldn’t stop moaning.

  “You are so beautiful,” he whispered, nipping at her earlobe, as his hands kept up their maddening movement. “So beautiful. Inside as much as out. I know you’re too young—hell, I really am old enough to be your father—but you don’t seem it. We barely know each other, but it doesn’t feel like it. I feel like I’ve known you for years.”

  The stimulation of his words and his touch together had Gabe feeling dizzy and desperate. She couldn’t have formed a response in words even if she’d known what to say, so she let her body respond instead.

  Finally, he stopped stroking and focused on her breasts. He had every inch of her skin buzzing already, and when he plucked at both nipples, she came up from his chest with a frantic cry.

  “Christ, I love that you love that,” he rumbled and plucked again.

  “Heath…please.” She reached back between them and took hold of his cock. He grunted and bounced his hips against her.

  Without thinking, knowing only what she needed, Gabe shifted until he was between her legs, pressing into her, sliding so near where she wanted him that her body seemed to open wide.

  But he groaned and lifted
her away. “Easy, now. Let’s get out of the tub.”

  “What? Why?” She was so close to what she wanted right now, right here.

  “No condom, Gabe.”

  “Oh.” The thought sank in fully. “Oh. Fuck.”

  “Definitely. Come on. The water’s getting cold anyway. Let’s take this to bed.” He climbed out and then lifted her out and to her feet. She stood still and let him wrap a towel around her and pick her up again.

  *****

  As soon as he had her in his bedroom, he dropped her on the bed, still wet, and fell on top of her. His mouth was everywhere his hands had been, sucking at her nipples, flicking over her clit, nipping and kissing and licking every point in between. She couldn’t take it anymore, she’d been dangling off the edge of an incredible orgasm for what seemed like hours, and every time she tried to get hold of his cock and put it where she wanted it, he danced out of her reach.

  Finally, he grabbed a condom from his nightstand drawer. She snatched it from his hand and tore open the packet. Understanding her intent, he grinned and rose up on his knees so that she could roll it on.

  She took her time, wanting to drive him as crazy as he’d been driving her, until he slapped her hands away and finished the job himself, then grabbed her—oh, he was rough now; she could feel his need in every powerful move of his body taking control of hers—and sank into her, slamming his mouth over hers at the same time.

  She came at once, as soon as he struck deep, and she kept coming and coming, like a rolling sea, waves that crashed over and over and over again as he thrust harder and harder, grunting into her mouth until she felt him swell. He tore his mouth away and reared back, freezing like that, tendons rising up in his reddening neck.